Читать книгу Rabble in Arms: A Chronicle of Arundel and the Burgoyne Invasion - Kenneth Roberts - Страница 21

Table of Contents

Chambly and St. John’s are twelve miles apart. St. John’s is the end of navigation for vessels coming north from Lake Champlain, and Chambly is the end of navigation for vessels coming south from the St. Lawrence; and between the two towns the Richelieu leaps down from the level of Lake Champlain to that of the St. Lawrence in a series of shoals and ledges and roaring rapids and tumbling cataracts.

Those twelve short miles are a strong barrier to an invading army wishful of moving from Canada to Lake Champlain; for no vessel can pass over them; and the army that attempts it must disembark at Chambly, abandon its vessels, march to St. John’s, and there build new vessels for the transporting of men, guns and supplies.

Therefore Chambly is a strategic point, and a fort was built there during the old French wars—an ugly square thing on a dirty, weed-grown plain between the upper and lower rapids.

When I came down the road on that hot June afternoon, there were tents on the plain, pitched with no appearance of military neatness; and on the river-bank were piles of supplies, most of them unguarded. There was a rumpled, deserted look about the whole place, such as is seen around an ill-kept tavern at an early hour in the morning.

I kicked my bony plough-horse in the ribs and rode up to the drawbridge of the fort. A ragged sentry sat on the planks, staring into the shallow rainwater that filled the ditch beneath.

“Message for Colonel Hazen,” I told him.

He jerked his head toward the open gateway of the fort, so I gave him my horse’s reins and entered the dark interior. In the guard-room I found a man mending rips in his trousers; but when I asked for Colonel Hazen, he shook his head absently and remained engrossed in his needlework. “Busy,” he murmured. “In quarters—talking to somebody.”

“I’ve got to see him quick,” I said. “I’ve got a message from General Arnold. It’s important.”

He looked up at me and grinned. “From General Arnold? You’ll be welcome here! Welcome as a pole-cat! Hazen’s got Bedel with him—Bedel and Colonel Easton and Major Brown.”

“I’m not here to be welcomed,” I said. “I’m here to give him this message.”

He eyed me queerly, but made a neat knot in the twine with which he was sewing, sawed it off with a jack-knife, wrapped his needle and twine remnant in an old rag, and led me down a passageway smelling of ammonia.

“Is Colonel Bedel the one that was at the Cedars?” I asked him.

He laughed hoarsely. “The one that wasn’t there, you mean,” he whispered. “Yes, that’s him.”

“I thought he was being courtmartialled for cowardice,” I said.

The man made no answer, but stopped at a door behind which I heard a murmur of voices. He motioned at the door with his thumb and went off the way he had come, stepping softly. I knocked on the door. The murmur ceased: then a sulky voice said “Come in.”

The room was more of a cell than anything else, and so dimly lighted by one small slit of a window that there were two candles burning on the table. There were two men in chairs at this table, and two more sitting on a bunk built against the wall. They were just sitting, all four of them, as if they had nothing else to do. They stared at me; and when one of the two at the table snapped “What’s your business?” I knew he must be Colonel Hazen. He was a red-faced man with a thick neck, quick and impatient in his movements, and he wore a handsome uniform—as good as those worn by the officers of the fine Pennsylvania troops that had been cut to pieces at Three Rivers.

“A despatch from General Arnold,” I said, and gave it to him.

He opened it, humming and hawing in his throat, whereupon one of the two on the bunk, a tall, long-nosed young man, snorted and said, “Speak of the devil!”

The officer at the table with Hazen was dusty, and farmerish-seeming. His face was round, and so was his body; and his eyes had a squint to them as if he could say something smart whenever he chose; and he chose at this moment. “Ain’t that a leetle weak, Major?” he asked. “Generally you git violent inside of three words!” At this all four of them guffawed meanly, as idlers guffaw in a village store, when one of them achieves a gem of rudeness.

The tall officer with the long nose, therefore, was a major, and must be Major Brown; and I remembered, then, that some one had spoken of Bedel as being the best hay-pitcher in New Hampshire. Thus Bedel had to be the round, dusty-looking, farmer-like man; for the fourth officer, the one who sat on the bunk beside Major Brown, was thin, with a bitter twist to his mouth, which was set in a perpetual sneer. He must, I was sure, be Colonel Easton, for I could tell by looking at him that he would be no better at pitching hay than at doing a generous deed.

Colonel Hazen placed Arnold’s letter on the table and smoothed it carefully: then turned it over and looked at the superscription. “ ‘Captain Peter Merrill,’ ” he read. “That’s you, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Whose commission do you hold, sir? Congress or Provincial?”

“General Arnold gave me my commission,” I said. “It was necessary in the performance of scout duty.”

The four officers looked at each other: then concentrated their stares on me.

“So you’re a scout, are you?” Major Brown said politely. “You have special qualifications, no doubt, if the general commissioned you.” He stressed the word “general” in such a way that I felt he would willingly cut Arnold’s throat if he could do it undetected. I made no answer; and in an instant he was on his feet, as if he had me in a court of law. “We’d be interested to know, Captain,” he persisted, “about your special qualifications.”

“Well, sir,” I said mildly, not wishing to have trouble with any of these four officers, “well, sir, I don’t rightly see what that has to do with you, or with my present duties.”

“You don’t?” Major Brown cried. “It has this to do with it! It’s contrary to law for General Arnold——”

“I’ll answer your question,” I said. “I’ve got another despatch to carry, and it won’t stand delay. I was a sea captain.” I had an itch to ask them for their own qualifications, but dared not—which is what the army does to most.

I think my desire showed in my face; for they said no more: only glowered at me.

“Sir,” I said to Colonel Hazen, “I’d like a receipt for that despatch.”

When he gave it to me, ungraciously, I went out of the fort on the run without stopping to salute any of the four officers. To my way of thinking they were what Cap Huff had called pig-nut officers—all rind and a little meat, and that worthless, in all likelihood. I knew next to nothing about them; but I was sure of two things. They hated Arnold because he hadn’t found them competent, and had let them see he knew their incapacities; and to my mind Arnold alone was worth all four of them stirred together, with another ten thousand like them added to the mixture.

... Because of the thousands of smallpox sufferers that had poured back on us from Sorel, and the tales of starvation, defeat and desertion that had reached us daily from Sullivan’s camp, I expected to find something terrible when I reached it. It might have been worse; for although the men in sight were thin and dejected-looking, they were clean shaved, and their hair and breeches were tied, showing they were subject to discipline.

None the less the camp at Sorel was miserable enough. It occupied the sandy marsh where the Richelieu runs into Lake St. Peter. The broad St. Lawrence lay before it, the far shore lost in a heat haze; and against the haze quivered distant marshy islets that had the look of fever-breeders. The air was moist and stagnant, and the smell of the place was that of a dirty water-butt on a hot day—foul and sickish.

Through and over everything seemed to run a faint yet shrill moaning. This was the sound of the countless billions of mosquitoes with which the country swarmed.

Yet the place was orderly. Two hundred brown bateaux lay in regular ranks along the river; and there were three schooners and a pair of cumbersome flat-bottomed gundelos tied up among them, like five curlews standing among a flock of sandpipers. The camp itself was neat, and enclosed with earthworks and trenches. Behind the earthworks, close to the water’s edge, there were five cannon, three of them great guns and two of them about large enough for shooting ducks.

All around me, as I rode through the wretched shelters under which this pauper army lived, were the Pennsylvania troops I had seen entering St. John’s two weeks before. Already their uniforms, the fine blue-and-white uniforms that had shone so brightly against the brown waters of the Richelieu, were faded and tattered, and the men themselves had the look of being tattered in spirit.

There were sentries at the door of headquarters; and when one of them bawled that here was a despatch-bearer come from General Arnold, I was taken at once before General Sullivan. There was little amiability to be seen in his broad lynx-like face as he glanced from the superscription on the letter to my rough clothes, and even less when he had opened the letter and run his eye over it. He pressed his lips together stubbornly and shook his head, so that I knew without any word from him that his ideas as to retreating were not the same as Arnold’s.

To me he said: “It was you, wasn’t it, Captain, who was taking the vessel to pieces because Arnold thought it might be needful in a retreat?”

I said, “Yes,” whereupon he remarked grimly that there seemed to be a conspiracy on somebody’s part to persuade him to retreat without firing a gun. With that he sighed and spoke to me kindly enough. “I suppose it’s your duty to return to Arnold with an answer to his message. Well, I can’t let you have it now: you’ll have to wait. Meanwhile, find yourself quarters with Wayne’s officers. I’ll have use for every healthy man obtainable, and in no great while either!”

It seemed plain to me that what Sullivan meant was that he intended, in spite of Arnold’s warning, to fight the British. If he had any other intentions, I was sure he would have moved at once.

But in spite of Arnold’s warning, Sullivan would not stir. God knows what he thought; but there in that steaming sticky fry-pan of a camp he waited, silent and lynx-like, staring out over the low islands of Lake St. Peter. He seemed to be set upon waiting, with his inactive army, perforce, waiting with him.

... On the day after I brought him Arnold’s message the whole army seemed to stare, too—stare breathlessly into the dirty heat-haze that smudged the northern sky, and wilt as it stared. A sun of molten brass glared down on fiery hot marshes that spewed mosquitoes into the quivering air; and on every side there was a muttering from the men and a grumbling from the officers; for word had spread among them as to the numbers of the British and the size of the guns they were bringing against us—guns big enough to let them lie well out of range of our little pea-shooters and batter us to a jelly.

A rumour flashed through the camp, when that broiling morning was half over, that a column of British had been sighted on the far shore of the St. Lawrence; a long column, attended by supply carts and artillery, marching up the river. If this was true, it meant the British were moving on a long curve that would bring them in our rear. It meant we would be cut off.

Officers went to Sullivan, where he stood on the earthworks, staring out over the lake. St. Clair, a worried-looking grayish man, talked with him, and Wayne, a tall, chesty officer with a bold, jeering look. They waved their arms and pointed, now at the camp and now toward the rear; and we knew they were urging Sullivan to retreat while there was yet time. But Sullivan just stood there, his lips tight together and the perspiration shining on his face, and wouldn’t stir. He would not stir.

It was early afternoon when the sentries on the earthworks began to shout and point across the pale blue waters of the lake. What they saw could be seen by any man with eyes. The distant haze had lifted—cooled, perhaps, by a fresher breeze—and beyond the sandy islands that crowd the upper end of Lake St. Peter there rose the white sails of such a fleet as I had never seen.

The whole horizon on the far side of the islands was solid with topgallant-sails and royals, score upon score of them. I tried to count them, but it was not possible, any more than it would be possible to count seagulls packed on a distant ledge. There were more than fifty vessels in the fleet. Their sails were big and square: not the sails of small merchant vessels, but of ships—war vessels: frigates, beyond question, and sloops-of-war. This vast spread of canvas hung there, shining in the scorching afternoon sun, like the silvery rim of a thundercloud: a great armada.

The breeze was light, but it was steady. In three hours, if it held, every last one of these tall vessels would have passed between the islands and would be close enough to open on us with big guns. I wondered whether Sullivan had gone mad with the heat. In no other way, it seemed to me, could his unwillingness to move be explained.

He had come out on the parapet again and stood staring down the river, motionless, with groups of officers gathered close around him. I could see their heads jerking and their hands waving, and knew they were arguing furiously; but Sullivan stood immovable among them, his gaze fixed on the countless sails in the north.

As I watched them, the damp heat of the place seemed to smother me—to choke me. I wondered what the British would do to us when they captured us: where they would take us.

I wondered about Nathaniel: whether he had seen Ellen Phipps yet: whether he would escape the British, or whether they would capture him too. I wondered about Ellen—whether she would get away to Albany: whether I would ever see her again.

Within me I cursed this lynx-faced general, who was putting all of us in a corner like a lot of helpless rats—putting us where we could neither fight nor run—and doing it in spite of Arnold’s warning: in spite, now that the odds against us were actually in sight, of the warnings of all his officers.

The group around Sullivan burst apart, almost as though a bomb had scattered them. Some of the officers shouted. A drummer ran toward them: then stopped, hitched his drum into position and beat a rattling, rasping roll that seemed the embodiment of irritation. It told every one within hearing that Sullivan had yielded at last and ordered a retreat.

On the instant the whole camp boiled with men. Other drums went to rolling, half heard in the yammering and bawling that arose on every side.

It was then that I saw for the first time the spectres that had lain hid in the huts and tents. They crawled out on hands and knees, some of them. Others were drawn out by men who looked near as sick as those they drew. They had the smallpox, and there were hundreds of them. How many hundreds I would not dare to say; but it seemed to me that for every well man, there was a man with the smallpox, lying on the hot sand in front of the tent or hut from which he had been dragged.

They looked dead. Their ragged fragments of uniforms were loose on them, almost as though there was nothing inside but bones; and their limbs, sprawled at odd angles, seemed lifeless. Flies and mosquitoes crawled on their unprotected faces, but they lay without moving—a dreadful festering host—an army barely alive.

... The things that were done by men called well on that sweltering fourteenth day of June were more, almost, than I can believe when I cast my mind back over them. Even if the men had been in the best of health, their accomplishments would have been miracles. But the well men were sick from scanty food and discouragement and exposure—so sick that if they had been aboard a ship of mine, I would have hesitated to let any one of them go aloft to hand a sail for fear he would have lost his hold from weakness.

Yet these men levelled the earthworks they had been weeks in building, and filled the trenches. They trundled the cannon from the embrasures and stowed them aboard the schooners in the river; carried the sick men to the bateaux and placed them tenderly in the bows and sterns; took out the powder, shot and supplies from the rickety warehouses and loaded them in the schooners and gundelos; packed up every last thing in the tents and huts and headquarters—every entrenching tool, every shovel, every blanket, every kettle.

They struck and packed the tents: crawled over that baking, mosquito-ridden, stinking marsh like fumbling human ants, weak and drenched with sweat, but tirelessly salvaging every usable thing.

The sun was a red-hot ball in a dirty heat haze when the schooners and gundelos, loaded with guns, stores and men, set off up stream. They were none too soon in their going, I thought; for the British fleet, crowded by now into the channel between the islands, was close. We could see the fighting-tops of the ships in the van, and the small figures in them, waiting to pick us off with muskets.

When there was nothing left in the camp but huts and warehouses and an expanse of foul and trampled sand, we set fire to everything that would burn. The smoke rolled down over the throngs that wrestled with the bateaux at the river’s edge, so that they had the look, in the hot red light of the setting sun, of lost souls struggling to escape from the fringes of hell.

We went into the bateaux like cattle, helter skelter, urged on by Sullivan, who marched up and down on the bank, as cheerful as though the British were in England, instead of a whisker’s width behind us. The sick lay at our feet, moaning and complaining; for not only were they seared and tortured by the internal fires of smallpox, but the bateaux were like ovens from lying in the full glare of the sun.

There was a stench to those poor men, the overpowering stench of smallpox, and they were terrible to look at, because of the sores and swellings that made their faces unrecognisable. They croaked hoarsely for coolness and water, and for a hundred things that we had no way to get for them; and to the accompaniment of this piteous faint chorus we pulled out into the swift current of the Richelieu.