Читать книгу Crossed Swords. A Canadian-American Tale of Love and Valor - Mary Wilson Alloway - Страница 12

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Some two months before, in the town of New Haven, Connecticut, two men were conversing on the theme of which all in the colonies, men and women alike, were thinking and talking—the stubborn campaign on which they had entered with such a mixture of rage and despair. One was a trader of the town, who had left his apothecary shop near the water-front to take to the field.

His companion, a man of a fine presence, showing camp training in his erect figure and soldierly bearing, was seated, but suddenly rising and placing his hand on the arm of the man pacing impatiently before him, he said:

"Arnold, be advised! Temper your passion with reason, for 'twere the height of folly and rashness to carry out this purpose of marching without orders."

At the words, spoken with persuasion yet with the authority of one who had seen service in the king's army, Benedict Arnold suddenly wheeled about. Irritably shaking off the restraining hand, with hair pushed angrily back, and the hot blood crimsoning his handsome, swarthy face, he looked every inch a fighter, as he exclaimed with passionate vehemence:

"'Tis easy for you, Vanrosfeldt, to counsel patience, who have already won your spurs. Think ye that I can longer bide here like a hound in leash? No! I swear only Almighty God will prevent my marching to Boston town, orders or no orders; for hark'ee, Vanrosfeldt, I am not made of the stuff that waits, as only yestermorn I gave this town good proof. Chancing upon a drunken dog of a sailor belaboring his whimpering wife with a rope's end, I was minded to give him a taste of it himself, and at the public whipping-post hard by, then and there, gave him forty such lashes as his knavish back will bear the marks of for many a day to come. That is how Ben Arnold waits, so mark me, I lead my men to Boston town to-morrow!"

"Well," replied Vanrosfeldt calmly, "if to such a course you are committed, 'twere useless, methinks, to parry words further. If I cannot dissuade you, I will at least not hinder your headstrong project. Perforce we must take the same road, as I am about to join the camp at Massachusetts Bay."

"I would not be averse to taking advantage of your greater military knowledge on the march," said Arnold eagerly, "as I am more sailor than soldier, and these young volunteers from the College halls are more used to books than muskets, and the field of game than of battle."

Accordingly, proceeding to sack the arsenal, Arnold set forth in the early morning at the head of his student volunteers, to join the growing army of patriots on the banks of the River Charles. Vanrosfeldt, as he glanced at the irregular ranks, unskilled in the use of the arms they awkwardly carried, said to Arnold, who already was showing himself something of a leader: "Arnold, America seems lacking in everything save men to fight!"

"Aye," was the answer, "but they come, every man of them, from good fighting stock! 'Tis New England 'gainst Old England!"

On reaching the camp, that this was true seemed plain to be seen, the former case woefully so. To Vanrosfeldt, with his practised eye, they seemed a nondescript and motley-looking crowd, but there was something in their look and mien that showed they remembered from whence they had sprung. Sorry looking soldiers truly they were, bivouacked in the rude huts of stones and turf that were scattered over Cambridge Common, and which were patched up with boards and weatherworn sail-cloth which had been cast aside after long years of service among the fogs of the Atlantic fishing-banks. Among the men what was lacking in experience was made up for in courage. They remembered that not far distant was a grim, grey rock on which their Puritan forefathers had landed, and that they were the sons of those old "Roundheads" who had fought with Cromwell at Naseby and Marston Moor, shouting as they charged Charles Stuart's ringleted Cavaliers "God with us!" The British held possession of the town across the river, but from the white farmhouses among the orchards, the wives and mothers brought food and needful clothing to sons and husbands, striving with the smiling bravery of pale lips to quiet the anxious beating of their hearts, that their soldiers' courage might not be lessened by their tears.

On an afternoon in early September the rays of the setting sun, slanting through the branches of the elms, cast long, wavering shadows over the pleasant fields of Cambridge, through which the River Charles ran under yellowing willows to the sea. Following a cow-path across the green, two soldiers of the patriot army were returning from Vassel House, a handsome mansion near by, from which its owner, a rabid Royalist, had fled some time before. Early in July, General George Washington had taken command of the army under one of those same Cambridge elms, since which time the house had been his headquarters.

As they walked, the men carried themselves with the assured gait of those having a firm purpose in view, and the doing of a great task before them. Such a frame of mind was befitting, as to them had been committed the making of a venture of imminent risk, one to which few men, even the bravest, were equal. Benedict Arnold, a look of fierce delight kindled in his eyes, turning to his companion and reading as they walked, said:

"Hark'ee, Vanrosfeldt, to our orders given herein: 'It is intended by the Congress at Philadelphia, that ye proceed to co-operate with the expedition under Generals Schuyler and Montgomery, and proceed to Quebec, by way of the waters and mountains of Maine. Upon the success of this enterprise, of preventing the King's troops in Canada from hectoring us on the north, the safety of the whole country largely depends.'" Stopping in the path, and drawing himself up to his full height, Vanrosfeldt said, laconically and with decision:

"We can do it, Arnold!"

Accordingly, a few days later, their detachment marched through the streets of Olde Town, or Cambridge, as it had become the fashion to style it, on the way to the northern border; betwixt which lay leagues of unbroken wilderness and unknown perils and hardship.

As the force passed the gates of the school, called for godly John Harvard, they found that, unmindful of the grave disquiet which the occupation of the premises by the troops from Connecticut had caused the worthy masters, a group of students had gathered under the walls. They lustily cheered the Patriots marching by, although they knew full well that each man had, in the well-filled pouch at his belt, a goodly supply of bullets obtained from the melting down and casting of the leaden roof and organ-pipes of the chapel in the campus.

Arnold, in command, walked in front, in the full regimentals of a colonel in the Continental Army, with Ensign Vanrosfeldt bearing the pennant of the Revolution, the morning light striking bravely on sword-hilt and sling-buckle. They were followed by a heterogeneous company, but, for spirited character and iron frames and wills, the picked men of the colonies. The column of twelve hundred men was made up of veterans of the Indian wars, who were learned in the cunning and savage wiles of the painted race, had heard the hideous scalp-yell, and been accustomed since childhood to the menace hanging over border settlements. Among them were hunters, knowing in woodcraft and trained in the use of the bark canoe. Born to a knowledge of the Indian, and having spent their lives on the outposts of the frontier, they were as keen on the wilderness trail as the wariest redskin who ever fired a settler's shanty, or strung scalp to his wampum belt. Crack shots, they were accustomed to forest fighting, knowing often that if their first ball did not tell, there would be no chance for another. Every backwoodsman was above all things skilled in the chase, which was no mean training for the field of battle.

Bringing up the rear was a body of men with the free, springing step of the mountaineers of Kentucky and Virginia, each carrying a rifle, with a tomahawk and scalping-knife in his belt. Sinewy veterans of border warfare, they seemed to carry in the ruddy tan of their cheeks and clearness of eye, the breath of the sweet, pure air of their native hills. Clad for the most part in the dress of their plumed and painted foes, they wore fringed and tasseled hunting-shirts, and leggings of buckskin, girdles worked in beads, and, on their heads, caps of coon or mink skin, the tail hanging down the back. With their long locks falling over the capes on their shoulders, they were magnificent in appearance and stature, not one being less than six feet in height. Echoes of the despairing strife of their brethren on the northern tidewater had penetrated through the dim woods to their mountain fastnesses, and they had hurried through leagues of shadowy forest to help those fighting on the seaboard, and with them to strike a blow for freedom from what they deemed injustice.

They were led by Daniel Morgan, a Virginian, of a famous family of Indian fighters. A hero in buckskin and a giant in stature, he had won a name for bravery and daring unequalled by any in the great woods of the Virginian frontier. He had left the blue mountains, the woodland haunts, the wild joy of the chase, and the camp-fire under the southern, balsam-breathing pines, for death, it might be, but fight he would!

Scattered among the ranks were farmers in every variety of homespun shirts and small-clothes, home-knit socks and cowhide shoes. At their sides were slung powder-horns, and in their toil-hardened hands were the trusty flintlocks that always hung ready over every chimney-corner in the settlements. Though followers of the plow, they had not forgotten the skill of their forefathers, who went to meeting-house with a psalm-book in one hand, and a gun in the other.

Arriving at Newburyport, scarcely had the first of the transports waiting for their conveyance been filled, when Vanrosfeldt, who was directing the embarkation, descried a small company of men approaching. They were covered thickly with the dust of the ten leagues over which they had come, and staggered with fatigue and the weight of the heavy muskets they carried. Their leader, though under medium height, was a striking youth, well proportioned, athletic in figure, and with a certain allurement of manner of unusual attractiveness. His features, though fine, were irregular, but this was forgotten in the beauty of the eye, which was full, a deep hazel, and with an expression which, once seen, could never be forgotten. Though little more than a boy, his countenance already bore traces of a wild and wayward nature. His face was haggard from recent illness, and the hurried and lengthy journey on foot, for which, in spite of all remonstrance, he had risen from a sick-bed.

Interrupted in his engrossing occupation, Arnold turned to the young man, whom he had known since his childhood, and with a frown said testily:

"Aaron, how came ye hither?"

With a low bow, and pointing to his comrades, he replied:

"With this brave following, whom I have equipped for service, I have marched the thirty miles 'twixt here and Boston. Six good men and true, we offer our swords on this crusade."

"What folly is this, lad?" exclaimed Arnold. "Did I not hear of you ill in your chamber, dosed with sassafras tea, and well bled by the leech, but one week past? This wilderness upon which we soon will enter is fit only for the foot of trappers and savages, and is no place for you, headstrong boy: so return forthwith to your foster-mother, good Mistress Shippen, as winding the silks for Mistress Peggy's tambour-frame is better suited to your years and taste than fighting British redcoats."

His air of depreciation and patronage exasperated the youth to anger.

"And I, in turn," he sneered, "would counsel you, Master Apothecary, to hie ye back to your shop of drugs on Water Street, New Haven, where I warrant ye have killed more men by your pills than ever ye shall with your bullets. If there were aught that might change my purpose, 'tis the thought of the sweet Peggy, who, I trow, would have wept her pretty eyes out had I had opportunity to bid her farewell; but even a kiss from her tempting lips would not have availed to deter me. Go I will! for neither argument nor persuasion will avail to change any purpose upon which Aaron Burr has set his mind." And lightly springing towards the boats, and hailing his companions to follow, he stubbornly took his place in the one which had just been loosed from its moorings.

An off-shore breeze rising freshly, and the tide with them, the course was taken up and continued until the mouth of the Kennebec River was reached, when the prows of the little fleet were turned up stream. Some facts about the route had been obtained from a party of Indians who had recently visited General Washington's headquarters. It had been learned from them that, three suns' journey from the big river of the Iroquois, a highland separated the waters flowing into it from those running south to the sea. From this information, and a rude map of the region in his possession, Arnold determined to leave the river and strike due north to find the summit which divided the St. Lawrence valley from the water sources of New England. Crossing that, he hoped to reach the head of the Chaudière, and from thence make descent upon Quebec. The task of penetrating a trackless, unknown wilderness was one of great hazard, demanding singular courage and self-reliance; but it was undertaken with undaunted and resolute spirit, and its difficulties manfully faced by leaders and men.

So exceedingly toilsome and laborious, however, did it prove, and so almost insurmountable the natural obstacles which presented themselves as they advanced, that even the hardy woodsmen, inured as they were to the rough experience of forest life, oftentimes faltered, and at nightfall were glad to sink down by the side of a pond on beds hastily made of pine or hemlock, and fall asleep in utter exhaustion. Week after week passed, and but little progress was made, until, with the food almost exhausted, slow starvation stared them in the face; and with the breaking out of malignant disease, terrible gaps were daily made in the ranks; to advance or turn back, seeming to be equally fraught with peril.

At last they sighted the high land that they had so intrepidly sought, and crossing it, pushed on down into the valley; although each man knew that they were pressing forward to assault a well-garrisoned, well defended town. Soon a clearing, with log huts among little patches of stubble-fields, told them that they had reached the outskirts of the French settlements, and the forty days of toil and famine were over—days in which they had waded rocky streams, sinking knee-deep in bogs; had hauled their bateaux over one hundred and eighty miles, and portaged them and their contents forty more, in cold and hunger, but with unabated courage and resolution.

At length what was left of the army, spent, tattered and gaunt, gathered on the banks of the tawny-flowing St. Lawrence, where, bristling with cannon on the beetling crags of the opposite shore, lay the fortress, to take which they were ready to die. The mist of an autumn rain softened the lines of coping and grim bastion, and mingled with the smoke from the stone houses clustering on the water's edge below.

As the men gazed across at the fortified cliffs, Vanrosfeldt, with face stern and set, pointed silently to where, high above the ramparts, a thin red line streamed against the grey of the sky—the Lion Standard of England.