A Soldier of Virginia Part 16

Shirley, is also an able man, but knows nothing of war. Indeed, he accepted the position to learn something of the art, but I fancy is disgusted with what knowledge he has already gained. As to the other officers, there is little to say. Some are capable, but most are merely insolent and ignorant, and all of them aim rather at displaying their own abilities than strengthening the hands of the general. In fact, Tom, I have regretted a score of times that I ever consented to make the campaign."

"But if you had not, where should I have been?" I protested.

"At least, you had been in no danger from Lieutenant Allen's sword," he laughed. "I have heard many stories of his skill since I have been in camp, and perhaps it is as well he was in wine that night, and so not at his best. How has he used you since?"

"Why, in truth," I said, somewhat nettled at his reference to Allen's skill, "he has not so much as shown that he remembers me. But I shall remind him of our engagement once the campaign is ended, and shall ask my second to call upon him."

Washington laughed again, and I was glad to see that I had taken his mind off his own affairs.

"I shall be at your service then, Tom," he said. "Remember, he is one of the best swordsmen in the army, and you will do well to keep in practice.

Do not grow over-confident;" and he bade me good-by and turned back to the general's quarters.

I thought his advice well given, and the very next day, to my great delight, found in Captain Polson's company John Langlade, the man of whom I had taken a dozen lessons at Williamsburg. He was very ready to accept the chance to add a few shillings to his pay, so for an hour every morning we exercised in a little open s.p.a.ce behind the stockade. I soon found with great satisfaction that I could hold my own against him, though he was accounted a good swordsman, and he complimented me more than once on my strength of wrist and quickness of eye.

We were hard at it one morning, when I heard some one approaching, and, glancing around, saw that it was Lieutenant Allen. I flushed crimson with chagrin, for that he guessed the reason of my diligence with the foils, I could not doubt. But I continued my play as though I had not seen him, and for some time he stood watching us with a dry smile.

"Very pretty," he said at last, as we stopped to breathe. "If all the Virginia troops would spend their mornings to such advantage, I should soon make soldiers of them despite themselves. Rapier play is most useful when one is going to fight the French, who are masters at it. I fear my own arm is growing rusty," he added carelessly. "Lend me your foil a moment, Lieutenant Stewart."

I handed it to him without a word, wondering what the man would be at. He took it nonchalantly, tested it, and turned to Langlade.

"Will you cross with me?" he said, and as Langlade nodded, he saluted and they engaged. Almost before the ring of the first parade had died away, Langlade's foil was flying through the air, and Allen was smiling blandly into his astonished face.

"An accident, I do not doubt," he said coolly. "Such accidents will happen sometimes. Will you try again?"

Langlade pressed his lips together, and without replying, picked up his foil. I saw him measure Allen with his eye, and then they engaged a second time. For a few moments, Allen contented himself with standing on the defensive, parrying Langlade's savage thrusts with a coolness which nothing could shake and an art that was consummate. Then he bent to the attack, and touched his adversary on breast and arm and thigh, his point reaching its mark with ease and seeming slowness.

"Really, I must go," he said at length. "The bout has done me a world of good. I trust you will profit by the lesson, Lieutenant Stewart," and he handed me back my foil, smiled full into my eyes, and walked away.

We both stared after him, until he turned the corner and was out of sight.

"He's the devil himself," gasped Langlade, as our eyes met. "I have never felt such a wrist. Did you see how he disarmed me? 'Twas no accident. My fingers would have broken in an instant more, had I not let go the foil.

Who is he?"

"Lieutenant Allen, of the Forty-Fourth," I answered as carelessly as I could.

Langlade fell silent a moment.

"I have heard of him," he said at last. "I do not wonder he disarmed me.

'Twas he who met the Comte d'Artois, the finest swordsman in the French Guards, in a little wood on the border of Holland, one morning, over some affair of honor. They had agreed that it should be to the death."

"And what was the result?" I questioned, looking out over the camp as though little interested in the answer.

"Can you doubt?" asked Langlade. "Allen returned to England without a scratch, and his opponent was carried back to Paris with a sword-thrust through his heart, and buried beside his royal relatives at Saint Denis. I pity any man who is called upon to face him. He has need to be a master."

I nodded gloomily, put up the foils, and returned to my quarters, for I was in no mood for further exercise that morning. What Allen had meant by his last remark I could not doubt. The lesson I was to profit by was that I should stand no chance against him.

CHAPTER XIV

I CHANCE UPON A TRAGEDY

As the first weeks of May pa.s.sed, we slowly got into shape for the advance, and I began to realize the magnitude of the task before us. Our march to Great Meadows the year before, arduous as it had been, was mere child's play to this, and I did not wonder that on every hand the general found himself confronting obstacles well-nigh insurmountable. And each day, as though to cover other defects, the discipline grew more exacting.

Arms were constantly inspected and overhauled; roll was called morning, noon, and night; each regiment attended divine service around the colors every Sabbath, though neither officers nor men got much good from it that I could see; guard mount occurred each morning at eight o'clock; every man was supplied with twenty-four rounds and extra flints, and also a new shirt, a new pair of stockings and of shoes, and Osnabrig waistcoats and breeches, the heat making the others insupportable, and with bladders for their hats.

On the sixteenth, Colonel Gage, with two companies of the Forty-Fourth and the last division of the train, toiled into camp, very weary and travel-stained, and on this day, too, was the first death among the officers, Captain Bromley, of Sir Peter Halket's, succ.u.mbing to dysentery. Two days later, we all attended his funeral, and a most impressive sight it was. A captain's guard marched before the coffin, their firelocks reversed, and the drums beating the dead march. At the grave the guard formed on either side, and the coffin, with sword and sash upon it, was carried in between and lowered into place. The service was read by Chaplain Hughes, of the Forty-Fourth, the guard fired three volleys over the grave, and we returned to quarters.

There was a great demonstration next day to impress some Indians that had come into camp. All the guns were fired, and drums and fifes were set to beating and playing the point-of-war, and then four or five companies of regulars were put through their manoeuvres. The Indians were vastly astonished at seeing them move together as one man, and even to us provincials it was a thrilling and impressive sight. And on the twentieth happened one of the pleasantest incidents of the whole campaign.

The great difficulty which confronted our commander from the first was the lack of means of transport. Of the three thousand horses and three hundred wagons promised from the colonies, only two hundred horses and twenty wagons were forthcoming, so that for a time it seemed that the expedition must be abandoned. Small wonder the general raved and swore at provincial perfidy and turpitude, the more so when it was discovered that a great part of the provision furnished for the army was utterly worthless, and the two hundred horses scarce able to stand upon their feet.

Let me say here that I believe this purblind policy of delaying the expedition instead of freely aiding it had much to do with the result.

Virginia did her part with some degree of willingness, but Pennsylvania, whence the general expected to draw a great part of his transport and provision, would do nothing. The a.s.sembly spent its time bickering with the governor, and when asked to contribute toward its own defense, made the astounding statement that "they had rather the French should conquer them than give up their privileges." Some of them even a.s.serted that there were no French, but that the whole affair was a scheme of the politicians, and acted, to use Dinwiddie's words, as though they had given their senses a long holiday.

Yet, strangely enough, it was from a Pennsylvanian that aid came at last, for just when matters were at their worst and the general in despair, there came to his quarters at Frederick a very famous gentleman,--more famous still in the troublous times which are upon us now,--Mr. Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, director of posts in the colonies and sometime printer of "Poor Richard." The general received him as his merit warranted, and explained to him our difficulties. Mr. Franklin, as Colonel Washington told me afterward, listened to it all with close attention, putting in a keen question now and then, and at the end said he believed he could secure us horses and wagons from his friends among the Pennsylvania Dutch, who were ever ready to turn an honest penny. So he wrote them a diplomatic letter, and the result was that, beside near a hundred furnished earlier, there came to us at c.u.mberland on the twentieth above eighty wagons, each with four horses, and the general declared Mr. Franklin the only honest man he had met in America. We, too, had cause to remember him, for all the officers were summoned to the general's tent, and there was distributed to each of us a package containing a generous supply of sugar, tea, coffee, chocolate, cheese, b.u.t.ter, wine, spirits, hams, tongues, rice, and raisins, the gift of Mr.

Franklin and the Philadelphia a.s.sembly.

There was high carnival in our tent that night, as you may well believe.

We were all there, all who had been present at Fort Necessity, and not since the campaign opened had we sat down to such a feast. And when the plates were cleared away and only the pipes and wine remained, Peyronie sang us a song in French, and Spiltdorph one in German, and Polson one in Gaelic, and old Christopher Gist, who stuck in his head to see what was toward, was pressed to pay for his entertainment by giving us a Cherokee war-song, which he did with much fire and spirit. We sat long into the night talking of the past and of the future, and of the great things we were going to accomplish. Nor did we forget to draft a letter of most hearty thanks to Mr. Franklin, which was sent him, together with many others, among them one from Sir Peter Halket himself.

The arrival of the wagons had done much to solve the problem of transport, and on the next day preparations for the advance began in earnest. The whole force of carpenters was put to work building a bridge across the creek, the smiths sharpened the axes, and the bakers baked a prodigious number of little biscuits for us to carry on the march. Two hundred pioneers were sent out to cut the road, and from one end of the camp to the other was the stir of preparation.

So two days pa.s.sed, and on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, Spiltdorph and myself crossed the creek on the bridge, which was well-nigh completed, and walked on into the forest to see what progress the pioneers were making. We each took a firelock with us in hope of knocking over some game for supper, to help out our dwindling larder. We found that the pioneers had cut a road twelve feet wide some two miles into the forest. It was a mere tunnel between the trees, whose branches overtopped it with a roof of green, but it had been leveled with great care,--more care than I thought necessary,--and would give smooth going to the wagons and artillery. We reached the end of the road, where the axemen were laboring faithfully, and after watching them for a time, were turning back to camp, when Spiltdorph called my attention to the peculiar appearance of the ground about us. We were in the midst of a grove of chestnuts, and the leaves beneath them for rods around had been turned over and the earth freshly raked up.

"What under heaven could have caused that?" asked Spiltdorph.

"Wild turkeys," I answered quickly, for I had often seen the like under beeches and oaks as well as chestnuts. "Come on," I added, "perhaps they are not far away."

"All right," said Spiltdorph, "a wild turkey would go exceeding well on our table;" and he followed me into the forest. The turkeys had evidently been frightened away by the approach of the pioneers, and had stopped here and there to hunt for food, so that their track was easily followed.

I judged they could not be far away, and was looking every moment to see their blue heads bobbing about among the underbrush, when I heard a sharp fusilade of shots ahead.

"Somebody 's found 'em!" I cried. "Come on. Perhaps we can get some yet."

We tore through a bit of marshy ground, up a slight hill, and came suddenly to the edge of a little clearing. One glance into it sent me headlong behind a bush, and I tripped up Spiltdorph beside me.

"Good G.o.d, man!" he cried, but I had my hand over his mouth before he could say more.

"Be still," I whispered "an you value your life. Look over there."

He peered around the bush and saw what I had seen, a dozen Indians in full war paint busily engaged in setting fire to a log cabin which stood in the middle of the clearing. They were going about the task in unwonted silence, doubtless because of the nearness of our troops, and a half dozen bodies, two of women and four of children, scattered on the ground before the door, showed how completely they had done their work. Even as we looked, two of them picked up the body of one of the women and threw it into the burning house.

"The devils!" groaned Spiltdorph. "Oh, the devils!" and I felt my own blood boiling in my veins.

"Come, we must do something!" I said. "We can kill two of them and reload and kill two more before they can reach us. They will not dare pursue us far toward the camp, and may even run at the first fire."

"Good!" said Spiltdorph, between his teeth. "Pick your man;" but before I could reply he had jerked his musket to his shoulder with a cry of rage and fired. An Indian had picked up one of the children, which must have been only wounded, since it was crying l.u.s.tily, and was just about to pitch it on the fire, when Spiltdorph's bullet caught him full in the breast. He threw up his hands and fell like a log, the child under him.

Quick as a flash, I fired and brought down another. For an instant the Indians stood dazed at the suddenness of the attack, and then with a yell they broke for the other side of the clearing. Spiltdorph would have started down toward the house, but I held him back.