Neville Trueman, the Pioneer Preacher Part 4

"It may save some poor fellow's life, my dear," he answered, "and one must always prepare for the worst, war is such an uncertain game. Indeed, wounds and death are almost the only things certain about it."

"Keep in the rear of the troops, my son, and take your orders from Major Sheaffe or of the army surgeon. I told them both what we were sending, as they pa.s.sed. Keep out of gunshot and avoid capture: the time may come only too soon when you'll share the battle's brunt yourself."

"I wish it were to-day, father. I'd give almost anything to be with Brock and his brave fellows."

"So would I, my son; but I must be the home-guard. It would never do to leave Kate and the maids unprotected, with an invasion so near. And no work can be more important than may be before you both before you return."

The brave boy drove off to the scene of action, the distant rattle of musketry, and at short intervals the loud roar of the cannon, making his heart throb with martial enthusiasm. The young preacher communed with his own heart on the unnatural conflict between his own kinsmen after the flesh and the compatriots of his spiritual adoption--and was still. The brave old veteran, shouldering the musket that had done good service at Brandywine and Germantown, patrolled the river road bounding the farm.

As they approached the village of Queenston, Neville and Zenas found that a temporary lull in hostilities had taken place. The Americans had possession of the heights, and were strongly re- enforced from the Lewiston side of the river.

The redcoats from Fort George--about four hundred men of the 41st regiment, together with a part of the 49th, which had already been in action--were about to march by a by-road apparently away from the scene of action.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Zenas to young Ensign Norton, of the 41st regiment, who was a frequent visitor at his father's house. "I don't understand this. You are not running away from these fellows are you? Why don't you drive the Yankees from that battery?"

"We intend to, young Hotspur, but it would be madness to charge up that hill in face of those guns. We are to take them in flank, I suppose, and drive them over the cliff."

"Where's Brock?" asked the boy, jealous of the fame of his hero, which he seemed to think compromised by this prudent counsel.

"Have not you heard," said Norton, with something between a sigh and a sob? "He'll never lead us again. He lies in yonder house,"

pointing to a long, low, poor-looking dwelling-house on the left side of the road.

"What! dead? killed--so soon?" cried the boy, turning white, and then flushing red, and unconsciously clenching his fists as he spoke.

"Yes, Mister," said a war-bronzed soldier standing by, who looked doubly grim from the blood trickling down his powder-blackened cheek from a scalp wound received during the morning skirmish. "I stood anear him when he fell, an' G.o.d knows I'd rather the bullet had struck me; my fighting days will soon be over, anyhow. But we'll avenge his death afore the day is done. They call us the green tigers, them fellers do, an' there's not a man of us won't fight like a tiger robbed of her whelps, for not a man of us wouldn't 'a' died for the General."

"To the right, wheel, forward march!" came the order from the Colonel, and the "green tigers" filed on with the grim resolve to conquer or to die.

The militia, clad chiefly in homespun frieze, with flint-lock muskets and stout cartridge boxes at their belts, were drawn up at the roadside, and were being supplied with ammunition, previous to following the regulars.

A number of Indians, whose chief dress was a breach clout and deerskin leggings, formidable in their war-paint and war plumes, with scalping-knives and tomahawks, were only partially held in hand by Chief Brant, conspicuous by his height, his wampum fillet and eagle plumes, and his King George's medal on his breast.

"Drive on to the village," said Major-General Sheaffe, who was now chief in command, to Zenas as he pa.s.sed. "You will find plenty to do there."

At the house where Brock's body lay, a single sentry stood at guard, his features settled in a fixed and stony stare, as though by a resolute effort controlling his emotions. Beyond the village a strong guard was drawn up, and two field pieces, with their gunners, occupied the road.

Soldiers were pa.s.sing in and out of a large barn which stood near the roadside. They came in groups of two each from the trampled hill slope, bearing on stretchers their ghastly burden of bleeding and wounded men. Although coming within musket-range of the American force, no molestation was offered. Their work of humanity was felt to be too sacred for even red-handed War to disturb.

Indeed, both American and British wounded were cared for with generous impartiality.

Zenas and Neville, a.s.sisted by an officer's orderly, conveyed their hospital stores into the barn. On bundles of unthreshed wheat, or on trusses of hay, were a number of writhing, groaning, bleeding forms, a few hours since in the vigour of manhood's strength, now maimed, some of them for life, some of them marked for death, and one ghastly form already cold and rigid, covered by a blood-stained sheet At one side they beheld an army surgeon with his sleeves rolled up, but, notwithstanding this precaution, smeared with blood, kneeling over a poor fellow who lay upon a truss of hay, and probing his shoulder to trace and, if possible, extract a bullet that had deeply penetrated.

"Why, Jim Larkins, is that you?" exclaimed Zenas, recognizing an old neighbour and recent schoolfellow.

"Yes, Zenas, all that's left of me. I won't fight no more for one while, I guess," he answered, as he moaned with agony as the doctor probed the wound.

"Give him a drink," said the doctor, and Zenas, as tenderly as a girl, supported his head and held to his parched lips a mug of cold and refreshing tea.

"Blessings on the kind heart that sent that," said the wounded man.

"It was Kate," said Zenas.

"I knowed it must be," murmured Jim, who was one of her rustic admirers. "Tell her," he continued, in the natural egotism of suffering, "she never did a better deed. Heaven reward her for it."

Zenas thought of the benediction p.r.o.nounced on the cup of cold water given for the Master, and rejoiced in the privilege of ministering to these wounded and, it might be, dying men.

"You'll have to lose your arm, my good fellow," said the doctor, kindly, but in a business-like way, "the bone is badly shattered."

"I was afear'd o' that ever since I got hit. I was just a-takin'

aim when I missed my fire,--I didn't know why, didn't feel nuthin', but I couldn't hold the gun. Old Jonas Evans, the Methody local preacher, was aside me, a-prayin' like a saint and a- fightin' like a lion. 'The Lord ha' mercy on his soul,' I heared him say as he knocked a feller over. Well, he helped me out o' the fight as tender as a woman, and then went at it again as fierce as ever."

"Don't talk so much, my good follow," said the doctor, who had been preparing ligatures to tie the arteries and arranging his saw, knife, and tourniquet within reach. The operation was soon over, Jim never flinching a bit. Indeed, during action, and for some time after, the sensibilities seem, by the concurrent excitement, mercifully deadened to pain.

"I'd have spared t'other one too, an' right willin'," said the faithful fellow, "if it would have saved Brock."

Zenas, at the doctor's direction, held the poor fellow's shattered arm till the amputation was complete. As the dissevered limb grew cold in his hands, he seemed more distressed than its late owner.

Instead of laying it with some others near the surgeon's table, he wrapped it tenderly, as though it still could feel, in a cloth, and going out where a fatigue party were burying on the field of battle--clad in their military dress, in waiting for the last trump and the final parade at the great review--the victims of the fight, he laid the dead arm reverently in the ground, and covered it with its kindred clay. He thought of his sister's remark, about preparing the shroud before death, but here was he burying part of the body of a man who was yet alive.

Neville, meanwhile, had been speaking words of spiritual comfort and counsel to the wounded and the dying, and receiving their last faint-whispered messages to loved ones far away. He also read, over the ghastly trench in which the dead were being buried--one wide, long, common grave, in which lay side by side friend and foe, those recently arrayed in battle with each other, slain by mutual wounds, and now at rest and for ever--the solemn funeral service. As he p.r.o.nounced the words, "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes," the earth was thrown on the uncoffined dead, and then over the soldiers' grave their comrades fired their farewell volley and again mounted guard against the foe.

Zenas received a lesson in surgery that day of which he found the benefit more than once before the war was over. He was soon able to apply one of Katharine's lint bandages or dress a wound with a deftness that elicited the commendation not only of the subject of his ministration, but even of the knight of the scalpel himself.

Neville, too, evinced no little skill in the surgeon's beneficent art.

"Young Drayton," said the surgeon, "I think we shall have to trespa.s.s on the hospitality of your house on behalf of Captain Villiers, here. He has received a severe gunshot wound, from which he will be some time in convalescing. I know no place where he will be so comfortable, and I know the squire will make him welcome."

"Of course he will," said Zenas, with alacrity. "He would make even those wounded Yanks welcome, much more an officer of the King."

While Neville remained to minister to the dying, Zenas made a comfortable bed of hay in his now empty waggon, on which the wounded captain was placed, with a wheat sheaf for a pillow, and drove carefully to The Holms. He was preceded by a waggon conveying a number of wounded soldiers to the military hospital at Niagara. As this load of injured and anguished humanity was driven down and up the steep sides of the ravine which crosses the road to the north of the village, at every jolt over the rough stones a groan of agony was wrung from the poor fellows, that made the heart of Zenas ache with sympathy and when the team stopped at the top of the hill, the blood ran from the waggon and stained the ground. War did not seem to the boy such a glorious thing as when he saw the gallant redcoats in the morning marching to the stirring strains of the "British Grenadiers." The boy seemed to have become a man in a few hours. Not less full of enthusiasm and high courage, but more serious and grave, and never again was he heard vapouring about the "pomp and circ.u.mstance of glorious war."

[Footnote: Accounts of several of the above-mentioned incidents were gleaned from the conversation of an intelligent lady, recently deceased, who, as a young girl, was an eye-witness of the leading events of the war.]

CHAPTER V.

A VICTORY AND ITS COST.

While the events just described had been taking place, an important movement was made for the recovery of Queenston Heights.

Major-General Sheaffe, with a force of about nine hundred redcoats and militia, made a circuitous march through the village of St.

David's, and thus gained the crest of the heights on which the enemy were posted. Here he was re-enforced by the arrival of a company of the 41st grenadiers and a body of militiamen from Chippewa.

With a volley and a gallant British cheer, they attacked, about two o'clock in the afternoon, the American force, which had also been re-enforced to about the same number as the British. Courage the enemy had, but they lacked the confidence and steadiness imparted by the presence of the veteran British troops.

Nevertheless, for a time they stoutly stood their ground; but, soon perceiving the hopelessness of resistance, they everywhere gave way, and retreated precipitately down the hill to their place of landing. The Indians, like sleuth hounds that had broken leash, unhappily could not be restrained, and, shrieking their blood- curdling war-whoops, pursued with tomahawk and reeking blade the demoralized fugitives. Many stragglers were cut off from the main body and attempted to escape through the woods. These were intercepted and driven back by the exasperated Indians, burning to avenge the death of Brock, for whom they felt an affection and veneration for which the savage breast would scarce have been deemed capable.

Terrified at the appearance of the enraged warriors, many of the Americans flung themselves wildly over the cliff and endeavoured to scramble down its rugged and precipitous slope. Some were impaled upon the jagged pines, others reached the bottom bruised and bleeding, and others, attempting to swim the rapid stream, were drowned in its whirling eddies. One who reached the opposite sh.o.r.e in a boat made a gesture of defiance and contempt toward his foes across the river, when he fell, transpierced with the bullet of an Indian sharpshooter.

Two brothers of the Canadian militia fought side by side, when, in the moment of victory, a shot pierced the lungs of the younger, a boy of seventeen, with a fair, innocent face. His brother bore him from the field in his arms, and, while the life-tide ebbed from his wound, the dying boy faltered--

"Kiss me, Jim. Tell mother--I was not--afraid to die," and as the blood gushed from his mouth, the brave young spirit departed.