Kitobni o'qish: «The Noank's Log: A Privateer of the Revolution»

CHAPTER I
A WOUNDED NATION AT BAY

It is well to fix the date of the beginning of a narrative.

Through the mist and the icy rain, with fixed bayonets and steadfast hearts, up the main street of Trenton town dashed the iron men from the frost and famine camp on the opposite bank of the Delaware.

Among their foremost files, leading them in person, rode their commander-in-chief. Beyond, at the central street crossing, a party of Hessian soldiers were half frantically getting a brace of field-pieces to bear upon the advancing American column. They were loading with grape, and if they had been permitted to fire at that short range, George Washington and all the men around him would have been swept away.

Young Captain William Washington and a mere boy-officer named James Monroe, with a few Virginians and Marylanders, rushed in ahead of their main column. Nearly every man went down, killed or wounded, but they prevented the firing of those two guns. Just before their rush, the cause of American liberty was in great peril. Just after it, the victory of Trenton was secure.

So it is set down in written history, and there are a great many curious statements made by historians.

This was a sort of midnight, it is said, – the dark hour of the Revolutionary War.

Manhattan Island, with its harbor and its important military and naval features, had been definitely lost to the Americans and occupied by the British. Its defences had been so developed that it was now practically unassailable by any force which the patriots could bring against it. From this time forward its harbor and bay were to be the safe refuge and rendezvous of the fleets of the king of England. Here were to land and from hence were to march, with only one important exception, the armies sent over to crush the rebellious colonies.

Nevertheless, Great Britain had won back just so much of American land, and no more, as her troops could continuously control with forts and camps. Upon all of her land, everywhere beyond the range of British cannon and the visitation of British bayonets and sabres, the colonists were as firm as ever. It is an exceedingly remarkable fact that probably not one county in any colony south of the Canadas contained a numerical majority of royalists, or "Tories." Still, however, these were numerous, sincere, zealous, and they fully doubled the effective strength of the varied forces sent over from beyond the sea.

The tide of disaster to the American arms had hardly been checked at any point in the north. Fort Washington had bloodily fallen; Fort Lee had been abandoned; the battle of White Plains had been fought, with sharp losses upon both sides. After vainly striving to keep together a dissolving army, General Washington, with a small but utterly devoted remnant, had retreated to contend with cold and starvation in their desolate winter quarters beyond the Delaware.

For a time, the red-cross flag of England seemed to be floating triumphantly over land and sea. All Europe regarded the American cause as hopelessly lost. The American character and the actual condition of the colonies was but little understood on the other side of the Atlantic. The truth of the situation was that the men who had wrested the wilderness from the hard-fighting red men, and who had been steadily building up a new, free country, during several generations, were unaware of any really crushing disaster. At a few points, which most of them had never seen, they had been driven back a little from the sea-coast, and that was about all. Among their snow-clad hills and valleys they were sensibly calculating the actual importance of their military reverses, and were preparing to try those battles again, or others like them. A bitter, revengeful, implacable feeling was everywhere increasing, for several aggravating causes. In the winter days of 1776-77, wounded America was dangerously AT BAY.

It was on Christmas morning, at the hour when the Hessians of Colonel Rahl were giving up their arms and military stores in Trenton town. At that very hour, a group of people, who would have gone wild with delight over such news as was to come from Trenton, sat down to a plentiful breakfast in a Connecticut farm-house. It was a house in the outskirts of New London, near the bank of the Thames River, and in view of the splendid harbor. As yet there were several vacant chairs at the table.

"Guert Ten Eyck," said a tall, noble-looking old woman, as she turned away from one of the frosted windows, "of what good is thy schooner and her fine French guns? Thee has not fired a shot with one of them. How does thee know that thee can hit anything?"

"Yes, we did, Rachel Tarns," was very cheerfully responded from across the table. "We blazed away at that brig. We hit her, too. Good Quakers ought not to want us to hurt people."

"Guert," she tartly replied, "thee has done no harm, I will instruct thee. If thee is thyself a Friend, thee must not use carnal weapons, but if thee is one of the world's people thee may do what is in thee for the ships and armies of thy good King George. Do I not love him exceedingly? Hath he not seized my dwelling for a barracks, and hath he not driven me and mine out of my own city of New York, for what his servants call treasonable utterances?"

"Rachel!" came with much energy from the head of the table. "I can't fight, any more'n you can. You love him just the way you do for pretty good reasons. So do I, for 'pressing my husband and sons into his navy. Thank God! they've all escaped now, and they're ready to sink such ships as they were flogged in – "

"Mother Avery," interrupted a stalwart young man at her side, "that's what we mean to do if we can. British men-o'-war are not easy to sink, though. We've something to think of just now. If our harbor batteries aren't strengthened the British could clean out New London any day. Their cruisers steer out o' range of Ledyard's long thirty-twos, but there's not enough of 'em. We haven't powder enough, either."

"Vine," said Rachel Tarns, "does thee not see the peaceful nature of thy long cannon? They keep thy foes at a distance, and they prevent the unnecessary shedding of blood. I am glad they are on thy fort."

"Rachel Tarns," said Guert, "you gave Aleck Hamilton the first powder he ever had for his field-pieces. You're a real good Quaker. I wish you'd come on board the Noank, though, and see how we've armed her. She's all ready for sea."

"What we're waiting for," said Vine Avery, "is a chance to do something. Father won't say just what his next notion's goin' to be."

"He says he won't wait much longer," said Guert. "Mother, you said I might go with him?"

"You may!" she answered firmly, and then her face grew shadowy.

He was a well-built, wiry looking young fellow, with dark and piercing eyes. His face wore at this moment a look that was not only courageous, but older than his apparent years seemed to call for. It was a look that well might grow in the face of an American boy of that day, whether sailor or soldier.

Others had now come in to fill the chairs at the table. At the end of it, opposite Mrs. Avery, sat a strong looking, squarely built man whom nobody need have mistaken for anything else than a first-rate Yankee sea-captain.

The house they were in was of somewhat irregular construction. Its main part, the doorstep of which was not many yards from the road fence, was a square frame building. At the right of its wide central passage, or hall, was the ample dining room. Opening into this at the rear was a room almost equally large that was evidently much older. Its walls were not made of sawed lumber, nor were they even plastered. They were of huge, rudely squared logs and these had been cut from the primeval forest when the first white settlers landed on that coast. They had made their houses as strong as so many small forts. In the outer doors of this room, and here and there in its thick sides, were cut loopholes, now covered over, through which the earlier Averys could have thrust their gun muzzles to defend their scalps from assaults of their unpleasant Pequot neighbors. There were legends in the family of sharp skirmishes in the dooryard. All of that region had been the battle-ground of white and red men and this was one reason why such captains as Putnam, and Knowlton, and Nathan Hale had been able to rally such remarkably stubborn fighters to march to Breed's Hill and to the New York and New Jersey battlefields.

"What's that, Rachel Tarns, about getting news from New York?" at last inquired Captain Avery, laying down his knife and fork. "I'd ruther git good news from Washington's army. I'm not givin' 'em up, yet, by any manner o' means."

"That's all right, father," said his son Vine, "but I do wish we knew of a supply ship, inward bound. I'd like to strike for ammunition for the Noank and for the batteries. We're not fixed out for a long voyage till we can fire more rounds than we could now."

There was a Yankee drawl in his speech, a kind of twang, but there was nothing coarse in the manners or appearance of young Avery, and his sailor father had an intelligent face, not at all destitute of what is called refinement.

"I wish thee might have thy will," responded Rachel, earnestly.

"Vine!" exclaimed his mother. "Hark! Somebody's coming. Rachel, didn't you hear that?"

"I did!" said Rachel, rising. "That was Coco's voice and Up-na-tan's. The old redskin's talking louder than he is used to about something."

"He can screech loud enough," said Guert. "I've heard him give the Manhattan warwhoop. Coco can almost outyell him, too."

At that moment, the front door swung open unceremoniously, and a pair of very extraordinary human forms came stalking in.

"Up-na-tan!" shouted Guert, with boyish eagerness. "Coco! All loaded down with muskets! What have they been up to?"

"Heap more, out on sled," replied a deep, mellow, African voice. "Ole chief an' Coco been among lobsters. 'Tole a heap."

"Thee bad black man!" said Rachel Tarns. "Up-na-tan, has thee been wicked, too? What has thee been stealing?"

"Ole woman no talk," came half humorously from the very tall shape which had now halted in front of her. "Up-na-tan been all over own island. See King George army. See church prison. Ship prison. See many prisoners. All die, soon. Ole chief say he kill redcoat for kill prisoner. Coco say, too. Good black man. Good Indian."

He might be good, but he was ferociously ugly. The only Indian features discernible about his dress were his moccasons and an old but hidden buckskin shirt. Over this he now had on a tremendous military cloak of dark cloth. On his head was a 'coonskin cap, such as any Connecticut farmer boy might wear. He now put down on the floor no less than six good-looking muskets, all duly fitted with bayonets. Coco did the same, and he, for looks, was equally distinguished. His tall, gaunt figure was surmounted by an undipped mop of white wool, over a face that was a marvel of deeply wrinkled African features. He also wore a military cloak, and both garments were such as might have been lost in some way by petty officers of a Hessian battalion. They were not British, at all events.

Guert glanced at the muskets on the floor and then sprang out of the door to discover what else this brace of uncommon foragers had brought home with them. Just outside the gate there was quite enough to astonish him. It was not a mere hand-sled, but what the country people called a "jumper." It was rudely but strongly made of split saplings, its parts being held together mostly by wooden pins. It had no better floor than could be made of split shingles, and on this lay, now, a closely packed collection of muskets, with several swords, pistols, and a miscellaneous lot of belts, cartridge-boxes, and knapsacks. Coco and Up-na-tan had plainly been borrowing liberally, somewhere or other, and Guert hastened back into the house to get an explanation. Curiously enough, however, both of the foragers had refused to give anything of the kind to the assembly in the Avery dining room.

"Where has thee been, chief?" had been asked by Rachel Tarns. "Tell us what thee and Coco have been doing. We all wish to hear."

"No, no!" interrupted the Indian; "Coco shut mouth. Ole chief tell Guert mother. Where ole woman gone? Want see her!"

"That's so," said Guert. "Mother's about the only one that can do anything with either of them. They used to live a good deal at our house, you know."

There had all the while been one vacant chair at the table, waiting for somebody that was expected, and now through the kitchen door came hurrying in a not very tall but vigorous-looking woman.

"Mother!" said Guert. "So glad you came in! Speak to 'em! Make 'em tell what they've been doing!"

She proved that she understood them better than he or the rest did by not asking either of them a question. She stepped quickly forward and shook hands, with the red man first and then with the black. She stooped and examined the weapons on the floor.

"Sled outside," said Up-na-tan. "Ole woman go see."

Out she went silently, and the dining room was deserted, for everybody followed her. In front of the jumper stood a very tired-looking pony, and she pointed at him inquiringly. He himself was nothing wonderful, but his harness was at least remarkable. It was made up of ropes and strips of cloth. Some of the strips were red, some green, and the rest were blue, the whole being, nevertheless, somewhat otherwise than ornamental.

"Ole chief find pony in wood," said Up-na-tan. "Hess'n tie him on tree. Find sled in ole barn. Hess'n go sleep. Drink rum. No wake up. Ole chief an' Coco load sled. Feel hungry, now. Tell more by and by."

His way of telling left it a little uncertain as to whether or not intemperance was the only cause that prevented the soldier sleepers from awaking to interfere with the taking away of their arms and accoutrements. He seemed, however, to derive great satisfaction from the interest and approval manifested by Mrs. Ten Eyck.

"Come in and get your breakfast," she said. "Rachel Tarns and I'll cook for you while you talk. Rachel, they must have the best we can give them. I've cooked for Up-na-tan. 'Tisn't the first meal he's had here, either. He's an old friend of mine and yours."

"Good!" grunted Up-na-tan. "Ole woman give chief coffee, many time." He appeared, nevertheless, a good deal as if he were giving her commands rather than requests, so dignified and peremptory was his manner of speech. No doubt it was the correct fashion, as between any chief and any kind of squaw, although he followed her into the house as if he in some way belonged to her, and Coco did the same.

"Guert come," he said. "Lyme Avery, Vine, all rest, 'tay in room. Tarns woman come."

The door into the kitchen was closed behind them in accordance with his wishes, and the breakfast-table party was compelled to restrain its curiosity for the time being.

"We must let the old redskin have his own way," remarked Captain Avery. "Nobody but Guert's mother knows how to deal with him. The old pirate!"

"That's just what he is, or what he has been," said Vine Avery. "He hardly makes any secret of it. I believe he has a notion, to this day, that Captain Kidd sailed under orders from General Washington and the Continental Congress."

"Captain Kidd wasn't much worse than some o' the British cruisers," grumbled his father. "They'll all call us pirates, too, and I guess we'd better not let ourselves be taken prisoners."

Mrs. Avery's face turned a little paler, at that moment, but she said to him, courageously: —

"Lyme! Do you and Vine fight to the very last! I'm glad that Robert is with Washington. I wish they had these muskets there! No, they may be just what's wanted at our forts here."

"More muskets, more cannon, and more powder," said Vine. "Oh! how I ache to know how those fellows captured 'em! There isn't any better scout than an Indian, but both of 'em are reg'lar scalpers."

They might be. They looked like it. They were unsurpassed specimens of out and out red and black savagery, with the added advantage, or disadvantage, of paleface piratical training and experience by sea and land. The very room they were now in was a kind of memorial of old-time barbarisms, and it might again become a fort – a block-house, at least – almost any day.

All the farm-houses of Westchester County, New York, not far away, if not already burned or deserted, had become even as so many "block-houses," so to speak. They were to be held desperately, now and then, against the lawless attacks of the Cowboys and Skinners who were carrying on guerilla warfare over what was sarcastically termed "the neutral ground" between the British and American outposts.

The huge fireplace, before which Mrs. Ten Eyck and Rachel Tarns began at once to prepare breakfast for their hungry friends, had an iron bar crossing it, a few feet up. This was to prevent Pequots, Narragansetts, or other night visitors from bringing their knives and tomahawks into the house by way of the chimney. Upon the deerhorn hooks above the mantel hung no less than three long-barrelled, bell-mouthed fowling pieces, such as had hurled slugs and buckshot among the melting columns of the British regulars in front of the breastwork on Bunker Hill, or, more correctly, Breed's Hill. A sabre hung beside them, and a long-shafted whaling lance rested in the nearest corner at the right, with a harpoon for a companion.

All these things had been taken in at a glance by the two foragers, or scouts, or spies, or whatever duty they had been performing most of recently.

"Keep still, Guert," commanded his mother. "Let the chief tell."

Gravely, slowly, in very plain and not badly cut up English, with now and then a word or so in Dutch, Up-na-tan told his story, aided, or otherwise, by sundry sharply rebuked interjections from Coco. The first thing which seemed to be noteworthy was that the British on Manhattan Island considered the rebel cause hopeless. Its armed forces, moreover, were so broken up or so far away that the vicinity of New York was but carelessly patrolled. There had been hardly any obstacle to hinder the going in or the coming out of a white-headed old slave and a wandering Indian. The red men of New York, for that matter, were supposed to be all more or less friendly to their British Great Father George across the ocean. All black men, too, were understood to be not unwillingly released from rebel masters, provided they were not set at work again for anybody else.

Up-na-tan's greatest interest appeared to cling to the forts and to the cannon in them, but he answered Rachel Tarns quite clearly concerning the conditions of the American soldiers held as prisoners. All the large churches were full of them, he said, packed almost to suffocation. One or more old hulks of warships, anchored in the harbor, were as horribly crowded. The worst of these was the old sixty-four gun ship, Jersey, lying in Wallabout Bay, near the Long Island shore. Up-na-tan and Coco had rowed around her in a stolen boat and had been fired upon by her deck guard, and they had seen a dozen at least of dead rebels thrown overboard, to be carried out to sea by the tide.

"Redcoat kill 'em all, some day," said the Indian. "Kill men in ole church. Bury 'em somewhere." He seemed to have an idea that the doomed Americans did not perish by disease or suffocation altogether. He believed that their captors selected about so many of them every day, to be dealt with after the Iroquois or Algonquin fashion. This was strictly an Indian notion of the customary usages of war. It did not stir his sensibilities, if he had any, as it did those of the warm-hearted Quaker woman and Mrs. Ten Eyck. Guert listened with a terribly vindictive feeling, such as was sadly increasing among all the people of the colonies. It was to account for, though not to excuse, many a deed of ruthless retaliation during the remainder of the war. In skirmish after skirmish, raid after raid, battle after battle, the innocent were to suffer for the guilty. Brave and right-minded servants and soldiers of Great Britain were to perish miserably, because of these evil dealings with prisoners of war in and about Manhattan Island.

"Thy scouting among the forts and camps hath small value," said Rachel Tarns, thoughtfully. "If Washington knew all, he hath not wherewith to attack the king's forces."

"No, no!" exclaimed the Indian. "Not now. Washington come again, some day. Kill all lobster. Take back island. Up-na-tan help him. Coco no talk. Ole chief tell more."

Aided by expressive gestures and by an occasional question from Mrs. Ten Eyck, he made the remainder of his story both clear and interesting. He and Coco had crossed the Harlem, homeward bound, in an old dugout canoe. They had worked their way out through the British lines by keeping under the cover of woods, to a point not far from the White Plains battle-field. Here, one evening, they had discovered a Hessian foraging party in a deserted farm-house. The soldiers were having a grand carouse, thinking themselves out of all danger.

"Musket all 'tack up in front of house," said Up-na-tan. "One Hess'n walk up an' down, sentry, till he tumble. Fall on face. Coco find sled in barn. Find pony. Up-na-tan take all musket. Pile 'em on sled. Harness pony, all pretty good. Come away."

"Didn't you go into the house?" asked Guert, excitedly. "Didn't any of 'em know what you were doing? How'd you get your cloak?"

"Boy shut mouth," said Up-na-tan. "Ole chief want cloak. Coco, too, want more musket, pistol, powder. Hate Hess'n. All in house go sleep hard. No wake up. Lie still. Pony pull sled to New London."

Mrs. Ten Eyck's face was very pale and so was that of Rachel Tarns. They believed that they understood only too well why the Manhattan warrior and the grim Ashantee who had been his comrade in this affair, preferred to say no more concerning the undisturbable slumber of that unfortunate detail of Hessians.

"Guert," said his mother, "go in and get your breakfast. The chief and Coco have had theirs. Rachel, you and I must have a talk with Captain Avery."