The Reckoning
Page 3
PROLOGUE
ECHOES OF YESTERDAY
His Excellency's system of intelligence in the City of New York I neverpretended to comprehend. That I was one of many agents I could have nodoubt; yet as long as I remained there I never knew but three or fourestablished spies with residence in town. Although I had no illusionsconcerning Mr. Gaine and his "Gazette," at intervals I violentlysuspected Mr. Rivington of friendliness to us, and this in spite of hisTory newspaper and the fierce broadsides he fired at rebels andrebellion. But I must confess that in my long and amiable acquaintancewith the gentleman he never, by word or hint or inference, so much asby the quiver of an eyelash, corroborated my suspicion, and to this dayI do not know whether or not Mr. Rivington furnished secret informationto his Excellency while publicly in print he raged and sneered.
Itinerant spies were always in the city in spite of the deadly watchkept up by regular and partizan, and sometimes they bore messages forme, the words "Pro Gloria" establishing their credentials as well asmine. They entered the city in all guises and under all pretexts, someas refugees, some as traitors, some wearing the uniform of Torypartizan corps, others attired as tradesmen, farmers, fishermen, andoften bearing passes, too, though where they contrived to find passes Inever understood.
It was a time of sullenness and quick suspicion; few were free fromdoubt, but of those few I made one--until that day when my enemyarrived--but of that in its place, for now I mean to say a word aboutthis city that I love--that we all love, understanding how alone shestood in seven years' chains, yet dauntless, dangerous, and defiant.
For upon New York fell the brunt of British wrath, and the judgment ofGod fell, too, passing twice in fire that laid one-quarter of the townin cinders. Nor was that enough, for His lightning smote thepowder-ship, the _Morning Star_, where she swung at her moorings offfrom Burling Slip, and the very sky seemed falling in the thunder thatshook the shoreward houses into ruins.
I think that, take it all in all, New York met and withstood everyseparate horror that war can bring, save actual assault and sack.Greater hardships fell to the lot of no other city in America, for welost more than a half of our population, more than a fourth of the cityby the two great fires. Want, with the rich, meant famine for the poorand sad privation for the well-to-do; smallpox and typhus swept us;commerce by water died, and slowly our loneliness became a maddeningisolation, when his Excellency flung out his blue dragoons to the veryedges of the river there at Harlem Bridge.
I often think it strange that New York town remained so loyal to thecause, for loyalty to the king was inherent among the better classes.Many had vast estates, farms, acres on acres of game parks, and livedlike the landed gentry of old England. Yet, save for the DeLanceys, theCrugers, their kinsmen, the Fannings, kin to the Tryons, FrederickRhinelander, the Waltons, and others too tedious to mention, thegentlemen who had the most to lose through friendliness to the cause ofliberty, chose to espouse that cause.
As for the British residents there, they remained in blameless loyaltyto their King, and I, for one, have never said one word to cast a doubtupon the purity of their sentiments.
But with all this, knowing what must come, no other city in America sogaily set forth upon the road to ruin as did patriotic New York. Andfrom that dreadful hour when, through the cannon smoke on BrooklynHeights, she beheld the ghastly face of ruin leering at her across thefoggy water--from that heart-breaking hour when the British drumsrolled from the east, and the tall war-ships covered themselves withsmoke, and the last flag flying was hacked from the halyards, and thetramp of the grenadiers awoke the silence of Broadway, she neverfaltered in her allegiance, never doubted, never failed throughoutthose seven years the while she lay beneath the British heel, arattlesnake, stunned only, but deadly still while the last spark oflife remained.
Were I to tell a tithe of all I know of what took place during thegreat siege, the incidents might shame the wildest fancies ofromance--how intrigue swayed with intrigue there, struggling hilt tohilt; how plot and plot were thwarted by the counterplot; how all trustin man was destroyed in that dark year that Arnold died, and a fiendtook his fair shape to scandalize two hemispheres!
Yet I am living witness of those years. I heard and saw much that Ishall not now revive, as where the victims of a pest lie buried it isnot wise to dig, lest the unseen be loosened once again. Yet somethingit may be well to record of that time--the curtain lifted for aglimpse, then dropped in silence--to teach our children that the menwho stood against their King stood with hope of no reward save liberty,but faced the tempest that they had unchained with souls self-shrivenand each heart washed free of selfishness.
So if I speak of prisons where our thousands died--hind and gentlemanpiled thick as shad in the fly market--sick and well and wounded alltogether--it shall not be at length, only a scene or two that sticks inmemory.
Once, in the suffocating heat of mid-July, I saw a prison where everynarrow window was filled with human heads, face above face, seeking aportion of the external air. And from that day, for many, many weeksthe dead-carts took the corpses to the outer ditches, passing steadilyfrom dawn to midnight.
All day, all night, they died around us in ship and prison, some fromsuffocation, some from starvation, others delivered by prison feverswhich rotted them so slowly that I think even death shrank backreluctant to touch them with his icy finger.
So piteous their plight, these crowded thousands, crushed in putridmasses, clinging to the filthy prison bars, that they arousedcompassion in that strange and ancient guild that once had claimed theMagdalen in its sad sisterhood, and these aided them with food, yearafter year, until deliverance.
They had no other food, no water except from polluted drains, no firein winter, no barriers to the blackest cold that ever seared the cityfrom the times that man remembers. I say they had no other food and nofire to cook the offal flung to them. That is not all true, because wedid our best, being permitted to furnish what we had--we and thestrange sisterhood--yet they were thousands upon thousands, and we werefew.
It is best that I say no more, for that proud England's sake from whoseloins we sprang--it is best that I speak not of Captain Cunningham theProvost, nor of his deputy, O'Keefe, nor of Sproat and Loring. Therewas butchers' work in my own North, and I shall not shrink from thetelling; there was massacre, and scalps taken from children too smallto lisp their prayers for mercy; that was devils' work, and may betold. But Cunningham and those who served him were alone in their awfultrade; cruelty unspeakable and frenzied vice are terms which fallimpotent to measure the ghastly depths of an infamy in which theycrawled and squirmed, battening like maggots on hell's own pollution.
Long since, I think, we have clasped hands with England over CherryValley and Wyoming, forgiving her the loosened fury of her red alliesand her Butlers and McDonalds. The scar remains, but is remembered onlyas a glory.
How shall we take old England's wrinkled hand, stretched out above thespots that mark the prisons of New York?--above the twelve thousandunnamed graves of those who died for lack of air and water aboard the_Jersey_? God knows; and yet all things are possible with Him--even thismiracle which I shall never live to see.
Without malice, without prejudice, judging only as one whose judgmenterrs, I leave this darkened path for a free road in the open, and soshall strive to tell as simply and sincerely as I may what only befellmyself and those with whom I had been long associated. And if thepleasures that I now recall seem tinged with bitter, and if the gaietywas but a phase of that greater prison fever that burnt us all in thebeleaguered city, still there was much to live for in those timesthrough which I, among many, passed; and by God's mercy, not my ownendeavor, passed safely, soul and body.
THE RECKONING