Altsheler, Joseph - [Novel 05]

by A Herald Of The West (lit)

  Again a cannon ball shrieked over my head, another sent splinters flying, and a boy, a powder monkey, cried out as one tore the flesh of his shoulder. They took him below to the surgeon, and a mrhute later our gun ners raised a great cheer. The stranger's fire was slack ening fast, and in ten minutes from the first cannon shot it became only a stray discharge or two. Then the captain ordered ours to cease entirely, for it was evi dent from the volume of the cannonade that the strange ship was much inferior to ours in calibre. I was sure now that she was not the Guerriere, which was of the same class as the President, but I was still firm in the belief that she was an Englishman.

  The gunners obeyed the order with the same prompt ness and calmness that they had shown in loading and

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  firing, and waited to see what would happen. What did happen was a sudden renewal of the stranger's cannon ade, for, taking our cessation as proof that we were beaten, he opened anew with many guns. Then the combat which we had rejoiced over as finished was begun again. The clouds of smoke thickened in the damp, misty night, and the quivering of our ship became a roll, for the wind was rising, and, despite the flash of the guns, the darkness increased. Looking up, I could see that there were no stars in the heavens, and all the skies were cloudy, black, and threatening. The firing of the stranger was wild, many balls whistled far above our heads, and still others struck the sea behind the ship, sending up jets of foam. There was much to- con fuse the aim, for each of the vessels was firing into the smoke-bank, and only by the light of the cannon were the combatants visible to each other. Suddenly the President fired an entire crashing broadside into the heart of the smoke-bank that hid the stranger. I heard the splintering and tearing of wood, the flapping of fall ing sails, the shriek of men mortally hurt, and the strange ship, under the impact of the shot, seemed to heave up out of the smoke-bank and then to sink back into the sea, winged and helpless. She was beyond the control of her crew now, for she wore around stern on, and another broadside from the President would have raked her fore and aft and annihilated her crew. But that broadside was not given, for it was evident that our enemy's fight was over.

  There was again a sudden silence aboard our ship; the gunners stood beside their guns, the sharpshooters in the rigging held their rifles at rest, the frigate rocked in the swell of the sea which lapped against her sides, and the clouds of smoke again drifted slowly from the deck and upward. Our captain hailed the stranger, and some kind of a reply was shouted out, but as we were to windward we could not understand it. Sure now

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  that she could fight no longer, we ran down under the stranger's lee and hove to, that we might be ready to rescue the crew in case she should sink, which seemed probable.

  I did not sleep or lie down that night. I will admit that every nerve in me was quivering with excitement. I, who a week before had dreamed of nothing, less than of this, had just passed through a furious naval bat tle which might bring untold, consequences, and, more over, I was thrilled to the marrow by the scene itself, the darkness of the night, the moaning of the wind, and the immensity of the sea, limitless to me, a lands man, upon which the two ships rocked side by side, one almost a wreck. The wildness of the enemy's fire had been so great that on the President nobody was hurt save the boy whom I had seen struck by a splinter, but I guessed that on the other ship there would be a much bloodier tale to tell.

  As the night advanced, the wind rose still more and the two ships drifted apart, and in the darkness we lost her for awhile. It was a time of suspense and anxiety for us all, since the stranger might go down in the night, leaving no sign, and it was important to know whom we had been fighting. But the long night ended and the slow day came at last. The fiery sun swinging clear of the sea drove away the sombre rain clouds, and the face of the waters stretched before us, a blaze of blue, shot with pink, where the flame of the sun struck through it. But there, two or three miles away, floating like a hulk, was our ship.

  " A Briton a twenty-two-gun sloop, I should say," said Lieutenant Creighton, by whose side I was standing. " What a fool she was to fire into a vessel of our weight, but since the Chesapeake affair any British ship thinks she can bully an American of double her size."

  'Which was true, but which, nevertheless, proved to be a most unfortunate thing for Englishmen.

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  We ranged up, and a boat was lowered from our ship.

  " Would you like to go in the boat, Mr Ten Broeck? " asked the captain of me. " I think that, after all, it was a go od thing you missed going ashore, as you will have to report on this affair, and you will be an extremely im portant witness/'

  Of course I volunteered to go in the boat, which was commanded by Lieutenant Creighton, who was instructed to convey to the stranger our regrets at the necessity that led to such an unhappy result, and to offer any assistance that might be needed. These things sound stilted and insincere now, but they were the style then, especially among naval officers, and hitherto it had been the pleas ure of the English only to " express regrets."

  We pulled toward the shattered ship, and saw lower- ering faces watching over the rail. But they did not object to our visit aboard, where we were received by Arthur Bingham, commander of his Britannic Majesty's twenty-two-gun corvette Little Belt, which had suffered eleven men killed and twenty-one wounded in a combat the night before with the American frigate President more than a double reparation for the murderous and gratuitous assault upon the Chesapeake.

  But the small courtesies that we had for each other were a mere form, soon discarded as useless. Commander Bingham was in no mood for phrases, nor would I have been, in his place, with my ship half a wreck under me. We gave the name of our ship and he gave his, declining our offer of assistance with the belief that the Little Belt was still good enough to reach her port, wherever that might be. So we left him to his dead and his wounded, and, though it is an awful thing to take life, I felt no sorrow for the English, since they" had provoked it and they had shed much American blood without redress be fore that night.

  I found that I was bound on a longer voyage than I had expected, as the President, in obedience to orders

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  of which I knew nothing, did not return to the Chesa peake, but sailed for New York. We spoke a Swedish vessel bound for Baltimore, which carried the first news of the fight to an American port, while we jogged leis urely on to New York.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  CONVERGING EVENTS.

  WHEN we reached New York I bade adieu to my. friends of the President, with whom my voyage had been pleasant and most eventful, and hastened ashore, where our adventure was known already, making the arrival of the frigate an occasion for ferment in the city. I hur ried to Fraunce's Tavern, intending to write there a letter to Mr. Gallatin which should contain a full and truthful account of the battle and an apology for my voyage on the President. But upon the latter point I anticipated no trouble whatever, since I would be, as Captain Rodgers had put it, a most valuable witness, a civilian hitherto unknown to the crew of the President, and therefore my presence on board her had been a most fortuitous occurrence.

  But rapidly, as I walked through the city, I could note the rising tumult, as I had noted it on the day De- guyo was seized, although it was now of a different char acter, for the temper of men's minds was such, made so by long and persistent provovcation, that they rejoiced at the shattering of the Little Belt and the slaughter of her crew a just punishment for the battle which she had begun and some small repayment for the innumerable outrages which we had suffered. So in the street I wit nessed no emotion save fierce joy, whatever the timid Federalists in their fine houses may have felt.

  As I stepped in at the door of Fraunce's Tavern I met Marian Pendleton, who was just about to come out. 212

  CONVERGING EVENTS. 213

  " Why, Philip! " she cried in the greatest astonish ment. "
Where did you come from? We heard that you had been sent to Annapolis with a message and had disappeared. Father had it in a letter from Washington, and there was much talk there about you."

  "And I am surprised, too, to see you here," I said without answering her question at once, but taking both her hands in mine. " I thought you had left for Wash ington weeks ago."

  " No, we have stayed on; we have found New York pleasant; our friends Mr. Mercer and Mr. Courtenay are also yet here; but tell me, where have you been?"

  " At sea; I've come from a battle."

  " At sea! A battle! " Her face was pale, but her eyes had lighted up.

  " Yes; I was on the President when she fought the Little Belt, and I've just landed from her."

  Then I told her the story, and she listened with sparkling eyes and a face in which a flush had replaced the pallor. She had all the feeling of our Western women against England, nourished as it was by the tales of the English-led and English-armed Indians who came down from the Northwest and slew and burned and out raged along the border. Women, the best of them, re member and cherish animosities longer than men. They, too, at times can cry for war as loudly as the men.

  " Oh, Philip," she said, " I am glad it has happened, and I am glad you were there! "

  " Perhaps we will have war now," I said, " and that may bring peace and security nothing else will."

  Then she became pale again, and I knew that she was thinking of those things, other than glory, that war is sure to bring. Cyrus Pendleton himself came in, full of the news and flushed with its character, so different from all that had gone before, the red showing through the brown of his lean hawk face, his black eyes snapping.

  "T tell yon, Phil," he said he, too, seemed to have

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  regained his ancient friendliness for me because I had been on the frigate " we've put the burden on England; it's her business now to show resentment. If she can stand this she can stand more."

  He talked on, full of joy, his fiery old soul ablaze. His was no parlour zeal; it was the warlike temper of a man who had carried his life at his rifle's muzzle for twenty years, and was still ready, at sixty, to light for what he thought the right. In many a log cabin on the border there was another like him. He was so anxious to go to Washington, that he might see what would hap pen and be present to lend what influence he had to make it happen as he wished, that he ordered Marian to do her packing and be ready for the start on the fol lowing morning. I asked to accompany them, and Mer cer and Courtenay, who came in soon, decided to do like wise. I discovered that the handsome Miss Constance Eastlake was one of the reasons why Courtenay had lingered in New York, and I was glad to learn from Mercer that she liked Courtenay better than any other man, for I thought her a very fine girl, though not the finest of all. Men were ever fools about women, and yet could not keep away from them, said Mercer in conclu sion, and for a little I was sad on his account.

  Early summer was in all its freshness and bloom, and we decided that instead of making the journey in stage coaches we would ride horseback to the capital. The in evitable Bidwell made his appearance as a member of our party, since he, of course, had not thought of leaving New York before the Pendletons.

  Few finer or more pleasant journeys have been made than that which we took in the rosy month of June, 1811, from New York to Philadelphia, and thence to Baltimore and on to Washington. Good weather at tended us, the roads were dry and hard; about us the country blossomed and bloomed, the apple and the peach trees were cones of pink and white, and the tiny wild

  CONVERGING EVENTS. 215

  flowers clustered in the grass. My prestige as a warrior, because I had been on the President in the tight, clung to me, and I profited by it to the utmost. I was forced to tell the tale of the battle again and again, and it required much power over self to keep to facts. I could not re strain a cut now and then at Bidwell, who did not seem to be of a warlike character, and once received a re buke from an unexpected quarter.

  " Mr. Bidwell is a courageous man, I think," said Marian Bidwell was too far away then to hear. " Per haps he will show it when the opportunity comes."

  Cyrus Pendleton's sudden attack of friendliness for me soon cooled a little, though I did not mind, and he still showed plainly that he wished Bidwell's estate and his own to be united, with the marriage certificate of his daughter as the title deed. It was a curious fact, as I have said before, that our Kentucky blue grass barons, who were then England's most embittered foes, copied her landed aristocracy as closely as they could, and the cherished ambition of them all was to found estates feu dal in extent and character.

  But our talk as we rode southward was not all of war. We had seen something of the richer and more cultivated East. Marian had been welcome in the soci ety of New York, and we of the West, who knew so much of the hardships of life, had begun now to learn a little of its softer side. So it was of these things that we talked often as we rode on through the country that flowered the more as we continued our southward way.

  We found Washington in a state of deep quiet, the affair of the Little Belt was growing old, and midsum mer, which is very hot at the capital, would soon be there. The English seemed to be surprised that some of their own men and not Americans had been killed, and one day I saw a quiet man of amiable appearance, who, as I was told, was the new British minister, Mr. Foster. My excuses had been accepted by Mr. Gallatin

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  without comment, but I noticed that he filed my report of the affair very carefully. Thus everything seemed quiet under the summer heats, but we could tell in a day that it was superficial, that behind this see ming veil of peace the storms were gathering. The first note came from the placid, amiable British minister himself, from whom so much of a soothing nature was expected, when he protested in a characteristic British way against our occupation of West Florida, an affair that concerned Spain and ourselves exclusively. From all the western country came the murmur of angly reply.

  I was taken back into Mr. Gallatin's office, the Pen- dletons and Mercer and Courtenay remained in the city, and 'the summer waned. The green and the freshness gave way to brown and dust, and men's minds were filled with uncertainty. In Europe the power of Bonaparte on land swelled and grew as ever, and he threatened to be come master of the whole Continent; the French legions marched only to victory. On the water the English rode supreme as of old; nowhere a foe dared to appear, and between the two, England and France, we were ground, as in all the years that had gone before. The thousands of impressed American sailors still sailed and fought against their will on the British ships, the British fleets still patrolled our coasts, seeking new vic tims, our own ships everywhere were exposed to search and confiscation, trade was going to ruin, there was no foot that did not feel the pinch of the shoe, and from all the regions behind the hills came the cry that it was better to fight; yet the Government made no prepara tions, though already, our negotiations with the chiefs failing, the formidable Northwestern tribes, led by the redoubtable Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet, yielding to English hints and English promises, were in open war on the border, where they were confronted by the armed farmers of the West. I heard of this war with the deepest anxiety. Many of my own personal

  CONVERGING EVENTS. 217

  friends had gone with Harrison's army into the Indiana wilderness, where the white man always fought at a great disadvantage, and there was no one in Kentucky who had not heard the tale of St. Glair's terrible defeat, how his army was annihilated in the winter wilderness by an un seen foe, as Braddock's English army had been forty years before. But the army was buried in the forest, and we were to hear nothing more of it until such time as chance willed for news to filter through the stretches of wooded desolation.

  The autumn waned, following in the path of the dead summer, the woods gleamed with the brilliant foli age, the variations and the changing colours of Indian summer, the smoky haze rose on the horizon, the sharp t
ouch of cold crept into the air, and the keen winds por tended the coming winter. One heard nothing in the little capital of Washington but politics; President Mad ison's re-election was assured, and it seemed that a war Congress would come in with him, though New England and the East would have nothing of it. Mr. Clay was a candidate for the House from the Lexington district, and everybody said that he would be chosen Speaker when he "came to Washington, using all his power in that great position to bring on the proposed war. But still the Government prepared nothing for what was certainly coming. The great men theorized and talked of an ideal state which would know naught of war, which would have neither army nor navy, which in all its dealings with foreign states should rely upon the single principle of justice, closing their eyes to the fact that all the world was at war, that force not justice was the single principle then ruling all things, and the man who did not arm consigned himself to the wolves. The nearer war came and the more we talked about it, the less ready we were for it, and with a divided country the most sanguine, who are always the youngest, could well shrink before the prospect.

  15

  218 A HERALD OF TEE WEST.

  I walked up Pennsylvania Avenue a windy morning in November and saw Courtenay approaching, waving his hat in his hand and shouting hurrah to me as he came. I thought he was suffering from a mild attack of lunacy and told him so, but he continued his shouting, and when he reached me grasped my hand and shook it fervently.