Altsheler, Joseph - [Novel 05]

by A Herald Of The West (lit)

  We had a few moments for breath, and I looked at the army streaming in mad haste and terror from the field. We were on a low hilltop, and the fugitives poured around us and by us as if we were a rock in the middle of a torrent. But among the sailors and marines there was perfect order, though they were only four hundred against ten or fifteen times their number, for our army was now disappearing on the Washington road, leaving a 17

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  trail of dropped weapons and a vast cloud of hovering dust to mark its flight.

  I saw the sailor Patterson at one of the guns, and he noticed me too, for he said:

  " We can't beat 'em now, Mr. Ten Broeck, but we'll let 'em know they've had a battle."

  The cannoneers were loading their pieces, and for a moment there was a pause in the rush of the battle, while the British prepared to hurl the full strength of their army upon our little force. Far away toward Washing ton was the immense cloud of dust which rolled over our fleeing men and followed them as a banner of dis grace. About the field lay dead bodies, the enemy's and ours, and some of the hurt sat up and tried to tend their sores.

  The British were now abreast of us in the main road, and our commander shouted to the battery to fire. All five guns were discharged at once, and the round shot plunged straight into the solid ranks of the British. I saw their army quiver and give to the shock, but in a moment they recovered and swept upon us in a long and deep semicircular line which threatened to envelop and strangle us.

  But the sailors were expert at the guns; they re loaded with incredible speed and poured another deadly volley at close range into the charging ranks. When the smoke lifted we gave a resounding cheer, for their lines had been broken and they were giving ground. I believed then for an instant that we would beat them off, but I saw in the next instant that it was impossible in the face of such numbers.

  They reformed their lines and pressed on again in an overwhelming mass, and those of us who had rifles began a fire in their faces which broke holes in their front ranks but could not stop their onward march. The cannon were reloaded, and again our ears trembled with the concussion of the guns as they were fired all to-

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  gether. Back went the British a second time, leaving their dead and wounded in our front, and a third time they came to the charge only to be driven back as before. The odour of mingled blood and dust and burnt gunpow der arose, but, carried away by zeal and the drunkenness of momentary success, we thought little of it.

  After the third repulse they hesitated, then sent a formidable column up a ravine, from which it passed and. dividing again assailed us on both flanks and in the rear, while the great force in front of us made its fourth charge at our faces. We were enveloped by fire and steel; the cannon and the rifles flashed in our eyes, the smoke floated over us so thickly that at times it hid our comrades, and as the hostile and overwhelming lines drew more tightly around us I had a curious feeling of strangulation, as if it were my throat and not our company that was compressed. I choked with the dust and the smoke, and then a heavy weight was hurled against me with such violence that at first thought I believed my self to have a fatal wound, but it was only a dead man driven upon me by the cannon ball that had killed him. His blood was over me and mingled with my own sweat and dust, and thus we fought, while the hot sun poured burning rays straight down upon our heads, and the choking clouds of dust and smoke drove in our faces.

  Let me say again that our sailors and marines fought here as they always fought, whether on land or sea, with the utmost valour and tenacity. Though pressed now on every side by overwhelming numbers, with the remainder of our army out of sight and rushing, wild with terror, into Washington; with no hope of success, and defeat the only thing sure, they fought on. Such is the result of discipline and training where the material is good.

  The solid ranks of the enemy pressed more closely upon us, the dust and smoke clouds thickened. Suddenly our commander went down, badly wounded. Some of those in our front ranks, crushed by the mere weight of

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  numbers, yielded, and it was plain to all that in a minute or two more our litUe band would be broken and shat tered.

  " Come! " shouted Cyrus Pendleton to me. " "When it's useless to fight any longer, Philip, it's time to save yourself! "

  It was the cautious old Indian fighter, the best of all fighters, the man who never sacrificed anything to false gallantry or bravado, who spoke, and seeing the truth of his words I dashed with him and Bidwell, who appeared just then at our side, at a thin point of the British line. A grenadier, bayonet presented, barred our way. I smashed at his head with a clubbed rifle, and I felt but did not see the blow, for I turned my head away. The fur trader fired a pistol at another, and then, leaping over their bodies, we dashed through the line down the hill and out into the plain beyond. A bullet or two whizzed by us, but in the wild turmoil of flame and dust and smoke and trampling regiments and shouting men we were not noticed more, and, short of breath, we passed off the field in the track of the fleeing army.

  "It seems to me that we are running away," said Cyrus Pendleton grimly.

  " It looks like it."

  Ahead of us were other fleeing forms, and the plain was spotted with discarded rifles. I was oppressed by an- 'ger, shame, and grief, and as the fury of the battle died my muscles relaxed and I felt as if I could drop through weariness, but my will bore me on. Now that my back and not my face was turned to the enemy, a breath of that panic that had swept away regiments touched me. I was sure that they were firing at me from behind, and I felt a fierce desire to rush forward at the utmost speed and take myself out of range. My heels were becoming master, and I made an involuntary movement to throw away my rifle to lighten myself and quicken my flight. But I had enough pride and will to rule my heels and to

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  crush down the sense of fear which overmasters when it is permitted to go far. I restrained my pace to an or-« dered flight, and kept my weapons for future use.

  But the anger and the shame remained. We were now in the trail of the dust cloud that the fugitives had kicked up, and we choked and sputtered and our weari ness grew. The sun blazed through the dust, and we seemed to be the chosen focus of his rays. I looked at Cyrus Pendleton and Bidwell. Their tongues were hang ing out and their faces were masked in dirt that was wet and sticky with sweat. Overhead the sun grinned at us and poured his hottest beams upon our heads. Behind us the uproar of the battle quickly sank to nothing, and wo knew that the sailors left alive had surrendered to over powering force. The cannon and the rifles echoed for a few moments, and the hum of many voices, the shuffling of feet, the confused clamour of an army, arose in its place, and then, too, died away as we raced on toward Washington.

  "Friends," said Bidwell suddenly, "you must stop!'*

  " Stop! " I said in surprise. " Not now! it's too early! "

  " Only a minute or two! "

  " What for? "

  " To see me die."

  We stopped abruptly, appalled at his words, the sud denness of them, the calmness with which they were spoken, but we saw at the first glance that they were true. Death was already upon him or he would not have spoken in such a strange fashion, and I noticed now a deep red blur upon his coat, where the bullet re ceived in the whirlwind of the battle, and perhaps un noticed at the time, had passed. I was smitten with a sudden great remorse, because I had sneered at him and despised him, and yet when the hour came he had proved himself of the finest and truest steel, and in so doing had lost his life.

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  I seized him in my arms, for he was about to fall, and bore him to the roadside, intending to put him down there on the grass. But I saw farther away a dense clump of trees, and with an eye to the pursuing British army I hastened to them, carrying the dying man and followed by Cyrus Pendleton, aghast at the fate of Bid- well, to whom he was really attached, and the coll
apse of his sanguine schemes of grandeur. I hastened into the clump of trees and put Bidwell down upon the grass.

  " Thank you, Phil," he said, with his dying breath. " I tried to make a good soldier. I gave the best that was in me."

  He spoke true words, for he had given his life. He tried to reach out his hand and I took it, but as I took it he died, and I have never been ashamed of the tear that fell then from my eyes. Mr. Pendleton seemed stupefied, as if his world were coming to an end, but I roused him and told him that we must dispose of Bid- well's body before we could continue our flight to Wash ington. We could hear the distant cries and tramplings and the scattering shots of the pursuing army, but we knew the way across the fields and through the woods, and I had no fear. A little farther back we found a cabin inhabited by negroes who were frightened to the verge of death and ready to acknowledge the first man who came as their sovereign lord and master. They screamed with fear at the sight of the dead body, but two ten-dollar gold pieces persuaded them to take it, a trust which they kept faithfully, and the mortal remains of poor Bidwell were buried afterward according to the rites of the Church into which he had been born.

  Leaving the body there, we continued our flight, op pressed by grief, shame, and anxiety. No man could tell what would happen to Washington. The victors be hind were those veterans of whom the Duke of Wel lington, their own commander, wrote to the British min-

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  istry: " It is impossible to describe to you the irregular ities and outrages committed by the troops." The men who were with Wellington were the men who were now at Washington.

  My first thought was of Marian, and her father told me he would go to her at once in Georgetown. Even as he told me we parted, he to go as he had said he would and take her to safety, and I to go to Washington, where I thought it my duty to be, for even yet I hoped that the army might rally and make some sort of a stand.

  I was sore of muscle, wearied by the battle and the flight, the heat and the dust, but I passed on at steady speed, and, entering Washington, saw for the first and last time a city in despair, its people fleeing before a ruthless conqueror, a sight which our country luckily has beheld neither before nor since. My head swam at the confusion and the terror which surged around me. There was not the slightest hope of reforming an army; no army was there, but the air was filled with the screaming of children, the crying of women, the shout ing and cursing of men, while the clouds of dust kicked up from the earth half veiled houses and human beings, and the hot glare of the sun beat down on everything. A wounded soldier, a clerk in the Treasury Department whom I had known, sat on the steps of a house tying up his wound with a handkerchief.

  " Over the bridge to Virginia, Ten Broeck! " he shouted to me.

  He must have recognised me by my size, for my face was encased in dried mud and blood as in a mask. I shook my head, and he said nothing more, but took his own advice and fled toward the bridge, which was crowded with a flying procession in wagons, on horse back, and among them many of the great officials of our nation. The President and his wife had crossed the river in a boat already, Mrs. Madison lingering to the

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  last to save the famous portrait of Washington in the White House.

  The wreck swept on, leaving full evidence of its pas sage. In the streets lay abandoned guns, pieces of fur niture, and broken mirrors, and the stray breezes caught up documents which, for all I knew, may have come from the Capitol itself. Over the bridge thundered the crowd, the tail of it a huddle of frightened negroes, who, after the custom of their race, wept at the top of their voices.

  I saw a group of twenty or twenty-five men in uni form; soldiers they were not, for when I asked them to stay and help in a defence they hooted at me and fol lowed at a swift pace in the wake of the fleeing crowd. Dusk was coming on; in the east the twilight was ap pearing. The beat of flying feet had sunk from thunder into a distant rumble. Those who remained had locked themselves in their houses, doors and windows barred, and the fallen city was about to behold a night of defeat.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  A NIGHT OF DEFEAT.

  As the darkness came out of the east and the silence of desolation spread over the doomed city I felt that it was time for me to go. The last straggler was dis appearing, a wagon loaded with household goods had just lumbered past me and gone out of sight around a corner; the night was settling down, thick and close, after a hot, burning day. There was nothing that one could do in Washington, and my sole idea then was to go to George town and help in the escape and protection of Marian. I stood in Pennsylvania Avenue, where I had made my last effort to rally some uniformed fugitives. Near me loomed the Capitol, its white walls shining through the advancing dusk. I turned to go, and heard a rattle and a shout and the tread of many feet. Before me blazed the red coats of an English regiment, advancing up the avenue, in but half order, their general, Eoss, and the admiral, Cockburn, who commanded the blockading fleet, at their head. Theirs was not the precise, steady walk of the drill ground, of troops under strict discipline, but they came on in irregular lines, shouting and firing stray shots at the silent and unoffending walls of houses. I saw at once that these men, wild and drunk with triumph, were in truth the men of whom Wellington wrote, and less kin to the Puritans of Cromwell than ever. I was about to turn again for retreat another way, when my eye was caught by the figure of an officer riding just behind the British general a tall man, straight-shouldered, and

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  riding stiffly. It was my kinsman, Major Northcote, in a brilliant uniform, all his seeming indifference gone, his face red with the flush of victory and gratified malice, as on this, the most triumphant day of his life, he rode toward the Capitol of the country which had injured him and which, I knew now, he hated with as much vin dictive passion as the human breast is capable of holding. He fascinated me for the moment as Turnus in the ^Eneid or the Devil in Paradise Lost fascinates the reader. The light of the setting sun, reddest as it goes, blazed upon his face, and brought forth like Greek chiselling every strong and sharpened feature the massive head, the projecting chin, the tight-shut lips, the high cheek bones, the seamed forehead, the thick gray hair above, the whole handsome as ever, but now harsh and repellent. It was only for the moment that I looked, and then I turned again to flee down a side street. Some of the soldiers saw me and shouted to their comrades to shoot, setting the example by firing point-blank at my vanishing form, and the others followed quickly with a volley. But the twilight had come and the soldiers were unsteady. I heard their bullets whistling around me, but none touched me, and I told Philip Ten Broeck that it was time to show himself a man of speed and sure foot, and so telling I took his advice and darted into the side street. It was well for me that I looked before me, for my eyes were saluted again by a line of red uniforms, and down the side street at a trot came a company of British grenadiers, shouting like their comrades in the avenue and firing at the houses, changing their aim when I came and sending their bullets at me. This way was closed, and I ran back into the avenue, to find the main body of the troops still nearer. Obeying instinct, I ran straight ahead at a great pace and directly toward the Capitol. I would have tried an other side street, but I feared that I would dash into a British company, for they seemed to be approaching from almost every direction, and I ran on toward the great

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  building, which rose white and massive in the misty twi light. More muskets were discharged at me, and the troops shouted in delight like hunters at a fox chase, but I had little fear of their bullets, which struck bushes and houses, but never my body.

  I dashed around a little patch of shrubbery, took a few leaps, and was then at the Capitol. I believed that the troops had lost sight of me, and I would hide in the building until the darkest part of the night came, when I would escape to the country. I listened for a moment behind one of the pillars, and then entered the Cap
itol. Books and parchments were scattered upon the floors, but around me was utter silence, and the darkness of night had gathered already in the lone rooms and halls. On a table in one of the rooms a candle burned dimly. How it came to be lighted I know not, but it sputtered there and threw its flickering flame on the marble walls like one of the torches that some religions burn at the feet of the dead.

  When I stepped heavily upon a stone floor the great building rumbled as the echo fled through hall and corridor, and the succeeding silence and desolation op pressed me. I went into the Senate chamber, where I had listened to the eloquence of Mr. Clay urging on the war, and walked down between the rows of deserted desks, some with rolls of papers lying upon them, and faced the Vice-President's chair, sitting there an em blem of emptiness and abandonment. It was now more than twilight in the silent chamber, for within those walls the darkness had come, and it was only my ac customed eyes that enabled me to see; even then the walls and chairs and desks became shadowy, while the feeble rays of light that filtered through the windows made a pallid and ghostly hue where they fell. It was to me a dim chamber of the dead, and my brain was ex cited with the wild battle and flight of the day, the heat and dust, the shame and disgrace of the rout, and my

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  presence alone there in that darkening room, from which the rightful occupants had fled. My heart was filled with varying emotions, shame, anger, excitement; my feet became light as air, and my brain swelled with strange ideas. I walked down the aisle and up to the Vice-President's chair, in which I took my seat and faced the empty chairs of the senators.