by Anthology
He rolled off the table onto his feet, immediately sagging as if someone were pulling him at the pockets. Walter gave him a shove and flattened him on the table again.
Walter was almost hysterical, his eyes dancing as he looked at the calendar on the wall behind us.
“Hank—look! It’s the eighteenth of April!”
“ ’Struth, ’tis!” boomed Revere. He grabbed his wig and swung it exultantly by its pigtail. “April the eighteenth, ’75, and Paul Revere’ll make history tonight. History, I say—one if by land, two if by sea . . . Another ale and I’ll have eyes like a hawk! Barkeep! ’Swounds, where is the poltroom?”
“One if by land—” I croaked in surprise. “Hey, that’s in the poem!”
“Twah!” Revere howled, wriggling his head back into his wig, now turned completely wrongside out. “Glory be, good gennelmen, and I swear a merry oath—’tis no poem. ’Tis a song! One if by land—two if by sea—I’ve a tankard of ale that’s due to me! A pox on us all—where’s my ale?”
“It’s getting close to midnight,” said Walter suddenly, his eyes wide.
“Midnight! Too late for ale—history’s in the making. One if by land, two if by sea—and Revere’ll send the alarm ringing through every Middlesex village from Charleston to Lexington and back again!”
Paul Revere notched his belt. He shot his feet at the floor with a sudden flurry of determination. “Must go,” he boomed.
“Well, if you gotta go—” I began, but Walter butted in.
For the past couple of minutes, Walter had stood with his mouth open and his face a complete blissful blank. But now he suddenly quivered all over, grabbed Paul Revere by his coat sleeve, and moaned: “Hank! Hank! We can’t let him go out of here—what’ll we do?”
“What’s this?” Revere hooted, regarding us with his bloodshot eyes. “Brigands in the tavern? Rascals, let me free!”
He jerked his arm loose with a twist that buckled his legs under him and he finally compromised by sinking to one knee. “Whew,” he muttered, eyes closed desperately, “I’m not so steady as I might be, with what I’ve to do this night. Help me to horse—strap m’ feet to the stirrups. Blast my boiled buttons, I’ve drunk too much for duty!” He sighed, and sank a little further toward the floor.
Walter was still just staring at him. “Hank,” he pleaded, turning my way, “don’t you get it? We’ve got to get him back in the machine right away! Don’t you see? We’ve botched up history, Hank. This is the eighteenth of April—the night of his famous ride. The British man-of-war Somerset is on her way into the Charles’ River this very instant!”
“Huh?”
“Oh, you dope!” Walter exploded. “Can’t you see that if Paul Revere doesn’t get back to his own Time to warn the colonists, the American Revolution may never come off?”
“Huh?”
That was when it hit me. “But, Walter, that’s old stuff—it’s been done and forgotten a hundred and fifty years ago!”
“Don’t be a mucklehead! Can’t you grasp the fact that the Past is just as real as the Present? Use your head, Hank. Look—Paul Revere, in ’75, on the eighteenth of April, was all set to make history as planned, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Shut up. Now, all at once a couple of blamed fools like us reach into the Past where we have no business, and snag Revere out of his own Time and yank him into our own year—1940!”
“Yeah, but—”
“Shut up. Now, here’s Paul on the floor of our room in 1940, half-crocked on ale and the Scotch we loaded him with a while back. How d’you suppose he’s going to be in two different centuries at once?”
“Well, he’s here now—”
“So he can’t be back in ’75 where he should be! And if he isn’t back in history where he belongs, he can’t warn the minute-men that the British are coming. And if he can’t do that, General Gage on the Somerset will land his troops and probably wipe out the American military supplies at Concord and cripple our forces like they intend to do. And they’ll capture John Hancock and Samuel Adams, too—they’re part of what Gage is after! And if that happens, then the Revolution’ll be over before it gets going, and the Redcoats’ll win and retain America as a British colony, and then—Oh, Hank, we’ve gone and bungled things so the whole history of our nation will be remade in a single night, and a hundred and fifty years of American freedom will be blotted out—be non-existent.”
“Walter,” I tried to calm him, “now, Walter, it can’t happen that way. What’s done is done—history is history, and—And, look, Walter! Maybe it’ll come out all right anyway!”
“Maybe,” cried Walter, a wild gleam in his eye, “but we don’t dare take that chance! Hank, we’ve not a second to lose. We’ve got to get Paul Revere back to his own time before the British ruin everything!”
So there we were.
It was half-past ten. In a little over an hour back there in that other world where Paul Revere should have been, the Redcoats would be sighted by Paul’s buddy in the belfry and the signal would be flashed to Revere himself, on the other side of the river.
And it was up to us to meet a crisis which occurred a hundred and fifty years before we were born!
How we went about it I don’t know.
While I worked on the machine with every tool I had, Walter was in no less of a dither pouring black coffee down the throat of a very much bewildered Paul Revere. By dint of much shouting and repetition, and the aid of a bucket of cold water in the groaning hero’s face, Walter was finally able to bring him to the realization that something was definitely haywire. We raced like madmen against the ominous ticking of the wall clock, fighting against each second that drove us that much closer to the moment when the Old North Church belfry should gleam with a lantern light back there in ’75.
Finally I wheeled, “Ready!” I wrapped my wrench around the last loose nut. Sweat cascaded down my face in a regular Niagara, but I was done, and it was just past eleven o’clock. “Throw him in the cage!” I panted.
Walter was busy all this time going over the situation endlessly with Paul Revere. “Don’t you understand?” he moaned hoarsely. “It’s our fault . . . It’s the Fourth Dimension.”
“Fourth Dimension? ’Sblood and pantaloons! Could you repeat it all just once more, citizen?”
“It’s no use,” Walter wept. “It just isn’t any use!”
“Looky!” I shrieked now, getting almost as mad as I was scared. “This is 1940. You’re from 1775 and you must get back. See?” Then I gave him a good hard shove toward the cage of the Time Swing, and, “Now you get the drift, buddy,” I finished, “we got no time to lose. Hop in!”
“But, good gentlemen—” He was getting a little of our own anxiety, now. Who wouldn’t, with two bleary-eyed and chalky faces gaping at him. Paul Revere was cold sober now—cold sober and plenty panicky.
“You—you don’t mean the Redcoats have already come?”
“You see, Einstein—” Walter began. “Skip Einstein—” I shoved Walter away. I jerked Paul Revere to his feet by the lapels of his funny coat. “Now, squat!”
He squatted. Huddled there in that big metal cage, surrounded on all sides by wheels and pistons, his eyes were popping with an uncomprehending fright.
“How’ll he find out what the British are going to do?” Walter turned to me.
“For Pete’s sake—tell him!” I yelped, busy wrapping Revere’s numb fingers around some arm-supports on the sides of the cage. “Now hang on tight so you won’t spill out somewhere in the Gay Nineties.” Then to Walter again: “Tell him—you know how it all came out! Tell him—and for God’s sake, throw that switch!”
Walter’s eyes lit up. “We know what happened, don’t we? By sea! Two lamps, Revere—that’s the signal! Two, man, d’ you understand?”
Paul Revere was nodding so hard his wig slid off into his lap. “By sea—” he was echoing, like a school kid, “two lamps in the Old North tower. By sea! I knew it!” His face
dropped again. “But Brondelbuss—what have you done with my horse?”
“Sit still! Walter—that switch!” Walter leapt at the control-panel, his hands buried in switches up to his wrists. “Close your eyes and count twenty;” he sputtered, “then grab the first horse you can find—and light out for Lexington!”
“But—” Revere began . . .
Then Walter slammed everything home.
There came a wheeze, a jerk, a whirring thump, and the Time Swing trembled into life.
Then Walter howled. “Grab ’er, Hank—she’s tipping!”
Faster and faster, and the old machine was beginning to groan and strain forward like it always did. I made a jump for her supports and hung on, the nuts and bolts I had so laboriously tightened a minute ago hopping about me like popcorn.
Then the gear-shifting began. Our anachronistic friend was now nothing more than a bluish blur with a frightened look running across it, slowly creeping off at right angles to everything else in the universe—climbing into that infernal Fourth Dimension.
Walter gulped.—“I—I think it’s working.”
The next second I thought he’d drop dead. Two of the wildly stomping beams of the rocking oil-well support of the Time Swing tore unexpectedly loose from their moorings, and the whole kaboodle of machinery waltzed in a crazy circle right across the room, leaving me holding about twenty pounds of loose ends in my hands. I stabbed Walter with a look and whirled back.
The seat in the cage was empty.
“It’s busted,” said Walter, dully.
I couldn’t believe it myself.
There came a long pause.
“We’ll soon know,” Walter said quietly.
I didn’t feel any too good all of a sudden, either. After all, even if my forefathers didn’t come over on the
Mayflower, I am an American, and proud of this Depression-bitten promontory of ours. And right at this moment I loved America, and I hated to think that Walter and me had tossed her right smack in the laps of the Redcoats back there on that fateful night a century and a half before either of us was born.
“Hank.” If there had been a deep pit under the floor of Walter’s shack, that is where his voice would have come from. “He didn’t make it. The Swing didn’t hold long enough. He couldn’t have made it. We threw him out in some unknown year—threw him away forever . . .”
I looked at the clock and shook my head. “He’d have had time to make it, too. Ain’t quite eleven yet. Had till midnight, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” mourned Walter’ gently. “‘ ’Twas twelve by the village clock,’ ” he quoted sadly, “‘when he galloped into Medford town.’ Yes—if only the machine had held, he’d have made it in good time.” Walter sighed.
“Yeah. And then we’d still be American citizens, huh?”
“Yes, Hank.” He was slowly shoving parts of the machine back together again. Absently, I chipped in with my wrench on a few bolts.
“We lost the Revolution, huh?”
“We will—at dawn, I guess, Hank. Throw me that bundle of wire, will you?”
I tossed it to him. I tightened something more with my wrench. “I wonder if he didn’t make it, though,” I said.
“No, Hank. I’m afraid not.”
“What’ll he do, Walter, wherever he is, huh?”
“Go on being an engraver, I suppose. That’s his trade, you know—engraving. He—hey, listen! What—what’s that?”
“What?”
“That!”
I heard it all right, only I didn’t want to.
“Listen, Hank.”
I listened again. I heard it again. I moaned.
“Hank.” It was a whisper, deep-hidden in some frozen crater of the moon. “Hank . . . we’re mad. D’you know that, Hank? Mad as loons . . .!”
From faraway outside it had come—that thudding and hoarse shouting. From faraway down the road. Then nearer, nearer it came, until we could make out words—words being cried out in a wild voice.
Walter and I were staring at each other, petrified. Then Walter broke. “That voice—” he choked, “can it be—?”
It was a barroom baritone, and it was bawling: “The Redcoats are coming . . . up, up, and to arms!”
But I couldn’t believe we were insane. “Walter,” I babbled, “is it—can it—?”
“No—Good Lord, no!”
But all the time the hoofbeats grew louder, and so did that hoarse voice. Together they came thundering down the road toward Walter’s place while we held our breaths. The hooves were thudding away just outside now—a moment more and they’d be past. But no—they stopped!
“Whoa!” crackled a human klaxon, just outside our door—“Whoa, I said, confound it!” That voice was unmistakable—I could almost smell the ale come floating through the door when it spoke. “Whoa, plague take thee!”
Then out of that night and into our shack thundered our Paul Revere. The door slammed open with a crash and a burly figure in lace shirt and white pants stood limned against the darkness, waving its triangle hat like a drunken college boy. “To arms, good people! The British regulars—” But they never came in that particular sentence. It rattled away as though someone had stuffed Revere’s big mouth with pebbles. I could have tightened up those bulging eyeballs with my wrench, the way they popped out of their sockets.
“Odd’s blood, gentlemen, is it thee again?” He was appalled.
“How the devil did you get back here?” Walter shouted.
Revere made no reply; he simply wheeled and dashed for the steps.
But Walter and I were right after him. “Get him, Hank,” screamed Walter, spilling down the steps, landing a-sprawl in the dirt. I leapt over his rolling body and dashed after Revere. Before he even got near his horse, I had him around the waist.
“Pox take thee, let me be! What devil’s potion have I drunk this night to have such visions? Let me go, quietly, I beg of you, sir Devils.”
But Walter had now picked himself up. “It’s only us, Mr. Revere—there’s been some kind of an error.” Judging from his agonized expression, this was scarcely good news to our captive, and he trembled like a leaf.
“Prithee, good demons,” he was pleading like a child, “only let me go.”
Then Walter let out a yelp. He dangled a wrist before my face. “Let’s step on it, Hank—we’ve still half an hour to midnight! There’s still a chance!”
Between us we managed to drag the big hulk inside, though we had to do it by his bootstraps to keep him from bolting. As it was, he writhed in a frenzy of despair and fear, clinging for a full minute to the doorknob, swinging there as if it were the handle of the Pearly Gate itself, before we could pry him loose and shut the door.
“No, no, good gentlemen, I beg you!” he blubbered. “I prithee, pretty devils, let me be!”
“Can it, boy,” I barked. “It’s just a bad dream, see? But if you don’t sit still, I’ll wrap this monkey wrench around your ears. Get me?”
Walter flew around the room. I thought he had a dozen hands, the way he was working over that control board and jamming do-businesses into the stomach of our battered machine.
“Be ready in a minute,” he was rattling. “Put him back in the cage . . . I hope we get him back in time, I hope! We still got ten minutes . . . Keep him still, Hank! Mullivaney’s nag, he must’ve had, eh, Hank? Hand me that insulator. Wasn’t in the Past at all, just thrown horizontally half a mile along the Fourth, through solids and all . . . I hope we got her set right—but we got to take the chance ’cause we’re lost anyway, if we don’t.
. . . Ah, now, Hank! Hold him steady—we’re ready to shoot!”
“Revere,” I breathed, “fly away home! You get the first nag you see—”
“What, good sirs—-” I swear I could almost see tears in his rolling eyes—“again?”
“Yes—you want the colonies to get the jump on the Redcoats, don’t you?”
“Ido, by God!”
I’ll be darned if he
wasn’t a real American, too!
“Great, then!” crackled Walter. “In exactly two seconds you’ll be back in the Revolution—”
He stopped, like a phonograph running down. I felt my own heart clanking into my boots.
For, with one wild cry, his face turning ocean green, Paul Revere had melted out of my grasp and slipped prone on his face in the cage of the Time Swing. The rocket-trip through the
Fourth Dimension and our mauling had been too much for his cargo of mixed ale and Scotch. The Man of History was out!
And once more the hungry hands on the clock began eating up our precious minutes!
We had been through all this once before tonight, but this time we were up against a stupor which would have done credit to Bacchus himself! It seemed like centuries, the time it took to get one of those tightly-clenched eyes open again—and yet it seemed that those clock-hands were romping over toward midnight like race horses on the stretch.
Finally, with less than six minutes to go before Zero Hour, Paul Revere groaned and tried to sit up.
“I—I’m not—not well,” he whispered, in a masterpiece of understatement, the ocean green of his face ebbing and flowing like a tide.
“Oh, Lord—try to get up!” wept Walter. “Try, Revere—you must try!”
“Five minutes!” I screamed at them both. “Five!”
But screaming and moaning and even trying were all no good. It had been a feat of sheer superhuman will for Revere to open that one eye—he had shot his bolt. He was through.
“Hank,” Walter’s restless syllables kept running on and on, “Hank, we got to get him up. Hank, if we only had a few minutes more, Hank, we got to—”
“Four minutes to twelve,” I heard myself groan. Then I shut up. Walter had got a solution. I saw it in his glazed eyes.
Two seconds he spent in unhooking the control panel from its moorings. One second more he took to plug in a long cord in its place, with a complicated gadget from his desk dangling from its end. Another second and he had shoved me clean off my feet into the swaying, rickety cage, smack on top of our prone hero. And then, with a chortle that must have been heard round the world, he plunged home a button-series on the gadget he held in his hand and leapt on the bodies of me and Revere.