ON MONMOUTH PLAIN.
"Wut's words to them whose faith and truth
On war's red techstone rang true metal;
Who ventured life and love and youth
For the great prize o' death in battle?"
--LOWELL.
And it was June-time, too, in the far-off New Jersey country across
which an army, glittering with scarlet and steel, took its way. Slowly
it moved; for with it went a wagon-train conveying many of the refugees
from the evacuated city of Philadelphia, people who could not crowd into
the transports that went by sea, but who feared to meet the incoming
Americans and so sought safety in New York. Children and delicately
reared women slept in army tents, or sat in their coaches all day,
listening to the crunching of the wheels in the sand and looking back
through the slowly increasing distance to the horizon, behind which lay
the deserted city where pleasure had held high carnival during the
months just passed. And with them they carried everything that could
be packed into coach or hidden in wagon; and though they went with the
semblance of victory and almost of pleasure-seekers, it was a sad
procession; for who could say when or upon what terms they might ever
see their old homes again? Often Clinton looked back impatiently at the
crawling train, for he had not liked to be so hampered, and yet had been
quite as unwilling to abandon these people to the vengeance they
imagined awaited them.
Almost before they had lost sight of the spires of the city, Arnold,
with braying bugles, marched his column down the echoing streets, and
set up the standard of the republic where late the British lion had
wooed the wind.
For nearly a week that long train crept on its way, held back by its own
cumbersome weight and the varying roughness of the route. And ever on
its flank hung the lean but resolute army of the Continentals, waiting
and longing for a chance to strike. All the suffering of Valley Forge
was to be avenged. Every wrong they had sustained was whispering at
their ears and tugging at their memories; every dead comrade seemed
calling out to them for retribution through the sunshine or the midnight
silence. And it should be theirs; the utmost atonement that arms,
nerved with patriotic and personal vengeance, could achieve should be
claimed--if only the hour would come. But still that long train moved
onward, and there came no word to fight.
Then, from out the blue sky-reaches of that June-time dawned Monmouth
day.
"We are to fight at last!"
And every man in that thin, dishevelled line felt his heart throb with
the exultation of action long desired and long delayed. Every man but
one, and he the one on whom rested the responsibility of the attack.
"Anybody but Lee!" Dunn had said with a groan, when he heard who was to
lead the attacking column. And Richard, having gone with him to report
some scouting work to the council of officers, and recalling Lee's
fierce opposition to any plan for battle, groaned too.
"His envy of General Washington and his imprisonment among the British
have made him half Tory. He is the senior officer, it is true,--but if
he had only persisted in his first refusal to lead the division and left
it to La Fayette!"
But in Richard's thoughts there was no time for doubt when, in the
brilliant light of the next morning, he swept with his column over the
brow of the low hill and on down the narrow valley toward the scarlet
line that marked Clinton's post. It was his first real battle; for
compared with this the engagements under Sumter had been but skirmishes,
and the frenzy of the fight was upon him. "For home and Joscelyn!" had
been the war-cry he had set himself, thinking to carry into the hottest
of every fray the memory-presence of the girl whom he loved. But when
the test came she was forgotten, and only the menace ahead, the death he
was rushing to meet, was remembered. Every musket along that steadfast
scarlet line seemed levelled at him alone, and into his heart there
flashed a momentary wish to turn and seek shelter in flight from the
leaping fire of the deadly muzzles. But in the quick onset, the shouts,
the growl of the guns, and the challenging call of the bugles, this fear
was conquered; and in its place a wild, unreasoning delirium seized upon
him, and the one thought of which he was conscious was to kill, kill,
kill!
To those blue-clad men, burning with the memory of their sufferings
and their wrongs, it seemed as if nothing could stand before them; but
British regulars were trained to meet such an advance, and the red line
was as a wall of adamant. Between the attack and the repulse there
seemed to Richard scarcely breathing-time; for they were repulsed, and,
fighting still, were driven back through that narrow defile, expecting
every moment that Lee would send them succour so that they might again
take up the offensive. But instead of reenforcements, there came that
strange order to retreat. Retreat? Had there not been some mistake? The
officers looked at each other incredulously, suspiciously, half-inclined
to disobey; for the battle was hardly yet begun, and this first check
was not a rout. Then full of rage and doubt they repeated to their
subordinates the orders of the couriers, and the regiment fell back
sullenly, clashing against other regiments who had not struck a blow,
but to whom had also come that mysterious order to fall back. What was
the matter, what was this paralyzing hand that had been laid upon them!
No one could tell; but men retreated looking longingly over their
shoulders at the enemy. Confusion grew almost into panic as those still
further away saw the retiring columns pursued by the Redcoats, and knew
not the cause nor yet what dire disaster had befallen.
Then suddenly upon the field there came the Achilles of the cause, and
the rout was turned.
"The general--thank God!" the officers sobbed; and the men cheered as
those who are drowning cheer a saving sail.
Richard was too far off to hear the fierce protest and rebuke heaped
upon Lee, but in a few minutes an aide galloped up to his regiment and
cried out to Wayne:--
"General Washington says you and Ramsey are to hold the enemy in check
here upon this hillside until he can re-form the rear."
And the blue line swung about and steadied, and met the English face
to face; and Richard Clevering's battle-cry rang full and clear amid
the yells that well-nigh drowned the roar of the musketry. About that
sun-scorched knoll there fell the fiercest part of the fray. The palsy
of hesitation was gone, and desperation had made the men invincible.
Again and again that red wave from the open space before surged against
them, broke and recoiled and gathered and came again like some strong
billow of the ocean that rolls itself against a headland--fierce, blind,
futile.
Then came the climax of the splendid tragedy. Upon Wayne's right was a
Continental battery from which a great gun sent its deadly challenge to
the foe. Again and again its whirring missives tore great gaps in the
red ranks, until Clinton gave orders to silence it at any cost.
Careless of danger, unconscious of his impending doom, the gunner loaded
his piece anew, and lifted the rammer to send the charge home. Behind
him stood his wife, who had left the safety of the wagons to bring him
water from a wayside ravine, for the sky was like copper and the dust
blew in suffocating gusts. She saw what he did not, the shifting of the
enemy's gun in the plain below, the turning of its deadly muzzle full
upon the knoll where they stood. But there was no time for so much as a
warning cry; for instantly the flame leaped out, the ground shook with a
strong reverberation, and a groan went up from the Continentals as they
saw the dust fly from the knoll and their own brave gunner throw up his
arms, swing sidewise, and then fall dead. For one awful moment no one
moved; then two men from the line sprang forward to take his place, but
some one was before them--some one with the face of an avenging Nemesis.
There was the flutter of a skirt, a woman's long black hair streamed
backward on the wind, and Moll Pitcher stood in her husband's place
like an aroused lioness of the jungle. Fury gave her the strength of a
Boadicea, and the rammer, still warm from the dead man's grasp, went
home with a single thrust; the flame flashed over the pan, and with a
roar that shook the heavens, the big gun sent back into the red ranks
the death it had witnessed. When the smoke had lifted, the breathless
men saw the woman, one hand still upon the great black gun, stoop down
and kiss the dead husband she had avenged; and all down the Continental
line eyes were wet and throats were cracked and dry with cheering.
All the rest of that fateful day, with the eyes of her dead love
watching her staringly, Moll Pitcher held her place beside the gun,
solacing her breaking heart with its flash and roar, holding back her
woman's briny tears until the silent vigils of the night, when her
mission was accomplished.
And in the meantime, in the rear, the voice of a single man, with its
trumpet tones of inspiration, was bringing order out of chaos. Regiments
were re-formed, scattered companies gathered, batteries turned, and
defeat robbed of its surety. Men, who a moment before had been
panic-stricken with the confused marching and counter-marching of the
day, looked into the face of the commander and felt their hearts beat
with an answering calm. Confidence was restored, and the routed corps
were turned into attacking columns. And so when that red wave broke for
the last time against Wayne's and Ramsey's divisions on the hillside,
reenforcements were close at hand.
But they came too late for some of the brave men who had saved liberty
and honour that day, for the red wave, receding, took as its flotsam all
the men in buff and blue who, in their enthusiasm and temerity, had
advanced too far beyond the ranks.
And among these prisoners went he whose battle-cry had been, "For home
and Joscelyn!"
[Illustration: "RICHARD WAS DRAGGED ALONG WITH THE BRITISH UNTIL THEIR
POSITION WAS REGAINED."]