All distant and faint were the sounds of the battle;
With the breezes they rise, with the breezes they fail,
Till the shout and the groan and the conflict's dread rattle,
And the chase's wild clamor come loading the gale.
THE MAID OF TORO.
In the confusion that ensued upon the defeat of Innis, James Curry
succeeded in conducting Butler from the field. His orders were to
retreat with the prisoner to Blackstock's; and he had accordingly set
out with about a dozen troopers, by a private path that led towards a
quarter secure from the molestation of the enemy, when the attack
commenced. Butler was mounted behind one of the men, and in this uneasy
condition was borne along the circuitous by-way that had been chosen,
without a moment's respite from the severe motion of the horse, nearly
at high speed, until, having accomplished three miles of the retreat,
the party arrived at the main road that extended between Innis's camp
and Blackstock's. Here Curry, conceiving himself to be out of danger of
pursuit, halted his men, with a purpose to remain until he could learn
something of the combat. Butler was in a state of the most exciting
bewilderment as to the cause of this sudden change in his affairs. No
explanation was given to him by his conductors; and although, from the
first, he was aware that an extraordinary emergency had arisen from some
assault upon Innis's position, no one dropped a word in his hearing to
give him the slightest clue to the nature of the attack. The troopers
about him preserved a morose and ill-natured silence, and even
manifested towards him a harsh and resentful demeanor. He heard the
firing, but what troops were engaged, by whom led, or with what chances
of success, were subjects of the most painfully interesting doubt. He
could only conjecture that this was a surprise accomplished by the
Whigs, and that the assailants must have come in sufficient force to
justify the boldness of the enterprise. That Horse Shoe was connected
with this irruption he felt fully assured; and from this circumstance he
gathered the consolatory and cheerful prognostic of a better issue out
of his afflictions than, in his late condition, seemed even remotely
possible. This hope grew brighter as the din of battle brought the
tidings of the day to his ear. The first few scattered shots that
told of the confusion in which the combat was begun, were, after an
interval, succeeded by regular volleys of musketry that indicated an
orderly and marshalled resistance. Platoon after platoon fired in
succession--signifying, to the practised hearing of the soldier, that
infantry was receiving the attacks of cavalry, and that as yet the first
had not faltered. Then the firing grew more slack, and random shots were
discharged from various quarters--but amidst these were heard no
embodied volleys. It was the casual and nearly overpowered resistance of
flying men.
At this juncture there was a dark frown on the brow of Curry, as he
looked at his comrades, and said, in a low and muttered tone, "That
helter-skelter shot grates cursedly on the ear. There's ill-luck in the
sound of it."
Presently a few stragglers appeared at a turn of the road, some quarter
of a mile in the direction of the battle, urging their horses forward at
the top of their speed. These were followed by groups both of infantry
and cavalry, pressing onwards in the utmost disorder--those on horseback
thrusting their way through the throng of foot-soldiers, seemingly
regardless of life or limb; the wounded with their wounds bleeding
afresh, or hastily bandaged with such appliances as were at hand. All
hurried along amidst the oaths, remonstrances, and unheeded orders of
the officers, who were endeavoring to resume their commands. It was the
flight of men beset by a panic, and fearful of pursuit; and the clouds
of dust raised by the press and hurry of this career almost obscured the
setting sun.
During the first moments of uncertainty, Curry, no less anxiously than
Butler, remained stationary by the road-side, reading the distant signs
of the progress of the fight; but now, when the disastrous issue was no
longer doubtful, he commanded his cavalcade to move forward, and from
that moment prosecuted his journey with unabated speed until he arrived
at Blackstock's.
Butler was unceremoniously marched to his former place of confinement
in the barn, where a rigorous guard was set over his person. In the
confusion and insubordination that prevailed amongst the crowd, that,
during the night, was continually increasing in the little hamlet, the
common rites of humanity towards the prisoner were forgotten, and he was
left to pass the weary hours till morning, on a shock of hay, without
food or other refreshment than a simple draught of water. From the
unreserved murmurs of those who frequented the place, and the querulous
upbraidings of the soldiery against each other, Butler was enabled to
glean the principal incidents of the day. The supposed death of Innis
reached him through this channel, and, what was scarcely a subject of
less personal interest to him, the certain end of Hugh Habershaw. It was
with a silent satisfaction at the moral or _poetical_ justice--as it has
been called--of the event, that he heard the comrades of the late
self-conceited captain describe his death in terms of coarse and
unpitying ribaldry--a retribution due to the memory of a cruel and
cowardly braggart.
When the morning was fully abroad, the disarranged and broken remnants
of the Tory camp began gradually to be reduced to a state of discipline.
The day was spent in this occupation. Orders were every moment arriving
from the higher officers of the late camp, or from the nearest British
posts. Videttes bore the tidings of the different military operations
from the neighborhood of the enemy. The fragments of companies were
marshalled into squads and subdivisions; and, successively, one party
after another was seen to leave the hamlet, and take a direction of
march that led towards the main British army, or to the garrisons of the
lower districts.
Towards the close of the day one detachment only was left; and Butler
was given to understand that this was intrusted with his especial
keeping. It was composed of a few regular soldiers of the garrison of
Ninety-Six, and a small number of the country militia,--making, in all,
about twenty men, commanded by Lieutenant Macdonald, of the regular
army.
Butler remained in his present state of seclusion four or five days,
during which he experienced much mitigation of the rigors of his
captivity. Macdonald was a careful and considerate soldier, and demeaned
himself towards his prisoner with such kindness as the nature of his
trust allowed. He removed him into a comfortable apartment in the
dwelling-house, and supplied him with the conveniences his situation
required; he even made him occasional visits, which were attended with
more than the mere observances of courtesy and respect, and expressed a
sympathy in his sufferings.
These unexpected tones of comfort, from a quarter in which Butler had
hitherto heard nothing but fierce hatred and harsh rebuke, fell
gratefully upon his ear, and gave a brighter color to his hopes for the
future. But he could not help observing, that no hint was dropped by
Macdonald which might furnish him the slightest ground of surmise as to
the vicissitudes that yet awaited him. The reported fall of Innis seemed
to afford a natural foundation for the belief, that the malice of his
enemies might hereafter be less active,--as he attributed much of the
persecution he had suffered to the secret machinations of that
individual. He no longer saw around his person those agents who first
pursued him with such bitter hostility. He seemed to have fallen into
entirely new combinations, and had reason to augur, from all he saw,
that their purposes against him were less wicked. And first, above all
other topics of consolation and comfort, was the conviction that a brave
and efficient party of friends were in the field, intent upon his
liberation. Still, his situation was one in which it required all his
manhood to sustain himself. A young soldier of an ardent temper, and
zealously bent upon active and perilous service, can ill brook the
tedious, dull delays of captivity, even in its mildest form: but if this
thraldom befal in a period of universal agitation, when "great events
are on the gale," of which the captive is only a witness to the
pervading interest they excite, without being permitted to know their
import; if moreover, as in the case of Butler, an impenetrable veil of
mystery hang over the purpose of his captivity, behind which the few
short glimpses afforded him, open upon his view nothing but death in its
most frightful forms; and if to these are added, by far the bitterest of
its qualities, the anxieties, cares, and pains of a devoted, plighted
lover, separated from the heart that loves him, we may well conjecture
that the most gallant spirit may find in it, even amidst occasional
gleams of sunshine, that sinking of hope which the philosophic king of
Israel has described as making "the heart sick,"--that chafing of the
soul that, like the encaged eaglet, wearies and tears its wing against
the bars of its prison. Even so fared it with Arthur Butler, who now
found himself growing more and more into the shadow of a melancholy
temper.
It was soon ascertained that Williams had abandoned the field he had
won, and had retreated beyond the reach of immediate pursuit. And as the
post at Musgrove's mill afforded many advantages, in reference to the
means of communicating with the garrisons of the middle section of the
province, and was more secure against the hazard of molestation from
such parties of Whigs as might still be out-lying, an order was sent to
Macdonald to remove with his prisoner to the habitation of the miller,
and there to detain him until some final step should be taken in his
case.
In pursuance of this requisition, Butler was conducted, after the
interval of the few days we have mentioned, to Allen Musgrove's. The old
man received his guest with that submission to the domination of the
military masters of the province, which he had prescribed to himself
throughout the contest,--secretly rejoicing that the selection made of
his house for this purpose, might put it in his power to alleviate the
sufferings of a soldier, towards whose cause he felt a decided though
unavowed attachment. This selection furnished evidence to the miller,
that nothing had transpired to arouse the distrust of the British
authorities in the loyalty of any part of his family,--and to Butler, it
inferred the consolatory fact, that the zealous devotion of Mary
Musgrove to his service had as yet passed without notice; whilst to the
maiden herself, it was proof that her agency in the delivery of the
letter, which she had so adroitly put within the reach of the officers
of the court, had not even excited a suspicion against her.
The best room in the house was allotted to the prisoner; and the most
sedulous attention on the part of the family, so far as it could be
administered without inducing mistrust, was employed in supplying him
with whatever was needful to his condition. On the part of the
commanding officer, the usual precautions known to military experience
for the safe keeping of a prisoner were adopted. The privates of the
guard occupied the barn, whilst Macdonald and one or two subordinate
officers took up their quarters in the dwelling-house: sentinels were
posted at the several avenues leading to the habitation, and a sergeant
had the especial care of the prisoner, who, under this supervision, was
occasionally allowed the range of the garden. The usual forms of a camp
police were observed with scrupulous exactness;--and the morning and the
nightly drum, the parade, the changing of sentries, the ringing of
ramrods in the empty barrels of the muskets, and the glitter of weapons,
were strangely and curiously associated with the rural and unwarlike
features of the scenery around.