The barge, thrust by the current, sheered in toward the hull of this
ship of death. Peale saw a porthole, strongly barred, a few feet above
his head and, as they came abreast, a vagary of the wind carried down to
him an indescribable stench. Nor was he the only one to experience it,
for there was a general mutter among the prisoners and the slightly
drunk officer began to lash at them with his tongue.
“Pull out—pull out! Y’ll swamp the barge shortly!”
From the porthole issued a hollow, frenzied voice.
“Better drowned than sech mis’ry! Lads, for God’s sake stay clear of
this cesspool! ’Tis easier to die in clean air!”
The officer raged and drew his pistol, threatening instant death to the
unknown speaker, but a sweep of the oars took the barge away and the
darkness blotted out voice and stench alike. A dozen strokes brought
them on the lee side of the ship; the officer issued a great shout that
presently was answered by a sentry’s grumbling voice.
“Aye.”
“Throw over the ladder! Prisoners comin’ up.”
“’Tis after receivin’ hours.”
“Stand there, jackanapes, and refuse an officer’s direct order! Throw
over the ladder, or by gad, I’ll give you a ball! After hours, indeed!
Who are you to balk a provost guard? Make it fast now before we stave in
our sides!”
After considerable delay in which the barge was flung violently back and
forth, always threatening to hurl itself against the ship’s side and
splinter into a hundred pieces, the ladder rolled down upon them and the
prisoners climbed up, one by one.
Peale, being in the rear of the barge, was the last to step on the decks
of the hulk, with the uncomplimentary farewell of the English subaltern
behind him. The rest of the unfortunates were huddled in front with the
solitary guard hovering indistinctly three yards away. There still was
time to take a step back and hurl himself over into the turbulent water;
in the darkness none could find him nor trace his route shoreward.
Precisely at that instant the guard advanced and a bayonet touched his
chest.
“For’d, rebel and down into the hole!”
Other guards, warned, came running up. Peale went on, seeing those ahead
stoop and disappear into the bowels of the hulk. Presently he was beside
the trap-door that led below and, when he likewise bent over, the fetid,
miasmatic air billowed up and struck him fully in the face.
It was a smell unlike any he had ever experienced. Barnyard and abattoir
stenches were perfume compared to it. That first full breath threw him
back, gagging, his vitals revolting at so horrible a destination. Then
the guard’s steel blade again touched him ungently and, half falling
through the aperture, he grasped the rungs of the ladder and descended.
The door of the trap fell into place, sealing this foulness in.
Reaching the bottom, he stood at the center of a whispering group,
blinded by the utter darkness and wrestling with the revolt of his
senses. It seemed impossible that men could live at all in such
atmosphere, or that any authority would permit it. Yet it was so; here
below was half a brigade of men—the _Whitby_ had the reputation of
holding better than a thousand—sleeping, or trying to sleep.
The group dissolved, fellows stumbling to right and left, seeking a
place on the floor. Peale’s ears began to pick up a subdued mournful
chorus which, when he traced out individual threads of it, proved to be
men groaning, sighing, choking—every conceivable lament of the human
spirit. What made it all the more pitiable was the hopeless quality of
their plaint. To Peale, vigorous and strong and with a memory of the
fresh, stormy air outside, it was at first unbelievable that so many of
them would endure this misery when only a trap-door and a skeleton crew
stood between them and freedom; it was but two or three hundred yards to
the Long Island shore, and there were boards a-plenty to rig up a raft
that would carry them across in the darkness.
The answer was too apparent: These men were not in their full vigor and
never again, probably, would be. Their bodies had begun to rot and their
spirits were at the last, stubborn level, below which is death. The
tyranny of one trap-door and one solitary guard was enough to quell
them.
He saw the gray bull’s-eye of a port across from him and started toward
it, only to stop, gesturing futilely in the dark. That looked to be the
sole air vent in all the extent of the ship, and to reach it he knew he
would have to cross a solid carpet of men. He turned another way. It was
very slow travel; always he felt bodies in his path and he had to reach
down with his hand to find space enough to place his feet.
They were like the dead, unprotesting, and with only some small sound or
twitching to indicate they still lived. Once he lost his balance and
stepped on an arm, and drew back, expecting protest. None came, and he
arrived at last at a vacant strip between two silent figures and laid
himself in it, marveling.
He told himself that he would have a night-long vigil. Never in this
dungeon of hopelessness could he find rest, and so he rolled face to the
floor. He knew not how long he was awake; but at last the poisonous
vapor drugged him and he fell into a state that was neither sleeping or
waking. Sometime, when the small bull’s-eye of light shone dimmest, a
great agonized cry rang through the hulk from bow to stern—the death cry
of a mortal. After that, profound silence settled over all.
* * * * *
He was roused at last by a cold draught of air pouring on his body and
by a ringing cry repeated again and again.
“Rebels, bring up your dead! Rebels, bring up your dead!”
Rising from his confined position, he found a foggy light billowing
through the open trap-door and the full, ruddy face of an English
officer peering down. Looking about, he saw the sad spectacle of better
than a thousand men waking to face another dreary day of confinement.
They were packed together like sticks of wood, with here and there
figures sprawling across others, at right angles.
One by one they rose and made their way uncertainly toward the ladder,
stooping at places to pinch and examine certain bodies who did not move.
They wore a ghastly color and their faces were drawn and sagged—an
illusion, he thought, of the early morning light. The man immediately
behind stirred, put a shaking hand to Peale’s shoulder and with that
support rose. He had not seen Peale’s countenance, but his finger tapped
slowly on the civilian suit and he spoke in a dead-level voice:
“’Tis a new man come to crowd this hell. I can see it by the neat
fixin’s on yer coat.”
When Peale swung about he knew that it was not the gray light that made
prisoner’s faces so; it was not an illusion but the pallor of
disintegrating flesh.
This one was nothing but a parcel of bones wrapped indifferently in
parchment. Something in the eyes told of youth; elsewhere was the sign
age. His hair was gray, his teeth hung loosely in white gums. Once he
had been a powerful fellow, for the shoulder joints were far apart and
his ribs, each of which was outlined through the cotton shirt, were well
sprung. But the muscles that once he had flexed and felt pride in were
shrunk to nothing. He must have seen the flaring compassion in Peale’s
face for he observed, mournfully:
“Well, friend, look on one betwixt earth an’ purgatory. I kin straddle
both regions mighty easy, I tell you.”
Peale felt the need of liquor then.
“Often have I heard tales of this place but never did they match the
living truth. Who are you, man, and how long have you been here?”
“Sharon Eastman—Haslet’s regiment. I was took with Stirling at the
skirmish on Long Island, August last.”
“And not exchanged yet?”
“Not a bit of news have _I_ heard about exchange. But ’tain’t likely I
would. When I was still strong I tried to escape. See fer yourself how
far down I come since then. Oh, no, they ain’t no exchange fer me.”
The guard’s warning issued again.
“Bring up your dead, rebels!”
Men worked sluggishly sewing blankets around several figures. A party of
six spent their feeble effort lugging one such mournful burden to the
upper deck. Sharon Eastman pointed with his thumb.
“This be a sickly ship. Ten die each blessed night. ’Tain’t long before
I’ll pass up them stairs like that. ’Ud gone sooner, but I come o’ tough
stock. Y’ve got no mess, yet, o’course? Well, stick by me for a time.
’Tis our first turn at the kettle.”
An officer, followed by four stolid, heavily armed mercenaries,
descended and went toward the center of the hold, where a big copper
kettle swung from the beams. Beneath it was a pit of earth on which a
fire was now blazing. The officer raised his voice.
“Bring y’r rations up, rebels! Mess by mess. No tarryin’, now, or I’ll
see to ’t ye lose y’r proper turn.”
Several fellows grouped about Sharon Eastman who seemed to act in the
capacity of a non-commissioned officer for his mess. From some place
along the dark crannies of the ship’s hulk he fetched a shank of beef
and a bucket of moldy peas. Peale looked upon the meat with a fresh
disgust of senses. It was raw and in a state hard to describe—a
stinking, maggoty piece of provender unfit for human consumption.
The group followed Eastman hungrily toward the kettle. Some one had
already bailed water into the kettle; green-scummed bilge-water, nothing
more. Without ceremony Eastman dropped the meat into this steaming brine
and stepped back, eyes cocked on the officer.
“I assure you,” said Peale, “I want none of that. I’ve long felt the
need of a fast and now’s the opportunity to take it.”
“Such squeamishness will pass,” observed the officer coldly.
Boots tramped across the deck above them and a tackle squealed under
burdens being lowered over the side. Peale saw a blanketed body pass
down across a porthole and heard the shouted directions of a guard. Back
of him clustered a line of men, waiting their turn at the kettle. The
officer took his watch and, after a period that could not have been more
than five minutes, raised his hand to Eastman.
“Pull your meat out. ’Tis done.”
“Done?” spoke up Peale angrily. “The filthy stuff’s not even warmed.”
“Take it out and give way.”
“D’ye require men to be cannibals on this cursed ship?” demanded Peale.
His fist went into the tub and emerged with the meat; this stringy
whitish stuff he thrust under the officer’s nose. The latter stepped
back with a wry face, at the same time plucking at his sword hilt.
“Fine filth for human bein’s is it not?” asked the irate Peale. “If you
think it’s done, taste it.”
“None of this —— sedition or I’ll run y’ through!” exclaimed the
officer. Sharon Eastman grabbed at Peale’s coat and pulled him away,
whispering:
“None o’ that. ’Twill serve no good. He’d spit you quicker’n a wink.”
Peale surrendered the meat and watched the mess divide it, he himself
refusing a share. Eastman poured into the hand of each a small measure
of the peas, and thus they made their meal. Groups collected elsewhere
going through the same mockery. At places he saw some of the newcomers
like himself, standing aside and being jeered for their lack of
appetite.
The trap-door was open and a few of the prisoners were crawling to fresh
air. With undisguised eagerness he followed and soon stood at the rail,
looking off through the fog to the city. Guards strode behind
him—high-helmeted Anspachers whose pigtails and dour faces indicated a
savagery of heart that they really did not possess. Toward the stern,
part of the deck had been penned off, and in it Peale saw a half dozen
pigs and a cow which now was being milked. Forward, another burying
detail clambered up the ship’s ladder, back from their sad work on the
Wallabout beaches.
But a scant five hundred yards separated him from Manhattan’s shore; he
had breasted twice the distance in waters no less dangerous. But to
accomplish this in daylight was almost impossible, and before night came
the trap-door would again bar him below decks. He cudgeled his brain for
a way out. Certainly he could not stay long without embarking on that
decline of flesh and spirit which so marked the other poor devils.
If he meant to break, he must break shortly. Through fire, sword or
water—any chance was preferable to rotting away. Moreover, Captain
Tremble must soon be looking for his prisoner and, failing to find him
in the sugar-houses, would surely come to search the ship and march him
back before a summary court. Therefore, if the man did not come during
this day, the first darkness was time to move on his contemplated
course. Somewhere on deck, in the pigsty or in a shadow of the guards’
housing, he might hide. Or, failing that, a crown in an itching palm
might help. These Germans had an unholy lust for plunder and felt no
particular pride in the war they waged.
Anything to reach mainland, see Jane Welch once more and take that
dossier he had put under the bed; then regain the Jerseys. The thought
of the girl brought forward a fear that had been with him since the
first moment of capture. Had he implicated her in any way by his
presence at the house? Had Tremble’s sharp glances pierced her secret?
Peale, moving uneasily, believed not. She had said she was above
suspicion and that the Englishmen residents in her house were too loyal
to countenance the thought. For that matter, she had a plausible
explanation; she might say Peale had looked like just another of the
many traveling provincial squires who applied at her door for lodging.
In the fog he seemed to vision her as she had been on the hour of his
capture—a tense figure, whipped by the wind, one white hand to her
breast and her eyes filled with an emotion such as he had never seen
before. Where could another woman be found like her?
Sharon Eastman stepped beside him, mumbling. There was a sly look on his
face and he pointed furtively toward the pen of hogs.
“They’re a-feedin’ the porks. If y’ll come quiet we’ll steal some o’ the
bran.”
“From where?”
“Why, out o’ the trough. ’Tis not so hard to do an’ it makes great
porridge. When the Hessian turns his back—”
Peale shook his head. Eastman grumbled disapprovingly.
“Better take hold o’ that p’ticklar appetite, friend. Y’ve got to eat.”
“Where,” asked Peale, “do they bury the dead?”
Eastman’s bony finger swept the mud flats of Wallabout Basin. “There.
But it’s no great rest the dead get. When the tide washes out y’ll see
white bones from Rapelje’s Mill to Remsen Point.”
Peale ground his foot into the deck, swearing roundly.
“Is there no spark of decency in their —— hearts? Gad! It makes a man
want to break them between his fist! Oh, I’ll call some of their proud
officers to account!”
“Not for a while, friend,” was the dispirited answer. “If it’s escape ye
think about, better put the idea away. It’s been tried many a time and
but once do I know of a man succeedin’. And if ye fail it’s outright
death or suthin’ worse. There’s a dark hole for’d they use fer proud
devils—half awash with bilge an’ squealin’ with rats the size o’ your
arm. Think twice, friend.”
“I am done with thinking,” replied Peale, gustily. “Did you ever hear of
a guard bein’ bribed?”
“I’ve considered it,” said Eastman wistfully. “If I was the strong lad
of another day an’ had a gold piece I’d be tempted to try that method.
These Hessians, they’d sell their mothers fer a bit o’ plunder.”
“Once the trap-door was left open—after dark I mean—and a dozen stout
fellows got to the deck—”
“No, no!” said Eastman with as much emphasis as his frail body would
admit. “I tried that. ’Twon’t work. Y’ll only make a fury that’ll bring
down the guards. And the new lads like yerself—there ain’t enough o’
them to push through by force. If ye mean to escape, do it by yerself.
The poor boys below are beneath movin’. The last example was a-plenty to
put fear o’ God in ’em. Five slaughtered outright, friend, and two more
in the dark hole till the rats bit ’em and they died o’ plague, ravin’
mad. Look to yerself only. Can ye swim?”
“Better than most.”
“Then it’s a fair chance ye have. But, mind me, if y’ fail, carry right
through till ye fall stone dead. Never let ’em pinion ye down alive.”
An officer saw them together, talking thus earnestly, and came over with
a sharp warning.
“No sedition on board! Separate!”
Eastman slid away. Peale stared at the shoreline, mind filling with the
hope of release from the leprous hulk that swayed uneasily in the water.
Once overboard, he would have no fear. Even in darkness he would have a
few glimmering lights from the town to guide him on. Ashore, he would
again be a free agent. Free enough at least to fight for himself. Here
on the prison ship he could only watch disaster overtake him. And there
was Maxwell waiting in the Morristown hut for his reply; there was Jane
Welch—
This new-found turbulence of spirit caused the day to drag on
interminably, made doubly dull by the lack of sun. Not once did the
heavy fog disperse, or a clear sky appear. Occasionally rain fell and
drove some of the feebler ones below. Toward midday there was a general
movement toward the hold, but though Peale got as far as the trap, his
freshened sense of smell rebelled at the sickening stench and so he
returned to his post and began a study of the guards.
The previous night, on coming aboard, an English voice had assailed him,
and even in the shadows he had seen the guard’s stubborn English face.
But, during the early hours there had been a change. Hessians now
lounged at particular posts on deck, arms carelessly ready, their
taciturn visages made all the more gloomy by their fashion of pigtailing
their hair and by their tall, helmeted hats. Not one who did not wear an
extraordinarily thick mustache. A child would have been frightened at
the first glimpse of them; and indeed America had trembled when first
they arrived.
Trenton had dissipated their false ferocity, and the towns and farms
along the route of their march knew them now as greedy, lustful
marauders more set on stealing the lead weights out of a clock than on
fighting. They kept their places stolidly, watching like so many lazy
mastiffs. Once Peale saw a prisoner sway and rub the elbow of such a
Hessian. The man spoke a word of jargon and pushed the weak one away
with his hand, not ungently.
He still had a few precious gold crowns in his pockets, saved from
confiscation by his swift changing of prisons. Now, as his ideas of
escape expanded, the money seemed the chosen instrument of salvation.
From hour to hour he watched, until time came to change reliefs and
another took post over the trap-door. They appeared to stand the regular
two-hour shift and Peale calculated that the following relief would come
on some short time before darkness; that guard was the one to approach
with the offer of money.
He moved restlessly around the pigsty to starboard. The path from the
trap-door to the ship’s side was not an open one. Several kegs of
molasses were piled between and a kind of alley led through them: Once
past the guard he had to thread this and throw himself over the bulwark.
He visualized every step of it. All he asked was but a moment’s
forgetfulness on the part of the Hessian sentry; a moment in which the
trap-door might be left unbolted. So thinking, he watched the East River
grow darker and more turbulent.
A cautious voice spoke into his ear.
“Come below, sir. There’s a council goin’ on.”
Before he could turn his head one of the newer prisoners walked past,
took a tour of the deck and descended. Peale tarried some moments,
feeling conscious of an overseeing eye. Casually looking about, he saw
no one watching and so followed down the trap and ladder to the hold.
Already dusk settled in the place and men were assuming attitudes around
the portholes. Some of the messes were fixing for the night meal. There
seemed to be a sly expectancy in the faces he passed; faces that
explored his stature as he walked along the dim alleys. News, he
decided, traveled quickly among prisoners.
Toward a far corner he saw the messenger who had summoned him and
pursued his way with a certain air of disinterest. Yet his intuition
told him what was abroad half-way toward the stern, and therefore he was
in a measure prepared when Sharon Eastman rose from a blanket and
intercepted him, whispering rapidly:
“Remember what I told ye, friend. Play a lone fiddle. Have nothin’ to do
with gen’ral mutiny. _That’s_ beyant hope!”
Peale nodded and went on. Beyond a square oak post, green with mold, he
came upon six of those with whom he had ridden on the barge. All were
resolute fellows, though ragged and dirty, and all turned on him a
singular glance of hope that the messenger presently undertook to
explain in a subdued voice:
“We got our bearin’s on this ship, sir. ’Tis the opinion of six of
us—all that’s got spirit—that if we ever wish to see liberty again it
would be better to make the attempt now. And since I knew you to be one
of Maxwell’s officers—seen you on parade one day—I made it plain to the
rest you should take the lead and give us some encouragement.”
“What had you thought?”
“Ah, that’s the infernally hard question to answer. We’d thought to
force the trap-door after dark and scatter. Once the passage was open
the rest of the poor devils might take heart and follow after. That
would simplify things. ’Twould be no task then to disarm the Hessians
and control the ship.”
“But if not?” asked Peale.
“Well, if we must count on only ourselves, it’s a matter o’ reaching the
bulwarks and divin’ for it.”
“Can all swim?” persisted Peale.
The spokesman was interrupted in his answer by another, more forthright.
“No, but —— all tories, I’ll take my chance on sinkin’ ruther’n fester
here! Besides, half them molasses kegs are empty, an’ bunged up. Good
support fer a bad swimmer. I’ll chance it!”
“You’ll give us a lead?” persisted the first speaker anxiously. “’Twas
in the mind of some that maybe we’d be bringin’ trouble down on the
heads of the helpless. ’Twas the reason we should like your direction in
case o’ trouble.”
Peale harked to Sharon Eastman’s warning and dismissed it. If there were
men to make the effort at liberty his was the privilege of throwing in
his lot with them.
“I had thought of a plan,” he said, scanning the circle of anxious
faces. “It’s fair dark now. Make no undue move together, but slip toward
the foot of the ladder, after it’s beyond being seen, and wait for my
word. Once on deck, quiet is the word and every man to his own
resources.”
He left them and made his way back through the thickening gloom.
Overhead was the tread of sentries, and when he reached the deck again
and expelled the cloying air from his lungs he found a new guard had
been posted at the trap—another dour creature, hardly distinguishable
from his brethren. Peale, glancing about him, thought each and every one
of these mercenaries possessed the same avidity of plunder in their
eyes.
There were, at the moment, no inquisitive faces bent his way and the fog
of the coming dusk had begun to foreshorten distance on the ship. So,
mustering his resources, he caught the Hessian’s attention by a nod of
his head.
“Do you understand English, friend?”
The mercenary stood at ease, arm thrown around his bayoneted weapon. His
features were cast in one unblinking, taurine expression. Peale felt a
degree of helplessness.
“I could wish for a knowledge of languages now,” he murmured. “I doubt
if he’ll comprehend signs and it would draw attention. But there is one
tongue he’ll understand, I vow.”
Taking a crown from his pocket, he bent as if to look at the buckle of
his shoe and slipped the crown beneath his heel. Rising, he moved away,
exposing the money.
The guard’s eyes fastened instantly upon it and remained there for an
indefinite period. Peale stepped back on the piece to recover the man’s
attention and then looked at the cloudy sky. The mercenary’s bold
features lost their rigidity when the prisoner moved his attention to
the trap-door and rather pointedly crossed glances with him. Deserting
the coin a second time, Peale walked to the aperture and kicked his toe
against the iron bolt which, at night, held the trap down. Again he
commanded the Hessian’s face with a steady glance, and ended by passing
between the kegs and leaning on the bulwark of the ship.
The Hessian looked about to find whether he were unobserved, and then in
a swift motion retrieved the crown. Peale nodded and flirted one finger
not too conspicuously out toward the river. The Hessian seemed to nod
his head—Peale could not be sure of that, but the sign looked
favorable—and resumed his stolid posture, one arm wrapped around the
bayonet.
An officer came from aft, calling out.
“Below rebels! Get below to your blankets!”
Not many had elected to stay above until the last moment of grace.
Enfeebled, lack-luster creatures, they preferred stench and a little
warmth to the chilly draughts of the harbor wind. Peale, almost the last
one to duck through the trap, turned to catch the Hessian’s eye. As he
passed below, closely followed by another straggler or two, the trap
slammed and the iron bolt clanked. The English officer spoke a word and
marched away, his boots making a small, mincing echo in the hold. They
were trapped once more for the night.
Of a sudden it was dark with no more than a grayish beam shooting
through the ports. Peale, standing at the ladder, began to make out once
more the rising chorus of human misery. Here were the hours when courage
ebbed. Men, shut in upon themselves by the lack of vision, began to be
aware of their proximity to death and to bewail the fact in slow and
measured groans. Peale shook his head compassionately at the sound,
hardly able to master a torrential anger. These creatures were going
through purgatory before their time.
A hand touched his elbow.
“Is there a flaw in the guards? Did you coax one?”
“I think so,” murmured Peale. “If you hear the bolt—”
A musket butt grounded on the trap, and they were aware that the bolt
was being worked from its slot, inch at a time, faintly protesting.
Peale touched his neighbor and felt the man reach out to signal another.
Advancing up the rungs, he stationed himself with his arms ready to
raise the door. The protesting iron became silent and the musket butt
tapped again, this time with less of noise. Peale was aware of his
followers clustering behind and, reaching down to communicate a word of
caution, he put his weight against the door and shoved, a little at a
time.
Waist high to the deck, he looked around to reassure himself. The guard
had slipped into the outer ring of darkness, apparently. There was no
living sound from fore or aft and nothing but the small sough of wind
and sigh of the East River current. Between the molasses barrels Peale
saw the glimmering lights of New York town.
Reassured, he got to the deck, laid the trap soundlessly down, and stood
silent, checking his following one by one as they emerged, breathing as
if from great physical exertion. There was an even half dozen of them
and he wanted all to be assembled at the ship’s railing before breaking
the silence. As for a general uprising, he had banished it from his
thoughts long ago. The bulk of the prisoners had ostentatiously rolled
themselves into blankets before dusk, as if washing their hands of all
trouble. It was for the chosen six to run the gauntlet.
His senses were preternaturally sharpened by suspicion, and he had not
taken a step forward before he knew that the worst of his fears was
about to be realized. They were ambushed, trapped, betrayed by the
Hessian who had taken his crown. He could see nothing or hear nothing to
justify this belief, yet he knew that they were ringed around by guards
and that the next pace toward the molasses barrels would loose a bitter,
bloody encounter.
It was one of those impalpable shutter-like warnings that rise from
utter blackness; all stalking animals know these, and sometimes men,
fighting for their existence, are pitched to a condition where they,
too, become aware. Poised on the balls of his feet, he was at the
necessity of making a decision, with Sharon Eastman’s warning rising to
guide him: “If y’re caught, go down fightin’. Don’t let ’em take ye
alive!” And were it not far better for men to die instantly than to
suffer decay? In the encounter they might score something for their
imprisonment; the gods willing, they might come out on even terms.
“Break!”
It was a signal. From the molasses barrels came a driving storm of lead.
A bullet fanned his cheek and his nearest companion sobbed like a
broken-hearted child and fell at his very feet. The kegs rolled away and
they were hemmed in. The silence of the river was riven by lusty cries.
Peale knew, even as he crouched low and came up beneath a guard’s
weapon, that he and the rest were utterly lost. The attack was too
vicious and too sudden; there was too much weight behind it. If a single
man escaped over the side that tragic night, he might account himself
lucky. So thinking, he got his arm around a mercenary’s fat throat and
brought him down.
The both of them were trampled on and kicked as others passed and
repassed the piece of deck over which they fought. The Hessian, greatly
overbalancing Peale by his bulk, sought to bring his rifle to bear.
Peale felt the bayonet gouge his chest; he ran his hand down the length
of the blade and found a good grip.
His knee knocked the Hessian’s wind from the paunchy stomach. A twist
and a solid blow and the trick was done; the Hessian lay still. Rising,
he dashed toward the ship’s side.
A lantern flared in his face and a sword flashed before his eyes. His
bayonet averted a disastrous swipe of the blade; but at the same time he
heard the alarm go out and resistance crumble behind and knew that the
freed guards were swarming toward him.
“Rally! Here’s the malcontent! Steady! Spit him if ye must, but try to
bag the devil alive!”
That officer’s very back was to the ship’s bulwark. But a distance of
five feet was between Jeffry Peale and liberty—a five feet that he could
not cut his way through.
Lunging and smashing, he saw faces drop before him while the lantern’s
glow took on a bloody color. He felt blows on his body, innumerable
blows, and his ears rang. Still he fought, trying to reach the elusive
officer who held the treacherous light upon him and made him a fair
target for all the surrounding mercenaries.
Barbaric oaths rang in his ears; he saw the point of his bayonet plunge
through a tunic and come out with a jet of blood behind it. After that
his vision reeled. Something thundered against his head and he heard, as
from a remote distance, the officer saying curtly:
“Don’t kill the devil! Take him for’d to the lazarette and throw him in.
We’ll give the rats company for a while. Ah! Well done! He’s down!”
Vivid shells burst in his brain and a cannon roared and reverberated.
After that salute all was dark. His last flash of thought was—
“Jeffry Peale, you are dead!”