time-killing with the young fellows at the house fire; and then: “While
you were dallying I got a glimpse of him--he’s there yet, tramping up
and down the walk. Hell and furies--if he’ll only give us time--time!”
And again, before I could have any speech with him, he was dragging me
by a roundabout way to come at the back of the garden enclosure and to
the place where our sunken boat was lying.
While we were waiting for our chance to dodge the pacing sentry on the
river bank, speech was still impossible, but in the interval I began to
get some glimmerings of a plan which would solve the wretched tangle,
and at the same time give Champe his leave to escape.
We both saw Arnold through the gap in the fence, which was still open.
Once he extended his walk on the garden path to come and stand almost
within touching distance of us as we lay crouching in the shadows. He
seemed to be staring out over the river which the gale was lashing
into yeasty foam-crests. I marveled at his indifference to danger, the
more since he had not seemed at all indifferent hitherto. And now he
had more cause to fear, knowing by the broken lock and the muddy foot-
and finger-marks that at least one desperate attempt had been made to
abduct him. But, as I have said before, cowardice in any real pinch of
danger was not among his many faults.
Nothing would have been easier than for us to seize and bind and gag
him there and then, leaving him so fettered and silenced to wait on
the issues of our boat recovery. Champe was hot for doing this, and I
had much ado to hold him back. When we had our opportunity to pass the
sentry, Arnold had gone back to his tramping of the garden path and I
felt that the worst of the crisis was now safely passed.
Reaching the water’s edge we groped for our mooring rock and found the
boat’s painter fastened as we had left it. In the task of raising the
boat, Champe worked like a demon, wading in the icy water to tug and
haul, and when the little craft finally showed her nose, plunging his
arms shoulder deep to remove the weighting stones. Since the pacing
sentinel passed and repassed on the bank above us every five minutes or
so, silence and caution were prime necessities; and again and again I
had to warn my companion on the score of his reckless and frantic haste.
So working and halting, the task was accomplished at last; and when the
final stone was removed and we had rocked and rolled the boat gently on
the beach to free it of some of the water, Champe got in to bail while
I held the gunwale and kept an ear alert for the sentry’s comings and
goings.
“All ready, Captain Dick,” muttered the frenzied one when he had
finished the bailing and had carefully pulled the oars from their
anchorings under the thwarts. “Make fast, and hold her so until I get
out.”
The time was come for striking the deadly blow, and it fell upon poor
Champe without warning.
“Stay where you are, Sergeant,” I commanded in low tones. “The game is
up, and we shall not do this thing which we set out to do. Take the
oars and let the tide and your two arms get you safely back to Major
Lee’s camp at Tappan while you have the chance.”
I could not see his face in the darkness, but my imagination could very
well picture the fierce rage which was distorting it.
“What’s that you say?” he choked. “You are giving it up?--now, when
the devil himself couldn’t balk us? In God’s name, what do you mean,
Captain Dick?”--this last in an agonized whisper.
“I mean precisely what I say; you can not take him alone, and I shall
not help you.”
“You are turning your back upon it, and you are staying here?” he
muttered, as one half dazed. Then he came suddenly alive to the full
meaning of my words: “You are a foul traitor, Captain Richard Page!
Curse you, curse you, curse you!--that Judas and the women have won you
over! I’ll see you hanged for this, if so be I have to hang with you!
Out of my way, or I’ll kill you where you stand!”
He had started up, and was clambering over the thwarts to get at me,
when I stooped and gave the boat a mighty shove out into the stream.
The sudden lurch made him lose his balance and come down with a noisy
crash among the unshipped oars. As quick as thought, the sentry on
the bank above cried out his challenge of “Halt! Who goes there?” but
Champe, furious as he was, was yet wary enough to lie still, letting
the wind and tide carry him on. The sentry did not climb down the bank
to investigate, as I made sure he would; and better still, he did not
fire his piece to give the alarm. I thought surely that Arnold must
have heard his shout, in which case my capture would be certain.
That the shouted challenge had been heard, I had proof presently in
a wind-blown muttering of voices at the top of the bank overhead. I
figured that the sentry had stopped to speak to Arnold, but I could
make no move to escape. Champe’s boat had disappeared in the darkness,
but I could not tell whether it had gone up or down the river or was
drifting with wind and tide out toward the Jersey shore. It was enough
that it had gone, as I fondly hoped, beyond the possibility of a
return. Champe, I fancied, would come to his senses shortly and make
his way to safety. Surely he would know that it would be nothing short
of suicide for him to land again within the enemy’s lines.
When all was quiet again on the bank above I still had to wait some
little time before venturing to cross the sentry’s path on my retreat.
There was good hope in the interval since I neither heard nor saw more
of the sergeant and was thus convinced that he was making the best of
his way out of the peril. More than once, however, while I waited, I
could distinguish the sound of Arnold’s footsteps on the gravel walk in
the garden, so I knew that the traitor had not been frightened away by
whatever talk he had had with the bank-pacing sentry.
Since boldness is often the truest kind of caution, it was in my mind
that I should snatch my chance to pass the sentry and so slip through
the gap in the fence to join Arnold in the garden, trusting to my wit
to frame a plausible excuse for the intrusion. Though for honor’s sake
I had turned my back on the purpose of betraying our chief deserter, I
meant to delay my own escape long enough to make sure that Champe was
safely out of the way. Try as I might, I could not rid myself of the
fear that he might yet be retaken, and in that case he would sorely
need a friend at court to save him from the rope. You will say that I
might have cut this knot by going with him in the boat, but I confess
frankly that I had no stomach for such an enterprise. Indeed, as
matters stood at our parting, it was plainly evident that I should have
had to kill him or let him kill me to patch up a peace between us.
It was with a mind strangely confused by the sudden turn which I had
forced our fortunes to take that I climbed the bank and dodged the
sentry and made my way by the roundabout route Champe and I had taken,
back to the street. I went this way, not because I was afraid to carry
out that purpose of going through the garden, but because, in passing
the gap in the fence, I found the garden walk untenanted, and a light
showing in the upper windows of the house to tell me that Arnold had
gone back to his office workroom.
With my feet pressing the familiar pavements in front of the house, it
came to me suddenly and with a curious little shock that I had lighted
upon an entirely new world; a world in which I was at the same moment
a man of rejuvenated honor and a hunted fugitive. I say it without
shame that for the moment my eyes were dimmed and a rush of emotions
too varied to be analyzed came swiftly over me. It is no light thing to
fling one’s self, heart and soul, into the accomplishment of a certain
purpose and then to turn short and take the path of renunciation at the
very climax of success.
Yet I felt strangely light-hearted, and as if a huge burden had been
lifted from my shoulders. Now that all was over, I could realize very
clearly that neither General Washington nor Mr. Hamilton could possibly
have foreseen any such wading in the pool of duplicity for me as that
into which my emprise had pushed me. Also, I understood that when they
should be made aware of all the circumstances they would be the first
to approve this final step of withdrawal which, lacking Beatrix Leigh’s
gentle promptings, I might never have taken.
So my conscience was clear at last and yet all this had little bearing
upon things present and pressing. When all was said, I was to the full
as likely to pay the spy’s penalty now as I should have been had I been
taken red-handed in the very act of abducting Arnold. The facts of my
mission were all known to Castner, and it was upon these facts, and
not upon the accomplishment, that I should be tried and condemned. Why
Castner had waited so long before springing his trap I could not guess.
Now that he was back from wherever he had been and with the spy Askew
safely in tow, a word to Sir Henry Clinton and another to Arnold were
all that were needed. And, surely, Castner had had time to preach an
entire sermon to either or both of them since I had seen him passing
the tavern with his two companions.
I had a part answer to this puzzling question of the reason for
Castner’s delay when, while I was as yet hanging upon my heel and not
knowing which way to turn, I saw an officer with the shoulder-straps of
a general descending Sir Henry Clinton’s steps; a man walking slowly
and with his head bowed and his hands tightly locked behind him.
The man was Benedict Arnold; and they had just been giving him the
undeniable proof of my treachery. I knew it as well as if I had been an
eavesdropper at the conference behind Sir Henry Clinton’s closed door.
Now you may scoff, if you will, but this discovery, the clinching of
the nail, as you may say, hurt me unspeakably for the moment. Deny it
as we may, we do all live more or less upon the good opinions of our
fellow creatures; and surely I had painted myself as a villain of the
deepest dye for this man who was coming on with his head bowed and
carrying in his heart a bitter disappointment to go with him back to
his quarters in the adjoining house.
I turned away, immeasurably saddened in spite of the strange and most
welcome heart-lightening; and I do think I would have given much at
that moment to be able to tell Arnold that I had spared him at the
final crisis. He would never know, and perhaps that was best; yet I
thought it was a needless twist of the thumb-screws of fate both for
him and for me that he could not know.
But there was no time for repining. I had no thought of taking the
first step in an effort to secure my own safety until after I should
have made sure of Beatrix’s embarkation and departure; indeed, it
was this, as much as anything else, that had made me miss the chance
of fighting it out with the saturnine sergeant in the boat. By every
lover’s obligation it was my first duty to see Beatrix and my Cousin Ju
on board the _Nancy Jane_, with the staunch little schooner plunging
on its way down the bay; and after that I could make my flight--if
Champe should not have turned up again to need a friend, and if all the
avenues should not be closed to me.
But the more I thought of the seaward venture for the two women the
less I liked it. It was a rough night, with the wind in the wrong
quarter and the lower bay still cluttered with the waiting ships
of Arnold’s expeditionary fleet. Again, Sprigg’s vessel might be
detained; at any hour it might be boarded by the harbor patrols, and
its contraband lading--the recovered tobacco--turned up to the light.
In that case I knew that the military authority which had winked at
the ransoming of the tobacco cargo could not, and would not, openly
intervene.
Worse than all, Major Simcoe’s troop might return from its wild-goose
chase on the Tarrytown road in time to claim passage rights for its
twenty-man quota on the _Nancy Jane_. Perhaps the Rangers had returned
already!
With that threatening possibility in mind I resolved to go at once to
the barracks on a spying reconnaissance, and if I should find that
Simcoe’s troop had returned, to press quickly on to the Vandeventer
house to hasten the embarkation. But first I yielded to a madman’s
prompting that had been fretting at me ever since Champe’s boat had
disappeared in the darkness and I had realized that I was once more a
free man. It was no less than a foolish notion that I should like to
show myself to Beatrix at the parting moment in my true colors--the
same patriot homespun I had worn when she had given me God-speed at the
door of her father’s house in Virginia, and which I had exchanged so
unwillingly for these cursed facings of Arnold’s Loyal Americans.
Now that I had cut loose once and for all from the tanglings
of chicanery and deceit, this uniform of Arnold’s Legion was
hateful--doubly hateful. To every eye that saw me in it, it told an
added lie; and I was sick and nauseated with lying. Could I not slip
into the tavern and find my portmanteau and make the change?
It seemed feasible enough; and a stealthy peering through the windows
of the lighted tap-room showed me a measurably clear field. A Quaker
in a drab long-coat and broadbrim sat at one of the tables smoking a
thin-stemmed church-warden. Two Hessians of Knyphausen’s were guzzling
ale at another; and the Irish barman was nodding sleeping behind his
wicket.
I opened the door and entered, passing quickly to the stair and
reaching it before the aproned Irishman at the bar could do more than
rouse himself and say, “Och, ’tis yourself, then, is it, Captain Page?”
and straightway fall to nodding again.
Coming to the barn-like room above-stairs which had apparently lain
undisturbed since Champe and I had forsaken it to become fugitives two
days before, I found flint, steel and tinder box, and a candle-end to
flare gustily in the cold drafts of the place while I made the swift
change from red and green to homespun blue. Flinging the badges of
disgrace into the corner, I replaced the Scots’ rapier in its belt,
thinking that I must, after all, be beholden to King George for this
much of my equipment. For Champe still had my horse-saber, and I would
not go on Beatrix’s business weaponless.
Being now ready to run the gauntlet of the tap-room again I sallied out
and groped my way to the stair-head. A hubbub of voices was rising from
the room below and when I had stepped cautiously down to the landing
turn I saw that my fate had already outrun me. In the few minutes which
had elapsed since my passing through it, the tap-room had filled with
soldiers and a crowding throng of riff-raff from the street; and by the
light of the bar candles I saw Castner. He was questioning the Irish
barman sharply and the good pot-filler was trying his best to shield me.
“Arrah, now, Liftenant, dear! is it Captain Page you’d be asking for?
Shure I haven’t seen the smilin’ face av him these four hours. Would he
be comin’ here widout me knowin’ ut?”
At this point there was a stir in the crowd and a tail man, soaked
and dripping, pushed his way rudely up to Castner’s elbow. I looked
and looked again, and gasped. By all the lunatics that ever filled a
Bedlam, it was John Champe!
“Don’t believe that lying Irishman, Lieutenant Castner!” he cried out
hoarsely. “I tell you I saw him enter here--no longer ago than the time
it took me to run and fetch you, sir!”
I saw Castner’s involuntary shrinking from the man who was thus
betraying one who at least held the claim of being a fellow-countryman,
a fellow-soldier, and a fellow-deserter. I confess that, at first, it
seemed blankly incredible to me that Champe should be doing this. If
the spy Askew’s story was to be taken as a whole, the sergeant from
Major Lee’s Legion was involved no less deeply than the captain from
Baylor’s Horse. But there was no mistaking his intention. There were
black circles around his eyes and he was so drunk with passion that he
could scarcely stand without leaning against the barman’s wicket.
My first impulse was to steal back up the stair to try a drop from
one of the windows. But when I would have translated the impulse into
action, another man, a small rattish man in gray clothes and with a
great bunch of seals dangling at his watch-fob, thrust himself forward
out of the mob of onlookers and I heard his whispered word to Castner.
“On the stair landing, Lieutenant. Look for yourself, and let the
Irishman spare his lying evasions!”
Castner looked as directed, bowing gravely when he saw me.
“Come down, Captain Page, and surrender your sword,” he commanded,
soberly stern; and the brabble of voices ceased and a sudden hush fell
on the room. Also, I noticed when Castner spoke and all eyes were
turned to my landing, Champe drew back behind the more forward ones in
the crowd and I saw him no more.
Now that the suspense was ended and open war was declared, I felt
better and could even lean over the stair-rail and laugh down upon
these king’s bush-beaters.
“You want my sword, Lieutenant?” I retorted. “I’ll give it to you, or
to any man whose need is greater than my own--always provided that you
or he will take it point foremost.”
“I make the demand in the king’s name,” said Castner, refusing to
be either joked or jarred out of his even-toned soberness. And then
he added, out of the heart of friendliness, I do think: “I wouldn’t
make it harder for you than I must, Captain Page. You should see that
resistance is madness.”
“I see that you may order your men to train their muskets on me and
bring me down bird-wise, Mr. Castner. I do assure you it will be far
more merciful than those other designs you have on me.”
He took me at my word with a soldierly disregard for further
parleyings. In a trice he had cleared the space to the stair-foot, and
had given the order to five of his musketeers. When their pieces were
leveled he gave me one more chance.
“Once more, and for the last time, will you come down and render
yourself, Captain Page?”
“With pleasure!” I cried; and whipping the rapier from its sheath I
vaulted over the stair-rail and fell upon him so heartily that he was
driven fairly back among his musket men before he could bare steel and
defend himself.
Lord! but there was a scattering among those gaping lookers-on! Never
have I seen buyers in the eagerest market so anxious to get to the
front--only their front was the rear. With an onset so vigorous and
unexpected, I might have cut and thrust my way to the door, if it had
not been for the cursed little gray-coated spy, James Askew. But at the
charging instant he dodged to get behind me, and I knew better than to
leave an enemy of his temper unaccounted for in the rear. My foining
to get a side-thrust at the spy gave Castner his chance to draw; and
in another breath we were at it, hammer and tongs, Castner striving
manfully to press me to the wall, and Dickie Page fighting as a man
fights when he knows that his hours are strictly numbered, and who asks
no more of this world and his enemies therein than the chance to die
while his blood is leaping battle-warm.
It was the cur Askew who ended it, after all, though not as he meant
to, I’ll dare swear. In our stamping rushes and thrustings and
parryings, Castner and I had him penned in a corner, and at length, in
a wide flanconade, my sword’s point touched him on the outward sweep
to line. With a yelp like that of a pricked dog, he darted out of his
corner and made to get away, rushing blindly into the zone of whistling
sword blades.
It was the end of him, as well as of the sword play. He was just in
time to catch the swift following thrust with which Castner replied to
my attack, and the lieutenant’s blade passed clean through him; through
his heart, I think, for he dropped like a stone, and gave only a shiver
before his eyes glazed and his jaw fell.
This was my fair chance to kill Lieutenant Charles Castner, of the
King’s Own; but I hope we Pages are something better than assassins,
even when the blood is hot and we are fighting for our lives. My point
went to the floor, and I stepped back to let Castner disengage; then
the musketeers flung their pieces aside and made their smothering rush,
and I was done.
The lieutenant was considerably out of breath when he pulled his
sword from the spy’s body and fell fiercely upon his men, who were
mishandling me pretty cruelly.
“Your word that you will not try to escape, Captain Page!” he panted;
but I would not give it.
“No; ‘safe bind, safe find,’ is your motto, my good friend,” I said
cheerfully, holding out my wrists for the cord.
It galled him to do it, but he would not fail in any part of his duty.
“I have had too much trouble in overtaking you,” he said in
extenuation, when the soldiers were tying my hands; with all the
riff-raff of idlers turned back now to look on, gaping.
“What a pity you have lost your witness,” I remarked, indicating the
dead spy.
“The less valuable of my witnesses,” he corrected curtly. “Unhappily
for you, there is another and more credible one.”
This remark of his set me to wondering. Then I remembered the third man
who had walked with Castner and the spy in the afternoon--the man whose
face I could not see, but whose gait and figure had been singularly
familiar. Was this the “more credible” witness? I should soon know.
We stayed no time at all in the tavern after the hand-tying. With a
word to the inn people about the disposition of the body of James
Askew, Castner disciplined his corporal’s guard and we took the open
air for it, pointing not for Sir Henry Clinton’s house, as I supposed
we should, but on past it toward Fort George.
Within the walls of the fort, we marched silently to the house of the
commander, a long low structure of Dutch brick, facing the parade
ground. Two rooms of it were well lighted, and when the door was opened
and I was thrust in, I saw that the court-martial was sitting and
waiting for me, and that I was confronting my judges.
XXI
THE DRUMHEAD COURT
SOME of the British officers gathered in the fort commandant’s room to
hold the court-martial were known to me by name, but that which gave
me the greatest shock was the sight of Major Simcoe, sitting stern and
thoughtful behind the up-ended drum. For his presence argued the return
of the Queen’s Rangers from their wild-goose chase up the Tarrytown
road, and their return promised the collapse of my care-taking plot to
insure the escape of Beatrix and my cousin on the _Nancy Jane_.
But they gave me little time for the anxious lover-thought, these
stern gentlemen who were holding an inquest rather than a trial. With
a haughty nod, to indicate my place in the prisoner’s dock, I suppose,
General Phillips, who sat as judge-advocate, signed to Simcoe, and
the major cleared his throat. I saw the burly Knyphausen tilting in
his chair; the two Hessian captains sitting on either side of him;
the commandant of the fort; a major; and a lieutenant-colonel of Sir
Henry’s staff: saw, also, that neither Clinton nor Arnold was present.
And then Major Simcoe began to recite the charges against me, Castner
bending over to untie my hands as the reading went on.
It was evident, before the charges were half read, that I had been
tried and condemned beforehand; that whatever I should say or do would
in no wise modify the sentence which had already been determined on.
That conviction broke the final thread of prudence in me; and when the
major came to that part of his manuscript where it was set forth that
I had entered the British lines as a spy and an emissary of General
Washington’s, with the premeditated purpose of kidnapping General
Benedict Arnold, I laughed hardily, and said I should like to be
confronted with the proofs, if there were any.
“You shall be accommodated, Mr. Page,” returned Simcoe gravely. And
then to Castner: “Bring in the man, James Askew, if you please,
Lieutenant.”
At this I laughed again, and said, most impertinently: “Having run
his sword through the body of the said James Askew a few minutes ago,
Lieutenant Castner makes his apologies to the court, and--”
“Silence, sir!” thundered Phillips, frowning me down; and I held my
peace while Castner explained, rather shamefacedly, how the spy had
come to his end.
“Then we will take your testimony, Mr. Castner,” said Simcoe; whereupon
the lieutenant told in a straightforward way how the spy Askew had
first informed him of my purpose; how, when the story, second-handed
on to Sir Henry Clinton, had resulted only in an order for my arrest
and detention, which order had been suspended, he, Castner, had gone
with Askew to meet an officer of Major Henry Lee’s Legion--one who knew
the facts from the rebel side, and who, for the sake of common honor,
would substantiate Askew’s story.