With a great effort Hamish dragged O'Flynn, who was a heavy, muscular
fellow, out of the reach of the wolf. Fortunately there chanced to be a
spring branch near at hand, and the ice-cold water hurriedly dashed into
the corporal's face, together with an earnest reminder of the hideous
danger of death and torture by the Indians, and a sense of the
possibility of escape, served to sufficiently restore him to enable him
to get upon his feet, unsteadily enough, however, and with Hamish's help
make his way toward the fort at a pretty fair speed. He fainted after
they crossed the ditch, and the great gates closed. These two were the
last of the hunters who found rescue; the others who had straggled in
previously, reported having been fired upon by Indians, and that several
dead soldiers were left upon the ground.
The parade was a scene of wild turmoil, far different from its usual
orderly military aspect. The settlers and their families, alarmed at
last, had fled for refuge to the fort, bringing only a small portion of
their scanty possessions. Women were weeping in agitation and terror of
the dangers passed, and in despair because of the loss of their little
homes, which the Indians were even now pillaging; children were clinging
about their mothers and peevishly plaining, their nerves unstrung by the
rush and commotion, and the unaccustomed aspect of the place; bundles of
clothing and bedding lay about on the ground; the pioneers moved hither
and thither, now seeking to adjust discomforts and clear the domestic
atmosphere, now aiding in the preparations for an expected attack.
Odalie, who had braced up her heart, found little to encourage her as
she went from one to another of the matrons and sought to comfort them
with the reflection that it might have been worse. "For my own part,"
she declared, "I think of what might have been. If my household gear
were not sacrificed we should have been at home last night when the
Indians came and found us gone and sacked and fired the house. And such
a little thing to save us--Fifine's talk of seeing Willinawaugh."
"Him top-feathers, him head, an' him ugly mouf," reiterated Fifine, who
had become impressed with the belief that she had done something very
clever indeed, and was enchanted to hear it celebrated.
Odalie's exertions were more appreciated at the hospital, where she
assisted in dressing the wounds and caring for the comfort of the
soldiers who had been shot. Afterward, still determined to make the best
of things and to help all she could, she discovered a mission to tax her
powers in offering to assist in what manner she might the
quarter-master-sergeant. That functionary looked as if the conundrum of
the created world had suddenly been propounded to him. He was a short,
square, red-faced man, with light, staring, gray eyes, and they seemed
about to pop out of his head whenever the finding of quarters for
another family was required of him.
"Why couldn't they have brought some conveniences, such as knives and
forks and cups and platters, instead of fool trifles?" he demanded
fiercely, aside, as he turned away from one group who were as destitute
of all appliances as if they had expected to peck off the ground, or
drink out of the bubbles of the spring branch. "I have got none to spare
except those of the poor fellows who were killed and Corporal O'Flynn's,
for he will be equal to nothing but spoon-meat for one while."
"Oh, the poor settlers,--I pity them,--and poor Mr. Green,--I feel very
guilty, for I came here just such a charge on the resources of the fort,
myself."
He paused pudgily, as if he were mentally in full run and had brought up
with a short stop.
"Oh, you--" he exclaimed, in the tone of making an exception, "you are
you."
He felt equal to any arrangements for merely military mortals, but the
"squaw question," as he mentally called it, overwhelmed him. With a lot
of anxious, troubled, houseless women and querulous, distraught,
frightened children, and difficult half-grown boys,--and the
commandant's general orders to quarter them all to their satisfaction
and to furnish whatever was necessary,--the strain might have proved too
great for the old bustling sergeant, and like undue pressure on the
boiler of one of our modern locomotives, which he much resembled, as he
went back and forth puffingly, might have exploded his valuable
faculties, but for Odalie's well-meant hints.
"I should give Mrs. Halsing the larger room if I were you," she
suggested. "Mrs. Beedie is a friend of mine and I will answer for it
that she won't mind." Or--"If I might suggest, I wouldn't put Mrs. Dean
and the twin babies next to Mrs. Rush. Nervous headaches and other
people's twin babies won't keep step--not one bit. Put them next to me.
I am conveniently deaf at times."
And Mrs. Halsing said, "That French thing flirts with every man in the
fort, from the commandant down to Mrs. Dean's one-year-old boy twin!"
For Odalie was presently conveying this juvenile personage about in her
arms, and he left off a whimper, characteristic of no particular age or
sex, to exhibit a truly masculine interest in the big soldiers with
their bright uniforms and clanking accouterments, and although
constrained by the force of the concussion to blink and close his eyes
whenever the great guns were fired, he fairly wheezed and squealed with
manly ecstasy in the sound--for a cannonade had begun, seeking to deter
the plunder of the deserted houses in the settlement.
The din suddenly ceased; the active military figures paused in the swift
preparations that were in progress to meet the expected attack; the
confusion and stir of the groups of settlers' families in the parade
were petrified in a sort of aghast disarray; amongst them appeared half
a dozen stalwart fellows bearing a stretcher, on which lay the body of
the dead soldier whom the horse had brought into the fort, his young
boyish face all smooth again and serenely upturned to the serene sky. He
was dressed in his uniform, with his belt and gloves freshly pipeclayed
and glittering white. His melancholy progress from the crowded barracks
to a vacant building where were kept the spare arms,--called the
armory,--there to wait the few remaining hours of his sojourn in these
familiar scenes, served to deepen the gloom with the thought of the
others of the little band, lying out in the woods, who would not receive
even such simple honors of sepulture as the fort could bestow.
But after the next day, when the poor young soldier was buried (the
children wept dreadfully at the sound of the muffled drum, the troops
being touched by their sympathetic tears, and Captain Demere read the
burial service and alluded feelingly to the other dead of the garrison,
to whom they could only do reverence in the heart and keep their memory
green)--after all this the place took on an air of brisk cheerfulness
and the parade ground presented somewhat the appearance of the esplanade
of a watering-place, minus the wealth and show and fashion.
In the evenings after the dress-parade and the boom of the sunset-gun,
the elder women sat about in the doors and porches, and knitted and
gossiped, and the men walked up and down and discussed the stale war
news from Europe--for the triumphs of British arms were then rife in all
the world--or sat upon the grass and played dominoes or cards; the
soldiers near the barracks threw horseshoes for quoits; the children
rollicked about, shrill but joyous; Odalie and Belinda Rush in their
cool fresh linen dresses, arm in arm, the admiration of all beholders,
strolled up and down with measured step and lissome grace; and the flag
would slip down, and the twilight come on, and a star tremble in the
blue summer sky; and the sweet fern that overhung the deep clear spring,
always in the shadow of the oaks near one of the block-houses, would
give out a fresh, pungent fragrance. Presently the moon would shed her
bland benediction over all the scene, and the palisades would draw
sharp-pointed shadows on the dark interior slope, and beside each cannon
the similitude of another great gun would be mounted; a pearly glister
would intimate where the river ran between the dense glossy foliage of
the primeval woods, and only the voice of the chanting cicada, or the
long dull drone of the frogs, or the hooting of an owl, would come from
the deserted village, lying there so still and silent, guarded by the
guns of the fort.
And after a little Odalie would be strolling on her husband's arm in the
moonlight, and would silently gaze about with long, doubting, diplomatic
eyelashes and inquiring eyes when asked where was Belinda Rush,--which
conduct induced Mrs. Halsing's comment as to Mrs. MacLeod's proclivity
toward matchmaking. For in the neighborhood of the northwestern bastion
one might see, if one were very keen, sitting in the moonlight on the
tread of the banquette, Belinda Rush and Ensign Whitson--talking and
talking--of what?--so much!--in fact so much that at other times Ensign
Whitson had little to say, and Lieutenant Gilmore pined for lack of
contradiction, and his powers of argument fell away.
Captain Demere and Captain Stuart, on their way to a post of observation
in the block-house tower, came near running over these young people
seated thus one moonlight night--to Captain Demere's manifest confusion
and Captain Stuart's bluff delight, although both passed with serious
mien, doffing their hats with some casual words of salutation. Despite
his relish of the episode, Stuart glanced down at them afterward from
the block-house tower and said, in a tone of commiseration, "Poor little
love-story!"
"Why preempt ill-fortune for them, John?" broke out Demere, irritably.
"Bless you, my boy, I'm no prophet!" exclaimed Stuart easily.
[Illustration: Belinda and the Ensign on the moonlit rampart.]
The expected attack by the Indians took place one night late, in the
dead hour, after the sinking of the moon, and with all the cunning of a
designed surprise. The shadowy figures, that one might imagine would be
indistinguishable from the darkness, had crept forward, encompassing the
fort, approaching nearly to the glacis, when the crack of a sentry's
firelock rang out, splitting the dead silence, and every cannon of the
twelve roared in hideous unison, for the gunners throughout the night
lay ready beside the pieces. A fusillade ill-directed upon the works,
for the besiegers encountered the recoil of the surprise they had
planned, met a furious response from the loop-holes where the firelocks
of the garrison were reenforced by the rifles of the backwoodsmen. Every
man had been assigned his post, and it seemed that the wild alarum of
the drum had hardly begun to vibrate on the thrilling air when each,
standing aside from the loop-hole according to orders, leveled his
weapon without sighting and fired. Wild screams from without, now and
again, attested the execution of these blind volleys into the black
night, and the anguish that overcame the stoical fortitude of the
warlike Cherokee. The crashing of the trees, as the cannon on all sides
sent the heavy balls thundering beyond the open space into the forest,
seemed to indicate that the retreat of the assailants was cut off, or
that it must needs be made under the open fire of the artillery.
How the movement fared the defenders could ill judge, because of the
tumult of their own rapidly delivered volleys--all firing to the word,
the "fencibles" adopting the tactics of the garrison in which they had
been so well drilled--and the regular reverberations of the rapidly
served cannon. They only knew when the ineffectual fire of the
assailants slackened, then ceased; the crash of riving timber, and now
and again a hideous yell from the forest, told of the grim deed wrought
beyond the range of the firelock by the far-reaching great guns.
It was soon over, and although the garrison stood ready at their posts
for an hour or more afterward, till the night was wearing into dawn, no
further demonstration was made.
"Vastly fine! They will not return to the attack,--the fun's over,"
Captain Stuart cried hilariously;--his face and hands were as black with
powder "as if he had been rubbing noses with the cannon," Corporal
O'Flynn said, having crawled out of the hospital on his hands and knees
to participate in the fight in some wise, if only as spectator.
"They have had a lesson," said Demere, with grim triumph, "how severe,
we can't judge till we see the ground."
This satisfaction, however, was to be denied them, for the corporal of
the guard presently brought the report of a sentinel whose sharp eyes
had descried, in the first faint gray siftings of the dawn through the
black night, parties of Indians, chiefly women, carrying off the dead
and disabled, and now and then a wild, shuddering groan or a
half-smothered cry of the wounded attested their errand of mercy.
"They ought to show a white flag," said Demere, exactingly, like the
martinet he was.
"And they ought to wear top-boots on their feet, and Steinkirks around
their gullets, and say their prayers, but they don't," retorted Stuart
in high good humor, for his rigorous discipline and persistent formality
were exerted only on his own forces; he cared not to require such
punctiliousness of the enemy since it did not serve his interest. "Let
them take the carrion away. We don't want to play scavenger for
them--from an ambuscade they could make it mighty hot for us! And we
should be compelled to do it for sanitary reasons--too close to the fort
to let the bodies lie there and rot."
And with this prosaic reminder Captain Demere was content to dispense
with the polite formality of a flag of truce. They never knew what the
loss might be on the Indian side, nor did the braves again venture
within gunshot. Now and then the cannon sought to search the woods and
locate the line, but no sound followed the deep-voiced roar, save the
heavy reverberations of the echo from up and down the river and the
sullen response of the craggy hills. The cannonade had served to
acquaint the Cherokees with an accurate estimate of the range of the
guns. The fact that a strong cordon was maintained just beyond this, was
discovered when the post hunters were again sent out, on the theory that
the repulse of the Indians had been sufficiently decisive to induce a
suspension of hostilities and a relinquishment of their designs to
capture the fort, if not a relapse into the former pacific relations.
The hunters were driven back by a smart fire, returning with one man
shot through the leg, brought in by a comrade on horseback, and four
others riding double, leaving their slain horses on the ground. It
became very evident that the Cherokees intended to maintain a blockade,
since the fort obviously could not be carried by storm, and the
commandant was proof against surprise. To send the hunters out again was
but to incur the futile loss of life and thus weaken the garrison. The
supply of fresh game already in the fort being exhausted, the few head
of cattle and the reserves of the smoke-house came into use.
The very fact that such reserves had been provided put new heart into
the soldiers and roused afresh the confidence of the settlers, who had
begun to quake at the idea of standing a siege so suddenly begun,
without warning or preparation, save indeed for the forethought for all
emergencies manifested by the senior officers. Both Demere and Stuart
became doubly popular, and when there was a call for volunteers to run
the blockade and severally carry dispatches to Colonel Montgomery, they
had but to choose among all the men in the fort. The tenor of these
dispatches was to apprise Colonel Montgomery of the blockade of Fort
Loudon and ask relief, urging him to push forward at once and attack
the Ottare towns, when valuable assistance could be rendered him by the
ordnance of the fort, as well as by a detachment of infantry from the
forces of the garrison attacking the Indians on the flank in support of
the aggressions of his vanguard.
Gilfillan was selected as the earliest express sent out, and loud and
woeful was Fifine's outcry when she discovered that her precious "Dill"
was to be withdrawn from her sight. But when he declared that he needs
must go to keep the Indians from cutting off her curls and starving out
the garrison--Mrs. Dean's twin babies were represented as the most
imminent victims, so much more precious than one, "being philopenas" as
O'Flynn admonished her--she consented, and tearfully bade him adieu. And
he kissed her very gravely, and very gravely at her request kissed the
cat. So with these manifestations of his simple affection he goes out of
these pages beyond all human ken, and into the great unknown. For Dill
returned no more.
His long backwoods experience, his knowledge of Indian character, his
wide familiarity with the face of the country, and many by-ways and
unfrequented routes, his capacity to speak the Cherokee language, all
combined to suggest his special fitness for the dangerous part he had
undertaken to play.
The next express, going two days later and following the beaten track,
was a man who had frequently served in this capacity and knew half the
Indians of the Lower Towns and Middle Settlements by name--a
quick-witted pioneer, "half-trader, half-hunter, and half-packman," as
he often described himself, and he had been in the country, he boasted,
"ever since it was built."
The choice of these two men was evidently specially judicious, and after
the mysterious disappearance of each, being smuggled out of the fort in
dead silence and the darkest hour of the deep night, the garrison
settled down to a regular routine, to wear away the time till they might
wake some morning to hear the crack of Montgomery's musketry on the
horizon, or the hissing of his grenades burning out their fuses and
bursting among the dense jungles, where the Cherokees lay in ambush and
blockaded Fort Loudon.
The military precision and order maintained continued as strict as
heretofore. It argued no slight attention to detail and adroit handling
of small opportunities that the comfort of the soldiers was in no wise
reduced by the intrusion into their restricted domain of so considerable
a number of people, many unprovided with the most ordinary conveniences
of life. Even in such a matter as table and cooking utensils the food of
the companies was served as heretofore, and only after the military had
breakfasted or dined, or supped, could their precious pewter platters
and cups be borrowed by the families, to be rigorously cleaned and
restored before the preparations began for the next meal. Every utensil
in the place did double duty, yet not one failed to be ready for service
when required. Mrs. Halsing ventured to cavil, and suggested that she
had always heard elsewhere that it was polite to serve ladies and
children first, instead of giving a lot of hulking soldiers precedence.
"Why, madam," Demere said, with rebuking severity, "the men are the
muscles of our defense, and must be kept in the best possible physical
condition."
Nothing was allowed to interfere with the regular hours of the troops or
break their rest. Tattoo and "lights out" had the same meaning for the
women and children and wild young boys as for the soldiery; no
boisterous callow cries and juvenile racing and chasing were permitted
on the parade; no belated groups of gossipers; no nocturnal wailing of
wickedly wakeful infants in earshot.
"A-body would think the men was cherubim or seraphim the way the
commandant cares for them," plained Mrs. Halsing.
The supplies were regulated by the same careful supervision and served
out duly by weight and allowance. Somewhat frugal seemed this dole,
especially to those who had lived on the unlimited profusion of the
woodland game, yet it was sufficient. No violent exercise, to which the
men had been accustomed, required now the restoring of exhausted tissues
by a generous food supply. There was ample provision, too, made for the
occupation of the men's attention and their amusement. The regular
cleaning of quarters, inspection, drill and guard duties, and
dress-parades went on as heretofore, with the "fencibles" as an
auxiliary body. The rude games of ball, ring toss, leap-frog were varied
sometimes by an exhibition, given under the auspices of the officers, of
feats of strength; certain martial Samsons lifted great weights, made
astonishing leaps, ran like greyhounds competing with one another in a
marked-off course, or engaged in wrestling-matches--to the unbounded
applause of the audience, except the compassionate Fifine, who wept
loudly and inconsolably whenever a stalwart fellow caught a fall. One
rainy evening, in the officers' mess-hall, the society of the fort was
invited to hear the performance of a clever but rascally fellow, more
used to ride the wooden horse than to any other occupation, who was a
bit of a ventriloquist. Among other feats he made Fifine's cat talk, and
tell about Willinawaugh with "him top-feathers, him head, an' him ugly
mouf," to the great relish of his comrades (who resented the fact that
the Indians, exceedingly vain of their own personal appearance,[12] were
accustomed to speak of the paleface as the "ugly white people"); to the
intense, shrieking delight of the elder children; and to the amazement
of Fifine, who could not understand afterward why the _douce mignonne_
would not talk to her. When the pretended conversation of the cat grew
funnily profane, Captain Demere only called out "Time's up," from the
back of the hall, and the fellow came sheepishly down from the platform,
holding the borrowed kitty by the nape of the neck, and half the
audience did not catch the funny swear that he attributed to the
exemplary feline. Then there was a shadow-pantomime, where immaterial
roisterers "played Injun," and went through the horrid details of
scalping and murders, with grotesque concomitant circumstances,--such as
the terrifying ricochet effects on an unsophisticated red-man of riving
a buzz-wig from the head of his victim in lieu of a real scalp, and the
consequent sudden exchange of the characters of pursued and
pursuer,--all of which, oddly enough, the people who stood in imminent
danger of a horrible fate thought very funny indeed.
One evening the commandant devised a new plan to pass the time. All were
summoned to the parade ground to share in an entertainment designated as
"Songs of all nations."
"An' I could find it in my stommick to wish it was to share in 'Soups of
all nations,'" said Corporal O'Flynn to a comrade. For it seemed that
the quartermaster-sergeant had docked his rations by an ounce or two, a
difference that made itself noted in so slender a dole and a
convalescent's appetite.
It was a night long to be remembered. The great coils of Scorpio seemed
covered with scintillating scales, so brilliant were the stars. No cloud
was in the sky, unless one might so call that seeming glittering vapor,
the resplendent nebulose clusters of the Galaxy. A wind was moving
through the upper atmosphere, for the air was fresh and cool, but below
was the soft, sweet stillness of the summer night, full of fragrant
odors from the woods, the sound of the swift-flowing river, the outpour
of the melody of a mocking-bird that had alighted on the tip of the
great flagstaff, and seemed to contribute thence his share to the songs
of all nations. He caught upon his white wing and tail-feathers, as he
flirted them, the clear radiance of the moon,--not a great orb, but
sending forth a light fair enough to be felt in all that sidereal
glitter of the cloudless sky, to show the faces of Odalie and Belinda
and others less comely, as the ladies sat in chairs under the line of
trees on one side of the parade with a group of officers near them, and
the soldiers and "single men" and children of the settlers filling the
benches of the post which were brought out for the occasion. So they all
sang, beginning with a great chorus of "Rule Britannia," into which they
threw more force and patriotism than melody. Then came certain solo
performances, some of which were curious enough. Odalie's French
chansonnettes acquired from her grand'maman, drifting out in a mellow
contralto voice, and a big booming proclamation concerning the
"Vaterland," by the drum-major, were the least queerly foreign. Mrs.
Halsing, after much pressing, sang an outlandish, repetitious melody
that was like an intricate wooden recitative, and the words were
suspected of being Icelandic,--though she averred they were High Dutch,
to the secret indignation of the drum-major, who, as O'Flynn afterward
remarked, when discussing the details of the evening, felt himself
qualified by descent to judge, his own father-in-law having been a
German. The men who had sung in the Christmas carols remembered old
English ditties,--
"How now, shepherd, what means that,
Why that willow in thy hat?"
and "Barbara Allen." Corporal O'Flynn, in the most incongruously
sentimental and melancholy of tenors, sang "Savourneen Deelish eileen
ogg." The sober Sandy gave a rollicking Scotch drinking-song that seemed
to show the very bead on the liquor, "Hey the browst, and hey the
quaigh!". The officers' cook, a quaint old African, seated cross-legged
on the ground, on the outskirts of the crowd, piped up at the
commandant's bidding, and half sang, half recited, in a wide, deep,
musical voice, and an unheard-of language that excited great interest
for a time; but interpreting certain manifestations of applause among
the soldiers as guying, he took himself and his ear-rings and a gay
kerchief, which he wore, to the intense delight of the garrison, as a
belt around the waistband of his knee-breeches, to his kitchen, replying
with cavalier insubordination,--pioneer of the domestic manners of these
days,--to Captain Stuart's remonstrances by the assertion that he had to
wash his kettle.
There were even cradle songs, for Mrs. Dean, who certainly had ample
field for efforts in that line, sang a sweet little theme, saying she
knew nothing else, and a big grenadier, whose hair was touched with
gray, and who spoke in a deep sonorous voice (the Cherokees had always
called him _Kanoona_, "the bull-frog"), respectfully requested to know
of the lady if she could sing one that he had not heard for forty years,
in fact, not since his mother sang it to him. One or two of the
settlers, hailing originally from England, remembered it too, and some
discussion ensued touching the words and the exact turn of the tune. In
the midst of this a wag among the younger pioneers mischievously
suggested that the grenadier should favor them with a rendition of his
version, and the big soldier, in the simplicity of his heart and his
fond old memories, in a great bass voice that fairly trembled with its
own weight, began "Bye-low, bye-low"; and the ventriloquist who had made
the cat swear, and who so often rode the wooden horse, was compelled
during the performance to wear his hat adjusted over his face, for his
grin was of a distention not to be tolerated in polite society.
Perhaps because of the several contradictory phases of interest involved
in this contribution to the entertainment, it held the general attention
more definitely than worthier vocal efforts that had preceded it, and
the incident passed altogether unnoticed, except by Captain Stuart, when
the corporal of the guard appeared in the distance, his metal buttons
glimmering from afar in the dusk as he approached, and Captain Demere
softly signaled to him to pause, and rising quietly vanished in the
shadow of the block-house. He encountered Stuart at the door, for he had
also slipped away from the crowd, himself, like a shadow.
"Dispatches?" he asked.
"The express from Fort Prince George," Demere replied, his voice tense,
excited, with the realization of an impending crisis.