December was well-nigh spent when Blennerhassett's bateau reached the
mouth of the Cumberland and joined Burr's flotilla of a dozen similar
boats. The number of men ready to embark for the Wachita counted only
three or four score. This informidable showing discouraged
Blennerhassett, but the "general," for so Burr was now styled, saw
fleet and men with the multiplying eye of faith, and he rejoiced to
have actually begun the campaign. Followers yet unseen were surely on
their way to join his resolute band. The miscarriage of plans at the
island imposed only a temporary delay on the five hundred expected to
descend from the Alleghany country. That recruits would flock the
Mississippi shores to look for the coming of the leader, and to offer
themselves--blanket, gun and soul--for the bold venture, was to be
expected of men whose names were written in the "Roster of the
Faithful."
The motley forces drawn up on the bank of the Cumberland for review
and instruction made up in fantastic variety for what they lacked in
number. There was much of the grotesque and somewhat of the pitiful in
the spectacle presented by the straggling ranks of boatmen and
backwoods farmers. Many wore garments of butternut linsey; others had
on buckskin breeches and coats of bear's pelts; some, in imitation of
Boone and the pioneers, had donned moccasins and wolf's skin caps,
ornamented with foxtails. Some of these picturesque resolutes leaned
on their long rifles, displaying to advantage tomahawk and scalping
knife.
To this nucleus of an expected great army Burr made a brief speech:
"There can be no failure in any enterprise backed up by patriots of
such stock as I see before me. You have the muscle and the sinew, the
blood and the brains, the heart and the soul, of Western heroes. Your
officers, while expecting obedience, give in return their friendship
and protection. We are to share common hardships and dangers, putting
up with things as they are to-day, in certainty of reward to-morrow."
The progress of the unwieldy batteaux was impeded by perils of winter
navigation. Burr exercised his best generalship in directing his men
how to overcome the difficulties they must encounter. He now thought
he knew the river in its two siren moods, its summer singing hour and
its winter rage of hunger for decoyed victims. His royal progress in
Wilkinson's barge he recollected as an event so long ago as to seem an
impression revived in the brain, of a voyage enjoyed in some previous
state of existence.
The flotilla had passed New Madrid, when, one afternoon, Burr standing
near the stern of his boat--amused himself by contemplating a
procession of flying clouds in distorted shapes of dragons,
hippogrifs, witches, and ghosts. The boat was close to shore, skirting
a low bluff, covered with shrubs and trees. A majestic poplar standing
on the river's edge drew the colonel's attention by its noble aspect.
At the very moment when the prow drove opposite the monarch tree, its
lofty top trembled, the towering trunk reeled and fell into the river
with a terrific plunge. The twenty-foot long steering pole, to which
was attached a rudder like the blade of a huge oar, was struck and
splintered by the falling trunk. The seemingly firm-rooted and defiant
poplar had been undermined by the incessant erosion of the flood.
"Good Heaven!" exclaimed Burr, involuntarily. "Am I the tree or the
undercurrent?"
That he had far less to dread from winds, waves, and falling trees
than from ominous storm gatherings of human element, menacing the
fleet from the shore, the adventurer discovered full soon. He was
prepared to battle with the Mississippi, but had not anticipated
collision with the territorial militia, for he was in ignorance of the
fact that his plans had been exposed, and that a thunderbolt from the
hand of national authority had been hurled. His flotilla, as it
proceeded southward, instead of being hailed and boarded by eager
recruits, was bayed by the watch-dogs of the law, civil and martial.
Intrusive messengers from the courts and officious colonels of raw
militia regiments pestered and threatened; those, with paper warrants
from local magistrates, these, with flintlock muskets in reserve.
Not until his boat arrived at Bayou Pierre, near Natchez, and landed
in Petite Gulf, was Burr fully informed of the action taken by the
National Government and the several States. The situation was
disclosed to him by Major Flaharty of the Second Regiment, who, acting
under the authority of the territorial governor of Mississippi,
ordered Burr to appear at the village of Washington to undergo
examination. The order was not promptly enforced, and the boats were
permitted to cross the river to a point on the western shore, a few
miles lower down.
Before Burr's boat pushed out from Petite Gulf, Blennerhassett hurried
to his superior, and with many apologies, handed him a letter,
crumpled from having been carried long in the bearer's pocket.
"This came by mail to the island, addressed, as you see, in my care.
Margaret warned me to deliver it to you promptly; but the commission
escaped my mind." The superscription on the letter, written in fine
hand, ran thus: "To Colonel Aaron Burr, care of Mr. Harman
Blennerhassett, Blennerhassett's Island, opposite Belpre, Ohio, U. S.
A." Burr waited until the boat was in motion before entering his cabin
to open and read the belated _billet-doux_, for such he judged the
missive to be. The news he had just heard of Wilkinson's changed
attitude, and the prospect of his own arrest, left him in a state of
mind not favorable to playing the capricious game of flirtation, with
pen or tongue. He cast the sealed epistle on the table provided for his
use, and sat down on a wooden stool to ponder. The only illumination of
his rude quarters came from a tallow candle stuck in a socket made by
boring an auger-hole in a block of wood. Night had fallen, the wind blew
in violent gusts and the timbers of the flatboat creaked and shuddered.
Burr sat in meditation, his face buried in his hands, his elbows resting
on the table, a foiled conspirator--frustrated, trapped, as he
conjectured, by his suave confederate. He had drifted into the eelpot
prepared for him. No mode of escape could he devise. He thought of Madam
Blennerhassett, of Theodosia, of glorious visions seen and royal
assurances given, in the secluded library of the White House on the
lonely island in the Ohio. Vividly he remembered his first voyage down
the beautiful river, the conversations with Arlington, the serio-comic
encounter with Plutarch Byle, the reverie on deck of the ark, the
evening in the ladies' bower. Slowly he raised his head from his hands,
and moved by the automatism of habit drew a cigar from its case, lit the
solacing weed at the blue-yellow cone of the candle flame, and smoked.
He now felt not disinclined to take up the neglected _billet-doux_. He
broke the seal and read.