THE ATTACK
It has already been mentioned that Indians, arriving singly or in
squads, to report at Hamilton's headquarters, were in the habit of
firing their guns before entering the town or the fort, not only as a
signal of their approach, but in order to rid their weapons of their
charges preliminary to cleaning them before setting out upon another
scalp-hunting expedition. A shot, therefore, or even a volley, heard on
the outskirts of the village, was not a noticeable incident in the
daily and nightly experience of the garrison. Still, for some reason,
Governor Hamilton started violently when, just after nightfall, five or
six rifles cracked sharply a short distance from the stockade.
He and Helm with two other officers were in the midst of a game of
cards, while a kettle, swinging on a crane in the ample fire-place,
sang a shrill promise of hot apple-jack toddy.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Farnsworth, who, although not in the game, was
amusing himself with looking on; "you jump like a fine lady! I almost
fancied I heard a bullet hit you."
"You may all jump while you can," remarked Helm. "That's Clark, and
your time's short--He'll have this fort tumbling on your heads before
daylight of to-morrow morning comes."
As he spoke he arose from his seat at the card table and went to look
after the toddy, which, as an expert, he had under supervision.
Hamilton frowned. The mention of Clark was disturbing. Ever since the
strange disappearance of Lieutenant Barlow he had nursed the fear that
possibly Clark's scouts had captured him and that the American forces
might be much nearer than Kaskaskia. Besides, his nerves were unruly,
as they had been ever since the encounter with Father Beret; and his
vision persisted in turning back upon the accusing cold face of Alice,
lying in the moonlight. One little detail of that scene almost maddened
him at times; it was a sheeny, crinkled wisp of warm looking hair
looped across the cheek in which he had often seen a saucy dimple dance
when Alice spoke or smiled. He was bad enough, but not wholly bad, and
the thought of having darkened those merry eyes and stilled those sweet
dimples tore through him with a cold, rasping pang.
"Just as soon as this toddy is properly mixed and tempered," said Helm,
with a magnetic jocosity beaming from his genial face, "I'm going to
propose a toast to the banner of Alice Roussillon, which a whole
garrison of British braves has been unable to take!"
"If you do I'll blow a hole through you as big as the south door of
hell," said Hamilton, in a voice fairly shaken to a husky quaver with
rage. "You may do a great many insulting things; but not that."
Helm was in a half stooping attitude with a ladle in one hand, a cup in
the other. He had met Hamilton's glowering look with a peculiarly
innocent smile, as if to say: "What in the world is the matter now? I
never felt in a better humor in all my life. Can't you take a joke, I
wonder?" He did not speak, however, for a rattling volley of musket and
rifle shots hit the top of the clay-daubed chimney, sending down into
the toddy a shower of soot and dirt.
In a wink every man was on his feet and staring.
"Gentlemen," said Helm, with an impressive oath, "that is Clark's
soldiers, and they will take your fort; but they ought not to have
spoiled this apple toddy!"
"Oh, the devil!" said Hamilton, forcibly resuming a calm countenance,
"it is only a squad of drunken Indians coming in. We'll forego
excitement; there's no battle on hand, gentlemen."
"I'm glad you think so, Governor Hamilton," Helm responded, "but I
should imagine that I ought to know the crack of a Kentucky rifle. I've
heard one occasionally in my life. Besides, I got a whiff of freedom
just now."
"Captain Helm is right," observed Farnsworth. "That is an attack."
Another volley, this time nearer and more concentrated, convinced
Hamilton that he was, indeed, at the opening of a fight. Even while he
was giving some hurried orders to his officers, a man was wounded at
one of the port-holes. Then came a series of yells, answered by a
ripple of sympathetic French shouting that ran throughout the town. The
patrol guards came straggling in, breathless with excitement. They
swore to having seen a thousand men marching across the water-covered
meadows.
Hamilton was brave. The approach of danger stirred him like a
trumpet-strain. His fighting blood rose to full tide, and he gave his
orders with the steadiness and commanding force of a born soldier. The
officers hastened to their respective positions. On all sides sounds
indicative of rapid preparations for the fight mingled into a confused
strain of military energy. Men marched to their places; cannon were
wheeled into position, and soon enough the firing began in good earnest.
Late in the afternoon a rumor of Clark's approach had gone abroad
through the village; but not a French lip breathed it to a friend of
the British. The creoles were loyal to the cause of freedom; moreover,
they cordially hated Hamilton, and their hearts beat high at the
prospect of a change in masters at the fort. Every cabin had its hidden
gun and supply of ammunition, despite the order to disarm issued by
Hamilton. There was a hustling to bring these forth, which was
accompanied with a guarded yet irrepressible chattering, delightfully
French and infinitely volatile.
"Tiens! je vais frotter mon fusil. J'ai vu un singe!" said Jaques
Bourcier to his daughter, the pretty Adrienne, who was coming out of
the room in which Alice lay.
"I saw a monkey just now; I must rub up my gun!" He could not be
solemn; not he. The thought of an opportunity to get even with Hamilton
was like wine in his blood.
If you had seen those hardy and sinewy Frenchmen gliding in the dusk of
evening from cottage to cottage, passing the word that the Americans
had arrived, saying airy things and pinching one another as they met
and hurried on, you would have thought something very amusing and
wholly jocund was in preparation for the people of Vincennes.
There was a current belief in the town that Gaspard Roussillon never
missed a good thing and always somehow got the lion's share. He went
out with the ebb to return on the flood. Nobody was surprised,
therefore, when he suddenly appeared in the midst of his friends, armed
to the teeth and emotionally warlike to suit the occasion. Of course he
took charge of everybody and everything. You could have heard him
whisper a bowshot away.
"Taisons!" he hissed, whenever he met an acquaintance. "We will
surprise the fort and scalp the whole garrison. Aux armes! les
Americains viennent d'arriver!"
At his own house he knocked and called in vain. He shook the door
violently; for he was thinking of the stores under the floor, of the
grimy bottles, of the fragrant Bordeaux--ah, his throat, how it
throbbed! But where was Madame Roussillon? Where was Alice? "Jean!
Jean!" he cried, forgetting all precaution, "come here, you scamp, and
let me in this minute!"
A profoundly impressive silence gave him to understand that his home
was deserted.
"Chiff! frightened and gone to stay with Madame Godere, I suppose--and
I so thirsty! Bah! hum, hum, apres le vin la bataille, ziff!"
He kicked in the door and groped his way to the liquors. While he
hastily swigged and smacked he heard the firing begin with a crackling,
desultory volley. He laughed jovially, there in the dark, between
draughts and deep sighs of enjoyment.
"Et moi aussi," he murmured, like the vast murmur of the sea, "I want
to be in that dance! Pardonnez, messieurs. Moi, je veux danser, s'il
vous plait."
And when he had filled himself he plunged out and rushed away, wrought
up to the extreme fighting pitch of temper. Diable! if he could but
come across that Lieutenant Barlow, how he would smash him and mangle
him! In magnifying his prowess with the lens of imagination he swelled
and puffed as he lumbered along.
The firing sounded as if it were between the fort and the river; but
presently when one of Hamilton's cannon spoke, M. Roussillon saw the
yellow spike of flame from its muzzle leap directly toward the church,
and he thought it best to make a wide detour to avoid going between the
firing lines. Once or twice he heard the whine of a stray bullet high
overhead. Before he had gone very far he met a man hurrying toward the
fort. It was Captain Francis Maisonville, one of Hamilton's chief
scouts, who had been out on a reconnoissance and, cut off from his
party by some of Clark's forces, was trying to make his way to the main
gate of the stockade.
M. Roussillon knew Maisonville as a somewhat desperate character, a
leader of Indian forays and a trader in human scalps. Surely the fellow
was legitimate prey.
"Ziff! diable de gredin!" he snarled, and leaping upon him choked him
to the ground, "Je vais vous scalper immediatement!"
Clark's plan of approach showed masterly strategy. Lieutenant Bailey,
with fourteen regulars, made a show of attack on the east, while Major
Bowman led a company through the town, on a line near where Main street
in Vincennes is now located, to a point north of the stockade.
Charleville, a brave creole, who was at the head of some daring
fellows, by a brilliant dash got position under cover of a natural
terrace at the edge of the prairie, opposite the fort's southwestern
angle. Lieutenant Beverley, in whom the commander placed highest
confidence, was sent to look for a supply of ammunition, and to gather
up all the Frenchmen in the town who wished to join in the attack.
Oncle Jazon and ten other available men went with him.
They all made a great noise when they felt that the place was
completely invested. Nor can we deny, much as we would like to, the
strong desire for vengeance which raised those shouting voices and
nerved those steady hearts to do or die in an undertaking which
certainly had a desperate look. Patriotism of the purest strain those
men had, and that alone would have borne them up; but the recollection
of smouldering cabin homes in Kentucky, of women and children murdered
and scalped, of men brave and true burned at the stake, and of all the
indescribable outrages of Indian warfare incited and rewarded by the
commander of the fort yonder, added to patriotism the terrible urge of
that dark passion which clamors for blood to quench the fire of wrath.
Not a few of those wet, half-frozen, emaciated soldiers of freedom had
experienced the soul rending shock of returning from a day's hunting in
the forest to find home in ashes and loved ones brutally murdered and
scalped, or dragged away to unspeakable outrage under circumstances too
harrowing for description, the bare thought of which turns our blood
cold, even at this distance. Now the opportunity had arrived for a
stroke of retaliation. The thought was tremendously stimulating.
Beverley, with the aid of Oncle Jazon, was able to lead his little
company as far as the church before the enemy saw him. Here a volley
from the nearest angle of the stockade had to be answered, and pretty
soon a cannon began to play upon the position.
"We kin do better some'rs else," was Oncle Jazon's laconic remark flung
back over his shoulder, as he moved briskly away from the spot just
swept by a six-pounder. "Come this yer way, Lieutenant. I hyer some o'
the fellers a talkin' loud jes' beyant Legrace's place. They ain't no
sort o' sense a tryin' to hit anything a shootin' in the dark nohow."
When they reached the thick of the town there was a strange stir in the
dusky streets. Men were slipping from house to house, arming themselves
and joining their neighbors. Clark had sent an order earlier in the
evening forbidding any street demonstration by the inhabitants; but he
might as well have ordered the wind not to blow or the river to stand
still. Oncle Jazon knew every man whose outlines he could see or whose
voice he heard. He called each one by name:
"Here, Roger, fall in!--Come Louis, Alphonse, Victor, Octave--venez
ici, here's the American army, come with me!" His rapid French phrases
leaped forth as if shot from a pistol, and his shrill voice, familiar
to every ear in Vincennes, drew the creole militiamen to him, and soon
Beverley's company had doubled its numbers, while at the same time its
enthusiasm and ability to make a noise had increased in a far greater
proportion. In accordance with an order from Clark they now took
position near the northeast corner of the stockade and began firing,
although in the darkness there was but little opportunity for
marksmanship.
Oncle Jazon had found citizens Legrace and Bosseron, and through them
Clark's men were supplied with ammunition, of which they stood greatly
in need, their powder having got wet during their long, watery march.
By nine o'clock the fort was completely surrounded, and from every
direction the riflemen and musketeers were pouring in volley after
volley. Beverley with his men took the cover of a fence and some houses
sixty yards from the stockade. Here to their surprise they found
themselves below the line of Hamilton's cannon, which, being planted on
the second floor of the fort, could not be sufficiently depressed to
bear upon them. A well directed musket fire, however, fell from the
loopholes of the blockhouses, the bullets rattling merrily against the
cover behind which the attacking forces lay.
Beverley was thinking of Alice during every moment of all this stir and
tumult He feared that she might still be a prisoner in the fort exposed
to the very bullets that his men were discharging at every crack and
cranny of those loosely constructed buildings. Should he ever see her
again? Would she care for him? What would be the end of all this
terrible suspense? Those remote forebodings of evils, formless,
shadowy, ineffable, which have harried the lover's heart since time
began, crowded all pleasant anticipations out of his mind.
Clark, in passing hurriedly from company to company around the line,
stopped for a little while when he found Beverley.
"Have you plenty of ammunition?" was his first inquiry.
"A mighty sight more'n we kin see to shoot with," spoke up Oncle Jazon.
"It's a right smart o' dad burn foolishness to be wastin' it on
nothin'; seems like to me 'at we'd better set the dasted fort afire an'
smoke the skunks out!"
"Speak when you are spoken to, my man," said the Colonel a trifle
hotly, and trying by a sharp scrutiny to make him out in the gloom
where he crouched.
"Ventrebleu! I'm not askin' YOU, Colonel Clark, nor no other man, when
I shill speak. I talks whenever I gits ready, an' I shoots jes' the
same way. So ye'd better go on 'bout yer business like a white man!
Close up yer own whopper jawed mouth, ef ye want anything shet up!"
"Oho! is that you, Jazon? You're so little I didn't know you!
Certainly, talk your whole damned under jaw off, for all I care," Clark
replied, assuming a jocose tone. Then turning again to Beverley: "Keep
up the firing and the noise; the fort will be ours in the morning."
"What's the use of waiting till morning?" Beverley demanded with
impatience. "We can tear that stockade to pieces with our hands in half
an hour."
"I don't think so, Lieutenant. It is better to play for the sure thing.
Keep up the racket, and be ready for 'em if they rush out. We must not
fail to capture the hair-buyer General."
He passed on, with something cheerful to say whenever he found a squad
of his devoted men. He knew how to humor and manage those independent
and undisciplined yet heroically brave fellows. What to see and hear,
what to turn aside as a joke, what to insist upon with inflexible
mastery, he knew by the fine instantaneous sense of genius. There were
many men of Oncle Jazon's cast, true as steel, but refractory as flint,
who could not be dominated by any person, no matter of what stamp or
office. To them an order was an insult; but a suggestion pleased and
captured them. Strange as it may seem, theirs was the conquering spirit
of America--the spirit which has survived every turn of progress and
built up the great body of our independence.
Beverley submitted to Clark's plan with what patience he could, and all
night long fired shot for shot with the best riflemen in his squad. It
was a fatiguing performance, with apparently little result beyond
forcing the garrison now and again to close the embrasures, thus
periodically silencing the cannon. Toward the close of the night a
relaxation showed itself in the shouting and firing all round the line.
Beverley's men, especially the creoles, held out bravely in the matter
of noise; but even they flagged at length, their volatility simmering
down to desultory bubbling and half sleepy chattering and chaffing.
Beverley leaned upon a rude fence, and for a time neglected to reload
his hot rifle. Of course he was thinking of Alice,--he really could not
think in any other direction; but it gave him a shock and a start when
he presently heard her name mentioned by a little Frenchman near him on
the left.
"There'll never be another such a girl in Post Vincennes as Alice
Roussillon," the fellow said in the soft creole patois, "and to think
of her being shot like a dog!"
"And by a man who calls himself a Governor, too!" said another. "Ah, as
for myself, I'm in favor of burning him alive when we capture him.
That's me!"
"Et moi aussi," chimed in a third voice. "That poor girl must be
avenged. The man who shot her must die. Holy Virgin, but if Gaspard
Roussillon were only here!"
"But he is here; I saw him just after dark. He was in great fighting
temper, that terrible man. Ouf! but I should not like to be Colonel
Hamilton and fall in the way of that Gaspard Roussillon!"
"Morbleu! I should say not. You may leave me out of a chance like that!
I shouldn't mind seeing Gaspard handle the Governor, though. Ah, that
would be too good! He'd pay him up for shooting Mademoiselle Alice."
Beverley could scarcely hold himself erect by the fence; the smoky,
foggy landscape swam round him heavy and strange. He uttered a groan,
which brought Oncle Jazon to his side in a hurry.
"Qu' avez-vous? What's the matter?" the old man demanded with quick
sympathy. "Hev they hit ye? Lieutenant, air ye hurt much?"
Beverley did not hear the old man's words, did not feel his kindly
touch.
"Alice! Alice!" he murmured, "dead, dead!"
"Ya-as," drawled Oncle Jazon, "I hearn about it soon as I got inter
town. It's a sorry thing, a mighty sorry thing. But mebby I won't do a
little somepin' to that--"
Beverley straightened himself and lifted his gun, forgetting that he
had not reloaded it since firing last. He leveled it at the fort and
touched the trigger. Simultaneously with his movement an embrasure
opened and a cannon flashed, its roar flanked on either side by a
crackling of British muskets. Some bullets struck the fence and flung
splinters into Oncle Jazon's face. A cannon ball knocked a ridge pole
from the roof of a house hard by, and sent it whirling through the air.
"Ventrebleu!--et apres? What the devil next? Better knock a feller's
eyes out!" the old man cried. "I ain't a doin' nothin' to ye!"
He capered around rubbing his leathery face after the manner of a
scalded monkey. Beverley was struck in the breast by a flattened and
spent ball that glanced from a fence-picket. The shock caused him to
stagger and drop his gun; but he quickly picked it up and turned to his
companion.
"Are you hurt, Oncle Jazon?" he inquired. "Are you hurt?"
"Not a bit--jes' skeert mos' into a duck fit. Thought a cannon ball had
knocked my whole dang face down my throat! Nothin' but a handful o'
splinters in my poorty count'nance, makin' my head feel like a
porc'-pine. But I sort o' thought I heard somepin' give you a diff."
"Something did hit me," said Beverley, laying a hand on his breast,
"but I don't think it was a bullet. They seem to be getting our range
at last. Tell the men to keep well under cover. They must not expose
themselves until we are ready to charge."
The shock had brought him back to his duty as a leader of his little
company, and with the funeral bell of all his life's happiness tolling
in his agonized heart he turned afresh to directing the fire upon the
block-house.
About this time a runner came from Clark with an order to cease firing
and let a returning party of British scouts under Captain Lamothe
re-enter the fort unharmed. A strange order it seemed to both officers
and men; but it was implicitly obeyed. Clark's genius here made another
fine strategic flash. He knew that unless he let the scouts go back
into the stockade they would escape by running away, and might possibly
organize an army of Indians with which to succor Hamilton. But if they
were permitted to go inside they could be captured with the rest of the
garrison; hence his order.
A few minutes passed in dead silence; then Captain Lamothe and his
party marched close by where Beverley's squad was lying concealed. It
was a difficult task to restrain the creoles, for some of them hated
Lamothe. Oncle Jazon squirmed like a snake while they filed past all
unaware that an enemy lurked so near. When they reached the fort,
ladders were put down for them and they began to clamber over the wall,
crowding and pushing one another in wild haste. Oncle Jazon could hold
in no longer.
"Ya! ya! ya!" he yelled. "Look out! the ladder is a fallin' wi' ye!"
Then all the lurking crowd shouted as one man, and, sure enough, down
came a ladder--men and all in a crashing heap.
"Silence! silence!" Beverley commanded; but he could not check the wild
jeering and laughing, while the bruised and frightened scouts hastily
erected their ladder again, fairly tumbling over one another in their
haste to ascend, and so cleared the wall, falling into the stockade to
join the garrison.
"Ventrebleu!" shrieked Oncle Jazon. "They've gone to bed; but we'll
wake 'em up at the crack o' day an' give 'em a breakfas' o' hot lead!"
Now the fighting was resumed with redoubled spirit and noise, and when
morning came, affording sufficient light to bring out the "bead sights"
on the Kentucky rifles, the matchless marksmen in Clark's band forced
the British to close the embrasures and entirely cease trying to use
their cannon; but the fight with small arms went merrily on until the
middle of the forenoon.
Meantime Gaspard Roussillon had tied Francis Maisonville's hands fast
and hard with the strap of his bullet-pouch.
"Now, I'll scalp you," he said in a rumbling tone, terrible to hear.
And with his words out came his hunting knife from its sheath.
"O have mercy, my dear Monsieur Roussillon!" cried the panting captive;
"have mercy!"
"Mercy! yes, like your Colonel's, that's what you'll get. You stand by
that forban, that scelerat, that bandit, and help him. Oh, yes, you'll
get mercy! Yes, the same mercy that he showed to my poor little Alice!
Your scalp, Monsieur, if you please! A small matter; it won't hurt
much!"
"But, for the sake of old friendship, Gaspard, for the sake--"
"Ziff! poor little Alice!"
"But I swear to you that I--"
"Tout de meme, Monsieur, je vais vous scalper maintenant."
In fact he had taken off a part of Maisonville's scalp, when a party of
soldiers, among whom was Maisonville's brother, a brave fellow and
loyal to the American cause, were attracted by his cries and came to
his rescue.
M. Roussillon struggled savagely, insisting upon completing his cruel
performance; but he was at last overpowered, partly by brute force and
partly by the pleading of Maisonville's brother, and made to desist.
The big man wept with rage when he saw the bleeding prisoner protected.
"Eh bien! I'll keep what I've got," he roared, "and I'll take the rest
of it next time."
He shook the tuft of hair at Maisonville and glared like a mad bull.
Two or three other members of Lamothe's band were captured about the
same time by some of the French militiamen; and Clark, when on his
round cheering and directing his forces, discovered that these
prisoners were being used as shields. Some young creoles, gay with
drink and the stimulating effect of fight, had bound the poor fellows
and were firing from behind them! Of course the commander promptly put
an end to this cruelty; but they considered it exquisite fun while it
lasted. It was in broad daylight, and they knew that the English in the
fort could see what they were doing.
"It's shameful to treat prisoners in this way," said Clark. "I will not
permit it. Shoot the next man that offers to do such a thing!"
One of the creole youths, a handsome, swarthy Adonis in buckskin,
tossed his shapely head with a debonair smile and said:
"To be sure, mon Colonel! but what have they been doing to us? We have
amused them all winter; it's but fair that they should give us a little
fun now."
Clark shrugged his broad shoulders and passed on. He understood
perfectly what the people of Vincennes had suffered under Hamilton's
brutal administration.
At nine o'clock an order was passed to cease firing, and a flag of
truce was seen going from Clark's headquarters to the fort. It was a
peremptory demand for unconditional surrender. Hamilton refused, and
fighting was fiercely resumed from behind rude breastworks meantime
erected. Every loop-hole and opening of whatever sort was the focus
into which the unerring backwoods rifles sent their deadly bullets. Men
began to fall in the fort, and every moment Hamilton expected an
assault in force on all sides of the stockade. This, if successful,
would mean inevitable massacre. Clark had warned him of the terrible
consequences of holding out until the worst should come. "For," said he
in his note to the Governor, "if I am obliged to storm, you may depend
upon such treatment as is justly due to a murderer."
Historians have wondered why Hamilton became so excited and acted so
strangely after receiving the note. The phrase, "justly due to a
murderer," is the key to the mystery. When he read it his heart sank
and a terrible fear seized him. "Justly due to a murderer!" ah, that
calm, white, beautiful girlish face, dead in the moonlight, with the
wisp of shining hair across it! "Such treatment as is justly due to a
murderer!" Cold drops of sweat broke out on his forehead and a shiver
went through his body.
During the truce Clark's weary yet still enthusiastic besiegers enjoyed
a good breakfast prepared for them by the loyal dames of Vincennes.
Little Adrienne Bourcier was one of the handmaidens of the occasion.
She brought to Beverley's squad a basket, almost as large as herself,
heaped high with roasted duck and warm wheaten bread, while another
girl bore two huge jugs of coffee, fragrant and steaming hot. The men
cheered them lustily and complimented them without reserve, so that
before their service was over their faces were glowing with delight.
And yet Adrienne's heart was uneasy, and full of longing to hear
something of Rene de Ronville. Surely some one of her friends must know
something about him. Ah, there was Oncle Jazon! Doubtless he could tell
her all that she wanted to know. She lingered, after the food was
distributed, and shyly inquired.
"Hain't seed the scamp," said Oncle Jazon, only he used the patois most
familiar to the girl's ear. "Killed an' scelped long ago, I reckon."
His mouth was so full that he spoke mumblingly and with utmost
difficulty. Nor did he glance at Adrienne, whose face took on as great
pallor as her brown complexion could show.
Beverley ate but little of the food. He sat apart on a piece of timber
that projected from the rough breastwork and gave himself over to
infinite misery of spirit, which was trebled when he took Alice's
locket from his bosom, only to discover that the bullet which struck
him had almost entirely destroyed the face of the miniature.
He gripped the dinted and twisted case and gazed at it with the stare
of a blind man. His heart almost ceased to beat and his breath had the
rustling sound we hear when a strong man dies of a sudden wound.
Somehow the defacement of the portrait was taken by his soul as the
final touch of fate, signifying that Alice was forever and completely
obliterated from his life. He felt a blur pass over his mind. He tried
in vain to recall the face and form so dear to him; he tried to imagine
her voice; but the whole universe was a vast hollow silence. For a long
while he was cold, staring, rigid; then the inevitable collapse came,
and he wept as only a strong man can who is hurt to death, yet cannot
die.
Adrienne approached him, thinking to speak to him about Rene; but he
did not notice her, and she went her way, leaving beside him a liberal
supply of food.