And give me kisses three;
If I'm not won ere the sun go down,
Won I shall never be."
Brave men, well-proved soldiers, were Childe Wynd's three-and-thirty,
but they cried out aloud to him, and some let go of their oars and
sprang shoulder-deep in the sea that they might drag their lord back
from this noisome horror that would destroy him. Prince Wynd's heart
gave a great stound, and back rushed the blood into his face, that had
been so pale and grim, and none was quick enough to come between him and
what his heart had told his mind, and what his mind most gladly willed.
As though he were kissing for the first time the one he loved, and she
the fairest of the land, so did he bow his head in courtly fashion, and
three times kiss with loving lips the Laidley Worm of Spindleston-Heugh.
And at the third kiss a great cry of wonder rose from his men, for lo,
the Laidley Worm had vanished, as fades an evil dream when one awakes,
and in its place there stood the fairest maid in all England, their own
dear Princess Margaret. With laughter and with tears did Childe Wynd and
his sister then embrace; but when the Princess had told her tale, her
brother's brow grew dark, and on his sword he vowed to destroy the vile
witch who had been his gentle sister's cruel enemy. With tears and with
laughter, and with gladsome shoutings the folk of Bamborough came in
haste to greet their Prince and Princess, and to speed them up to the
castle, where the King, their father, welcomed them full joyously. But
there were angry murmurs from the men of Northumbria, who called for
vengeance on her who had so nearly ruined their dear land, and who had
striven to slay both Prince and Princess. Childe Wynd held up his hand:
"To me belongs the payment," he said, and the men laughed loud when they
saw his stern face, for those were days when grim and bloody deeds were
gaily done, and blithe they were to think of torture for the Witch
Queen. Cowering in a corner of her bower in the turret, white-faced and
haggard, they found her, and dragged her out to Childe Wynd. But no
speedy end by a clean sword blade was to be hers, nor any slower death
by lingering torture.
"Woe be to thee, thou wicked witch!" said the Prince; and she shivered
and whimpered piteously, for well she knew that in far-off lands across
the sea Childe Wynd had studied magic, and that for her were designed
eternal terrors.
"Woe be to thee, thou wicked witch,
An ill death mayst thou dee;
As thou my sister hast lik'ned,
So lik'ned shalt thou be.
I will turn you into a toad,
That on the ground doth wend;
And won, won, shalt thou never be,
Till this world hath an end."
To the fairy days of long, long ago belong Prince Wynd and the Princess
Margaret and the wicked Witch Wife. But still in the country near
Bamborough, as maids go wandering in the gloaming down by the yellow
sands and the rough grass where the sea-pinks grow, they will be
suddenly startled by a horrible great dun-coloured thing that moves
quickly towards them, as though to do them a harm. With loudly beating
hearts they run home to tell that they have encountered the venomous
toad that hates all virtuous maidens, who once was a queen, her who
created the Laidley Worm of Spindleston-Heugh.
A BORDERER IN AMERICA
It would be matter for wonder if, in the histories of old Border
families, record of strange personal experiences did not at times crop
up. Sons of the Border have wandered far, and have sojourned in many
lands, and borne their part in many an untoward event. But it is not
likely that any can lay claim to adventures more strange and romantic
than those which, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, befell a
youthful member of one of the most ancient of these Border clans. This
story of his adventures is literally true, as the family records prove,
but the descendants of the person to whom they happened prefer that he
should not figure in the tale under his own name. For convenience,
therefore, it must suffice here to call him Andrew Kerr.
The responsibilities of life began early in his day. A boy who would now
find himself in a very junior form at school, was then considered old
enough to serve his Majesty in a marching regiment, or left his home to
engage in business whilst yet his handwriting had scarcely emerged from
childhood's clumsy formation, and veritable infants served as
midshipmen in ships of war. Young Kerr was no exception to this general
rule. Long before the boy had reached the age of sixteen he was shipped
off to New York, there to join an uncle who, in order to engage in
commerce, had lately retired from the 60th "Royal American" Regiment,
then a famous colonial corps.
Those were stirring times, and for a passenger the voyage to America was
no hum-drum affair devoid of excitement or peril. We were at war with
France and Spain. Every white sail, therefore, that showed above the
horizon meant the coming of a possible enemy; no day passed, in some
part of which there might not chance to arise the necessity to employ
every device of seamanship if escape were to be effected should the
enemy prove too big to fight, or in which there was not at least the
possibility of smelling powder burned in earnest.
Nor were danger and excitement necessarily ended with the ship's arrival
in New York harbour. We were still fighting the French in Canada; men
yet told grim tales of Braddock's defeat and of the horrors of Indian
warfare. To him whom business or duty took far from the sea-board into
the country of the savage and treacherous Iroquois, there was the
ever-present probability that he would some day--perhaps many times--be
compelled to fight for his life, with the certainty that, if disabled by
wounds he fell into the enemy's hands, the scalp would be torn from his
skull ere death could put an end to his sufferings; whilst capture
meant, almost for a certainty, the being eventually put to death after
undergoing the most hideous tortures that the cruelty of the Redskins
could devise. To the colonists, "the only good Indian was a dead
Indian"; and doubtless, by the newly-landed Andrew Kerr, the order at
once to proceed up-country with a convoy in charge of military stores
must have been received with somewhat mixed feelings. On the one hand,
his boyish love of adventure would be amply satisfied, while, on the
other, there were risks to be faced which might well have caused more
than uneasiness to many an older man--risks which the boy's
acquaintances possibly were at no pains to conceal, which, indeed, a few
of them would probably take pleasure in painting in the gloomiest of
colours. But duty was duty, and the lad had too great a share of Border
stubbornness and grit to let himself be badly scared by such tales as
were told to him.
The destination of the convoy was Fort Detroit. In those far-off days
New York was but a little city of some twenty thousand inhabitants, and
the western part of New York State was quite outside the bounds of
civilisation. To reach the Canadian frontier there were then two great
routes of military communication--one, up the Hudson River, and so by
way of Lakes George and Champlain and down the Richelieu to the St.
Lawrence; the other, by the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, then by way of
Lake Oneida and the Oswego River to the first of the great lakes, Lake
Ontario; thence the journey to Fort Detroit would be chiefly by canoe,
up Lakes Ontario and Erie. Between the last military post at the head of
the Mohawk, however, and the mouth of the Oswego River, there was a
great gap in which no military post had been established. Thus the route
of the convoy to which Kerr was attached necessarily took them through
country overrun by hostile Indian tribes.
No mishap, however, befell the party; probably they were too strong, too
wary and well skilled in Indian warfare, to give the enemy a chance of
ambushing or taking them by surprise on their march through the woods.
At Fort Detroit, it was found that a small exploring party, under a
Captain Robson, was about to set out with the object of determining
whether or not certain rivers and lakes were navigable, and young Kerr,
boylike, eagerly volunteered to join the expedition.
Here began his strange adventures. The party, all told, consisted but of
eleven persons--Captain Robson, Sir Robert Davers, six soldiers, two
sailors, and young Kerr. Apparently they did not think it necessary to
take with them any colonists, or Indian scouts. It is a curious
characteristic of the average Britisher who finds himself in a new land,
that he appears to regard it as an axiom that he must necessarily know
much more than the average colonist; can, in fact, teach that person
"how to suck eggs." The colonist, of course, on his part--and in the
majority of cases with justice--regards the "new chum," or "tender
foot," as a somewhat helpless creature. But the Britisher despises, or
at least he used to despise, the mere colonist. Hence have arisen not a
few disasters. The little--travelled Britisher does not readily learn
that local conditions in all countries are not the same, that
dispositions and customs which suit one are totally out of place and
useless in another. That was how General Braddock made so terrible and
absolute a fiasco of his expedition; it was the custom of the British
army to fight standing in line--(and, in truth, many a notable victory
had they won before, and many have they won since, in that
formation)--therefore fight thus in line they must, no matter what the
nature of the country in which they fought. Hence, in dense forest,
surrounded by yelling savages, our men stood up to be shot by a foe whom
they never saw till it was too late, and panic had set in amongst the
few survivors. Had our troops been taught to adapt themselves to
circumstances and to fight as the colonists fought, as the French in
Canada had learned to fight, as the Red Indians fought, taking every
advantage of cover, Braddock need not thus unnecessarily have lost
nearly seventy per cent, of his force. In matters appertaining to war
or to fighting, it was beneath the dignity, most unhappily it was
beneath the dignity, of a British general to regard as of possible value
the opinion of a mere colonial, no matter how experienced in Indian
fighting the latter might be, or how great his knowledge of the country.
It was that, no doubt, which induced Braddock to disregard the opinion,
and to pooh-pooh the knowledge of his then A.D.C. George Washington. Yet
it was nothing but Washington's knowledge that saved the van of
Braddock's defeated force.
In like manner, had this little exploring expedition been accompanied by
colonists experienced in Indian ways, or had they chosen to make use of
Indian scouts, disaster might have been averted. As it was, almost on
the threshold of their journey they were ambushed, and cut off by the
Redskins. Robson, Davers, and two of the men were speedily picked off by
the concealed enemy, or were killed in the final rush of the painted,
yelling savages. The little force was scattered to the winds. One or
two, taking to the water, under cover of the darkness, and protected by
that Providence which sometimes watches over helpless persons,
eventually reached safety. But young Kerr was not amongst these
fortunate ones. For him, experiences more trying were in store. In the
last mêlée he fell into the hands of a grim-looking, powerfully-built
warrior, who bound him to a tree, and in that most unpleasant
predicament the lad for a time remained, from moment to moment
anticipating for himself the treatment he saw being dealt out on the
bodies of his friends. His youth saved him. Too young to be considered
by the Indians as fit to be a warrior, his scalp was not added to the
other bloody trophies of victory; for him was reserved the fate of
slavery, the disgrace (from an Indian point of view) of performing
menial offices, of doing the work usually performed by squaws. Kerr's
captor, a warrior named Peewash, of the tribe of the Chippeways, dragged
his prisoner home to his wigwam. There the boy was stripped naked,
painted as Indians were painted, his head clean shaved except for one
tuft on top called "the scalp lock," which amongst the Indians it was
the custom to leave in order to facilitate the operation of scalping by
their enemies should the owners chance to fall in battle. A scalp was
the recognised trophy of victory. It was not regarded as absolutely
necessary to kill an enemy; if his scalp could be torn from his head, no
more was required, and not infrequently a wounded man was left scalpless
on the ground, writhing in speechless agony, to linger and die
miserably.
After undergoing the preliminaries of an Indian toilet, young Kerr had
moccasins given to him, and a blanket to wear--a costume perhaps more
convenient than becoming--and he entered on a round of duties new and
strange. He was not, after a time, unkindly treated by Peewash and his
squaw. But the work was far from pleasant, and many were the terrible
sights forced on his unwilling notice at this time. Once, when the
little garrison of Detroit sent out a small party, which, making a dash
at the Indian camp, succeeded in killing a Chippeway Chief, the Redskins
in revenge tortured and killed Captain Campbell, a Scot, who had been
captured by the Ottawas. Such sights filled the boy with sick horror,
and with a not unnatural dread of the fate which might yet await
himself. Rather than remain to furnish in his own person the leading
feature of an Indian festival, it was surely better, he thought, to die
in attempting escape.
As it chanced later, a French trader--these tribes were the allies of
the French--arrived in camp, and remained there some time. Moved to pity
by the boy's unhappy condition, this man, with some difficulty,
persuaded Peewash to sell the lad to him for goods to the value of £40.
Great was Kerr's exultation; once more he was free, free too without
having had to face the terrible ordeal of attempting to escape from
these murderous Indian devils. All would now be well, for assuredly he,
or his friends, would repay to the Frenchman the ransom money. The boy
felt as if his troubles were already over; in a day or two at longest he
would sleep again under the flag of his own land; perhaps even, at no
distant date, he might once more gaze on scenes for which throughout his
captivity his soul had hungered, see, once more, Cheviot lying blue in
the distance, the Eildons with their triple crown, hear the ripple of
the Border streams. What tales of adventure he would have to tell.
Alas! he counted without his hosts. The Chippeways when they heard of
the transaction would have none of it. The captive boy had been the
property of the tribe, they said, and they refused to part with him; he
must be given up by the Frenchman. And the latter had no choice but to
comply.
Black now were the nights, gloomy the days, for Andrew Kerr, the blacker
and the more gloomy for the false dawn that for brief space had cheered
him; unbearable was his burden, more hopeless and wretched than ever
before, a thousandfold, his captivity. It was as it might be with a man
dying of thirst if a cup of cold water were dashed from his lips and
spilt on the sandy desert at his feet. Who can blame the boy if only the
knowledge of what treatment he would avowedly receive from the young
Indians if he should play the squaw and weep, kept him from shedding
tears of misery and vexation.
A new master was now his, a chief of the Chippeways; a new squaw set him
hateful, degrading tasks, and ordered him about; the young men and the
squaws laughed him to scorn; life became more bitter than ever before.
Gradually, however, Kerr's new owners relaxed their severity of
treatment, and his lines grew less unpleasant. Time, indeed, made him
almost popular--embarrassingly popular--for there came a day when the
tribe more than hinted its desire that the Pale-face should wed one of
its most beauteous daughters. Happily, the question of who should be
bride was left in abeyance. He became, too, almost reconciled to his
dress, or want of dress--though, to be sure, a coat of paint and a
blanket cannot, at the best, be regarded as more than a passably
efficient hot-weather costume. With the easy adaptability of boyhood,
Andrew Kerr had become almost a veritable Indian.
Now, Peewash all this time had looked with covetous eye on his former
slave, and desired to repossess him. A big price would have to be paid,
no doubt; but Peewash was prepared to bid high, and the owner could not
withstand a temptation, backed, as it was, by that bait irresistible to
a Red Indian, "firewater." The boy again changed hands, and now for some
time served his original captor.
About this period the Tribes again "dug up the hatchet," and set out on
a big war-trail. Cruel and bloody was the fighting, many the prisoners
taken and brought into camp from time to time. On one occasion young
Kerr was compelled to stand, a horrified spectator, among the exulting
Redskins as with yells of gratified triumph, warriors and squaws, young
men and children, gloated fiercely over the brutal torture and lingering
death of eight English prisoners. It was a grim and grisly spectacle,
for no form of torment--from the nerve-wracking test of knife and
tomahawk, arrow or bullet, aimed with intent to graze the flesh and not
immediately to kill, to the ghastly ordeal of red-hot ramrods and
blazing pine-root splinters thrust into the flesh or under the nails
--was omitted by those bloodthirsty red devils. Many a sleepless hour,
many a night broken by awful dreams, must the sight have cost the boy.
But it determined him to attempt escape at all hazards whenever kind
fortune should put the chance in his way.
And fortune did help him ere long. There was a French trader named
Boileau who came much about the camp. To him Andrew very cautiously made
advances, and succeeded at last in enlisting the man's sympathies. Kerr
confided to the trader his desire to attempt escape, and, none too
willingly at the beginning, Boileau agreed to take the risk of helping.
It was no easy task to lull the suspicions and to evade the watchful eye
of the crafty Indians; but the boy had never, so far, shown any desire
to escape, and he was not now so everlastingly under supervision. In
very bad English on Boileau's part, and in worse French on that of Kerr,
a plan of escape was devised. Early in the day, Boileau, after his usual
habit, was to leave camp in his canoe, ostensibly setting out on an
ordinary trapping expedition. After nightfall, he would return to a
certain rock on the lake shore, and then Kerr was to steal out and
attempt to join him; thereafter, a night's paddling ought to take the
fugitive out of the immediate danger-zone.
The night was cloudy and black, and not too still; everything, in fact,
was in the boy's favour as, with beating heart, he wormed his way out of
the wigwam and crawled stealthily on his belly from the camp towards the
dense gloom of the forest. Then, almost as he had succeeded in gaining
the comparative safety of the trees, beneath his moccasined foot a stick
snapped, and a cursed Indian dog gave tongue, rousing the entire pack,
and the sleeping camp, like an angry swarm of bees, woke at once to
venomous life.
But Kerr by this time was at least clear of the wigwams; if he could but
reach that rock by the lake-side, and if the Frenchman had kept faith,
he might get safely away. Boileau would surely never fail him. Hampered
and constantly tripped up by roots and tangled undergrowth, confused by
the blackness of the night, the boy toiled on with thumping heart and
shortening breath; and at last, looming above him, was the welcome
outlines of the great rock. But on neither side of it could he find sign
of the trader or of his canoe. And already by the rustlings in the woods
and the occasional snapping of dry sticks, he could tell that the
pursuing Indians were drawing perilously near him.
"Boileau!" he whispered. "Boileau!" And then, in an agony of mind he
risked all, and shouted:
"Boileau, Boileau! _A moi!_"
An angry whisper from almost at his side replied viciously:
"_Pas de chahut, malheureux! A bord vite, mille dieux!_"
And as the canoe silently glided from the shore with the boy safely on
board, the form of an Indian could be dimly seen where Kerr had stood
the previous moment, and a bullet sang past his ear.
There for the time his more acute troubles ended. A few days later, at
Detroit, a throng of persons, half helpless with laughter, noisily
escorted to the Fort a forlorn, bald-headed, painted scare-crow, clad in
a tattered Indian blanket, which scare-crow presently introduced itself
to the commandant as Andrew Kerr, lately a prisoner of the Indians.
Once recovered from his fatigues and hardships, Andrew, as one of a
small force, was sent to Niagara to obtain supplies for the Detroit
garrison. The outward voyage down Lake Erie was safely and pleasantly
accomplished. But these vast American lakes are subject to sudden and
violent storms, and on the return trip, during an exceptionally fierce
squall, the little 40-ton sloop, heavily laden as she was with military
stores, sprang a leak, and to save themselves the crew were forced to
run her aground on a gravelly beach under the lee of a projecting
headland. The situation at best was most critical, for if the wind
should shift but a few points the sloop must inevitably break up; and
not only was the one boat available a mere skiff incapable of living in
a heavy sea, but even should they all succeed in safely getting ashore
with muskets intact and ammunition dry, their position would still be in
the last degree precarious. For well they knew in what manner of country
they were about to set unwilling foot--forest land occupied by the
fiercest and most treacherous of the hostile Indian tribes. Capture
meant death, probably with torture to precede it.
With great difficulty and some danger the ship-wrecked crew did at
length succeed in getting ashore, with their rifles and a fair supply of
powder and lead, and without an instant's delay they set about building
a rude breastwork for protection if matters should come to a fight. The
stranded vessel must certainly have been already seen by the Indians; at
any moment they might appear. But the breastwork was completed without
interruption, and still no sign of the Redskins had been seen. It was at
least breathing space, though all knew what must assuredly follow, and
to some the actual immediate combat would have been less unwelcome than
was now the suspense.
After consultation, a few of the party, including Kerr, whose knowledge
of Indian ways it was thought might be useful, left the breastwork to
spy on the enemy--or at least to try to pick up some knowledge of their
whereabouts. Had it been into that enchanted land that they now
entered, where lay the Sleeping Beauty, the forest shades could not have
been more still, more apparently devoid of life. No breath of wind
stirred leaf or bough, all nature breathed peace, and, lulled to a sense
of security, the little party ventured farther among the trees than was
prudent. In Indian warfare, appearances were ever deceitful; the greater
the apparent security, the greater the need for caution. So it was now
here.
"I guess it ain't all right," one man was saying; "I don't like it. Get
back, boys."