THE WAGES OF WAR.
At The Holms, as may well be supposed, the rude alarum of war, at
the very door, as it were, threw the quiet household into unwonted
excitement. The early cannonade brought every member of the family
with eager questioning into the great kitchen.
"It has come," said the squire, "the day I have long looked for.
We muse meet it like brave men."
"God defend the right," added Neville, with solemn emotion.
"And forgive and pity our misguided enemies," said Katharine, the
tears standing in her eyes.
"And send them back quicker than they came," exclaimed Zenas, with
some more hard words of boyish petulance.
"We must help to send them, eh, Sandy?" said Tom Loker.
"Ay, please God," devoutly answered Mr. McKay. "I doubt na He will
break them in pieces like a potter's vessel--a vessel fitted for
destruction."
After a hurried breakfast the two men hastened to join their
militia company, Mary having first filled their haversacks with a
liberal supply of bread and cheese, ham sandwich, and, at Sandy's
special request, a quantity of oaten bannocks.
"They're aye gude to fecht or march on," he said, "an' we're like
eneuch to hae baith to thole or ere we win hame again."
The apparition of Sir Isaac Brock and his aides galloping past the
house in the early dawn, and an hour later of the breathless
messenger returning to hurry up re-enforcements, and of the troops
from Fort George marching by to the inspiring strains of "The
British Grenadiers," had been witnessed by Zenas, and had excited
his highest enthusiasm. "Now, father," he said, "the time has come
for me to do my part for my country."
"You shall, my son," said the squire tenderly. "Even as David went
to his brethren in the camp, shall you bear succour to the brave
fellows who are fighting our battles. Some of them may sorely want
help before the day is over."
"And I," said Neville, "will go with him. I hope I may be of some
use, too."
"That you may," answered the squire. "I only fear there may be but
too much need for your services."
With busy hands the old soldier and his son loaded the waggon with
such articles as his military experience had taught him would be
most needed by men exposed to all the deadly vicissitudes of war.
Katharine prepared a great boilerful of tea--"The best thing in
the world," said the squire, "for fighting men." All the bread in
the house, a huge round of cold beef and half a dozen smoked hams,
a large cheese, several jars of milk, and the last churning of
great yellow rolls of butter were gladly given to the patriotic
service. With his own hands the squire put up a generous parcel of
his best Virginia leaf tobacco. "I know well," he said, "how it
soothes the pain of wounds and numbs the pangs of hunger." More
thoughtful provision still, Kate, with a sigh, brought out the
stout roll of lint bandage which, at her father's suggestion, she
had prepared for the unknown contingencies of the border war.
"O this is dreadful, father," she said. "It seems almost like
making a shroud before the man who is to wear it is dead."
"It may save some poor fellow's life, my dear," he answered, "and
one must always prepare for the worst, war is such an uncertain
game. Indeed, wounds and death are almost the only things certain
about it."
"Keep in the rear of the troops, my son, and take your orders from
Major Sheaffe or of the army surgeon. I told them both what we
were sending, as they passed. Keep out of gunshot and avoid
capture: the time may come only too soon when you'll share the
battle's brunt yourself."
"I wish it were to-day, father. I'd give almost anything to be
with Brock and his brave fellows."
"So would I, my son; but I must be the home-guard. It would never
do to leave Kate and the maids unprotected, with an invasion so
near. And no work can be more important than may be before you
both before you return."
The brave boy drove off to the scene of action, the distant rattle
of musketry, and at short intervals the loud roar of the cannon,
making his heart throb with martial enthusiasm. The young preacher
communed with his own heart on the unnatural conflict between his
own kinsmen after the flesh and the compatriots of his spiritual
adoption--and was still. The brave old veteran, shouldering the
musket that had done good service at Brandywine and Germantown,
patrolled the river road bounding the farm.
As they approached the village of Queenston, Neville and Zenas
found that a temporary lull in hostilities had taken place. The
Americans had possession of the heights, and were strongly re-
enforced from the Lewiston side of the river.
The redcoats from Fort George--about four hundred men of the 41st
regiment, together with a part of the 49th, which had already been
in action--were about to march by a by-road apparently away from
the scene of action.
"Hello!" said Zenas to young Ensign Norton, of the 41st regiment,
who was a frequent visitor at his father's house. "I don't
understand this. You are not running away from these fellows are
you? Why don't you drive the Yankees from that battery?"
"We intend to, young Hotspur, but it would be madness to charge up
that hill in face of those guns. We are to take them in flank, I
suppose, and drive them over the cliff."
"Where's Brock?" asked the boy, jealous of the fame of his hero,
which he seemed to think compromised by this prudent counsel.
"Have not you heard," said Norton, with something between a sigh
and a sob? "He'll never lead us again. He lies in yonder house,"
pointing to a long, low, poor-looking dwelling-house on the left
side of the road.
"What! dead? killed--so soon?" cried the boy, turning white, and
then flushing red, and unconsciously clenching his fists as he
spoke.
"Yes, Mister," said a war-bronzed soldier standing by, who looked
doubly grim from the blood trickling down his powder-blackened
cheek from a scalp wound received during the morning skirmish. "I
stood anear him when he fell, an' God knows I'd rather the bullet
had struck me; my fighting days will soon be over, anyhow. But
we'll avenge his death afore the day is done. They call us the
green tigers, them fellers do, an' there's not a man of us won't
fight like a tiger robbed of her whelps, for not a man of us
wouldn't 'a' died for the General."
"To the right, wheel, forward march!" came the order from the
Colonel, and the "green tigers" filed on with the grim resolve to
conquer or to die.
The militia, clad chiefly in homespun frieze, with flint-lock
muskets and stout cartridge boxes at their belts, were drawn up at
the roadside, and were being supplied with ammunition, previous to
following the regulars.
A number of Indians, whose chief dress was a breach clout and
deerskin leggings, formidable in their war-paint and war plumes,
with scalping-knives and tomahawks, were only partially held in
hand by Chief Brant, conspicuous by his height, his wampum fillet
and eagle plumes, and his King George's medal on his breast.
"Drive on to the village," said Major-General Sheaffe, who was now
chief in command, to Zenas as he passed. "You will find plenty to
do there."
At the house where Brock's body lay, a single sentry stood at
guard, his features settled in a fixed and stony stare, as though
by a resolute effort controlling his emotions. Beyond the village
a strong guard was drawn up, and two field pieces, with their
gunners, occupied the road.
Soldiers were passing in and out of a large barn which stood near
the roadside. They came in groups of two each from the trampled
hill slope, bearing on stretchers their ghastly burden of bleeding
and wounded men. Although coming within musket-range of the
American force, no molestation was offered. Their work of humanity
was felt to be too sacred for even red-handed War to disturb.
Indeed, both American and British wounded were cared for with
generous impartiality.
Zenas and Neville, assisted by an officer's orderly, conveyed
their hospital stores into the barn. On bundles of unthreshed
wheat, or on trusses of hay, were a number of writhing, groaning,
bleeding forms, a few hours since in the vigour of manhood's
strength, now maimed, some of them for life, some of them marked
for death, and one ghastly form already cold and rigid, covered by
a blood-stained sheet At one side they beheld an army surgeon with
his sleeves rolled up, but, notwithstanding this precaution,
smeared with blood, kneeling over a poor fellow who lay upon a
truss of hay, and probing his shoulder to trace and, if possible,
extract a bullet that had deeply penetrated.
"Why, Jim Larkins, is that you?" exclaimed Zenas, recognizing an
old neighbour and recent schoolfellow.
"Yes, Zenas, all that's left of me. I won't fight no more for one
while, I guess," he answered, as he moaned with agony as the
doctor probed the wound.
"Give him a drink," said the doctor, and Zenas, as tenderly as a
girl, supported his head and held to his parched lips a mug of
cold and refreshing tea.
"Blessings on the kind heart that sent that," said the wounded
man.
"It was Kate," said Zenas.
"I knowed it must be," murmured Jim, who was one of her rustic
admirers. "Tell her," he continued, in the natural egotism of
suffering, "she never did a better deed. Heaven reward her for
it."
Zenas thought of the benediction pronounced on the cup of cold
water given for the Master, and rejoiced in the privilege of
ministering to these wounded and, it might be, dying men.
"You'll have to lose your arm, my good fellow," said the doctor,
kindly, but in a business-like way, "the bone is badly shattered."
"I was afear'd o' that ever since I got hit. I was just a-takin'
aim when I missed my fire,--I didn't know why, didn't feel
nuthin', but I couldn't hold the gun. Old Jonas Evans, the Methody
local preacher, was aside me, a-prayin' like a saint and a-
fightin' like a lion. 'The Lord ha' mercy on his soul,' I heared
him say as he knocked a feller over. Well, he helped me out o' the
fight as tender as a woman, and then went at it again as fierce as
ever."
"Don't talk so much, my good follow," said the doctor, who had
been preparing ligatures to tie the arteries and arranging his
saw, knife, and tourniquet within reach. The operation was soon
over, Jim never flinching a bit. Indeed, during action, and for
some time after, the sensibilities seem, by the concurrent
excitement, mercifully deadened to pain.
"I'd have spared t'other one too, an' right willin'," said the
faithful fellow, "if it would have saved Brock."
Zenas, at the doctor's direction, held the poor fellow's shattered
arm till the amputation was complete. As the dissevered limb grew
cold in his hands, he seemed more distressed than its late owner.
Instead of laying it with some others near the surgeon's table, he
wrapped it tenderly, as though it still could feel, in a cloth,
and going out where a fatigue party were burying on the field of
battle--clad in their military dress, in waiting for the last
trump and the final parade at the great review--the victims of the
fight, he laid the dead arm reverently in the ground, and covered
it with its kindred clay. He thought of his sister's remark, about
preparing the shroud before death, but here was he burying part of
the body of a man who was yet alive.
Neville, meanwhile, had been speaking words of spiritual comfort
and counsel to the wounded and the dying, and receiving their last
faint-whispered messages to loved ones far away. He also read,
over the ghastly trench in which the dead were being buried--one
wide, long, common grave, in which lay side by side friend and
foe, those recently arrayed in battle with each other, slain by
mutual wounds, and now at rest and for ever--the solemn funeral
service. As he pronounced the words, "Dust to dust, ashes to
ashes," the earth was thrown on the uncoffined dead, and then over
the soldiers' grave their comrades fired their farewell volley and
again mounted guard against the foe.
Zenas received a lesson in surgery that day of which he found the
benefit more than once before the war was over. He was soon able
to apply one of Katharine's lint bandages or dress a wound with a
deftness that elicited the commendation not only of the subject of
his ministration, but even of the knight of the scalpel himself.
Neville, too, evinced no little skill in the surgeon's beneficent
art.
"Young Drayton," said the surgeon, "I think we shall have to
trespass on the hospitality of your house on behalf of Captain
Villiers, here. He has received a severe gunshot wound, from which
he will be some time in convalescing. I know no place where he
will be so comfortable, and I know the squire will make him
welcome."
"Of course he will," said Zenas, with alacrity. "He would make
even those wounded Yanks welcome, much more an officer of the
King."
While Neville remained to minister to the dying, Zenas made a
comfortable bed of hay in his now empty waggon, on which the
wounded captain was placed, with a wheat sheaf for a pillow, and
drove carefully to The Holms. He was preceded by a waggon
conveying a number of wounded soldiers to the military hospital at
Niagara. As this load of injured and anguished humanity was driven
down and up the steep sides of the ravine which crosses the road
to the north of the village, at every jolt over the rough stones a
groan of agony was wrung from the poor fellows, that made the
heart of Zenas ache with sympathy and when the team stopped at the
top of the hill, the blood ran from the waggon and stained the
ground. War did not seem to the boy such a glorious thing as when
he saw the gallant redcoats in the morning marching to the
stirring strains of the "British Grenadiers." The boy seemed to
have become a man in a few hours. Not less full of enthusiasm and
high courage, but more serious and grave, and never again was he
heard vapouring about the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war."
[Footnote: Accounts of several of the above-mentioned incidents
were gleaned from the conversation of an intelligent lady,
recently deceased, who, as a young girl, was an eye-witness of the
leading events of the war.]