CHESTNUT NECK
“The sky
Is overcast, and musters muttering thunder.” —Byron.
“I heard the wrack,
As earth and sky would mingle.” —Milton.
The Neck was a tongue of land, which, jutting out into the tide, and
surrounded on two sides by salt marshes, formed the last piece of solid
ground as the voyager descended the river. As the crow flies, this point
was but a few miles from the bay. But the navigator, after leaving the
Neck, practically had to conquer many a weary league before he reached
the Atlantic, the stream winding, in sinuous turns, in and out among the
low meadows, before it finally attained its destination.
On this bit of fast land a few scattering houses had been built, the
principal one being about a hundred yards from the water’s edge.
Corn-fields extended for some distance inland, where they were met by
dense woods, which stretched on both sides, wherever there was solid
ground, as far as the eye could see. A few fine old chestnut trees,
growing in a clump near the extreme end of the point, made the spot a
land-mark, visible for miles up and down the stream.
The neck of land formed, on its upper side, a little bay, in which were
now disposed about thirty dismantled merchant vessels. Bales of goods
were piled upon the shore, as if just unloaded; while others were being
hurried into the neighboring store-houses. At least five hundred men
were already collected, when Major Gordon reached the rendezvous. They
were all busy, for those who were not engaged in securing the cargos of
the prizes, were occupied in throwing up a rude earthen breastwork for
the defence of the place.
Among the first to welcome our hero was the old waterman, Mullen, whom
the reader will recollect as having been with him, when Kate was rescued
from the wreck. Charley Newell was also there, but came forward more
coyly, and blushed like any girl when the Major complimented him for his
conduct on that occasion.
From these old comrades our hero learned that the express rider had
preceded him several hours; that intelligence had already reached the
settlements on both sides of the river; and that the privateers had made
good their escape. Nothing, as yet, had been seen of the British.
Meantime, the whole country was rising, and Mullen predicted that,
before four and twenty hours, a thousand men would rendezvous at the
Neck.
“There’s no danger of surprise?” said Major Gordon,
interrogatively.
“We know the cut of every sail on the river,” said Mullen, “and
can tell a strange one miles off. There isn’t a child even,
hereabouts, who can’t say whether a craft is ours or not, a’most as
soon as he can pint out a gray-back or a millet. The river makes a wide
sweep, as maybe you may remember, just below here, so that what’s but
a mile right across the mash hereaway, is a matter of three miles as the
water runs. You can see a sail an hour or more before she can reach the
Neck.”
Satisfied on this point, and having posted sentinels at every proper
point, so as to provide against being surprised in the darkness, Major
Gordon dismissed his command to their quarters soon after night-fall;
and directly hundreds of men, fatigued by a hurried march, or a day of
severe labor in storing goods, were fast asleep, bivouacking around him.
Slumber was not, however, for his eyes. Though he scarcely expected an
attack before the following day, even if then, the anxiety natural to
his position kept him awake. He paced slowly up and down, hour after
hour, under the shadows of the chestnut trees, now listening to the
sentry’s cry of “all’s well,” and now to the low plash of the
tide as it swept past the point. Or he stood, with folded arms, cooling
his heated brow in the night air, or gazing dreamily over the vast and
silent expanse of salt meadows between him and the ocean, as they were
vaguely seen in the starlight. Occasionally he went the rounds
personally. At other times, he leaned against one of the old chestnuts,
and gave himself up to reflection, Kate dividing his thoughts nearly
equally with the responsibilities of his command.
The morning dawned, close and misty. The fog hung low and thick over the
marshes, or lay packed, like aerial fleeces, upon the stream. Now and
then a faint breeze would wave it gently, as when a light curtain is
stirred by the wind; and here and there it eddied and undulated,
apparently without cause. The atmosphere was warm, almost stifling.
“An enemy might steal on us now, like a thief in the night,” was
Uncle Lawrence’s morning salutation to Major Gordon. “The fog’s so
thick it looks as if one might cut it with a knife.”
“It’s a’most as bad as the fogs off Newfoundland,” put in
Mullen, coming up, “where the Marblehead fishermen have a saying they
can make steps in ‘em, as if they were rock. Ha! ha!”
“When I was at Newport,” remarked Major Gordon, joining in the humor
of the moment, “in the beginning of the war—and Newport’s famous
for its fogs, you know—they told me the girls used to hang their heads
out of the windows, whenever there was a fog, to bleach their
complexions; and certainly the ladies there look almost like
wax-work.” And thus speaking, he laughingly passed on.
“Like wax-work!” said Mullen, contemptuously. “Give me an honest
tan on the face. A woman ain’t good for much that can’t dig
potatoes, or maybe hold a plough a bit, while her husband’s out a
fishin’. In these parts, at any rate, a man don’t want a wife that
he has to keep in a glass case.”
“Every one to his taste,” interposed Uncle Lawrence. “Now
there’s Miss Aylesford would stand but a poor chance digging potatoes
with them white little hands of hern, yet she’s a brave gal for all
that, as you know, Mr. Mullen.”
“Ay, ay, that do I. Lord A’mighty, how beautiful she looked, when
she ran for’ard on that ere wreck to cast off the cable. What a pictur
she’d a made. There’s nothing in my old woman’s family Bible as
fine.”
As the day wore on, the fog lifted, and Major Gordon’s anxiety was
relieved by discovering no signs of the foe. Aware of his as yet
insufficient means of defence, he wished to postpone the struggle as
long as possible. For though he had several hundred men under his
command, and though the number was hourly being augmented, they were
wholly undisciplined, and the breastwork, which might have aided him
materially, was still unfinished.
Meantime, he urged forward the construction of the fortification, often
personally assisting the laborers. He hoped, by another day, to have the
defences finished, in which case he thought he could make good his post,
even if Pulaski should fail to come up. Nevertheless, he was not
over-sanguine. For the thousand disciplined soldiers, marines, and
sailors, whom the British were despatching against him, were not to be
despised by a brave and prudent commander. Two-thirds of his men had
never seen fire; and though their patriotism was unquestionable, no
leader, he well knew, could count certainly on such troops.
When, at last, noon arrived, and the fortifications were pronounced
half-finished, and when, having swept the river below with his glass, no
enemy was seen, Major Gordon went to his meal with something like
relief.
Clouds had been hovering all day, however, around the horizon,
portending rain; and more than once low growls of thunder had come up
faintly from the distance. While the men were at dinner, the threatening
vapors culminated, and a storm, as sudden as it was violent, broke upon
the little camp. The Major was seated at his meal, in the “best
parlor” of the principal dwelling, when his attention was aroused by
the unexpected darkness that fell across the room. Almost immediately
there came a rush of wind, which dashed the sand against the window-pane
like showers of fine shot, while the enormous chestnuts were heard
swaying and moaning as if twisted and tortured almost beyond their
powers of endurance. Rushing to the casement he saw the air filled with
a ghastly dust, through which the light looked lurid, as if the Judgment
Day had come. The young saplings were bending like reeds; while some
cattle, which had been driven into the camp to be slaughtered, had
broken loose, and now ran wildly about, tearing up the loose soil and
bellowing in affright: and overhead, the birds, scared from their
noontide shelter, flew hither and thither blindly.
All at once a dead silence fell upon the scene. The wind ceased as if by
the command of some fell magician. This quiet was, however, even more
awful than the preceding turmoil. It was, indeed, as if all things had
come to their last gasp, and earth wanted but the word to dissolve
forever. Suddenly this ominous stillness was broken by a terrific clap
of thunder bursting almost overhead. Simultaneously a vivid streak of
lightning, that filled the whole room with dazzling light, and blinded
Major Gordon for a moment, shot to the ground just in front of the
garden fence; the earth opened, ploughed up for yards on either side by
the red bolt, and then, while a dense smoke rose, or seemed to the dizzy
eyesight to rise from the spot, the house apparently rocked to its
foundations, and the firmament shook, while peal on peal reverberated
into the distance, as if thousands of artillery wagons were jolting at
full gallop down the pavement of heaven.
Involuntarily Major Gordon sprang back from the window, while the
servant girl, who had been waiting on him, ran screaming from the room,
crying that the end of the world had come. Then a rushing sound was
heard, and a burst of rain followed, as if the windows of the sky had
been opened, the rain dancing on the road in huge drops, and hissing as
though it fell on a furnace. Hail was soon mixed with the descending
water, which now poured down in sheeted cataracts, and with the roar of
an avalanche. The icy particles, as big as hazel-nuts, rattled on the
roof like buckshot, cracked the frail glass of the window-panes, and
heaped themselves up in the ruts, like pebbles left by a mountain
torrent. The trees once more bent in the driving gale, and the rain,
swept almost horizontally along, smoked over the fast land and vanished
in clouds of gray mist across the distant marshes.
For more than an hour, the rain continued to fall. The fury of the
tempest, however, began to subside long before that period had elapsed.
At last Major Gordon ventured out. The storm had crossed the country
diagonally, and was now moving towards the Atlantic, its gloomy mass
extending along the eastern horizon and far up towards the zenith, black
as a funeral hearse and procession. No sable pall could have descended
more wall-like, over the salt marshes and river below the Neck, than did
the ebon clouds of the tempest. Continually, down this inky curtain,
crinkled the zig-zag lightning, its white-heat blaze irradiating all
around for an instant, and then leaving it seemingly duskier than
before. Wherever the storm came down, in this way, on the river, a murky
glare fringed its lower edge, diffusing a ghostly reflection on the
troubled waves in front of it. Every few minutes the thunder boomed from
out of this black ominous mass, sounding fainter as the storm receded,
however, until at last it subsided into a low, sullen growl, as when a
baffled lion retires reluctantly into the night before the hunters.
Suddenly, around the nearest bend of the river, a fleet of boats was
seen advancing towards the Neck. The rowers were evidently men-of-wars
men; while intermingled among them were the red coats of British
soldiers and the caps of British marines. The whole number of the boats
was not less than thirty, and Major Gordon, at a hasty glance, estimated
the entire force of the assailants at nearly a thousand.
The enemy had approached undetected, under cover of the tempest, and in
consequence of having no sails; and was now within a quarter of a mile.
Not a minute was to be lost in preparing for defence. Our hero,
therefore, hurriedly ordered the alarm to be sounded, and began to
marshal his men, eager to do the best he could to avert the consequences
of this surprise.