THE MARCH THROUGH MAINE.
It was on Monday morning, September 11th, that Dick and Tom marched with
their fellow riflemen from Prospect Hill, bound first for Newburyport,
thence by sea for the mouth of the Kennebec River, and thence through
the Maine wilderness into Canada and to Quebec.
The little army of 1,100 men, consisting of the two Pennsylvania rifle
companies,--one from Cumberland County and one from Lancaster
County,--Captain Morgan's company of Virginia riflemen, and two
divisions of New England infantry, set forth in gay spirits. Its
commander, Col. Benedict Arnold, of Connecticut, had recently arrived in
Cambridge from his achievement with Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga, his
deeds on Lake Champlain, and his capture of St. John's. He was a short,
stout, ruddy, handsome man, with a face complacent but resolute. His
soldiers admired his bravery, and the most ungovernable of them yielded
to his great persuasiveness.
Dick found himself more immediately under the command of Capt. Daniel
Morgan, who led the division composed of all three rifle companies; a
large, strong man, whose usually severe mien softened on occasion into a
singularly kindly one; a rigid disciplinarian, impetuous yet sagacious,
easily aroused but soon calmed. Dick's own captain, William Hendricks,
was tall and noble-looking, gentle and heroic in face and heart. The two
lieutenants, John M'Cleland and Michael Simpson, were both old
acquaintances of Dick's, the former being notable for his openness of
character, the latter for his gaiety and his skill as a singer. Sergeant
Grier was a faithful, reliable man, whose stout and intrepid wife
accompanied him on the campaign and without difficulty kept the respect
of the soldiers. The Lancaster company's captain, Matthew Smith, was
soldierly and good-looking, but unlettered and turbulent. Two of his
best men were a pair of adventurous youths no older than
Dick,--Archibald Steele and John Joseph Henry.
Of the two New England divisions, one was under Lieutenant-Colonel
Christopher Greene, of Rhode Island, the other under Lieutenant-Colonel
Enos, of Connecticut. But Dick, on the march, came little in contact
with the Yankee troops.
Sleeping by the way on the first night of the expedition, the army
reached the little town of Newburyport on Tuesday, and camped here
several days, completing its equipment. It was joined here by several
volunteers, including two young men named Aaron Burr and Matthew Ogden,
and Colonel Arnold attached these two to his staff. On Monday afternoon,
September 18th, the army embarked on ten transports, which set sail in
the evening, and which, under a fair, strong breeze, reached the mouth
of the Kennebec at dawn. Continuing on the transports a short distance
up this river, to Gardiner, the army left them at Colonel Colborn's
ship-yard, and proceeded in two hundred bateaux to Fort Western,--on
whose site the city of Augusta was later built,--reaching that place on
Saturday, September 23d, having camped by the river during the nights.
Here Colonel Arnold sent forward a pioneer party to explore the river
and to blaze a way through the wilderness at each place where boats
could not navigate and where the men would have to go by land. Dick
openly envied the lucky fellows selected for this duty,--Steele, Henry,
four more of Smith's men, and three of Morgan's. As, from the camp on a
pine-clad slope, he watched them set out, he would have given much for a
place in one of their two light birch-bark canoes, each of which was
partly laden with pork, meal, and biscuit.
"Hoot toot, lad!" said MacAlister, divining the boy's feelings. "It's
work enough ye're like to have, whether ye gang before or behint, ere
ye set eyes on the inside of Quebec town!"
It was Dick's lot not to go behind. The rifle companies constituted the
van of the army, and set out from Fort Western in their bateaux a day in
advance of the second division, Greene's, which in turn by a day
preceded Eno's division, the third and last. This order was to be
maintained until the army should have gone some way up the Kennebec,
marched to that stream's branch, the Dead River, proceeded thereon, and
made thence to the Chaudiere, where all should unite for the advance on
Quebec. Colonel Arnold waited at Fort Western till the last division was
off, then took a canoe, with Indians at the paddles, passed the third
and second divisions, and overtook the advance at Norridgewock Falls, in
the country of the moose deer.
Dick now found himself in a wilderness more solitary and picturesque
than his own Pennsylvania forests. The last cabin of white settlers had
been left behind. Civilized habitation would not again be seen until the
army should reach the French settlements in Canada. The river, pursuing
a turbulent way among rocks and over cataracts, was set amidst solitudes
of fir-trees, hemlocks, birch, and other species, and these crowned the
eminences that rose now gently, and now abruptly, on every hand. Within
sound of the eternal tumult of Norridgewock Falls, were the ruins of a
deserted Indian village, and as Dick lay at night under his blanket on
his bed of evergreen branches, listening to the noise of the waterfall,
and of MacAlister's snoring, he would look through his tent opening and
imagine the ghosts of bygone red men, or that of the good French priest,
Father Ralle, who had come to this village in 1698, and been killed when
a party from Massachusetts suddenly attacked the place in 1724.
It was the task of Dick and his fellow riflemen to open the way, remove
impediments from the streams, learn the fords, explore the portages or
carrying-places where, the waters not being navigable, the boats had to
be carried over land, and free these last of obstructions. For this work
their attire was more suitable than was such garb as Dick had discarded
on joining them; it consisted of hunting-cap, flannel shirt, cloth or
buckskin breeches, buckskin leggings, moccasins, and outside
hunting-shirt of brown linsey-woolsey, with a belt in which a knife and
a tomahawk were carried. Each of Morgan's men wore on his cap a
front-piece inscribed with the words, "Liberty or Death." This ever
present reminder to the men, of the cause for which they toiled and
suffered, came not amiss. It was not from the rifle companies that the
desertions occurred, which united with swamp-fever and fatigue to
reduce the army to fewer than a thousand able men before October 13th.
Dick soon realized the truth of old Tom's prediction concerning hard
work. At the times when some of the men marched along the river banks,
while some forced the bad and heavy bateaux, with their loads of
provisions and other supplies, up the rapid stream, the lot of the
former, struggling through thickets and swamps and over rocks, was no
worse than the lot of the latter, wading and pushing against the
current, which oftentimes upset or swamped their boats, and damaged
provisions, arms, and ammunition. More than once a whole day was spent
in getting around some single cataract, the men unloading the cargoes,
carrying them--and sometimes the boats also--on their shoulders, then
relaunching and reloading for another tug against the swift stream.
Before the Great Portage, from the Kennebec to the Dead River, had been
traversed, Dick was inured to the life of an amphibious being, as well
as to that of some swamp-infesting animal or of some inhabitant of the
underbrush. His breeches and leggings were torn almost from his legs by
thickets, which spared not the skin under them, and below the hips he
was thoroughly water-soaked. But he still slept and ate well, there
being at this time plenty of trout and salmon in the ponds and streams,
with which to eke out the diet of pork, meal-cakes, and biscuit. As yet
the weather, though cold at night, caused no suffering to a youth of
Dick's hardiness, or to a veteran as well seasoned as MacAlister.
"I prophesy that will be the langest fifteen mile ye'll often gang
over," said Old Tom, when he and Dick came to a halt at last on the bank
of the Dead River, having put behind them the Great Portage and its
three intervening lakelets, after days of dragging and pushing of boats
over a rough ridge, and through ponds and bogs. "I gather from offeecial
sources," continued the Fiddler, "that we're like to reach the Chaudiere
River in eight or ten days, though I hae my doots, seeing it's mony a
mile up this river we'll be ganging, and then over God knows what kind
of country after that. Weel, weel, lad, it's Quebec or nothing now, if
ye hauld out, for devil a bit will ony mon of us gang willingly back
over the road we've come by!"
So jubilant were the men at having overcome the difficulties of the
great carrying-place, that they whistled and jested as they launched
their boats on the sluggish waters of the Dead River. They acted as if
the end of their journey were in sight. Colonel Arnold had already sent
an Indian messenger to General Schuyler, whose army from the province of
New York had in August started under Montgomery from Ticonderoga to
enter Canada below Montreal and eventually unite with Arnold's force
before Quebec. The colonel thought to receive an answer to this letter
on arriving at the Chaudiere.
"It's a blithe lot of men, true for ye, wi' their whistling and
capering," said old Tom, in an undertone, as he and Dick stood
recovering their breath after much pulling and shoving of boats. "All
looks weel and bonny the day, but ye maun put nae trust in appearances.
Do ye moind, ayont Curritunk, afore we left the Kennebec, how ye steppit
sae merrily on the green moss that seemed to cover level ground for sae
lang a stretch, and how ye found 'twas rotten bog beneath the surface,
and full of them snags that tripped ye up and cut your feet in the
devil's ain way? Mony's the mon like that,--and woman, too!"
Up the Dead River for eighty-three miles the army proceeded, the
riflemen still leading. Seventeen times they had to unload their boats
and carry the loads past places that were not navigable. On this part of
the journey the men were assailed by rains and cold weather. Lieutenant
M'Cleland, more fragile in body than in spirit, was one of many whose
constitutions began to yield to these assaults. With a cold in the
lungs, he toiled on, performing his duties and refusing aid, until his
increasing weakness compelled him to relinquish the former and accept
the latter, on his comrades' insistence and his captain's orders. When
the chosen route departed from the Dead River, to cross a mountain,
M'Cleland was placed on a litter and so carried forward.
"If I can only hold out till we enter Quebec!" he said from his litter,
one bleak, drizzling day, while Captain Hendricks, Dick, MacAlister, and
others bore him up the wooded mountain-side,--for the captain took his
turn at the litter with the others.
Captain Hendricks cheerily said there could be no doubt of that, and
Lieutenant Simpson, who happened to be walking immediately behind the
litter, predicted that the sufferer would begin to mend as soon as the
troops should reach the Chaudiere, and reminded him, for the tenth time,
that a boat was being carried across the mountain purposely to take him
down that river while his comrades should march along the banks.
The lieutenant brightened up at this reassurance that he was not to be
left behind,--as more than one ailing man had necessarily been,--and,
turning his eyes to Dick, said:
"Do you remember the morning, Dick, when I galloped up to your house
with the news of the beginning of this business? How long ago that
seems, and how far away!" His voice had sunk, and he was silent and
thoughtful for a moment. Then he resumed, with as much cheerfulness as
his weakened state would allow him to show, "We didn't imagine
ourselves, that morning, marching into Quebec together, as we shall be
before many a day!"
Dick's answer was prevented by a fit of coughing on M'Cleland's part,
after which the sufferer closed his eyes and went into a feverish doze.
Old Tom glanced down at him, and for a moment looked grimmer than
usually.
Before starting to cross this mountain, which was one of the great
snow-covered chain running northeastwardly, Colonel Arnold and the first
division had camped at the base to rest. The tents had been flooded by
heavy rains and by sudden torrents from the mountains. The inundation
had upset several boats, destroyed provisions, and dampened the spirits
as well as the bodies of the men. Rations were shortened, and the
dejecting news went round that there remained a journey of twelve or
fifteen days in a wilderness devoid of supplies. After consulting with
the officers on the ground, Arnold sent orders back to Colonel Greene
and Colonel Enos to bring forward as many men as they could furnish with
fifteen days' provisions, and to send the rest of their forces back to
Norridgewock. These orders despatched, Arnold and the riflemen started
on their march across the mountain.
Drenched with rain at the outset, they were soon chilled by wintry
winds, and presently impeded by snow and ice. But at last the crest of
the mountain no longer crossed the bleak sky ahead. Valleys, set with
icy streams and frozen lakes, came into view, their sombreness not
lessened by the color of their dark evergreens. The down-hill and
cross-country march of the scantily fed men brought them at last to Lake
Megantic, the source of the Chaudiere. Here they met a courier whom
Colonel Arnold had sent ahead to the valley of the Chaudiere to sound
the French _habitans_, whose humble farms would be the first human
abodes reached in Canada. This emissary said that the peasants would
give the American army a hospitable reception. Colonel Arnold thereupon
chose to precede the army down the Chaudiere, with a foraging party,
that he might obtain and send back supplies and also have provisions
collected for the army's use on its arrival at the habitations. He
therefore caused the little remaining food to be given out equally to
the companies, ordered them to follow as best they could to the
Chaudiere settlements, and set out with a birch canoe and five bateaux.
In the colonel's party was Archibald Steele, with whose pioneer force
the riflemen had reunited at the Dead River, and whom Dick, compelled as
before to remain behind with the main advance, again had reason to envy.
"Whist, lad!" quoth old Tom. "The post of honor, ye'll find, is back
where the starving will be. There'll be low spirits henceforth, I'm
thinking, and waurk for the fiddle, hearting up the men when they've
leetle dourness left to fa' back on and it's devil a bit of difference
whether they live or die. Lord, Lord! It's a gang of living ghaists we
are, Dickie. Wi' the clothes of us torn to flinders by the stanes and
briars, and wi' nowt left to our shoes but the tops, we'd do fine to
scare away the crows from the corn fields in a ceevilized country. Sure,
the wind is like to pull the tatters frae our backs, and make us a
shocking sight to the ladies when we march in triumph into Quebec!"
"If we ever get to Quebec," said a soldier, dismally, who had overheard
Tom's last words.
"We'll get to Quebec!" said Dick, positively; and he involuntarily put
back his hand and felt his queue.
Dick now went to speak to his friend M'Cleland, who had been placed in a
boat, which was to be navigated across the lake and down the Chaudiere
by Sergeant Grier and several others.
"Mind you land him safe!" called out the sergeant's buxom wife, as the
boat moved off; and the sergeant replied he would do his best.
"I'm afraid the poor lieutenant finds it a long way to Quebec," said
Mrs. Grier, taking place in the line of riflemen as it started for the
Chaudiere by land.
"It's a lang way for some more of us," replied Tom MacAlister, who
marched behind her. "There's that puir blind Shafer, the drummer in the
Lancaster company. Look at him now, yonder. It's ten to one he can't see
a dozen foot ahead of his nose, yet he's always in his place, next man
to one ahint Captain Smith,--except when he fa's into a bog, through
lack of eyesight. It must be the sense of hearing keeps him sae straight
after the heels of young Henry afore him. Sure, if every man was like
him, Captain Morgan would never have to look black and curse inside
because of stragglers from the camp."
"It's a sin," said Mrs. Grier, "the tricks the men play on him, stealing
his cakes away from under his very eyes. Och! there he goes now,
tumbling off the log into the gully, drum and all! You're right,
MacAlister,--the way to Quebec is a long one to Shafer, the drummer."
"Yet I'd wager a pound or two, if I had it," said Tom, "the puir, blind,
naked, hungry body will be beating his drum at Quebec, when mony a stout
rascal that laughs at him now will be sleeping here in these gullies wi'
the bitter wind for bed-covering."
The troops came presently to a pond, which would require so wide a
detour to skirt, that the far shorter way was to cross it. Trying the
ice that covered it, the men found that too thin to bear their weight.
With dogged resignation, they began to break the ice with their guns,
and waded in. Mrs. Grier raised her skirts above her waist and followed
the man ahead, through the chilling water, to the opposite shore. Dick
and Tom waded immediately after her. No one offered either smile or
comment. On the tired troops marched, in Indian file, hungry, shivering,
aching, each man feeling that the next step might be his last.
When they reached the Chaudiere, many of the riflemen did not wait for
the order to halt, but exhaustedly sank to the frosty ground in line.
Tom, always respecting discipline, trudged on till the word came,
followed through force of example by Dick; and then these two also
dropped in their places.
"Chaudiere," said MacAlister, glancing down that stream. "That means
caldron, and frae the look of things down yonder I won't gainsay the
fitness of the name. It's unco' wild navigation we're like to have, down
that there boiling torrent, I'm thinking!"
And so it proved, when an attempt was made to launch boats. Every one
that was put into the river was stove in by rocks, on being hurled
forward by the rapids. But Captain Morgan persisted, until he had lost
all of his boats. The ammunition, arms, and other equipments were
thereupon taken up by the men, who proceeded along the banks of the
turbulent stream.
It happened that Dick and Tom were at the front of the division, when
they turned the corner of a projecting rock, and came unexpectedly on a
group that stood around a fire, beside which a man was lying. It
required but a glance to inform Dick that this group consisted of
Sergeant Grier's party and that the man on the ground was Lieutenant
M'Cleland. The sight of a damaged boat, and of a rock near the verge of
a cataract, told the story,--that the boat had lodged on the rock, and
that the men had managed to bring the feeble lieutenant ashore in time
to save him from speedy death. In a moment Dick was kneeling at his
side, whither he was soon followed by Captain Hendricks and Lieutenant
Simpson.
"It was a foolish thing to let you go by the river," said Hendricks to
the prostrate man, whose breath came in quick, feeble movements, and
whose weather-browned features had an ashy pallor.
"We'll carry you on as we did over the mountain,--all the way to
Quebec," said Dick, pressing M'Cleland's hand.
But the lieutenant merely smiled faintly, took on a look of drowsy
resignation, essayed to shake his head, and whispered the word,
"Farewell!" Dick had to yield the hand he held, and his place by his
friend's side, that his captain and certain of his comrades might clasp
the hand once ere it should be cold. Even as Dick was thinking of the
sunny April morning when his friend had ridden up, all life and
animation, with the news of Lexington, the soldier sighed his last
farewell.
When the troops took up their march and left the dead man there, as they
had left many another in those bleak wilds, Dick had a moment of
heart-sickness, when all seemed dark before him, and when he wished that
he and M'Cleland might be back in their Pennsylvania valley, and that
there had never been a war.
"Heart up, lad!" came over his shoulder, softly, the voice of old Tom.
"It's mony a friend ye'll leave cauld by the wayside ere ye come to lie
there cauld yoursel'. Ye'll learn to keep looking forward, as ye gang
over the hills and far away. Sae hauld up your head, and swallow your
Adam's apple, and fasten your mind's eye on Quebec!"
And Dick braced himself and did so.
By the 29th of October the last mouthful of meat was eaten and the last
biscuit gone. A little flour remained, and this was divided equally,
each man receiving five pounds. This they boiled in kettles of water,
without salt, into what they called a bleary, subsequently eating it out
of the wooden bowls around each one of which several half-numb fellows
sat or lay at meals. At such times, those who were not reduced to a
state of wretched apathy or speechless despair, discussed the
probabilities of their ever receiving food from Colonel Arnold's advance
party, or of their perishing in the chill wilderness. Many were the
growlers and foreboders of evil.
"Bedad," said Tom MacAlister, after two or three of these had been
having their say, "ye put me in mind of the complaining children of
Israel, though it's far waur than them ye be, for they had forty years
in the wilderness afore ivver they set sight on the Promised Land."
"Ay," replied one of the malcontents, "but the Lord sent them manna from
heaven, whereas he sends us only rain and snow and wind. And who can say
for certain when we shall catch sight of our Moses again, eh, boys?"
Suspicions like this, real or pretended, that their leader had deserted
or even betrayed them, were plentiful among these troops, as they were,
indeed, throughout the American armies during most of the war for
independence. It was by making men forget these thoughts, or ashamed of
them, that the example of uncomplaining endurance set by Dick, and the
soldierly conduct and musical performances of old Tom, were of great use
to the officers in holding the troops to their weary task. At night an
immense fire was made, and, while the men lay around it to warm their
bodies, MacAlister fiddled and Lieutenant Simpson sang for them. The
lieutenant had a rich, manly voice, and as many songs at command as Tom
had tunes,--songs of war, comic songs, songs of love,--and his voice and
that of Tom's fiddle, rising above the crackling of the fire, made
sounds unwonted in that wintry wilderness accustomed only to the murmur
of waters and the howling of winds.
The last pinch of flour found its way into the pot and thence into some
half famished stomach. The men's lives now depended entirely on the
arrival of supplies from Colonel Arnold's foraging party before
starvation could complete its work. After going a day unfed, MacAlister
and Dick boiled their leather cartouch-boxes in the pot, drank the
broth, and afterward chewed up the leather. The next day they discussed
the advisability of following the example of some of the other riflemen,
who had boiled their moccasins and leggings. Wandering through the camp,
while off duty, they came to a startled halt, at sight of a number of
men actually eating some roasted meat. Partaking speedily of this feast,
on invitation, Dick, not recognizing the flavor of the flesh, asked what
it was.
"Whist, lad," said old Tom, tearing the meat from a bone with his teeth,
"be content with what Providence sends, and discipline your curiosity.
Ye'll no relish your supper the better for speering."
But the men's talk soon disclosed that the meat was of Captain
Dearborn's Newfoundland dog, which had been an army pet. Dick ate no
more that evening, but the next day, drawn irresistibly to the same
mess, he accepted a ladleful of greenish broth, which, the men told him,
had been made of the dog's bones, these having been pounded up for the
purpose.
"He's all gone now, poor fellow," said one of the men; "even the insides
of him, and Lord knows when we'll eat next!"
On the march, the troops came to a place where the Chaudiere swept a
smooth beach, through which protruded parts of sand-roots. At sight of
these, many of the men broke madly from the file, dug out the roots with
their fingers, and ravenously ate them on the spot.
Captain Morgan, sharing without exemption the sufferings of the men, was
no less severe against insubordination during this starving time than he
had formerly been. His rigid yet fair rule, and the kindly and tactful
authority of Hendricks, kept the men moving along towards the distant
goal, however listlessly and hopelessly some of them went. As for the
Lancaster company, if Captain Smith was unduly boisterous, his men had
before them such examples of unquenchable spirit as young Henry, and of
unwearying patience as Shafer, the half blind drummer. But it was, on
the whole, a despairing band of haggard and half naked men that moved
at crawling pace along the rocky Chaudiere.
"The farther we march, the farther away seems the Promised Land,"
muttered the man whom old Tom had once likened to the murmuring children
of Israel.
MacAlister, who had begun to limp, for the once made no answer, and
Dick, toiling heavily along behind him, had to clench his teeth and
think of the girl in Quebec, to keep from succumbing to the general
despair.
Suddenly, from the tree-hidden distance in front, came a sound that made
every man's head go up in eager, half-incredulous joy. It was the lowing
of cattle.
The troops pushed rapidly forward, every ear and eye alert. When a clear
space was reached, and a few men of Colonel Arnold's party, with some
Canadians and Indians, were seen coming up the river with a herd of
cattle, several of the soldiers shrieked wildly, others laughed like
lunatics, many wept like women, and some rushed forward and threw their
arms around the great brown necks of the cattle. Dick smiled and cheered
and waved his hat, and old Tom's face warmed for a moment into a
gratified grin. In after years both often used to say that the
joyfullest sight of their lives was that of these cattle coming up the
river on that wintry day in the wilderness.
While they ate, around their camp-fire, they heard how Arnold's party
had fared, how three of its boats had been dashed to pieces on the way
down the Chaudiere, the cargoes lost, the crews put in great peril of
their lives, one boat-load of men nearly thrown over a cataract; how the
party was cordially received at Sertigan, the nearest French settlement,
whose first house Arnold had reached on the night of October 30th, and
how he had started provisions back towards the army early the next
morning.
It was two o'clock on Saturday afternoon, November 4th, when the
riflemen, having swiftly waded mid-deep through a wide stream that
flowed from the east, came in sight of the first house they beheld in
Canada, a small, squat, wooden building, which, with its barn and little
outhouses, had a look of snugness and comfort all the greater for the
bleak surroundings. The men rushed forward to it joyfully, and found
that Colonel Arnold had laid in a great quantity of food.
Stared at curiously by the wool-clad Canadian family of seven persons,
the famished troops ate voraciously, cramming their throats with boiled
beef, hot bread, and boiled or roasted potatoes. Warned by MacAlister,
Dick restrained his appetite and fed but moderately. Within a few hours
he realized the value of old Tom's admonition, for many of the men
sickened from the sudden repletion and some died of it. The army now had
not only supplies but also a reinforcement, which consisted of the
Abenaqui chief, Natanis, with his brother, Sebatis, and several of his
tribe, all these Indians having distantly accompanied the troops,
unseen, from the Dead River. They had feared that, in the wilderness,
the army might receive them as enemies. These allies were welcomed as
compensating slightly for the defection of the entire third division,
which, through the misunderstanding or disobedience of Enos, had gone
back in its entirety, with the medicine-chest and a large stock of
provisions, when Arnold had ordered its incapacitated men returned to
Norridgewock.
The army made a halt at the French settlements, while Colonel Arnold
distributed among the Canadians a printed manifesto furnished him by
General Washington, of which the purpose was to enlist Canadians to the
cause of the revolted colonies. On the 7th of November the two
divisions, now together and numbering only six hundred men, were four
leagues from the St. Lawrence. Hope and expectation had reawakened.
Around the camp-fire that night there were conjectures as to how and
when the attack on Quebec would be made; as to how it was at present
garrisoned and fortified; as to what the army from New York, under
Schuyler and Montgomery, must have done by this time in the vicinity of
Montreal; as to when Colonel Arnold should receive replies to the
messages he had sent by Indians to those commanders; as to when the two
armies would unite; as to which side would be taken by the different
elements of Canada's population,--the old French aristocracy, the
Catholic priesthood, the French peasants, the few British and Irish
immigrants who had come in since the English had taken the country from
the French. Thus far, the humble _habitans_, at least, had given the
Americans kindly welcome, calling them _nos pauvres freres_ and refusing
payment for lodging and food in their little farmhouses. Again and again
was told the story of Wolfe's victory in '59, and it was questioned
whether the American commanders would ascend to the Heights of Abraham
to attack, as he had done, or would assail the city on some other side.
Arnold's boldly outlined, resolute countenance, with the fire in the
eyes, and the look of inward planning, had the prophetic aspect of
victory, and throughout the little army confidence grew apace.
Lieutenant Simpson's voice and Tom MacAlister's fiddle now sounded out
blithely. Even the cold was less heeded. A deeply thrilling expectancy
glowed in Dick, making him view things about him as in a kind of dream.
"Sure, the Promised Land seems to be coming into sight, after all," said
old Tom, to the grumbler who marched ahead of him. The army had broken
camp and was marching towards the St. Lawrence.
"Who said it wasn't?" queried the other; but he added, a moment later,
"Though we haven't set foot on it yet, and as for what's in sight, all I
can see ahead is woods, with a parcel of ragged walking corpses trailing
through."
They were, indeed, a procession of sorry-looking creatures. Unkempt,
ill-shaven, limping from footsoreness, bending forward from the habit
induced by fatigue, sunken of cheek, haggard of eye and feature, half
naked, many of them barefoot, bearing their rifles and baggage as heavy
burdens, they were an army more fitted to appall by their ghastly aspect
than by military formidableness. So they plodded through the forest.
On Thursday, November 9th, blinking their eyes at the sudden light as
they emerged from the shades, Dick and MacAlister stepped out in file
from the woods, presently came to a halt, drawn up in line with the
little army, and stood staring in a kind of stupid wonder at the scene
before them,--first a clear space sloping gradually, next a wide river
flowing tranquilly, a few vessels moored in the river, then some houses
and walls massed irregularly at the base of high cliffs, and finally, at
the top of these cliffs, a huddle of fortifications, towers, spires, and
roofs, and, over all else, the flag of England.
"'Tis Quebec, lad!" said old Tom, in a singularly dry tone, little above
a whisper; "the Promised Land!"
Dick made no answer, but stood gazing with moistened eyes, unable to
speak for the emotion that stirred within him.