THE FIRST CAPTURE
OR
_Hauling Down the Flag of England_
BY HARRY CASTLEMON
_Author of "The Gunboat Series," "Houseboat Series,"
"War Series," Etc., Etc._
_ILLUSTRATED_
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING CO.
NEW YORK AKRON, O. CHICAGO
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING CO.
CONTENTS.
Chapter Page
I. The Battle of Lexington 5
II. Enoch's Home 18
III. Zeke Lewis 30
IV. Zeke's Proposition 42
V. A Rebellion in the Court-room 56
VI. Getting ready for the Fray 69
VII. The Bucket of Yeast 82
VIII. Under Way 95
IX. The "Aggressive" Tory 108
X. A Visit to the Jail 121
XI. A Plan that did not Work 133
XII. Different Opinions 145
XIII. The Cheer 158
XIV. The Chase 171
XV. Hauling down the Flag of England 183
XVI. After the Battle 196
XVII. Zeke's Exhibition of Strength 209
XVIII. What to do with the Schooner 222
XIX. Conclusion 235
THE FIRST CAPTURE
CHAPTER I.
THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON.
It happened on the morning of the 9th day of May. The little village of
Machias in the far away colony of Maine was lively enough as far as
fishing towns go, but on this particular time it was in a regular
turmoil. Men had jumped up leaving their breakfast half eaten and ran
out bareheaded to gather round a courier, who, sitting on a horse that
had his head down and his flanks heaving as if he were almost exhausted,
was telling them of a fight which had occurred just twenty days before.
There was nothing to indicate that the men were excited except their
pale faces and clenched hands, but the looks they turned upon one
another had a volume of meaning in them. What had the messenger to
communicate that had incited such a feeling among those who listened to
him? He was describing the battle of Lexington which had been fought and
won by the patriots on the 19th day of April. We did not have any
telegraph in those days, and the only way the people could hold
communication with one another was by messengers, mounted on fleet
horses, who rode from village to village with the news.
The courier was so impatient to tell what he knew that he could not talk
fast enough, but the substance of his story was as follows:
General Gage, the commander of the British troops who were
quartered in Boston about this time, had become a tyrant in the
eyes of the people. When spring opened he had a force of three
thousand five hundred men. Boston was the headquarters of the
rebellion. He determined with this force to nip the insurrection in
the bud, and his first move was to seize and destroy the stores of
the patriots at Concord, a little village located about six miles
from Lexington. To carry out this plan he sent forth eight hundred
men under the command of Colonel Smith and Major Pitcairn with
orders to "seize, burn and otherwise render useless" everything in
the shape of munitions of war that they could find. He supposed he
went about it secretly, but the ever-vigilant patriots were awake
to all his movements. A watch was established at Concord, and
everywhere the minute-men were ready with "burnished muskets,
fixed bayonets, and well-filled cartouches."
They left Boston about midnight, but it so happened that the minute-men
became aware of their expedition almost as soon as it was ready to
start. Paul Revere was there and ready to undertake his famous midnight
ride. No sooner was the trampling of soldiers heard than two lights were
hung in the steeple of Christ Church in Charlestown. Paul Revere saw the
lights, and he forthwith mounted his horse and started to carry the
warning to every village in Middlesex.[1] The British did not see the
beacon fire blazing above them, but marched away silent and still,
arresting everybody that came in their way "to prevent the intelligence
of their expedition being given."
[Footnote 1:
"He said to a friend, 'If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the Old North Tower as a signal light--
One if by land, two if by sea,
And I on the opposite shore will be
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm
For the country folk to be up and to arm.'"]
As the day began to dawn in the east the British reached Lexington, and
there they found a company of minute-men gathered on the green. To say
that they were amazed at the sight would be putting it very mildly; but
Major Pitcairn, after a short consultation with his superior officer,
rode up and flourished his sword as if he meant to annihilate the
minute-men then and there. His officers followed him and his troops came
close behind him in double quick time. But the patriots stood their
ground, and the redcoats shouted angrily at them--
"Disperse, you villains! Lay down your arms! Why don't you disperse, you
rebels?"
But our men had not come out there to be dispersed by shouting. Utterly
ignorant of the ways of civilized warfare they continued to hold their
ground, and for a time it looked as though there was going to be
bloodshed sure enough. Major Pitcairn did not care to come too close to
them but wheeled his horse, discharged his pistol and shouted "Fire!"
and the British obeyed him. The front rank fired, and when the smoke
cleared away, seven men, the first martyrs of the Revolution, were found
weltering in their blood. That was too much for the patriots. They did
not suppose that the British were going to shoot them down like dogs.
They scattered in every direction, and the redcoats, having nothing
further to oppose them, kept on and destroyed the stores.
"Colonel, I don't like the way those rebels retreated," said Major
Pitcairn, as he kept a close watch upon the neighboring hills. "They
fell back as though they would come again."
"If they were soldiers we would know how to take them," replied Colonel
Smith. "But being rebels, we have nothing further to fear from them."
Major Pitcairn, however, kept a bright lookout, and very soon he became
uneasy at the rapidity with which the militia increased in numbers. He
called the attention of his superior to it, and very shortly the latter
gave the order to retreat; and it was not a moment too soon. The whole
region flew to arms, for remember that Paul Revere had aroused to
vigilance the inmates of every house he came to, and from every one
there came a man or boy who was strong enough to handle a rifle, and
hurried to the help of his countrymen. It seems that Colonel Smith had
more to contend with than mere rebels. It appeared, too, that one who
afterwards wrote about that battle was there to have seen it for he
tells us in his poem:
"And so through the night rode Paul Revere,
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm--
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore.
For, borne on the night-wings of the Past,
Through all our history to the last,
In the hours of our darkness, peril, and need,
Will the people waken to listen, to hear
The hurrying foot-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere."
The minute-men gathered as if by magic. They did not come out and form
themselves in line for the purpose of being shot down by the redcoats,
but remembering their skulking habits which they learned while fighting
the Indians, they hid behind trees, fences, and rocks, in front, flank,
and rear, and poured so galling a fire upon the Britishers that if it
had not been for reinforcements not one of those eight hundred men would
ever have reached the city alive. As one of their officers expressed it:
"the militia seemed to have dropped from the clouds," and the flower of
that British army must have surrendered to those patriots if relief had
not arrived. Their retreat was regarded as a defeat and a flight, and
at every corner were heard the jeers and mockings of the people
regarding that "great British army at Boston who had been beaten by a
flock of Yankees." At any rate the jubilee trumpet was sounded
proclaiming "Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants
thereof." The power of all the royal governors was broken, from
Massachusetts to Georgia.
This was the substance of the news which was brought to Machias twenty
days after the fight. The people were both astonished and
angry--astonished to know that the British soldiers, who had been
regarded as invulnerable, could be outdone with American bullets, and
angry to learn that so many of their friends[2] should have been killed
during their conflict with them.
[Footnote 2: Lossing says: "The British lost 65 killed, 18 wounded, and
28 made prisoners; in all 273. The Americans lost 59 killed, 39 wounded,
and 5 missing; in all 103.]
"This thing has got to be settled now," said Zeke Lewis, turning away
and flourishing his fists in the air. "That is too many of our men to go
up after fighting those redcoats. Boston has been standing all the
brunt of tyranny so far, and we had better join in. Now there's that--"
The man suddenly paused and looked about him. Almost every face he saw
was that of a patriot, but there were a few who were known to be Tories,
and it would not do to express his thoughts too freely before them.
"Go on, Zeke," said a friend at his elbow. "There's what?"
"When I get you fellows all by yourselves I will explain things to you,"
said Zeke, after holding a short consultation with a young man who stood
close beside him. "There are too many Britishers here."
"Yes; and they ought to be shot down as those redcoats were at
Lexington," said another.
Any one who had been there could easily have picked out the Tories by
the expression of their faces. They were amazed by the news. British
soldiers whipped by a mob! They would have been glad to deny it if they
could, but there were too many stalwart sailors standing around whose
opinions differed from their own, and they thought it would be the part
of wisdom to keep their thoughts to themselves. They turned toward their
homes, but they had plenty of opportunity to exchange ideas with one
another.
The most of those who had listened to the messenger's news also turned
away when he got through speaking and walked with their heads on their
breasts and their eyes fastened thoughtfully on the ground. Among them
was one, Enoch Crosby by name, who seemed to think that the world was
coming to an end because the British soldiers had been fired upon; but
he did not believe as the Tories did by any means. He was an American;
he could not forget that.
Among all the boys of his acquaintance there was no one more loyal to
King George than he was. His father had been an officer in the service
of the crown before he died, and Enoch believed that a monarch who had
been selected to reign over a country, was placed there by divine right.
The people had nothing to do with it except to hold themselves in
readiness to obey his orders. He had English blood in his veins, and,
although he felt the soil of America under his feet, he had been,
almost ever since he could remember, a good and loyal subject of Great
Britain, and hoped some day to serve King George with his sword. To have
all this thing wiped out in a day by a fight, was rather more than the
boy could live up under.
But he was an American. It came upon him with a force sometimes that
almost took his breath away. He could still be loyal to his sovereign
and ready to smite hip and thigh any one who said anything against him,
but his sailor's love of fair play would not let him stand by and see
his neighbors imposed upon.
Enoch had been watching this thing for two years and all the while he
felt the ropes of tyranny growing tighter. Ever since General Gage had
taken up his quarters in Boston he had been growing more and more severe
in his treatment of the patriots. The Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre,
The Tea Party, and the conduct of his soldiers in destroying the ice on
which the boys were accustomed to spend their half holidays--all these
were galling to Enoch, and he hoped that the time would soon come when
something would induce the King to do differently. But when Christopher
Snyder was killed by Richardson for looking on at a mob who were engaged
in throwing clods and stones at him, and Governor Hutchinson refused to
sign Richardson's death warrant, it opened the eyes of Enoch and he
began to see things in a plainer light. The man was put into prison, but
at the end of two years was pardoned out by the King. Enoch found that
it was necessary to fight in order to secure his rights, and it cost him
a long and severe struggle to come to that conclusion. He was thinking
about these things as he walked slowly homeward and went into the house.
His mother, with snowy hair and steel-bowed spectacles, raised her eyes
from her knitting, and one glance was enough to show her that something
had gone wrong with Enoch.
If there was anybody on earth Enoch loved it was his mother. All her
surroundings bore evidence to that fact. Enoch was a sailor--he had made
a good many trips along the coast in little trading vessels--but when he
was at home he was not idle. His mother had enough from the earnings of
her husband to support her in as good a style as she cared to live; the
raiment of herself and son was neat and comely, but that did not prevent
her from sticking close to the New England maxim: "Those who do not work
should not eat." She had plainly brought Enoch up with the same ideas,
for when he was ashore he was always at work at something.
Mrs. Crosby did not go out to listen to the news the messenger had to
bring, but Enoch went, and the face he brought back with him excited his
mother's alarm at once. Like her son she had been waiting for this day,
but she little dreamed that it would come so soon.
"What is it, boy?" she asked, dropping her knitting into her lap. "That
man's horse seems to be near tired out. Has he come far?"
"He came from out west somewhere," said Enoch, dropping into the nearest
chair. "But I don't know whether he came from Lexington or not."
"What should be going on at Lexington?" asked Mrs. Crosby; although
something told her that the news the messenger brought was worse than
any she had heard yet.
"They have had a fight out there," said Enoch, resting his head on his
hands. "King George can make up his mind to one thing, and that is, he
had better keep his men at home. The provincials whipped them because
they destroyed property that did not belong to them."
"And they did have a fight sure enough?" said his mother.
"They had such a fight as they used to have with the Indians. They
killed almost three hundred of them."
Mrs. Crosby settled back in her chair and looked at Enoch without
speaking.