THE General, at the behest of the blooming Rachel, rests for three
round weeks, which seem to his fight-loving soul like three round years.
Then the Government sends him to Fort Jackson to dictate terms of peace
to the broken Creeks.
The latter assemble, war paints washed off, in a deeply thoughtful, if
not a peaceful, mood.
The General proposes terms which well nigh amount to a wiping out of the
Creek landed possessions. The Creeks go into secret council, as it
were executive session, and bemoan their desperate lot. They curse the
English who urged them to that butchery of Fort Mims and then deserted
them. Beyond relieving their minds, however, the curses accomplish no
Creek good. They must still face the inveterate General, whose word is,
“Your lives or your lands!”
The mournful, beaten Creeks come forth from executive session, and
the great formal conference begins. The council is called on the flat
field-like expanse in front of the General's imposing marquee--for he
has come to this mission with no little of pompous style, to the end
that the Creek mind be impressed.
The Creek chiefs, blanketed to the ears, feathered to the eyes, sit
about, crosslegged like tailors, in a half circle, their only weapon a
sacred red-stone pipe. The General, blazing in a new uniform, comes
out of his marquee. With him are Colonel Coffee, Colonel Hawkins, and
lastly, Colonel Hayne, the brother of him who will one day cross blades
in Senate debate with the lion-faced Webster, and have the worst of it.
As the General steps forward an orderly leads up his great war horse, as
though the conference might lapse into battle, and he must be ready
to mount and fight. To the rear, his hunting-shirt men, one thousand
strong, are drawn out, as following forth those precautions which
produce the General's war horse. The Creeks, at these evidences of
suspicious alertness, never move a bronze muscle; they pass the sacred
redstone pipe with gravity unmoved, and puff away as though the last
thing they suspect is suspicion.
Big Warrior makes a speech, and is followed by She-lok-tah, the tribal
Demosthenes. The General shakes his grim head at their protests; there
is no help for it, they must give him his way or fight. The Creeks bow
to the inevitable, and give the General his way; which bowing submission
is the less disgraceful, since both the Spanish at Pensacola and the
English at New Orleans, in a brief handful of months, under pressures
less stringent than are those which now and here in front of the
Generali great marquee bear down the broken hopeless Creeks, will follow
their abject example.
Having made peace with the Creeks on the Tallapoosa, the General lets
his angry, warseeking eye rove in the direction of Florida. Many of the
hostile Creek Red Sticks have fled to cover there, where they are made
welcome by the Spanish Governor Maurequez, and petted and pampered
by Colonel Nichols and Captain Woodbine of the English. The besotted
Governor Maurequez has permitted these latter to land an English force,
and, inspired by his native hatred of Americans and the sight of British
ships of war in Pensacola harbor, has surrendered to them the last
stitch of Florida control.
The General guesses these things and sends out scouts to make
discoveries. Meanwhile, he marches his hunting-shirt men to Mobile,
which his instincts--never at fault in war--warn him will be the
next English point of attack. Word has reached him of the downfall of
Napoleon, and he foresees that this will release against America the
utmost energies of England, who in thirty odd years has not forgotten
Yorktown nor despaired of its repair.
The General's scouts are a sleepless, observant, close-going set of
gentlemen, and fairly enter Pensacola. Presently, they are back with the
news that two flags float in friendly partnership on the battlements of
Fort St. Michael, one English and one Spanish. Also, seven English war
ships ride in the harbor.
They likewise say that the popinjay Colonel Nichols is issuing
proclamations to “The People of Louisiana,” demanding that, as
“Frenchmen, Spaniards, and English,” they arise and “throw off the
American yoke”; that Captain Woodbine is assembling the fugitive Red
Sticks by scores, and reviving their drooping spirits with English gold,
English guns, English gin, and English red coats.
Captain Woodbine, it appears, is so dull as to think he may make regular
soldiers of the untamed Red Sticks, and drills them in the Pensacola
plaza, where they handle their new muskets much as a cow might a cant
hook, and look like copper-colored apes in those gorgeous red coats. The
tactical, yet tactless, Captain Woodbine even makes his red command a
speech, and is so unguarded as to refer to “General Jackson.” This is
a blunder, since instantly half the assembled Red Sticks desert, taking
with them the guns, gin, and jackets which have been conferred upon
them. The oratorical Captain Woodbine is deeply impressed by the awful
effect of the General's name upon his red recruits, and their terror
communicates itself to him. He has difficulty in restraining himself
from deserting with them, but takes final courage and remains. Only he
is at pains to delete “General Jackson” from subsequent eloquence,
and never again mentions that paladin of the Cumberland in the quaking
presence of a Red Stick Creek.
By way of adding to these hardy doings, the wordy popinjay, Colonel
Nichols, fulminates new proclamations, comic in their ignorance and
bombast. He believes that the formidable General can be whipped by
manifestoes. As against this belief, however, most careful preparations
move forward aboard the English ships, looking to the destruction
of Fort Bowyer and the capture of Mobile; for Captain Percy of the
_Hermes_, who has command of the fleet, is altogether a practical
person, and pins no faith to proclamations and Indians in red coats when
it comes to bringing a foe to his knees.
All these interesting items are laid before the General by his
painstaking scouts, and he is peculiarly struck with the word about
Captain Percy and Mobile. He sends back his scouts for another bagful
of news, and begins to strengthen and stiffen Fort Bowyer, thirty miles
below the town.
Having patched up this redoubt to his taste, the General puts Major
Lawrence in command, and tells him to fight his batteries while a man
remains alive. Major Lawrence says he will; and, not having a ship,
but a fort, to defend, he follows as nearly as he may the motto of his
heroic relative, and issues the watchword, “Don't give up the Fort!”
Leaving Major Lawrence in this high vein, the General goes back to
Mobile to concert plans for its protection.
Captain Percy of the _Hermes_ is a gallant man, but a bad judge of
Americans. He tells the proclaiming Colonel Nichols that he will take
four ships and capture Fort Bowyer in twenty minutes. Colonel Nichols
has so little trouble in believing this that he conceives the deed of
conquest already done. Full of hope and strong waters--for the English
have not given the thirsty Red Sticks all their gin--he is so far
worked upon by Captain Percy's turgid prophecies as to issue a new
proclamation, declaring Fort Bowyer taken, and showing how, presently,
the English intend doing likewise at New Orleans. Having taken time so
conspicuously by the forelock, the anticipatory Colonel Nichols--who
has never been in the chicken trade, and therefore knows nothing of
what perils attend a count of poultry noses before the poultry are
hatched--goes aboard the _Hermes_, with Captain Woodbine and others of
his staff; for he would be on the ground, when Fort Bowyer and Mobile
succumb, ready to assume control of those strongholds.
It is no mighty voyage from Pensacola to Mobile, and a half day's sail
will bring Colonel Nichols and Captain Percy within point-blank range
of Fort Bowyer. Taking a bright, cool morning for it, Captain Percy lets
fall his topsails, and forges seaward, followed by the cordial wishes
of Governor Maurequez who, glass in hand, drinks “Good voyage!” from the
ramparts of St. Michael.
“All I regret is,” cries the valorous Governor Maurequez, in the
politest phrases of Castile, “that you brave English will destroy these
vagabonds, and thus deprive me and my heroic soldiery of the pleasure of
their obliteration, when they shall have invaded our beloved Florida.”
Away go the English war ships in line, like a quartette of geese
crossing a mill pond, the _Hermes_, Captain Percy, in the van. The
fleet rounds the lower extremity of Mobile Point, out of range from Fort
Bowyer, and lands Colonel Nichols with a force of foot soldiers and a
howitzer. This military feat accomplished, the fleet, still like geese
in line, bear up until abreast of the Fort, which is a musket shot away.
There is no time wasted. The _Hermes_ lets go her anchors and swings
broadside-on to the Fort. The others follow suit. Then, with a crashing
discharge of big guns by way of overture, the fight is on.
Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes go by; shots fly and shells
burst, and Major Lawrence still holds the fort. Evidently Captain Percy
cut his time too fine! Then, one hour, two hours follow, and Major
Lawrence's twenty-four pounders are making matches of the _Hermes_.
As the merry war progresses, Colonel Nichols, with much ardor and no
discernment, drags his howitzer to a strategic sand hill, and fires
one shot at Fort Bowyer. It is a badly considered movement, the instant
effect being to draw the Fort's horns his way. The southern battery
of the Fort opens upon him like a tornado, and he and his fellow
artillerists retire--without their howitzer. The most discouraging
feature is that a stone, sent flying from the strategic sand hill by
a cannon ball, knocks out one of Colonel Nichols's eyes. After this
exploit, the one-eyed proclamationist, much saddened, but with wisdom
increased, is content to stand afar off, and leave the down-battering of
Fort Bowyer to the fleet.
This down-battering Captain Percy and his sailormen do their tarry best
to bring about. But, as hour after hour drifts to leeward in the smoke
of their broadsides, and the stubborn Lawrence continues to send his
hail of twenty-four-pound shot aboard, it begins to creep upon Captain
Percy, like mosses upon stone, that Fort Bowyer is a nut beyond the
power of even his iron teeth to crack. As a red-hot shot sets fire
to the _Hermes_ and explodes her magazine, the impression deepens to
apprehension, which, when the _Sophia_ is reported sinking, ripens
rapidly into conviction. Major Lawrence, with his “Don't give up the
Fort!” all but blots Captain Percy--who has tenfold his force--off the
face of the Gulf, and he does it with a loss of eight men killed and
wounded to an English loss of over three hundred.
Captain Percy, whipped and broken-hearted, shifts his flag and what
is left of his _Hermes'_ crew to the _Sophia_, and, pumps clanking
hysterically to keep-himself afloat, goes limping back to Pensacola,
lighted on his defeated way by the flare and glare from the blazing
_Hermes_. As the English pass the extreme southern tip of Mobile Point,
as far from the unmannerly batteries of Fort Bowyer as the lay of
the land permits, they pick up the one-eyed proclamationist, Colonel
Nichols, and his howitzerless men.
The fleet, battered, torn, sails adroop, with the _Sophia_ three feet
below her trim from shot-admitted water in her hold, reaches Pensacola.
Governor Maurequez looks scornfully dark, but, Spaniard-like, shrugs his
vainglorious shoulders and says to an aide:
“It is nothing! They are but English pigs! When this General Jackson
reaches Pensacola--if he should be so great a fool as to come--we
cavaliers of old Spain will tear him to pieces, as tigers rend their
prey. Yes, _amigo_, we will show these beaten pigs of English how the
proud blood of the Cid can fight.”
The Red Stick Creeks, furnished of a better intelligence, in no wise
adopt the high-flying sentiments of Governor Maurequez. The moment
the English come halting into the harbor, the awful name of “General
Jackson!” leaps from aboriginal lip to lip. Hastily tearing off Captain
Woodbine's red coats as garments full of probable trouble, but taking
with them his new guns, the frightened Red Sticks head south for the
Everglades, first drinking up what remains of their gin. Not a hostile
Creek will thereafter be found within a day's ride of the General; all
of those English plans, which seek the aid of savage axe and knife and
torch, are to fall to pieces.
Captain Percy, made ten years older by that fight and failure at Fort
Bowyer, goes about the repair of his ships; Colonel Nichols, omitting
for the nonce all further proclamations, nurses his wounds; Captain
Woodbine, having now no Indians, abandons his daily drills on the plaza;
Governor Maurequez, whispering with his aide, brags in chosen Spanish
of what he will do to thick-skull vagabond Americans should they put
themselves in his devouring path; while over at Mobile the General
hugs Major Lawrence to his bosom in a storm of approval, and gives that
sterling soldier a sword of honor.