SCENE. _The ground before the fort. Baggage wagons. Cannon dismounted.
Confused sounds within. A soldier is seen leaning on his rifle_.
(_Another soldier enters_.)
_2nd Sol_. It's morning! Look in the east there. What are we waiting
for?
_1st Sol_. Eh! The devil knows best, I reckon, Sir.
_2nd Sol_. Hillo, John! What's the matter there? Here's day-break upon
us! What are we waiting for?
(_Another soldier enters_.)
_3d Sol_. To build a bridge--that is all.
_2nd Sol_. A bridge?
_3d Sol_. We shall be off by to-morrow night, no doubt of it,--if we
don't chance to get cooked and eaten before that time,--some little risk
of that.
_2nd Sol_. But what's the matter below there, I say? The bridge? what
ails it?
_3d Sol_. Just as that last wagon was going over, down comes the bridge,
Sirs, or a good piece of it at least.--What else could it do?--timbers
half sawn away!
_2nd Sol_. Some of that young jackanape's work! _Aid-de-camp!_ I'd _aid_
him. He must be ordering and fidgetting, and fuming.--Could not wait
till we were over.
_1st Sol_. All of a piece, boys!
_3d Sol_. Humph. I wish it had been,--the bridge, I mean.
_1st Sol_. But, I say, don't you see how every thing, little and great,
goes one way, and that, against us? Chance has no currents like this!
It's a bad side that Providence frowns on. I think when Heaven deserts a
cause, it's time for us poor mortals to begin to think about it.
_3d Sol_. Now, if you are going to do so mean a thing as that, don't
talk about Heaven--prythee don't.
[_They pass on_.
(_Two other soldiers enter_.)
_4th Sol_. (_singing_.)
_Yankee doodle is the tune
Americans delight in,
'Twill do to whistle, sing, or play,
And just the thing for fighting.
Yankee doodle, boys, huzza_----
(_Breaking off abruptly_.) I do not like the looks of it, Will.
_5th Sol_. Of what?
_4th Sol_. Of the morning that begins to glimmer in the east there.
_5th Sol_. No? Why, I was thinking just now I never saw a handsomer
summer's dawning. That first faint light on the woods and meadows, there
is nothing I like better. See, it has reached the river now.
_4th Sol_. But the mornings we saw two years ago looked on us with
another sort of eye than this,--it is not the glimmer of the long,
pleasant harvest day that we see there.
_5th Sol_. We have looked on mornings that promised better, I'll own. I
would rather be letting down the bars in the old meadow just now, or
hawing with my team down the brake; with the children by my side to pick
the ripe blackberries for our morning meal, than standing here in these
rags with a gun on my shoulder. Let well alone.--We could not though.
_4th Sol_. (_Handing him a glass_.) See, they are beginning to form
again. It looks for all the world like a funeral train.
_5th Sol_. What was the Stamp Act to us, or all the acts beyond the sea
that ever were acted, so long as they left us our golden fields, our
Sabbath days, the quiet of the summer evening door, and the merry winter
hearth. _The Stamp Act?_ It would have been cheaper for us to have
written our bills on gold-leaf, and for tea, to have drunk melted
jewels, like the queen I read of once; cheaper and better, a thousand
times, than the bloody cost we are paying now.
_4th Sol_. It was not the money, Will,--it was not the money, you know.
The wrong it was. We could not be trampled on in that way,--it was not
in us--we could not.
_5th Sol_. Ay, ay. A fine thing to get mad about was that when we sat in
the door of a moonlight evening and the day's toils were done. It was
easy talking then. _Trampled on!_ I will tell you when I was nearest
being trampled on, Andros,--when I lay on the ground below there last
winter,--on the frozen ground, with the blood running out of my side
like a river, and a great high-heeled German walking over my shoulder as
if I had been a hickory log. I can tell you, Sir, that other was a
moon-shiny sort of a trampling to that. I shall bear to be trampled on
in figures the better for it, as long as I live. Between ourselves
now----
_4th Sol_. There's no one here.
_5th Sol_. There are voices around that corner, though. Come this way.
[_They pass on_.
(_Another group of Soldiers_.)
_1st Sol_. Then if nothing else happens, we are off now. Hillo, Martin!
Here we go again--skulking away. Hey? What do you say now? Hey, Mr.
Martin, what do you say now?
_2nd Sol_. (_Advancing_.) What I said before.
_1st Sol_. But where is all this to end, Sir? Tell us that--tell us
that.
_3d Sol_. Yes, yes,--tell us that. If you don't see Burgoyne safe in
Albany by Friday night, never trust me, Sirs.
_1st Sol_. A bad business we've made of it.
_4th Sol_. Suppose he gets to Albany;--do you think that would finish
the war?
_3d Sol_. Well, indeed, I thought that was settled on all hands, Sir. I
believe the General himself makes no secret of that.
_4th Sol_. And what becomes of us all then? We shall go back to the old
times again, I suppose;--weren't so very bad though, Sam, were they?
_1st Sol_. We have seen worse, I'll own.
_3d Sol_. And what becomes of our young nation here, with its congress
and its army, and all these presidents, and generals, and colonels, and
aide-de-camps?--wont it look like a great baby-house when the hubbub is
over, and the colonies settle quietly down again?
_2nd Sol_. Faith, you take it very coolly. Before that can happen, do
you know what must happen to you?
_1st Sol_. Nothing worse than this, I reckon.
_2nd Sol_. (_makes a gesture to denote hanging_.)
_4th Sol_. What would they hang us though? Do you think they would
really hang us, John?
_2nd Sol_. Wait and see.
_1st Sol_. Nonsense! nonsense! A few of the ringleaders, Schuyler, and
Hancock, and Washington, and a few such, they will hang of course,--but
for the rest,--we shall have to take the oath anew, and swallow a few
duties with our sugar and tea, and----
_2nd Sol_. You talk as if the matter were all settled already.
_1st Sol_. There is no more doubt of it, than that you and I stand here
this moment. Why, they are flocking to Skeensborough from all quarters
now, and this poor fragment,--this miserable skeleton of an army, which
is the only earthly obstacle between Burgoyne and Albany, why, even this
is crumbling to pieces as fast as one can reckon. Two hundred less than
we were yesterday at this hour, and to-morrow--how many are off
to-morrow? Ay, and what are we doing the while? Bowing and retreating,
cap in hand, from post to post, from Crown Point to Ticonderoga, from
Ticonderoga to Fort Edward, from Fort Edward onward; just showing them
down, as it were, into the heart of the land. Let them get to
Albany--Ah, let them once get to Albany, they'll need no more of our
help then, they'll take care of themselves then and us too.
_2nd Sol_. They'll never get to Albany.
_1st Sol_. Hey?
_2nd Sol_. They'll never get to Albany.
_1st Sol_. What's to hinder them?
_2nd Sol_. We,--yes we,--and such as we, craven-hearted as we are.
They'll never get to Albany until we take them there captives.
_3d Sol_. Then they'll wait till next week, I reckon.
_1st Sol_. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! How many prisoners shall we have a-piece,
John? How many regiments, I mean? They'll open the windows when we get
there, won't they? I hope the sun will shine that day. How grandly we
shall march down the old hill there, with our train behind us. I shall
have to borrow a coat of one of them though, they might be ashamed of
their captor else.
_3d Sol_. When is this great battle to be, John? This don't look much
like it.
_4th Sol_. I think myself, if the General would only give us a chance to
fight----
_2nd Sol_. A chance to throw your life away,--he will never give you. A
chance to fight, you will have ere long,--doubt it not. Our General
might clear his blackened fame, by opposing this force to that,--this
day he might;--he will not do it. The time has not yet come. But he will
spare no pains to strengthen the army, and prepare it for victory, and
the glory he will leave to his rival. Recruits will be pouring in ere
long. General Burgoyne's proclamation has weakened us,--General Schuyler
will issue one himself to-day.
_1st Sol_. Will he? will he? What will he proclaim?--As to the recruits
he gets, I'll eat them all, skin and bone. What will he proclaim? You
see what Burgoyne offers us. On the one hand, money and clothing, and
protection for ourselves and our families; and on the other, the cord,
and the tomahawk, and the scalping-knife. Now, what will General
Schuyler set down over against these two columns?--What will he offer
us?--To lend us a gun, maybe,--leave to follow him from one post to
another, barefooted and starving, and for our pains to be cursed and
reviled for cowards from one end of the land to the other. And what will
he threaten? Ha, we were cowards indeed, if we feared what he could
threaten. What thing in human nature will he speak to?--say.
_2nd Sol_. I will tell you. To that spirit in human nature which resists
the wrong, the fiendish wrong threatened there. Ay, in the basest nature
that power sleeps, and out of the bosom of Omnipotence there is nothing
stronger. It has wakened here once, and this war is its fruit. It
slumbers now. Let Burgoyne look to it that he rouse it not himself for
us. Let him look to it. For every outrage of those fiendish legions,
thank God.--It lays a finger on the spring of our only strength. _What_
will he offer us? I will tell you.--A chance to live, or to
die,--_men_,--ay, to leave a sample of manhood on the earth, that shall
wring tears from the selfish of unborn ages, as they feel for once the
depths of the slumbering and godlike nature within them. And
Burgoyne,--oh! a coat and a pair of shoes, he offers, and--how many
pounds?--Are you men?
_4th Sol_. What do you say, Sam?--Talks like a minister, don't he?
_1st Sol_. Come, come,--there's the drum, boys. You don't bamboozle me
again! I've heard all that before.
_3d Sol_. Nor me.--I don't intend to have my wife and children
tomahawked,--don't think I can stand that, refugee or not.
_2nd Sol_. Here they come.
(_Other Soldiers enter_.)
_5th Sol_. All's ready, all's ready.
_6th Sol_. (_singing_.)
"_Come blow the shrill bugle, the war dogs are howling_,"--
[_Exeunt_.
* * * * *