Rabble in Arms, page 56
In my relief at having somebody to whom I could talk about Nathaniel the words burst from me in a flood. “She’s a British spy. She’s got her claws on Nathaniel, and she’s trying to turn him to the British. So far she hasn’t done it. He thinks he’s in love with her, Cap, and she’s tolling him along. He can’t get away, no more than a drake can get away from a live decoy. She’s planning to use him somehow. I can’t sleep for trying to figure what to do about it. I can’t figure it out. He’s my young brother. If anything happens, hell be called a spy and a deserter. I just cant find the answer! He’s a fine boy, Cap. He’s no traitor. He thinks he’s doing what’s right. He’s—”
“Listen,” Cap growled, “I know all about it! I went through it with Stevie! There’s only one course to foller: we got to get Stevie. Stevie’ll know what to do! We’re scouts, and we can go where most people can’t. Maybe we can get around behind the British fines some dark night and catch this brother of yours and tell him a thing or two. You let Stevie tell him a few facts and he’ll come away with us, all quiet and peaceable.” He contemplated his knuckles; then dropped a heavy hand upon my shoulder. “Get yourself some sleep.”
I took a last look from the doorway. The sun was just coming up. The guns on the north platform had ceased firing. The advance companies of the British had fallen back out of range. A swarm of Continental troops dragged a cannon near the head of the bridge of boats, at the foot of Ticonderoga. In spite of their raggedness, visible, even, from where we were, they worked fast and alertly. The sight of the British forces hadn’t cowed them.
All around us were big guns, and plenty of them. Below us, near the entrance to the narrow waterway leading to Skenesboro, were five vessels. Two of them had stubby masts and lateen sails. They were the Gates galley and the Trumbull galley, which I had designed and helped to build. The others were the Liberty schooner, the Revenge schooner and the Enterprise sloop—the remnants of the Valcour fleet. Crowded around them were bateaux by the hundred. After all, the place seemed well equipped, and the men ready to fight.
Cap was already stretched upon the floor, and I let myself slack down beside him. I had only a moment of drowsiness before heavy sleep came, but during that moment I seemed to have a long experience—to be in the canoe for days and weeks with Sponge-belly and my friends. And through that power we have in dreams to be in more than one place at the same time, I seemed also to be in the council house, a painted Indian myself among hundreds of my painted brothers—yet all the time I seemed to be telling Ellen Phipps that I had got through to our fines and Ticonderoga, while she, sitting willingly bound and gagged upon the ground before me, looked at me with patient eyes and seemed a little glad to hear me talk.
LVI
AT TICONDEROGA, in those next few days, everything was wrong. No sooner had we crossed back to the fort from Cap’s cabin on the steamy noon of July 3rd, 1777, than Whitcomb took Cap and Joseph Phipps from me and sent them off on private business. The rest of the day Doc and I spent in search of clothes, which were scarce as gold gorgets. Half the Continental troops were garbed in ragged homespun; and the militia were scarecrows, unkempt and shambling, their officers strangers to discipline, drill and neatness. Yet even the militiamen felt free to laugh at our leggins, belt cloths and shaven heads.
By nightfall Doc had swapped his shaman’s bonnet for a shirt and something that had once been a coat. I had begged a shirt and a pair of breeches from two Massachusetts militiamen, and had found and washed a handkerchief for my naked poll; but at that, Doc and I might rightly have been considered the worst-dressed men in General St. Clair’s army.
It was on the 4th that the storm began to break. I had gone to Wilkinson to ask for an assignment—something at which Doc and I could busy ourselves. He still held a grudge against me because of my former closeness to Arnold, and regarded me owlishly with jaw muscles all a-throb. “The general hasn’t made up his mind, yet, how to use you, Captain. You’ll have to be patient. The general has a great deal on his mind, Captain. We’ve entered you on the rolls.’’ He gave me a condescending nod. “You’ll have your pay as from July 1st.”
“I can get along without pay, Major,” I said, “but I can’t get along without work—not at a time like this. There’s five armed vessels off Mount Independence, Major. Some of them look pretty familiar to me. Put me in command of one of ’em. You haven’t forgot I sailed the Congress galley, have you?”
He shook his head. “That was a most unfortunate affair,” he murmured. “Not only throwing away his ships, as he did, but setting his vessel afire and leaving his wounded to be burned to death.”
He moved his jaw muscles in a deliberate manner, a profound ass if I ever saw one.
“He?” I asked. “Do you mean Arnold? Where did you hear any such story as that, Major?”
“Oh, it was told to Congress on trustworthy authority.”
“Trustworthy authority be damned,” I said. “Congress was also told on good authority that General Burgoyne had no intention of attacking Ticonderoga this summer. Congress told General St. Clair he needn’t look for Burgoyne in this direction; but he’s here, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” he said, “but that makes no difference. We’ll beat them off.” He was exactly what Cap had called him: a tit-wit.
“Major,” I said, “I did the navigating on the Congress galley, as you well know. What you heard about General Arnold leaving his wounded to be burned to death is as untrue as that Burgoyne wouldn’t attack Ticonderoga. It’s a reflection on me and on every man who fought aboard that vessel. Whoever sent that word to Congress is an enemy to you and me and the American people. You’ll deny it, won’t you, whenever you have the opportunity?”
“Oh, certainly, Captain,” he said instantly. “Certainly! Certainly, certainly, certainly!”
I saw I carried no weight whatever with him; he’d repeat the story about Arnold the next time he had a chance. The vainer a man is, the tighter he clings to preconceived first notions; he’s afraid of someone accusing him of changing his mind, which would show he hadn’t been the all-wise possessor of all knowledge from the moment of his birth.
“Major,” I persisted, “I’d be truly obliged to you if you’d try to get me a command on one of those galleys, where my knowledge would be of some value. The British have a fleet, and a strong one. I think I could make myself useful against ’em. I’ve done a good deal of navigating, Major.”
“I’ll bring it to the general’s attention,” Wilkinson said. “Those ships, you understand, have officers aboard. You’re asking to have one of them displaced just to make room for you.”
I tried not to show how much I’d enjoy knocking his ears off. “Our side needs all the men it can get, don’t you think so, Major?” I asked. “I’m a man, Major, and I’d like to be made use of.”
Wilkinson’s eyes described a slow circle of the room, and came to rest on me with a sort of mulish stubbornness. “I understand your point of view, Captain. We’re leaving nothing undone—nothing. Ah—I’ll speak to the general; but you have no idea of the mass of detail he’s obliged to attend to.”
A sentry popped his head in at the door. “There’s smoke on top of Sugar Loaf!”
Wilkinson got slowly to his feet, surprised and incredulous. “Sugar Loaf? Do you mean Mount Defiance?”
“Same thing, ain’t it?” He was not what I would have called a well-disciplined sentry.
“You can’t mean Mount Defiance,” Wilkinson said. He went to the door. “You cant mean Mount Defiance! There’s no way of getting up Mount Defiance. Our maps mark it inaccessible.”
“They’s somebody got up it now!” the sentry said. “They’s a hell of a big fire on top of it, no matter what the map says.”
Wilkinson pushed past the sentry and went out to the parade-ground of the fort.
He returned at once, his customary calmness gone, his eyes round and staring.
“Wha’d I tell you!” the sentry exclaimed.
Wilkinson pounded noisily on General St. Clair’s door and went in. In a moment I heard the general protesting bitterly. “Good God, Wilkinson! They couldn’t! How could they ever get to the top of Mount Defiance!”
Arnold’s swarthy, laughing face came to my mind. In my imagination I heard his high-pitched voice, saying what Cap had described him as saying—”the first thing the British would do, gentlemen, would be to put a few guns on that height over there; and right about that time, gentlemen, you’d start running, being as how that hilltop commands not only the fort, but both roads to the south!”
I wondered why Arnold seemed to see things his fellows couldn’t see—why his brain leaped straight to the heart of problems that confronted him, while others fumbled and failed to understand; closed their eyes; dodged the truth as if it were some terrible disease.
The door of St. Clair’s quarters flew open and St. Clair hurried out, followed closely by Wilkinson. They went to the south gun platform, and I after them; for I was more than ever determined, in the light of this latest news, to find berths for Doc and myself aboard one of the galleys.
From the battlements the fort and the waters it commanded, on that hot July 4th, was a heartening spectacle. Beneath us lay the narrow, glassy lake; facing us was the dark slope of Mount Independence, scarred with trenches and surmounted by a fort of palisades. Stretched across the channel, a mile to the northward, was the close-packed line of British vessels, idle and useless-looking. Near at hand the heavy guns on the platforms looked numerous enough and powerful enough to blow all of England to fragments. If ever a place seemed to defy attackers, it was this stone fort.
Except for the line of vessels to the north, there was no sign of an enemy. Every gun was silent: the ragged sentries walked their posts as heedlessly as though every Briton were in far-off Albion. There was nothing to threaten the serenity of the scene—nothing but that wisp of smoke above Mount Defiance. Yet that wisp of smoke was more ominous than any storm-cloud. It meant that the British had marched completely around us, ascended an inaccessible peak, and stood between us and the Hudson.
St. Clair, reconnoitering the mountain-top through a telescope, fumed and fussed. “Wipe off that glass!” he told Wilkinson. “Damn that blasted thing! Here, wipe it off!” He wiped it off himself and again studied the top of Mount Defiance. He handed the glass to Wilkinson.
“What do you see?” St. Clair demanded.
“Two Indians,” Wilkinson said. “There’s somebody that looks like an engineer officer—yes, and an artilleryman. Blue: he’s got a blue uniform. Yes, he’s artillery!”
“It’s a ruse,” St. Clair said. “It’s a ruse! They’ll never get guns up there! Never! How in God’s name could they ever get guns up there? Wilkinson, there’s no way of getting guns up there, is there?”
Wilkinson made no reply, only continued to peer at Mount Defiance.
St. Clair stared about him, baffled and helpless. His eye fell on me. “Here!” he said testily. “What are you doing here! I don’t want you following us around!”
“Sir,” I said, “I’m waiting for Major Wilkinson to tell me what to do. I’m a scout captain, sir, and I haven’t a command. He said he’d ask you to put me in command of one of the row-galleys.”
St. Clair looked puzzled. “Row-galleys? What do you want to command a row-galley for?”
“Because that’s my trade. I’m a sea captain. If you have to retreat, you’ll find a sea captain might come in pretty handy on one of those vessels, small as they are.”
“Retreat!” St. Clair shouted. Then he lowered his voice. “Retreat? Why should we retreat? Rather than give up these works, every man of us’ll die in them!”
Wilkinson returned the telescope to St. Clair and at the same time murmured something to him.
“Of course!” St. Clair exclaimed, as though relieved of a troublesome decision. To me he explained, “You’ll have to see General Roche-Fermoy. The vessels are at Mount Independence, and that’s his bailiwick. See him, my dear Captain! See him and tell him what you want.”
As I hurried down the hill toward the bridge of boats, my thoughts were sour ones. More than ever I understood what Arnold must have felt when he found himself subject to the orders of St. Clair and others of similar caliber.
… The welcome I received from General Roche-Fermoy was delightful. When I recalled myself to him, he shook me by the hand as if we had been the greatest of friends during our crossing on the Beau Soleil from France—as if, even, I had been clad in a splendid uniform of blue and buff, as was he, instead of wearing a nondescript coat with my buckskin leggins, and having a blue handkerchief bound around my head to keep its nakedness from being a public spectacle.
I think Fermoy s greatest trouble was that he was hospitable: he felt obliged to drink a glass of wine with anyone who entered his quarters-felt obliged to prove how charming and democratic a French soldier could be. Such hospitality, at times, has an unfortunate effect on the host.
How he had coaxed a brigadier general’s commission out of Congress, God only knows; but he had it, nonetheless, together with the command of Mount Independence, the peak which protected Ticonderoga on the south. With bis position went a log cabin so roomy as to have a bedroom and a kitchen as well as an apartment which seemed to be, so far as I could tell, his drinking room—or at least his principal drinking room. He had also acquired a young aide-de-camp, two servants and several sentries, to say nothing of an air of penetrating wisdom such as I had seen in no other general—least of all in Arnold, and little enough in Gates and St. Clair, in spite of their long service in the English army.
We had a glass of wine together, and he was kind enough to ask for Nathaniel, whose name he had naturally forgotten. Some gentlemen, he said, were coming to supper, so he would postpone taking action on my request until the next morning, when he could do full justice to it.
Unfortunately he was unwell on the following morning—which was the 5th of July, the hottest day I ever endured. He was so unwell that it took the best part of a bottle of rum to get him up—or so Doc claimed to have discovered from one of the sentries; and I suspect General Roche-Fermoy would have been unable to get up at all if he had not been called to a Council of War by General St. Clair.
He could not, of course, attend to me while the Council of War was on his mind, nor could he do it when the Council of War was over, because, apparently, of the serious nature of the business transacted at it. What the business was, we were none of us supposed to know; but it was not hard to guess. Not only had the British succeeded in scaling Mount Defiance, but they had also succeeded in taking two great guns to the top.
At one moment there had been nothing on that towering height-nothing but a moving speck or two. A moment later two British guns looked over at us—two guns capable of throwing into confusion any movements of troops or vessels that might be undertaken within their range—two guns that would doubtless, in a day’s time, be augmented by a dozen more. The British had done what Arnold had predicted they would do; and nothing—not one single thing—had been done by St. Clair to hinder them.
Arnold, Cap had said, had given due warning of what might ensue. “About that time,,, Cap had heard him say, “you’ll start running, seeing as how that hilltop commands not only the fort, but both routes to the south.”
Ever mindful of that warning, I tried again and again to see Roche-Fermoy. The whole place was in a hot and irritated turmoil, with men hurrying here and there, as ants run, suddenly frenzied, when a heavy foot descends too near their nest.
I was in a worse stew; for I could no more catch Roche-Fermoy and pin him down than I could a humming-bird. Doc and I haunted his quarters all that long afternoon, but to no avail. He was obliged to rest, his aide told us, after the Council of War. Then he was reported busy with his maps and papers. Then he was having his supper, at which he could not be disturbed, because he was making important plans—or so his aide said.
Toward sundown there was cannonading from the lake-shore. We saw two British gunboats leave the shelter of the line of British vessels, and advance as if to reconnoiter our boom and bridge of boats. They were driven back by a burst of gunfire; but this activity, and the turbulent banging of the guns, increased my rage at being held helpless by this irresponsible French adventurer.
At last, in desperation, I threw myself on the mercy of the aide, who had doubtless been given the position because he spoke French, and I hoped he knew more about French than about war.
“Look here,” I said, “I know you’re sick of the sight of me, but I’ve been promised a command on one of our vessels, and I haven’t got it. Can’t you write out an order and take it to the general to be signed?”
His eyes wavered. “Just at the moment it’s impossible. The general’s too occupied to be disturbed.”
Doc, standing meekly behind me, cleared his throat apologetically. “If he ain’t well, maybe I could help him out some.”
The aide shook his head. “He’s all right, but he’s had a tiring day and can’t be disturbed.”
“If he’s drunk,” Doc persisted, “I know how to fix him.”
The aide made an effort to look haughty, but only succeeded in looking worried. Unquestionably Doc was right. Roche-Fermoy was drunk—too drunk to be of any use.
“For God’s sake, can’t you help us out?” I asked the aide. “General St. Clair told me to come to General Roche-Fermoy, and here we are, hung up in the air like kite-tails, no good to anyone. Tell us what your orders are, so well know what’s going on—so we’ll know what to do. It’s nearly night, and something’s going to happen! What is it?”
The aide looked helpless. “I haven’t had any orders! General Roche-Fermoy hasn’t issued any.” What he said was impossible, yet apparently the simple truth.
With the gathering darkness, gunfire from the fort and the water-batteries was increasing, and a hot wind had sprung up—a searing blast straight from an oven, so that the black abyss between Defiance, Independence and Ticonderoga was like the mouth of Gehenna. That howling, parching wind, whirling the cannonading against us, set my nerves on edge.
