When Moshoo Menut brought the pasties, Cap embraced him and made us a speech about the French, for whom he professed great love. He said that of all the people in all the Americas who wore queues, the French were the most generous and friendly, and their queues without peers. The French, he said, would be perfect companions if only they would learn to get along without garlic, or if we would only learn to eat it. Sometimes, he said, it almost made him cry to think two nations should be kept apart by a mere vegetable, root, fungus, or berry, if garlic were indeed any of these; and he, for one, would be willing to devote the rest of his life to helping the French give up the use of garlic.
All this was pleasing to Moshoo Menut, and he sent cider in to us at his own expense. Cap drank his health, and said, with a knowing leer, “On Normandee noo boovong doo see-druh” then suddenly fell silent, staring and rubbing his face with his great red hands, as if caught in a drift of spider webs.
When we looked where he was staring we saw a sergeant major from headquarters standing by our table—a sergeant major whose blanket coat, all down the breast and sleeves and on the shoulders, was matted with snow. He straightened his arms with a snap. Wads of snow flew out of the creases in his sleeves, plopping on the table before us and striking coldly against our faces.
“She’s cornel” Cap whispered hoarsely.
“You bet she has,” the sergeant major said. “A northeaster: thicker than gurry and getting thicker every minute.”
He looked around the room and our gaze followed his. Men were going out of the door, two and three at a time. Others were struggling into their blanket coats.
“Orders are to go to your barracks, put yourself in readiness, and get what sleep you can,” he said. “They’ll tell you the rest of it at barracks.”
He turned away and went to the next table. We knotted the sashes of our coats and drew our caps over our ears. One of the Virginians stopped in front of McLean’s proclamation offering land to recruits in any part of the American colonies. “They won’t get no part of my land!” he said. He threw a cider mug at the proclamation. It smashed full against the paper. We went out into the snow.
When we reached Mother Biard’s, the thought came to me that if I wished to speak to Phoebe once more I must do it now. The Virginians went on and left us before the house.
“What you want to talk to her about?” Cap asked.
I knew there was something, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what.
“To hell with it!” Cap said. “She’ll know you’re gone soon enough! Let her sleep.”
That was the sensible thing to do, though I would have liked her opinion on the new ship and Ranger and the garrison house and the building of a bridge across the creek and a new dress for my mother. I went closer to the door and saw the snow had drifted high against it.
Cap pulled me by the sleeve. “Come on! It’s too cold to stand here all night.”
We went on. The snow muttered and hissed in my ear. I was wrapped in gloom, instead of filled with joy that at last the time had come to go in search of Mary Mallinson.
XXXIII
IT WAS four in the morning when we were awakened by the bellowing of Daniel Morgan. We were belted into our blanket coats and out into the storm before, almost, we had dug the sleep from our eyes. Scaling ladders and pikes were pushed into our hands as we went out—a ladder for every twenty men, and a pike for every four; and I made up my mind, when I felt the weight of the pike that was shoved at me, that I would give it to Cap as soon as I could and depend on my musket butt for killing Britishers.
I thanked God, when I got out into the snow, that Morgan’s men had been billeted so close to the walls; for we had slept until the last minute, while the others had been marched in from the hospital, with the snow driving hard into their faces.
The street was full of men, drawn up in double ranks. We filed silently between them. Hendricks’s riflemen, dimly seen, were hunkered down in the rear, their backs to the storm and their scaling ladders leaning against them, already coated with snow. Beyond them we passed Goodrich’s company. Later I heard Hanchet and Goodrich and Hubbard had been shamed into going when they saw parts of their companies would have gone without them. The weak companies had been placed between strong ones. Ahead of Goodrich’s company was Captain Ward’s, then Captain Thayer’s and Captain Topham’s, after which Hubbard’s and Hanchet’s were led by Smith’s Pennsylvania riflemen. Smith, still suffering from Cap Huff’s mug-throwing, had been replaced by Lieutenant Steele.
Beyond Steele there were no men, only a snow-filled street; and we formed in a double line, heading the column. I wondered what had become of Paul Higgins and his Indians; and even as I thought it, Natanis and Hobomok came running up through the snow. I drew them in behind me. Paul, Natanis said, was following slowly with his men. Eneas, he told me, had gone into Quebec the day before, and Sabatis too. “I think,” Natanis said, “that Eneas is against us, but that Sabatis goes with Eneas only because he is his friend.”
In our rear we heard a confused gabbling. Captain Oswald with thirty advance pickets plodded through the snow between us, all with their heads down and free of scaling ladders. A little behind them came Colonel Arnold, talking to the men in that rasping voice of his that set anyone who heard it to breathing more quickly.
“Now, boys,” he was saying, “we’ll all have a shot at it! Nobody can stop us if you fight the way you can! Don’t stop! Never give up! Stick to me, boys! The general depends on us, boys!”
So he went past us, broad-shouldered and laughing, and moving as lightly and easily through the drifts as he had moved across our yard at Arundel years before, doing his feats of skill. On his right was the hulking figure of Daniel Morgan, and on his left young Matthias Ogden; and the three of them continued on into the snow after Oswald and his advance pickets. We fell in and moved ahead.
We could hear nothing because of the doleful yowling and moaning of the northeast wind and the hiss of snowflakes pouring into our faces and against our garments.
I have been out on dark nights and on cold nights; but I have never been out on a worse night than this, with the snow cutting into our eyes, and the icy wind sucking the breath out of our lungs so that we hung our heads almost to our waists to shield our mouths. The snow dragged at my feet, so once again I moved to the rhythm of my mother’s spinning wheel. We couldn’t move faster than a crawl. The wall towered above us, a black bulk beyond the whirling flakes, and I knew we couldn’t go on much farther without discovery. This was what troubled me; I expected each moment that the bombs and grape-shot of the British would rip into us, and the suspense was like a nest of mice in my vitals—as bad, almost, as the snow.
If I speak over-often of the snow, it is because we struggled in a smothering, strangling universe of snow—a whirling world of snow: snow that froze to our guns: snow that clogged our eyes: snow that slipped up our sleeves and down our collars and under our caps: that bit our lips and stung our throats and numbed our cheeks and chins: that made our eyebrows and eyelashes into ice-cakes and our hands into vast and painful iron knobs. However we turned or screened ourselves, the flakes hissed and spat against us as if in scoffing derision at our puny shivering efforts.
We passed the ruins of La Friponne and the palace, which lie near the beginning of the walls; then entered a narrow way between the St. Charles River and the cliff on which the walls were built. This was the beginning of the Lower Town, and we had never come in so far as this, any of us.
We were pinched between the river and the cliff. Against the cliff were warehouses; and the high tides had thrown ice-cakes close against their fronts, so that we picked our way between and over blocks of ice, painfully and slowly, slipping and stumbling.
We were bearing to the right, rounding into the Lower Town. The drive of the snow was against the sides of our heads and not into our faces. Cap had just turned to me and said hoarsely: “They passed back word the Hôtel Dieu’s up there, if that makes you any
warmer,” when far off we heard a harmless thud, as though a twig had slapped a pillow. More thuds followed in quick succession.
A bell clanged high up above us in the snow and the darkness; and other bells joined in. Dogs barked. We could hear shouts from the towering cliff at our right. There was a rattle of musketry behind us; and from the cliff came stabs of flame, ghostlike in the whirling snowflakes. The whole side of the cliff burst out with flashes. Above them were sheets of light and the crash of cannon, stupendous bellowing crashes that seemed to press snow into my ears and hold it there.
I heard Cap foolishly shouting: “They seen us! They seen us!”
I strove to find a mark at which to shoot. When I would have shot at a flash, my musket missed fire and I was jostled forward by those behind. There were no shots at all from our column, for our powder and everything else had been wetted by the driving snow.
Somehow those on the cliff threw fire balls over our heads: balls that sent up a red flame the height of a man, even when they fell in deep drifts. We moved between the walls and the fire balls, through a hideous tumult of bell-ringing and musket fire and the smashing of bombs and cannon. There were flirtings in the air, like the whir of the little birds that fly from underfoot when one hunts in a marsh in the late summer. These flirtings were the sound of passing bullets.
I saw one of the Virginians on his hands and knees beside the path. When Cap reached out and pulled him to his feet and released him, he fell full length in the snow. We went on by him; for the labor of getting through the drifts was great, and there was no use dragging a wounded man.
We came to three more sprawled beside the path. One of them, face up, said something in a wheezy, bubbly voice. When I stooped over him, he asked to be turned face down. I did as he asked, and hurried ahead, hoping to God I wouldn’t meet the same end.
Since there was a wider space between the cliff and the river, I shouted to Cap and we moved out of the footsteps of those that preceded us and struggled along more quickly.
This did us no good; for the column stopped. Before we knew it we came up with a cluster of men standing there as if wondering whether to go on or go back.
I heard a man say, “Get me up! Get me up!” It was Arnold’s rasping, excited voice.
“Jesus!” Cap said. “They got Arnold!”
I could see him, then, hanging to Ogden’s neck: at his foot a black stain in the snow.
“Spread out, boys!” he said. “Spread out, so you won’t be a mark! And for God’s sake get forward!”
Morgan began to bellow: “God damn it! Who’s in command!”
“Greene!” Arnold said. “It doesn’t matter! Get forward! We’re not fifty yards from the barrier! Get at it!”
“Let me have ’em!” Morgan shouted. “I’ve been through this before!”
“Go ahead!” Arnold snapped.
Morgan shook his fist at us. “Come on!” he roared. “We’ll show ’em, by God!” He went plowing through the snow like an angry moose. The rest of us followed, as fast as we could for our muskets and pikes and scaling ladders. I saw Ogden catch at a Virginian to help him with Arnold, and heard Arnold shouting: “Don’t give up! Go on, boys! Go on, boys!”
It made me a little sick to hear his voice fading behind us, urging on the others, urging them on; for this was the end of all his laboring and scheming, and the end had been plucked out of his hands, leaving him hurt and bleeding in the snow, and the rest of us without his resourcefulness and his wild courage.
The cliff and the river seemed to come together. We ran shouting around a shoulder of the cliff and into a narrow street, the Sault-au-Matelot—a narrow, narrow street, barred by a stockade of logs. The stockade would have been higher than our heads but for the snow which had drifted so deep against it that we could scramble across. Morgan was over it with a bellow, and close behind him those who were unburdened with ladders or pikes. The rest of us heaved over the pikes and ladders as best we could and went blundering after, into the teeth of the howling storm.
There was a higher barrier beyond the stockade, a barrier with two ports in it. One of the ports burst in my face, a hot white glare that seemed to rip the lids off my eyeballs. It must have been that the charge went over our heads; for we came safe to the foot of the wall, all of us. There were four scaling ladders against it in less time than it takes to peel an onion.
Cap blew out his breath at me with a great whoosh. “My God! I don’t like it!”
There were men crouched on each ladder, as if waiting to be pushed up. Morgan reached out and caught one of them, pulling him backward into the snow. “Get up here!” he bawled in that bellowing teamster’s voice of his, and was up it like a cat—up it and into a blaze of light from the muzzles of a dozen muskets. He fell backward off the ladder, and his Virginians set up an angry roar.
“Jesus!” Cap said, “they got Morgan, too!” He went to the nearest ladder and pulled a Virginian off it, going clumsily up. Before he reached the top Morgan had scrambled out of the snow and up his ladder, yelling like a madman. I threw my pike after Cap and went up too, jumping blindly into the pit beyond and scrambling forward so those behind me might not break my neck. I seemed to be on a gun platform, for I fell off it headfirst into the snow. Cap was there, snapping the hammer of his musket at running figures, and cursing wildly when it missed fire, which it steadily did.
Morgan hobbled in a circle near us, favoring his right leg and shouting for the men to hurry. We could see them scrambling over the wall behind us; hear them falling and cursing on the gun platform.
I scuffed in the snow for my pike without finding it. Musket fire began to smash against our faces from the windows of a log house into which the running figures had disappeared.
“Prime your guns!” Morgan shouted. “Get down here and prime your guns! Prick ’em out; they’re wet!”
We went to priming and snapping at the windows of the house. Melted snow must have run down the barrels, for never a one would fire.
“To hell with that!” Morgan roared. “Run ’em out!”
He went lumbering at the house. When we scrambled through the windows with our pikes and bayonets, we found the guards tumbling frantically out of the rear door. A Virginian caught one of them on his pike and pitchforked him screaming through a window.
Morgan’s shouts were deafening. “Ladder men!” he bawled. “Ladder men! Bring over three ladders and leave one! Get ’em over here! The rest of you get after those guards! Get ’em before they reach the next barrier!”
We stumbled out of the guardhouse and hurried after the others. The street was narrow—so narrow the buildings seemed toppling on us in the pallid, snow-swept dark, but there was no musketry or cannon fire to pester us. I doubt any Britisher could have kept up with me in my running, because of my eagerness to get under the second barricade before its defenders opened on us. It may be the others felt as I did; for we were on the guards and they disarmed in little more time than it had taken us to get in and out of the guardhouse.
We pushed them against a wall, fifty of them, and were taking their muskets for our own use when there came another spatter of musketry from farther along the street. Cap Huff found me in the press and dragged me after him.
“Come on!” he shouted. “I want to get at these lice with a dry musket! By God, Stevie, they’re scareder than I am, and I’m damned scared!”
Natanis and Hobomok were clinging to him. We set off again down the narrow street, holding our new muskets under our coats to keep them dry. We saw a musket flash from a window on the right and heard Morgan shouting to get them. The Virginians started a sort of jeering howl and ran up under the windows, thrusting their new muskets through the panes and letting them off in the rooms, at which there arose a crying and complaining from the interior.
Cap Huff put his shoulder against the door and smashed it in, shouting, “Come out!” There stumbled into the street a motley throng of folk, business men playing at soldier, all muddled and heavy with
drink. At their head was a portly gentleman with a splendid uniform showing under his blanket coat, but so drunk he could scarce stand up without catching at one of us. By good luck or ill, he caught hold of Cap, and Cap held him firmly.
He was indignant, this fine gentleman, and wished to talk about it in spite of the cold and the snow. “Very unsporting!” he said. “Not thing do ’tall, swear ’tain’t, not Noorsheve—not Noorearsheave.”
He hiccupped noisily.
“Take their arms!” Morgan shouted. “Push ’em in a corner and put ’em with the others. Take ’em back in the house, Huff, and stand guard until the others come up. Come on, boys.”
We herded these raddled fighters back into their house while Morgan and his men ran on. Cap held their leader until the last.
“That’s a lovely uniform you got on, Captain,” I heard him say.
“Man after m’own heart!” the leader said, pawing Cap. “Not sporting thing do, come interfering gen’lemen Noorearseve, bu’s all right. S’pose you’re one those damned Americans, eh?”
“Listen!” Cap said, shaking him fiercely, “I want those clothes! Take ’em off!”
The fine gentleman pawed protestingly at Cap. “No! Not clothes! Shoard! You want shoard! Fortunes war!”
Cap snarled at him. “Sword and clothes too! Quick about it if you don’t want this pin pushed through you!” He jabbed his bayonet against his captive’s stomach.
“Not sporting!” the captive protested.
Cap snatched his fine laced hat from him and clapped it on. “This ain’t sport! Leastways, I ain’t seen none yet! Get out of those two coats!” He seized the Englishman’s blanket coat and had him out of it like stripping the husks from an ear of com. “Now the uniform coat! Off with it!”
He seized the uniform coat as well; then threw his own stained coats, sodden with snow, to the protesting captive. Seeing that some of Goodrich’s men had caught up with us, Cap, important in his fine new garb, issued orders concerning the prisoners with as much assurance as Morgan himself. Then he took me by the arm and hurried onward.
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