Proceed, Sergeant Lamb

by Robert Graves

  Here we remained, almost perishing with hunger and cold until night, not daring either to light a fire or to resume our march until nightfall. Broadribb grew very gloomy and we were forced to give him our remaining peach-whiskey. He told us that we were heading towards the township of Caernarvon, where was a barn in which he had, not long before, rested himself all night. On that occasion, the farmer when he had passed through the barn in the morning had not discovered the presence of his visitor, even when a loud sneeze escaped him: he must have been either sunken in a brown study or, more likely, stone deaf. Broadribb led us without a fault across the Conestoga Creek by a footbridge and along a woodland trail until at dawn he halted us and ‘there is the place’, he said. It was a stone dwelling-house with a great red barn contiguous, as also a boarded maize-shed of the sort that broadens upward like a wheat-rick and has half an inch of interval between the boards to allow ventilation for the maize-heads stored in it. We deliberated whether or not to steal a few heads of maize where a broken board permitted, but we had no rasp to grate them into flour; so with one consent we went to repose our hungry and weary selves in the red barn. The door was open, we soon entered and, climbing up a long ladder, concealed ourselves under some sheaves of wheat which were in the loft. We rubbed a few ears in our hands in Galilean fashion and chewed the grain; but fell asleep still chewing. I kept a spy-hole open between the sheaves in case we were surprised.

  We were cheated of our rest, for just as sleep was deliciously stealing over my senses, with many coloured images and confused dancing lights, a shrill whistling of Yankee Doodle spoilt all, and I awoke with a start to see a tousle-headed, lanky boy with a pitchfork coming up the ladder. It was clear that he was about to remove the wheat for thrashing.

  I aroused the others and instantly disclosed myself. Says I: ‘We arrived to see your master pretty late last night and took the liberty of spending the night in his barn.’

  He stared at us and, evidently misliking our looks, backed down the ladder again, carrying his pitchfork at the charge, and then ran out of the barn. In my haste to forestall him with his master I jumped from the loft upon a heap of hay and ran after, entering the house almost as soon as he. The boy was shouting about us to the farmer, a big, blinking, grey-bearded German, who made a trumpet of one hand placed to his ear, and replied, ‘Yes, yes, my child,’ very indulgently.

  We saluted him with politesse and he desired us to sit down. Though it appeared that he was a widower and childless, the place was spotlessly clean. There was a collection of curiosities ranged in well-made glass cabinets: such as Indian arrowheads of red, grey and black flint, tropical nuts, lumps of ore, fossils, a carved whale’s-tooth and a wampum-belt. I happened to admire a gaily decorated fire-board (used to fill the fire-place in summer time) which was suspended from a nail on the wall. The intricate design of birds, trees and flowers had evidently been scratched into the soft wood, then filled in with colour and varnished over.

  He smiled complacently. ‘Mine own work,’ he said in a thick German accent. He then pointed to a painted chest, decorated in the same style, with houses and people portrayed among birds and flowers. ‘Mine own work,’ he said again. We all expressed great admiration for the chest, and indeed it was most pleasingly painted, though the figures were crude and the flowers ill-sorted with them as to size. Then he showed us a work upon which he had been engaged as we came in: a sheet of illuminated handwriting, nearly complete, under a painting of the Whale spewing up the prophet Jonah. The writing was German verse and appeared to be a hymn. He had on the table beside him a colour-box containing quill pens, brushes (which he told us were of cat’s hair), a small bottle of cherry-gum varnish, and others of coloured inks—red, green, blue, yellow and cuttle-fish brown.

  I smote him upon the back, and uttered some resounding compliment. It was clear that, hungry and sleepless though we were, we could not hurry matters, but must cultivate the friendship of this artist by the easiest and most natural means—a regard for his work. After a while he said to me, in the mixed whispering and shouting characteristic of deaf people: ‘Ha, can you do Fractur, ha? ha? It is not easy, ha?’ He thrust a quill into my hand and rummaged in a box for a sheet of paper, then grinned at me as he laid it down before me. Thus challenged, I limned a neat little picture of four starving children with platters in their hands, standing meekly at the door of a house, where a benignant gentleman, the very spit and image of our present host, blinked down at them. Underneath, I wrote in my best penmanship with delicate flourishes and seraphs and an intricate rubric below, the first verse of the Souling Song as it is sung in my country by children from door to door at the vigil of All Souls’.

  A Soul, a Soul, a Soul cake!

  Pray, good master, a Soul cake!

  An apple, a pear, a plum, a cherry,

  A loaf or a cake to rest us merry:

  One for Peter, two for Paul,

  Three for HIM who made us all.

  A Soul cake!

  Then it was he who slapped me upon the back, roaring with laughter that I had hit him off so luckily, and immediately shouted to his little cook-wench to bring us breakfast.

  This consisted only of maize-flour stirabout, but since we had eaten nothing since our meal beyond the Susquehannah, fifty hours previously, we made a hearty breakfast. He eyed us with a quizzical expression, for we ate most voraciously; but abstained from asking us a single question as to our condition and destination. However, when we had finished, and he had given each of us a bowl of fresh milk he said solemnly: ‘Gentlemen, I spy who and how you be. I spy your intention well. But I shall have nothings to do with you. For the sake of your good leader, who is mine brother in Fractur, I say as follows: “Depart now in peace”!’

  I offered him money, but he would not accept of it, saying very obligingly that my little picture (which after breakfast I completed by giving the beggar children little scarlet coats) had paid our score. We thanked him warmly and withdrew to our usual hiding-place, the woods, where we remained for several hours.

  ‘Well, Happy,’ said Smutchy Steel, ‘what is our next port of call?’

  Broadribb told us that there was a gentleman, one of the King’s Friends, who lived ten miles further on the great road leading to Pennsylvania. We should certainly receive entertainment from him. He was a native of Manchester in England and had grown very rich from the export of flour. Flour shipped on board at Philadelphia cost five dollars the barrel of 196 lb.; and, if it eluded the vigilance of the King’s ships and privateers at the mouth of the Delaware River and won safe through to the Havannah, produced at least thirty dollars the barrel in hard money. Very many vessels were captured, but new ones were always in the stocks to take their places, and this gentleman had been more than usually fortunate of late. There was, I believe, scarcely a captain or even a common seaman who had not been taken six or seven times during the war—nor, for the matter of that, any merchant who had not been more than once rich, ruined and rich again.

  When we arrived at this gentleman’s fine mansion at dusk, we remained concealed in the orchard while Broadribb went ahead into the house. He soon returned and told us to follow him in by the side-door. We found ourselves in a most luxurious apartment, furnished in the English style. Tyce, Probert and Smutchy seemed ashamed to trespass into this elegance, clad as they were in sad rags, with cracked wet shoes on their feet and beards of five days’ growth. But I determined not to be put out of countenance, and saluted the old yellow-wigged gentleman who rose from his wide elbow-chair to welcome us, as if I were in all the glory of full regimentals.

  He bade us sit down at a fine wide fire until refreshment could be got ready for us. Then, in a most feeling manner he observed: ‘You know the great hazard I run in receiving you as friends. It is now eight o’clock. I will let you remain under my roof till midnight. You must then depart. I will not ask your names, and if you know mine, I must ask you to forget it.’

  ‘That we undertake, Sir,’ I said.


  A most excellent supper was then set before us by the old gentlemen’s widowed daughter, who acted as his housekeeper. There was boiled ham, cranberry jelly, venison pastry, hot coffee with plenty of brown sugar as a sweetening; also apples, hickory nuts, wheaten bread and butter and plentiful cider out of silver goblets. The mahogany table glistened under the light of several white wax candles, and our instruments were ivory-handled Sheffield knives, and heavy silver spoons and forks. Our host asked us a number of questions relative to our experiences in the Carolinas and Virginia, which I answered at some length, for I could see that his mind was working upon problems of commerce and considering what new markets might lie open to him in that quarter, now that the Royal armies had removed. I was left to do all the talking, for my comrades had none of them sat at such a table before, and kept their mouths shut all the while except for an occasional ‘Yes, your Honour’ and ‘No, your Honour’ and ‘That I cannot tell you, your Honour’.

  The night proved very stormy, and the rain poured down like a deluge: we could hear it beating a continuous ruffle upon the roof of the portico outside. The hands of the tall clock drew nearer to midnight, and we eyed them wistfully, like the lady in the old wives’ tale, who must leave the ballroom at that same hour lest the spell break and her fine ball dress be transmogrified into its original rags. But gratitude to our host forbade us to overstay our welcome. I asked a great favour of him, that he would write down for us a list of the King’s Friends who lived in our line of march. This he did on condition that we learned the names by rote without taking the paper from him; and that we never, so long as we lived, revealed them to any questioner. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘that if by some great mischance the worst should happen, and by a treaty of peace the United States be granted their independence, these good people, unlike yourselves, must remain in America, where their fortunes lie. To be known as disaffected would prove as fatal then as now.’

  We promised to abide by this condition, and I have ever since kept my word. Just before we braved the dark and boisterous weather, the old gentleman told us: ‘Wait a minute, and we will drink a toast together.’

  He brought out a very large bottle of rum from an armoury, filled up six Waterford rummers, and then, stepping up to a picture of General Washington which hung over the chimney, turned its face to the wall; so revealing to our admiring eyes another painting executed on the reverse of the canvas.

  ‘To His Gracious Majesty, King George, gentlemen,’ he said, and drank the glassful down at one blow. We followed his example and gazed for a full minute in silence at the Royal features in the portrait. Then we saluted and trooped out.

  CHAPTER XIX

  The night was so dark that we ventured to march on the main road to Philadelphia. The nearest of the King’s Friends mentioned in the list lived near Hilltown, about seventeen miles away. We marched on hopefully, despite the increasing inclemency of the weather. We had not gone a mile before we were well drenched to the skin, and what made our journey yet more distressing was that the road was all puddle from the great fall of water. Broadribb began to murmur at the hardships which he endured, saying that his shoes were almost worn out and that the stones cut his feet. Indeed, all our shoes were in a wretched condition: we could scarcely keep them on our feet. Both my soles had come away from the toes, and to prevent them catching as I walked I had secured them with twists of wire.

  We told Broadribb to be of good courage, enlarging upon the better aspects of the situation. Rain, we said, was at least better than snow, since it portended fine Spring weather. Besides, we had a good meal in our bellies and a recommended friend at the end of our march. We swore that we were proud of his company and would sing his praises very loudly upon our arrival at New York. Yet he stopped in his course, like a recalcitrant ass, and fetching a deep groan cried: ‘No, comrades, no, I can go no further with you. You know that I am a deserter and a drunkard and a poor lost wretch, and you despise me in your hearts. Come, come, you can’t deny your true opinion of me.’

  Private Tyce put an arm about the wretched fellow and, ‘Billy Broadribb,’ said he, ‘you take a delight in belittling yourself. You were a fine soldier once, and will be so again when you have shaken yourself free of your despondency. You, Sergeant Probert, weren’t you present aboard the Isis three and a half years since, when we engaged the Caesar seventy-four, and didn’t Captain Raynor, our Commander, pick upon Happy Billy Broadribb, out of our whole Fusilier company, and call him a “damned cool soldier”?’

  Probert clearly could not recollect any such occasion, but came out with an ‘O yes indeed, I swear by damn those were the Captain’s very words.’

  This encouragement helped the unhappy fellow for another mile or two upon his journey, but then he stopped again, to observe with another groan: ‘No, no, I have been thinking that perhaps all my hardships will be of no avail: when I get into New York I shall be denied my pardon and sentenced to the halberts. In my present weak state two strokes only with the lash would kill me.’

  It still wanted an hour or so of dawn, but the rain now ceased and in the grey light we saw a small hovel on the road-side, and a solid house a little further on. I suggested that we should take shelter in it, and Tyce very nobly said: ‘Yes, indeed, Billy Broadribb, I see now that your shoes are very bad. Suppose that you and I exchange, for as our guide it is only justice that you should be the best shod.’ But it proved that the only man besides myself with a shoe of the right size was Smutchy Steel, so Smutchy devoted his to the common cause. I would have yielded mine, but they were in worse repair even than Broadribb’s.

  We pushed open the crazy door of the hovel, where to our great mortification we were saluted with the roaring and loud grunting of the pigs which were inside. We marched off at once, lest by their outcries they might alarm the people of the house, and Broadribb, who now understood how greatly we depended upon him, found a fresh complaint, namely that the coloured clothes he had received from the Scot were much thinner and more wretched than any of ours. Rather than that he should make an outcry as we passed the house, we undertook to give him, presently, the best clothes we had in exchange for his bad ones. At last we came in sight of a large barn. We had been cheated of rest on the previous morning and resolved to take shelter here; but were again disappointed, for as we drew nearer we saw that someone was inside with a lighted lantern. We heard some sheep coughing from the barn and guessed that here was one of those careful shepherds who sit up with their ewes in the lambing season.

  Broadribb now began to whimper and sob and vowed that not another step would he march without rest and sleep. Behind the barn was a large dung-hill and, as the last resource to humour him, we agreed to lie upon it, covering ourselves with the loose litter. Here we remained about half an hour, but could not continue longer because of the extreme cold, and the shooting pains in our bones caused by the damp of the dung.

  Smutchy Steel suddenly leaped up with a curse. ‘Now, you wretch of a Broadribb, we have been subject to your megrims and fancies for too long. Why, you might be a breeding woman, not a Fusilier! For sixpence in old Continental paper, I’d break your lolling neck for you. Up now, you tapeworm, you poltroon, and lead forward or, by God, I will shoot you dead and bury you here in this charming muck-heap.’

  This sharp speech had the looked-for effect. Broadribb started to his feet and declared himself ready to continue. The house recommended to us would not be far off, and morning was breaking fast on us. We reached the place after about a mile. It was a tavern, and as we approached we heard a neighing from the stable. I went forward to reconnoitre, but found to my unspeakable disgust that six army chargers were tied up in the stalls, with furniture which showed pretty clearly that the house was filled with American officers of rank.

  I put a good face upon it, and returning to my comrades, remarked: ‘The whole of General Washington’s family appears to be sleeping in our beds. Do you proceed half a mile down the road while I get some liquor for us all, and if I am not
back among you within five minutes, continue under Sergeant Steel’s command, for I will be a lost man.’ They moved off and I returned to the tavern.

  As I approached, I was aware of two men talking behind a shuttered window—the one in thick drawling tones, and the other in the brisker accents of New York. I paused to listen. As nearly as I can recall the dialogue, it ran after this style:

  ‘Captain Cuyler, I say you are a damned son of a bitch, yet I swear I love you.’

  ‘Fie now, my dear Major M’Corde, I must take exception to that sentiment. Yet I forgive you with all my heart. For it is as plain as a cat’s nose that you are altogether Addled and Awash.’

  ‘How say you, damme? I want none of your plaguey Dutch forgiveness. I addled, sirree? Egad now, it is you who are addled. I am Sobriety’s sweet self. You are, moreover, Boozy, Buzzy and Bepunched.’

  ‘I deny that with blasphemous oaths, Major M’Corde, and will cap you, Tappahanock toper, throughout the English alphabet, if you dare. I say: you are customarily Cocked, Cock-eyed and Crocus, as my name is Cuyler.’

  ‘I take you up, you dog! You are damnably Dagged and Drunk—yet I love you, I swear.’

  ‘Dagged, am I? You are Ebrious.’

  ‘And you, Fettered.’

  ‘You, Glazed.’

  ‘Hammerish, Sirree.’

  ‘Intoxicate.’

  ‘Juicy.’

  ‘Knapt and Kill-Devilled.’

  ‘Lappy, my trickish friend.’

  ‘Mimbo’d, Mumbo’d and Momentous, my mighty Major.’

  ‘Nimtoposical as old Noah.’