Proceed, Sergeant Lamb

by Robert Graves

  The people of Elizabethtown slept soundly and we were not challenged; but our guide was not to be found at the place appointed. We waited two hours for him and then gave up all hopes. We saw clearly that he had given us the slip. There was a piercing north wind which whirled heavy snow with it. We could not support the notion of waiting longer, our clothes being in tatters and our shoes having broken open again in our recent marching—for the leather was too rotten to hold the stitches of the German cobblers. We at last resolved to proceed by ourselves, though we had no notion upon what point of the compass South Amboy lay. The snowstorm abated and we saw the North Star shining rather bright; we knew we could not be materially wrong if we steered due north. We marched on, very hard, over broken, uneven ground, sometimes on the road, and sometimes through the woods.

  At four o’clock in the morning, Smutchy Steel suddenly stumbled and fell prone on the rutted ground. He exclaimed in a very weak voice: ‘Gerry Lamb, I have endeavoured to keep my troubles to myself and not let out a cry. But I have long overpassed the limit of my possible exertions. The pains of Hell are in my wounded foot, which is greatly inflamed, and not another step can I go.’

  I knew that Smutchy was no ‘malingerer’ or skulker: if he said that he could not march another step, that was the mere truth. I therefore said to the other two: ‘Come now, comrades, I know your feet are all very bad, but we must not abandon our friend so close to our goal. Come, hoist him up on my back, will you? We can carry him by turns until daylight. Then we will rest.’

  ‘No, Gerry,’ said he, ‘leave me here! You are yourselves at the very end of your tether. Better that one should die than all be lost. If I live till morning, I will strive to creep to the next house; and if I have luck, I will follow you in a day or two.’

  We tried to take him with us, none the less, but he was a heavy man and we could not support his weight: we fell down under it. We saw that we must after all leave him, and this was peculiarly distressing to me as his comrade in so many hazards. But for Tyce and Sergeant Probert being dependent upon my leadership, I should have elected to remain with Smutchy. He gave us his pistol, we wrung his hand, and marched on.

  The whole of the next day we spent marching through the snowy woods. We were quite without provisions, nor did we break our fast before two o’clock of the following morning, which was March 22nd. Then we stopped at a house on the side of a narrow road, which was unconnected with any other building. We heard voices downstairs and rapped at the door. An old man quickly opened and, said he: ‘I don’t know who you may be, but step inside if you are a good man, and stop outside if you are not. My old woman and I are lonely old folk, but select in company.’

  I said: ‘Pray, Sir, I believe you are a Dubliner by your manner of speech. It is long since I heard the true Dublin speech from other than soldiers. May I ask from what part of the City do you come?’

  This bold questioning drew a hearty laugh from the old man and a cackle from his old wife. ‘Glory be to God,’ he cried. ‘Do you mean, after all, that thirty years in this land of sharp speech have not cured me of my soft voice? Now, tell me, you night-prowler, whom in the name of Nick do you resemble? I have seen those eyes before now, and that manner of widening them as you speak. Well, I’ll not think—it will come the easier to me, the harder I thrust the thought away. But I’ll tell you, my fine, large man, that my abode was by Bloody Bridge, and that I worked about St. Patrick’s Cathedral, for the old Dean, the dear man.’

  I told him: ‘The Cathedral was having that grand spire added to the steeple about the time you came away, was it not?’

  He looked very grave: ‘Truth, and I came away on account of that same spire. I had the misfortune to drop a hammer on the skull of a drunken, lying mason who was walking beneath me, and they all misdoubted it an accident: for I had the good fortune a few days later to marry my Molly here, whom I widowed. They gave me black looks in the Cathedral, did my fellow masons, and I came away here. Tell me now, isn’t it true that there have been many fine churches and other edifices built or rebuilt in Dublin of late years? Answer me now, quickly, for I’m dying to hear.’

  I here begged permission first to bring in my comrades; though I did not yet declare who we were. This he granted, and with a brisk nod at them immediately began plying me with numerous questions relative to these new churches—their style, materials, decoration and capacity. His wife chid him for his lack of hospitality to a fellow-countryman and began hastily to peel about twelve pounds of fine potatoes and made her husband mend the fire with the bellows, which she thrust into his hand.

  It is very hard for a man caught in a hostile wilderness and near fainting with cold, hunger and sleeplessness to be obliged to read a lecture upon the ecclesiastical architecture of Dublin! Yet I was equal to the task, for I knew how much depended upon it. He was a choleric old man and would not be crossed. I told him of the elegant symmetry of St. Werburgh spire—a fine octagon supported by pillars and terminating in a gilt ball, and of the re-edification of St. Catherine’s in Thomas Street, and of the new St. Thomas’ church, the latest foundation of that kind in the City; and of the handsome front of hewn stone with columns and pediment which was added to St. John’s in Fishamble Street about the time I left the City.

  From churches I was obliged to proceed to the new Royal Exchange, which was a fairy-tale to my host, and to the rebuilding of Arran Bridge (now Queen’s Bridge) which was destroyed by the floods in my eleventh year and soon after rebuilt in hewn stone. He suddenly smote his knee and cried: ‘Now, isn’t this an agreeable packet of news? Come, Molly, my duck, the whiskey! Here are two Irishmen who would be sociable together.’ The potatoes were now bubbling in the pot and demanded eating, and had it not been for thoughts of poor Smutchy Steel, as another Dubliner, it would have been a truly merry evening.

  My host informed us, as if accidentally, where were the American posts on the banks of the river, which flowed only two miles away. But he made no clear profession of politics, and neither did his old wife. She kissed me very affectionately when we presently left their abode.

  Off we went, avoiding the American posts, and as soon as daylight dawned, we saw the woods of Staten Island in the distance, but a deep and broad river rolling between. We wandered up and down the shore in search of a canoe or boat, but found nothing. The broad appearance of day much alarmed us, and after a hurried consultation we agreed to return to my fellow-countryman’s house, discover who we were and throw ourselves upon his protection.

  He came running out of the house to meet me, snapping his fingers and crying: ‘I have it, I have it!’

  I tried to address him, but he would have his say first: ‘Tell me this, my poor, ragged friend: who was the fine man with the pale blue eyes like yours who kept a marine store convenient to Arran Bridge?’

  I replied, laughing: ‘Now, why wouldn’t his name be Lamb, the same as his son’s?’

  ‘That’s the name, by Jesus God! It was from him I bought my seaman’s clothes when I took ship for this country. He widened his pale blue eyes at me in the same way as yourself. Now, Mr. Lamb, I am yours entirely. You are British soldiers, are you not? Be guided by me. I love King George as much as any man.’

  It was late that evening that we entered a small row-boat, owned by two friends of our Dubliner, and put off from the shore. We had agreed to pay them for the passage all the money in our possession. The river here was more than three miles broad.

  The men had not rowed a quarter of a mile when the wind, which had hitherto blown fair for us, changed around and blew very fresh. The boat made a great deal of water, which alarmed the boatmen: they immediately brought the helm over and made for the shore whence we came. There was an English sloop of war that constantly cruised at night in these waters to intercept American privateers and other craft, but we had not yet caught a sight of her. We ordered the boatmen to turn the boat again and either attempt to gain this sloop or, failing that, row us at all events across to the Island. They decl
ared that a boat could not live in such a wind and that we should all be drowned if we persisted. At this I pulled Smutchy’s pistol from my shirt and peremptorily ordered them to do as I said.

  After beating against the wind and waves for near two hours, and being almost perished with wet and cold, we espied a square-rigged vessel at half a mile from us. The boatmen declared her to be an American privateer, but as our boat was within a few minutes of sinking, despite vigorous bailing, we resolved to make towards her. Tyce could not swim at all, and Probert very ill. We must take the risk, I said. As we approached, we were hailed and ordered to come alongside. To our unspeakable joy, when a lantern was shown, we saw British soldiers standing on the deck.

  They hauled us aboard and, as the leader of the party, I was ordered down to the cabin to give an account to Captain Skinner, her commander, who we were. Arrived before him, I could only gape, having lost for awhile the power of articulation. However, he humanely ordered a large glass of rum to be given me. This soon brought me to my speech. ‘Thank God,’ I cried, ‘we are back among our own people!’

  CHAPTER XX

  The author has conducted his readers over varied fields of adventure and trouble, marching and sailing them some four thousand miles from his first enlistment at Dublin to his half-way house at Boston; and perhaps another four thousand miles on his complicated journeys, by way of New York, through the Southern and Middle States and back to New York again. However trying these scenes have proved, he hopes that the faithful local description contained in them will convey a certain degree of amusement and interest, as being the work of an eye-witness. Now, having almost reached the close of his career as a soldier, the author will make a quick exit from the literary stage, aware that the awful blaze of war alone could footlight so obscure a character as himself into public notice.

  ***

  Captain Skinner set us ashore on the next morning with a letter to his father, the Colonel of a regiment of Loyal Americans. We waited on Colonel Skinner, who immediately ordered a boat to convey us to New York. Our appearance astonished the soldiers of the Garrison as with cheerful steps we marched up to Headquarters. Never had sergeants of the Royal Welch Fusiliers appeared in such scarecrow wretchedness. Sir Guy Carleton, whom we found to have superseded Sir Henry Clinton as Commander-in-Chief, received us with great kindness, and we communicated to him all the information we possessed that could tend to the good of the service. But it was with a pang, as I stood in the parlour, that I thought how I had stood here last in much the same pickle and how familiarly and sweetly poor Major André had talked with me. There were some framed sketches and silhouettes by his hand still hanging upon the walls. His appointment as Deputy-Adjutant-General was now held by Major Frederick Mackenzie, who had been adjutant of the Royal Welch Fusiliers during the siege of Boston, and therefore took great interest in us. He desired me to write out a narrative of our escape, and then sent us to the officer who should pay us the usual bounty. This officer, after he had entered my name in the book, turned his eye to the top of the first page. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘the Lambs are famous for this sort of work. Here is another Roger Lamb, a sergeant of The Ninth, one of the first who made good his escape from General Burgoyne’s army, in the winter of 1778.’

  I answered: ‘I am the same man. I afterwards entered the Royal Welch Fusiliers.’

  ‘Indeed, then,’ he said, ‘if you can prove that you are identical with the other, I have good news for you. Colonel John Hill who was exchanged and went to England has left here all your arrears of pay.’ The proof was not difficult, there being officers of both regiments in New York at this time; and the money was paid me, amounting to forty pounds.

  Major Mackenzie then recommended me to General Birch, the Commandant of New York, who appointed me his first clerk, at a good salary. Nor did the Major’s kindness stop there: through his interest I was later made adjutant to the Merchants’ Corps of Volunteers who were on permanent duty in the town. With them for two months I enjoyed the only repose, I may truly say, which I had during the eight years I was in America! Sir Guy Carleton, it may be remarked, had been appointed to his command by Lord Rockingham (whose Ministry had displaced that of Lord North) largely as being an honest and vigorous administrator who would root out from their seat at New York the parasites and plunderers who, under the negligent eyes of Generals Sir William Howe and Sir Henry Clinton, had sucked such immense private fortunes from the war. Sir Guy at once instituted a General Court of Inquiry and soon sent packing a number of officers, commissaries and contractors.

  Later in the year when the preliminaries of peace were signed between Spain, France, America and Great Britain, I was at King’s Bridge in charge of the recruits of the Royal Welch Fusiliers who were doing duty there. I heard the news with a sort of apathy, but high indignation was expressed by very many Loyalists and British. They were aware that General Washington’s army were as naked and destitute as ever, and incapable of making a march of one day, even often plotting mutiny and held down only by the shooting of their ringleaders. General Washington himself afterwards confessed that his people were in a sort of stupor, that had we been permitted to march we could certainly have taken the Highlands above Hudson’s River. The terms of the peace conceded the United States total independence; the great back-country territories from the middle Mississippi northward to the Great Lakes, formerly a part of Canada; the enjoyment of the cod-fisheries on the banks of Newfoundland; and the retention of the confiscated estates of the Loyalists. The Loyalists, twenty-five regiments of whom had served in our armies, now tore the British facings from their coats and stamped them under foot. They had lost all.

  Thus ended a contest which had dismembered England of much more than half her territory. How far her commerce and her true interest as a nation were affected by it, was a point upon which it was then useless to speculate, and upon which innumerable and contradictory opinions have since been given. This at least can be written without fear of contradiction: that for the sake of enforcing duties upon tea and other commodities, which would only have brought in a few thousand pounds sterling—even had the expense of collection not greatly outweighed the receipts!—a war was precipitated which added no less than £120,000,000 to the National Debt, already very heavy, and doubled the burden of interest upon it. (The French, by the bye, were also £50,000,000 out of pocket as a result of this same war.) However, money is dross, and much money is much dross, and in the long run I believe it to have been for the best that the two nations were thus at last separate, in fact as well as by a fiction. It may even come about some day that, remembering the ancient ties of affection and language that, despite all, yet bind the two nations, the Americans will join in armed alliance with us against the French or other relentless foes who threaten our common liberties. However, from the loss of their Tories, they have been unhappily slow in settling down as a nation upon an even keel; and in this very year in which I write5 we have fallen foul of them again, and been forced to land troops who have burned down their new capital city of Washington.

  I have hoarded up two happy surprises for the reader; and may now disclose them. Sergeant Collins and his party came safe into New York about the end of April. They had endured the same great hardships as ourselves, and had been unfortunately taken prisoners in Jericho Valley as they prepared to cross the Delaware River a few miles below Trenton. They were confined in the famous Reformatory Prison of Philadelphia. There the treatment of prisoners was wisely designed to eradicate vice and make them look forward to their re-establishment as honest members of society: by allowing them to continue at their trades during their servitude, or teaching them trades if they were ignorant of any. Sergeant Collins and his party did not own to the knowledge of any trade and were therefore all together instructed in nail-making; just as ignorant females were commonly set to beat hemp. Had my comrades, who preferred liberty to reformation, been made into hemp-beaters they would have stolen strands to twist into light rope for their escape; but
as nail-makers they stole iron bars instead and escaped by undermining the foundation of their cell. They smuggled themselves aboard a trading vessel at the docks and were rescued, as she sailed out of the river, by a British privateer.

  We celebrated our banquet of reunion, as agreed upon, with the same choice viands that we had named as we crouched in the snow by the Susquehannah River, though we had to forgo our pineapples as unobtainable. The expense, I can assure my readers, was no paltry one, for in New York market at this time a leg of mutton sold for a guinea, a fowl for six shillings, a good egg for threepence, and the other articles proportionately. Liquor also stood extravagantly high. I proposed a silent toast to ‘An absent face’, meaning of course Smutchy Steel, and as we raised our glasses to our lips, then pat, as if by a theatrical cue, someone knocked at the door. ‘Enter,’ we cried. A well-known head craned in and a well-known voice enquired: ‘Is the table set for eight or only for seven? And where is my great trencherful of potatoes that you promised me?’

  ‘Why, Smutchy!’ we cried, and ran to him, pressing him to our breasts. ‘How came you here?’

  He said: ‘By the same way as you did, Gerry. I had the luck after you left me by Elizabethtown. The guide had not deserted us, but by an error waited at another hill closer to the village. When he found his mistake he went after us, and came upon me lying insensible by the roadside. He revived me with some warm rum and carried me to a friend’s house, where I remained for three weeks until my foot had been healed with poultices. My next stage was the house of an old Irishman by the river who wished to be kindly recommended to you; and so across to Staten Island by boat with a fair wind and a starry sky.’