Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)
Page 852
Four miles north from Kingston the little party again stopped and cut the wires. They started to take up a rail and were pulling at the loosened end, when to their consternation they heard behind them the whistle of an engine. They managed to break the rail and then clambered in and moved on. At the next station, Adairsville, they found a mixed goods and passenger train waiting, and learned that there was an express on the road. It was a crazy risk to take, but they dared not delay, so they started at a terrific speed for the next station, Calhoun, hoping to reach it before the express, which was late, could arrive.
They did the nine miles to Calhoun in less than nine minutes, and saw in front of them the express just starting. Hearing their whistle it backed, and enabled them to take a side track, but it stopped in such a manner as to close the other end of the switch. There stood the trains side by side, almost touching each other. Naturally questions were asked, and Andrews was hard put to it to explain. He told the powder story, and demanded in the name of General Beauregard that the other train should at once let him pass. With some difficulty its conductor was persuaded, and moved forward.
They were saved by the broken rail. The pursuit saw it in time and reversed their engine. Leaving the soldiers behind, Fuller and Murphy ran along the track till they met the train which Andrews had passed at Adairsville. They made it back in pursuit, and at Adairsville dropped the coaches and continued with only the locomotive and tender, both loaded with a further complement of armed soldiers. They thought that their quarry was safe at Calhoun, but they reached that place a minute or two after Andrews had moved out.
Everything now depended on whether the band of twenty could make another gap in the track in time, for if they could the road was clear before them to Chattanooga. A few minutes ahead of them was the Oostenaula bridge, and if that could be burned they would soon be safe in Mitchel’s camp.
But the mischief was that they had no proper tools, and the taking up of the rails was terribly slow. Once again they heard the whistle of a locomotive behind them and saw their pursuer with armed men aboard. Another minute would have removed the rail, and their victory would have been assured; but they could do nothing more than bend it, and were compelled to hurry back to their engine.
Now began one of the most astounding hunts on record. At all costs Andrews must gain a little time so as to set fire to the Oostenaula bridge; so he dropped first one car and then another. The pursuing engine, however, simply picked them up and pushed them ahead of it. There was no time to do anything at the bridge. Over its high trestles they tore, with Fuller and his soldiers almost within rifle shot.
Soon it appeared that there was no difference in the pace of the two engines. The Confederates could not overtake the filibusters, and Fuller’s policy was therefore to keep close behind so as to prevent Andrews damaging the track and taking on wood and water. Both engines were driven to their last decimal of power, and Andrews succeeded in keeping his distance. But he was constantly delayed, for he was obliged to cut the telegraph wires after every station he passed, in order that an alarm might not be sent ahead; and he could not stop long enough to tear up rails.
All that man could do in the way of obstruction he did, for at all costs he must gain enough ground to destroy the Chickamauga bridges. He broke off the end of their last goods van and dropped it and various sleepers behind him, and this sufficiently checked the pursuit to enable him on two occasions to take in wood and water. More than once his party almost succeeded in lifting a rail, but each time Fuller got within rifle range before the work was completed, Through it all it rained, a steady even-down deluge. The day before had been clear, with a high wind, and a fire would have been quick to start, but on that Saturday, to burn a bridge would take time and much fuel.
On went the chase, mile after mile, past little forgotten stations and quiet villages, round perilous curves, and over culverts and embankments which had never before known such speed. Hope revived whenever the enemy was lost sight of behind a curve, but whenever the line straightened the smoke appeared again in the distance, and on their ears fell the ominous scream of his whistle. To the men, strung to a desperate tension, every minute seemed an hour. If the Northerners’ courage was superb, so also was the pursuit’s. Several times Fuller only escaped wreck by a hairbreadth. At one point a rail placed across the track at a curve was not seen until the train was upon it, when, said Fuller, “the engine seemed to bounce altogether off the track, and to alight again on the rails by a miracle.” A few of the soldiers lost their nerve and would have given up the chase, but the stubborn resolution of their leader constrained them.
Some of Andrews’ party now proposed that they should turn and ambush the enemy, getting into close quarters so that their revolvers would be a match for his guns. This plan would probably have succeeded, but Andrews still hoped to gain sufficient ground to achieve his main purpose; and he feared, too, that the country ahead might have been warned by a telegram sent round to Chattanooga by way of Richmond. He thought his only chance was to stake everything on speed. Close to the town of Dalton he stopped again to cut wires and confuse the track. A Confederate regiment was encamped a hundred yards away, but, assuming that the train was part of the normal traffic, the men scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it. Fuller had written a telegram to Chattanooga and dropped a man with orders to send it. Part of the telegram got through before the wires were cut and created a panic in that town. Meantime, Andrews’ supply of fuel was getting very low, and it was clear that unless he could delay the pursuit long enough to take in more, his journey would soon come to an end.
Beyond Dalton the adventurers made their last efforts to take up a rail, but, as they had no tools except an iron bar, the coming of the enemy compelled them to desist. Beyond that was a long tunnel, which they made no attempt to damage. Andrews saw that the situation was getting desperate, and he played his last card.
He increased speed so that he gained some considerable distance. Then the side and end boards of the last goods van were broken up, fuel was piled upon it, and fire brought from the engine. A long covered bridge lay a little ahead, and by the time they reached it the van was fairly on fire. It was uncoupled in the middle of the bridge, and they awaited the issue. If this device was successful there was sufficient steam in their boiler to carry them to the next woodyard.
But the device did not succeed. Before the bridge had caught fire Fuller was upon them. He dashed right through the smoke and drove the burning car before him to the next side track.
Left with very little fuel and with no obstructions to drop on the track, the position of the adventurers was now hopeless. In a few minutes their engine would come to a standstill. Their only chance was to leave it and escape. The wisest plan would probably have been to desert the train in a body, move northward through the mountains by tracks which could not be followed by cavalry, and where there were no telegraphs. But Andrews thought that they should separate. He ordered the men to jump from the engine one by one and disperse in the woods. So ended in failure a most gallant enterprise.
Melancholy is the conclusion of the tale. Ignorant of the country and far from their friends, the fugitives were easily hunted down. Several were captured the same day, and all but two within the week. As the adventurers had been in civil dress inside the enemy’s lines they were regarded as spies, court-martialed, and Andrews and seven others condemned and executed. The advance of the Northern forces prevented the trial of the rest, and of the remainder, eight succeeded in making their escape from Atlanta in broad daylight, and ultimately reaching the North. The others, who also made the attempt, were recaptured and held captive till March 1863, when they were exchanged for Confederate prisoners.
I know of few stories where the enterprise was at once so audacious and so feasible, where success turned upon such an infinity of delicate chances, and where it was missed by so slender a margin.
III. — THE ESCAPE OF KING CHARLES AFTER WORCESTER
I
The nearest and most obvious refuge was Wales, where the country people were Royalist, and where, in the mountains, Cromwell’s troopers might well be defied. But there was no chance of crossing the Severn in that neighbourhood, so it was decided to ride north into Shropshire. Colonel Careless offered to act as rearguard and stave off the pursuit, and Mr. Charles Giffard, of the ancient family of the Giffards of Chillington, who knew the forest country of the Staffordshire and Shropshire borders, undertook the business of guide. There was a place called Boscobel, an old hunting lodge among the woods, where Lord Derby had already been concealed a few weeks before, so Giffard and a servant called Francis Yates (who was afterwards captured by the Cromwellians and executed) led the little band through the twilight meadows.
They passed the town of Kidderminster on their left, where, at the moment, Mr. Richard Baxter, the Presbyterian divine, was watching from an upper window in the market-place the defeated Royalists galloping through and a small party of Cromwellian soldiers firing wildly at the fugitives. The main road was no place for the King when the bulk of the Scottish horse was fleeing northward by that way, so he turned through Stourbridge and halted two miles farther on at a wayside inn to drink a glass of ale and eat a crust of bread. After that they passed through the boundaries of the old Brewood Forest, and at about four o’clock on the morning of Thursday, 4th September, arrived at the ancient half-timbered manor of Whiteladies, belonging to the family of Giffard. A certain George Penderel was in charge as bailiff, and at the sight of the party he stuck his head out of the window and asked for news of the battle. The door was flung open, and the King rode his horse into the hall. Charles was taken into the inner parlour, and George’s brothers, William and Richard Penderel, were sent for. Richard was bidden fetch his best clothes, which were breeches of coarse green cloth and a leathern doublet. Charles changed into them, his hair was shorn, and he was now no more the Cavalier, but a countryman of the name of Will Jones, armed with a woodbill.
It would have been fatal for the party to have remained together, so his companions galloped off in the direction of Newport, where most of them were taken prisoner. Lord Derby was captured and afterwards beheaded; Giffard also was taken, but he managed to escape, as did Talbot and Buckingham. Charles was led by Richard Penderel into a wood at the back of the house called Spring Coppice, where he had to make himself as comfortable as might be under the trees.
All that day, Thursday, 4th September, it rained incessantly. Richard Penderel brought him food and blankets, and Charles, worn out with want of sleep, dozed till the dusk of the evening. Then Penderel aroused him and bade him be going. His proposal was to guide him south-west to Madeley, where there seemed a chance of crossing the Severn into Wales. Madeley lay only nine miles to the south-west, a pleasant walk among woods and meadows; but on that autumn night, with the rain falling in bucketfuls and every field a bog, it was a dismal journey for a young man stiff from lying all day in the woods, and stayed by no better meal than eggs and milk. Charles was a hearty trencherman, and had not trained his body to put up with short commons. However, he was given some bacon and eggs before he started.
The Penderels were Catholics, and men of that faith were accustomed in those days to secret goings and desperate shifts, and, since all were half-outlawed, there was a freemasonry between them. Therefore Richard proposed to take the King to a Catholic friend of his, Mr. Francis Wolfe, on the Severn bank, who might conceal him and pass him across the river into Wales. That journey in the rain remained in the King’s mind as a time of peculiar hardships, though there seems no particular difficulty in an active young man walking nine miles at leisure in the darkness. In after years Charles was a famous walker, and used to tire out all his courtiers both by his pace and endurance. But on this occasion he appears to have been footsore and unnerved. When they had gone a mile they had to pass a water-mill and cross a little river by a wooden bridge. The miller came out and asked them their errand; whereupon Penderel took alarm and splashed through the water, followed by his King. After that Charles almost gave up. Lord Clarendon to whom he told the story, says that “he many times cast himself upon the ground with a desperate and obstinate resolution to rest there till the morning that he might shift with less torment, what hazard so ever he ran. But his stout guide still prevailed with him to make a new attempt, sometimes promising that the way should be better and sometimes assuring him that he had but little farther to go.” Charles was desperately footsore. Perhaps the country shoes of “Will Jones” did not fit him.
Penderel took alarm and splashed
through the water, followed by his King.
In the small hours they arrived at Mr. Wolfe’s house. Charles waited “under a hedge by a great tree” while Richard Penderel went forward to meet his friend. He was greeted with bad news. Every ford, every bridge, and every ferry on the Severn was guarded by the Cromwellians, who were perfectly aware that the King would make for Wales. Wolfe had “priests’ holes” in his house, but he did not dare to hide the King there, for they had already been discovered by the soldiers; so Charles was concealed among the hay in the barn, where he lay during the day of Friday the 5th. There was nothing for it but to take refuge at Boscobel, the hiding-place originally arranged that night, after borrowing a few shillings from Wolfe the King and Richard set off eastward again guided for the first part of the road by Mr. Wolfe’s maid. At Whiteladies they heard that Colonel Careless, who was acting as rearguard, had safely reached the Boscobel neighbourhood, and that Lord Wilmot was at Moseley, in Staffordshire, nine or ten miles to the east. All the country was thick woodland interspersed with heaths, and few safer hiding-places could be found in England.
Charles was now in better form. The Penderels had stripped off his stockings, washed his feet and anointed the blisters. His disguise was also perfected, for his face and hands had been dyed with juice, and he made gallant efforts to imitate the clumsy gait of a yokel. But his disguise can never have been very perfect. The harsh features, the curious curl of the lips, the saturnine dark eyes, and above all the figure and the speech, were not such as are commonly found among mid-England peasantry.
Penderel did not dare take him into the house, so he took refuge in the wood, where he was presently joined by Colonel Careless. On the coast being reported clear, the King spent the night in one of the priests’ holes in the old manor, an uncomfortable dormitory, which had, however, a gallery adjoining it, where he took walking exercise and surveyed the road from Tong to Brewood. Saturday the 6th was a fine day, and the King spent some time sitting in an arbour in the garden. He was presently induced by Colonel Careless to seek a safer retreat in an oak tree in the wood. A little platform was made in the upper branches, pillows were brought from the house, and there Careless and the King spent the day. The Royal Oak is famous in Stuart history, and this particular tree has long since been hacked to pieces to make keepsakes for the faithful. But it is by no means certain that Charles was in particular danger during the day that he slept in it, or
that any Roundhead trooper rode below the branches and “hummed a surly hymn.” Careless had the worst part of the business, for the King rested his head in his lap and the honest soldier’s arm went to sleep. “This,” in the words of the Miraculum Basilicon, “caused such a stupor or numbness in the part, that he had scarcely strength left in it any longer to support His Majesty from falling off the tree, neither durst he by reason of the nearness of the enemy speak so loud as to awake him; nevertheless, to avoid both the danger of the fall and surprise together, he was (though unwillingly) constrained to practise so much incivility as to pinch His Majesty, to the end he might awake him to prevent his present danger.”