Governor maurequez evolves into the very climax of the affable, not to say obsequious. He assures the General that he is relieved by the flight of the pig English, whom he despises as hare-hearts. Also, he is breathless to do anything that shall prove his affectionate admiration for his friend, the valorous Senor General.
The General accepts the affectionate admiration of Governor Maurequez, and leaves in his care Major Laval, who has been too severely wounded to move; and Governor Maurequez subsequently smothers that convalescent with nursing solicitude and kindness. Those other twenty wounded hunting-shirt men the General takes back with him to Mobile.
The General now gives himself up to a profound study of maps. His invasion of Florida has paled the cheek of the Spanish Minister at Washington and given European diplomacy a chill; he knows nothing of that, however, and would care even less if he did. After poring over his maps for divers days, he comes to sundry sagacious conclusions, and sends for the indispensable Coffee to confer. That commander makes an admirable counselor for the General, since he seldom speaks, and then only to indorse emphatically the General's views. For these splendid qualities, and because he is as brave as Richard the Lion Heart, the General makes a point of consulting the excellent Coffee concerning every move.
“Coffee,” says the General, as that warrior casts himself upon a bench, which creaks dolorously beneath his giant weight, “Coffee, they'll attack New Orleans next.”
The listening Coffee grunts, and the General, correctly construing the Coffee grunt to mean agreement, proceeds:
“England has now no foe in Europe. That allows her to turn upon us with her whole power. Even as we talk, I've no doubt but an immense fleet is making ready to pounce upon our coasts. Now, Coffee, the question is, Where will it pounce?”
The General pauses as though for answer. The admirable Coffee emits another grunt, and the General understands this second grunt to be a grunt of inquiry. Stabbing the map before him, therefore, with his long, slim finger, he says:
“Here, Coffee, here at New Orleans. It's the least defended, and, fairly speaking, the most important port we have, for it locks or unlocks the Mississippi. Besides, it's midwinter, and such points as New York and Philadelphia are seeing rough, cold weather. Yes, I'm right; you may take it from me, Coffee, the English are aiming a blow at New Orleans.” The convinced Coffee testifies by a third grunt that his own belief is one and the same with the General's, and the council of war breaks up. As the big rifleman swings away for his quarters the General observes:
“Coffee, you will never realize how much I am aided by your opinions. Two heads are better than one, particularly when one of them is capable of such a clean, unfaltering grasp of a situation as is yours.”
The General burns to be at New Orleans, and leaving Colonel Coffee to bring on his three thousand hunting-shirt men as fast as he may, gallops forward with four of his staff. It is a rough, evil road that threads those one hundred and seventy-five miles which lie between the General and the Mississippi, but he puts it behind him with amazing rapidity. At last the wide, sullen river rolls at his horse's feet.
As the General traverses the rude forest roads, difficult with November's mud and slush, a few days' sail away on the Jamaica coast may be seen proof of the pure truth of his deductions. The English admiral is reviewing his fleet of fifty ships, preparatory to a descent upon New Orleans.
It is a formidable flotilla, with ten thousand sailors and nine thousand five hundred soldiers and marines, and mounts one thousand cannon. The flagship is the Tonnant, eighty guns, and there sail in her company such invincibles as the Royal Oak, the Norge, the Asia, the Bedford, and the Ramillies, each carrying seventy-four guns. With these are the Dictator, the Gorgon, the Annide, the Sea Horse, and the Belle Poule, and the weakest among them better than a two-decked forty-four.
In command of this armada are such doughty spirits as Sir Alexander Cockrane, admiral of the red, Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, Rear Admiral Malcolm, and Captain Sir Thomas Hardy—“Nelson's Hardy,” who commanded the one-armed fighter's flagship Victory at Trafalgar. These, with their followers, have grown gray and tired in unbroken triumph. Now, when they are making ready to spring on New Orleans, their war word is “Beauty and Booty!”
Review over, Admiral Cockrane in the van with the Tonnant, the fleet sails out of Negril Bay for Louisiana. As the General's horse cools his weary muzzle in the Mississippi, the English fleet has been two days on its course.
It is a dull, lowering December morning when the General, on his great war stallion, following the Bayou road, rides into New Orleans. He finds the city in a tumult, and nothing afoot for its defense. He is received by Governor Claiborne, a stately Virginian, and Mayor Girod, plump and little and gray and French, with a delegation of citizens. Among the latter is one whom the General recognizes. He is Edward Livingston, aforetime of New York, and the General's dearest friend in those old Philadelphia Congressional days. The General gives the Livingston hand a squeeze and says: “It's like medicine in wine, Ned, to see you at such a time as this.”
Governor Claiborne makes a speech in English, Mayor Girod makes a speech in French-leading citizens make speeches in English, Spanish, and French. The speeches are fiery, but inconclusive. All are excited, confused, ani without a plan. The General replies in little more than a word:
“I have come to defend your city,” says he: “and I shall defend it or find a grave among you.”
Following this ultimatum, the General goes to dinner with Mr. Livingston.
Governor Claiborne, Mayor Girod, and the leading citizens remain behind to talk the General over in their several tongues. They are disappointed, it seems.
There be those who wish he hadn't come. Among them is the Speaker of the Territorial House of Representatives—A French creole of anti-American sentiments.
“His presence will prove a calamity!” cries this legislative person. “He seems to me to be a desperado, who will make war like a savage and bring destruction and fire on our city and the neighboring plantations.”
There is no retort to this, for the local spirit of treason is widespread.
While the citizens of New Orleans are discussing the General, he with his friend Livingston is discussing them.
“What is the state of affairs here, Ned?” asks the General.
“It could not be worse,” is the reply. “All is confusion, contradiction, and cross-purposes. The whole city seems to be walking in a circle.” “We'll see, Ned,” returns the General grimly, “if we can't make it walk in a straight line.” Commodore Patterson comes to call on the General. He is one who says little and looks a deal—precisely a gentleman after the General's own heart, for while he himself likes to talk, he prefers silence in others.
Commodore Patterson sets forth the naval defenses of the town. An enemy entering from the sea must come by way of Lake Borgne, and there are six baby gunboats on Lake Borgne. The flotilla is commanded by Lieutenant Jones, who is Welsh and therefore obstinate; he will fight to the final gasp. The General beams approval of Lieutenant Jones, who he thinks has a right notion of war.
“But of course,” says Commander Patterson, “he will be overcome in the end.”
The General nods to this. He does not expect Lieutenant Jones to defend the city alone. Commodore Patterson continues: “There are the schooner Carolina and the ship Louisiana in the river, but they are out of commission and have no crews.”
“Enlist crews at once!” urges the General.
The General appoints Mr. Livingston to his staff, and the pair make a tour of the suburbs and the flat, marshy regions round about. The General is alert, inquisitive; he is studying the strategic advantages and disadvantages of the place. When he returns he orders a muster of the city's military strength for the next day. The review occurs, and the General declares himself pleased with the display.
Commodore Patterson comes to say that, while the streets are full of sailors, not one will enlist. The General asks the Legislature to suspend the habeas corpus. That done, he will organize press gangs and enlist those reluctant “volunteers” by force. The Legislature refuses, and the General's eyes begin to sparkle.
“To-morrow, Ned,” says he, “I shall clap your city under martial law.”
“But, my dear General,” urges Mr. Livingston, who, being a lawyer, reveres the law, “you haven't the authority.”
“But, my dear Ned,” replies the determined General, “I have the power. Which is more to the point.”
The General declares civil rule suspended, and puts the city under martial law. It is as though he lays his strong, bony hand on the shoulder of every man, and, the first shock over, every man feels safer for it. The press gangs are formed, and scores of seafaring “volunteers” are carried aboard the Carolina and Louisiana in irons. Once aboard and irons off, the “volunteers” become miracles of zeal and patriotic fire, furbishing up the dormant broadside guns, filling the shot racks, and making ready the magazines, hearts light as larks, as though to fight invading English is the one pleasant purpose of their lives; for such is the seafaring nature.
The General's “press” does not confine itself to sailors. Negroes, mules, carts, shovels, and picks are brought under his rigid thumb. Every gun, every sword, every pistol is collected and stored for use when needed. Meanwhile, the indefatigable Coffee arrives, marching seventy miles the last day and fifty the day before to join his beloved chief. Also Captain Hinds of the dragoons is no less headlong, and brings his command two hundred and thirty miles in four days, such is his heat to fight beneath the blue, commanding eye of the General.
Nor is this all. A day goes by, and Colonel Carroll steps ashore from a fleet of flatboats, at the head of a hunting-shirt force from the Cumberland country. The backwoods cheer which goes up when the new hunting-shirt men see the General, brings the water to his eyes with thoughts of home. Lastly, Colonel Adair appears with his force of Kentuckians. These latter are a disappointment, being practically unarmed, owning but one gun among ten.
“Ain't you got no guns for us, Gin'ral?” asks one of the Kentucky captains anxiously.
“I am sorry to say I have not,” returns the General.
“Well,” responds the Kentuckian, while a look of satisfaction begins to struggle into his face, as though he has hit upon a solution of the tangle, “well, I'll tell you what we'll do, then. Which the boys'll just nacherally go out on the firin' line with the rest, an' then as fast as one of them Tennesseans gets knocked over, we'll up an' inherit his gun.”
THESE are busy times for the General. He lives on rice and coffee, and goes days and nights without sleep. He sends the tireless Coffee, with his hunting-shirt men, to take position below the city, between the morass and the river. Finally he orders all his forces below—Colonel Carroll with his new hunting-shirt men, Colonel Adair with his unarmed Kentuckians, the hard-riding Captain Hinds with his dragoons, as well as the muster of local military companies, among the rest Major Plauche's battalion of “Fathers of Families.” There are a great many filial as well as paternal tears shed when the “Fathers of Families” march away to the field of certain honor and possible death; even Papa Plauche himself does not refrain from a sob or two. The “Fathers of Families” take with them their band, which musical organization plays the Chant du Depart, whereat, catching the tempo, they strut heroically. The rough hunting-shirt men are much interested in the “Fathers of Families,” and think them as good as a play.
The General busies himself about his headquarters, and waits for news of the English, of whose coming he has word. One afternoon appears a lean little dark man, with black, beady eyes, like a rat. He introduces himself; he is Jean Lafitte, the “Pirate of Barrataria.” Only he explains that he is really no pirate at all, not even a sailor; at the worst he is simply the innocent shore agent or business manager of pirates. Also, he declares that he is very patriotic and very rich, and might add “very criminal” without startling the truth.
Why has he come to see Monsieur General? Only to show him a letter from the English Admiralty, brought by the General's old friend, Captain Percy, late of H. R. H. Ship Hermes, offering him, Jean Lafitte, a captain's commission in the royal navy, thirty thousand dollars in English gold, and the privilege of looting. New Orleans, if he will but aid in the city's capture. Now he, Jean Lafitte, scorning these base attempts upon his honor, desires to offer his own and the services of his buccaneers to the General in repulsing those villain English, whom he looks upon with loathing as Greeks bearing gifts.
“Only,” concludes Jean Lafitte, his black rat eyes taking on a sly expression, “my two best captains, Dominique and Bluche, together with most of their crews, are locked up in the New Orleans calaboose.”
The General considers a moment, looking the while deep into the rat eyes of Jean Lafitte. The scrutiny is satisfactory; there is nothing there save an anxiety to get his men out of jail. This the General is pleased to regard as creditable to Jean Lafitte. He comes back to the question in hand.
“Dominique and Bluche,” he repeats. “Can they fight?”
“They can do anything with a cannon, Monsieur General, which your sharpshooters do with their squirrel rifles.”
The General has the caged Dominique and Bluche brought before him. They are hardy, daring, brown men of the sea, with bushy hair, curling beards, gold rings in their ears, crimson handkerchiefs about their heads, gay shirts, sashes of silk, short voluminous trousers, like Breton fisherman, and loose sea boots—altogether of the brine briny are Dominique and Bluche. One glance convinces the General. The order is issued, and the two pirates with their followers take their places as artillerists where the wary Coffee may keep an eye on them.
The English fleet arrives and anchors off the Louisiana coast. Loaded scuppers-deep with soldiers and sailors and marines, the lighter craft enter Lake Borgne. They sight the six cockleshells of Lieutenant Jones, and make for them.
Lieutenant Jones, with his cockleshells, slowly and carefully retreats. He retreats so carefully that one after another the English boats, to the round number of a score, run aground on divers mud banks, where they stick, looking exceeding foolish. When the last pursuing boat is fast on the mud banks, Lieutenant Jones anchors his six cockleshells where the English may only get at him in small boats, and awaits results.
The English are in no wise backward. Down splash the small boats, in tumble the men, and presently they are pulling down upon the waiting Lieutenant Jones—twelve men for every one of his. The small boats have swivels mounted in their bows, and by way of preliminary, stand off from the six cockleshells, waging battle with their little bow guns. This is a mistake. Lieutenant Jones returns the fire from his cockleshells, sinks four of the small boats, and spills out the crews among the alligators. Unhappily, it is winter, and the alligators are sound asleep in the mud below, by which effect of the season the spilled ones are pulled aboard their sister boats with legs and arms intact.
Being reorganized, and having enough of swivel war, the English fleet of small boats rush the six cockleshells, and after a fierce struggle, take them by weight of numbers. The English Captain Lockyer, following the fight, wipes the blood from his face, which has been scratched by a cutlass, and reports to Admiral Cockrane his success, and adds:
“The American loss is, killed and wounded, sixty; English, ninety-four.”
Being masters of Lake Borgne, the English go about the landing of troops on Pine Island. The sixteen hundred first ashore are formed into an advance battalion and ordered forward. They go splashing through the swamps toward the river like so many muskrats, and in the wet, cold, dripping end crawl out on a narrow belt of sugar-cane stubble which bristles between the levee and the swamp from which they have emerged. Finding dry land under their feet, they cheer up a bit, and build fires to make comfortable their bivouac while waiting the coming of their comrades, still wallowing in the swamp.
Night descends, but finds those sixteen hundred of the English advance reasonably gay; for, while the present is distressing, their fellows by brigades will be with them in the morning, and they may then march on to sumptuous New Orleans, where—as goes their war word—theirs shall be the “Beauty and Booty” for which they have come so far. And so the chilled, starved sixteen hundred of that English advance hold out their benumbed hands to the fires, and console themselves with what the poet describes as “The Pleasures of Anticipation.” And in this instance, of course, the anticipations are sure of fulfillment, for what shall withstand them? The raw, cowardly militia of the country? Absurd!
As confirmatory of this, a subaltern hands about a copy of the London Sun which has a description of Americans. The others peruse it by the light of their camp fires. It makes timely reading, since it is ever worth while to gather—so that they be reliable—what scraps one may descriptive of an enemy. The English, crouched about their fires, are much benefited by the following:
“The American armies of Copper Captains and Falstaff recruits defy the pen of satire to paint them worse than they are—worthless, lying, treacherous, false, slanderous, cowardly, and vaporing heroes, with boasting on their loud tongues and terror in their quaking hearts. Were it not that the course of punishment they are to receive is necessary to the ends of moral and political justice, we declare before our country that we should feel ashamed of victory over such ignoble foes. The quarrel resembles one between a gentleman and a sweep—the former may beat the low scoundrel to his heart's content, but there is no honor in the exploit, and he is sure to be covered with the soil and dirt of his ignominious antagonist. But necessity will sometimes compel us to descend from our station to chastise a vagabond, and endure the degradation of such a contest in order to repress, by wholesome correction, the presumptuous insolence and mischievous designs of the basest assailant.”
The young English officers find this refreshing as literature. It might have been less uplifting could they have foreseen how ninety years later England will fawn upon and flatter and wheedle America to the point which sickens, while her bankrupt nobility make that despised region a hunting ground where, equipped of a title and a coat of arms, they track heiresses to lairs of gold and marry them.
Now that the satisfied English are asleep about their fires, it behooves one to hear how the General is faring. The day with him is one fraught with work. Word reaches him of the captured cockleshells on Lake Borgne. Also it reaches that valuable Legislature—honeycombed of treason.
The Legislature sends a committee to ask the General what will be his course if he's beaten back. The General is hardly courteous:
“Tell your honorable body,” says he, “that if disaster overtake me and the fate of war drives me from my lines to the city, they may expect to have a very warm session.”
Mr. Livingston catches the adjective. The committee having departed, he propounds a query.
“A warm session, General!” says he. “What do you mean by that?”
“Ned,” replies the General, “if I am beaten here, I shall fall back on the city, fire it, and fight it out in the flames! Nothing for the maintenance of the enemy shall be left. New Orleans destroyed, I shall occupy a position on the river above, cut off supplies, and, since I can't drive, I shall starve the English out of the country. There is this difference, Ned, between me and those fellows from the Legislature. They think only of the city and its safety. For my side, I'm not here to defend the city, but the nation at large.”
On the heels of this, the Legislature whispers of surrendering Louisiana to the English by resolution. It is scarcely feasible as a plan, but it angers the General. He stations a guard at the door of the chamber and turns the members away.
“We can dispense with your sessions,” says he. “We have laws enough; our great need now is men and muskets at the front.”
The patricians of the Legislature are scandalized as being shut out of their chamber.
“Did I not tell you,” cries the prophetic House Speaker, “did I not tell you this fellow was a desperado, and would wage war like a savage?”
The members retire from the guarded doors, cursing the General under their breath. Their doorkeeper, a low, common person, is so struck by what the General has said anent men and muskets, that he gets a gun and joins that “desperado.” And wherefore no? Patriotism has been the mark of vulgar souls in every age.
Colonel Coffee's hunting-shirt scouts come in and report the watch fires of those sixteen hundred of the English advance winking and blinking among the sugar stubble.
“Ah!” says the General, “I've a mind to disturb their dreams.”
The General dispatches word to Commodore Patterson to have the Carolina in readiness to act with his forces. Then he sends for the indispensable Coffee.
“Coffee, we shall attack them to-night.”
The wise Coffee gives the grunt acquiescent.
“Thank you, Coffee!” says the General.
The council over, Colonel Coffee goes to turn out the troops. This is to be done softly, as a surprise is aimed at.
Now on the dread threshold of battle, Papa Plauche of the “Fathers of Families” is overcome. As the intrepid “Fathers” fall into line, tears fill Papa Plauche's eyes, and he appeals to neighbor St. Geme.
“I am a Frenchman!” cries Papa Plauche, tossing his arms; “I am a Frenchman, and do not fear to die! But, alas! mon St. Geme, I fear I have not the courage to lead the 'Fathers of Families' to slaughter.”
“Hush, Papa Plauche!” returns the good St. Geme, made wretched by the grief of his friend. “Hush! Command yourself! Do not let the wild General hear you; he will not, with his coarse nature, understand such sentiments.”
Captain Roche, of the “Fathers of Families,” steps in front of his company. Striking his breast melodramatically, he sings out:
“Sergeant Roche, advance!”
Sergeant Roche advances.
“Embrace me, brother!” cries Captain Roche in broken utterances, “embrace me! It is perhaps for the last time.”
The brothers Roche embrace, and the “Fathers of Families” are melted by the tableau.
“Sergeant Roche, return to your place!” commands the devoted Captain Roche, and the sergeant, weeping, lapses into the ranks.
The hunting-shirt men, witnesses of these touching scenes, are rude enough to laugh, and by way of parody embrace one another effusively. As they depart through the dark for their station, they break into whispered debate as to whether the theatrical grief of Papa Plauche, the brothers Roche, and the “Fathers of Families” is due to their creole blood, or their city breeding, either, according to the theories of the hunting-shirt men, being calculated to promote the effeminate in a man. While they thus wrangle, there comes an angry hissing whisper from Colonel Coffee, like the hiss of a serpent:
“Silence!”
Every hunting-shirt man is stricken dumb. They move forward like shadows, right flank skirting the cypress swamp. To the far left they hear the moccasined, half-muffled tramp of Colonel Carroll's men—their hunting-shirt brothers from the Cumberland. As they turn a bend in the swamp, they see not a furlong away the flickering and shadow dancing of the watch fires of the tired English. At this every hunting-shirt man makes certain the flint is secure in the hammer of his rifle, and loosens the knife and tomahawk in his rawhide belt.
AS the hunting-shirt men come within sight of the blinking lights, which polka-dot the sugar stubble in front and mark the bivouac of the English, Colonel Coffee sends the whispered word along the line to halt. At this, the hunting-shirt men crouch in the lee of the cypress swamp, and wait. Colonel Coffee is lying by for the signal which shall tell him to begin.
Before the movement commences, the General calls Colonel Coffee to one of their celebrated conferences.
“It is my purpose, Coffee,” explains the General, “merely to shake them up a bit. An attack will cure them of overconfidence, and break the teeth of their conceit. This should hold them in check, and give us time for certain earthworks I meditate. The signal will be a gun from the Carolina. When you hear the gun, Coffee, attack everything wearing a red coat. But be careful!” Here the General lifts a long, admonitory finger. “Do not follow too far! Reinforcements are crawling out of the swamp to the rear of the English every hour, and the only certainty is that, even as we talk, they outnumber us two for one.”
The faithful Coffee departs. As he reaches the door, the General calls after him:
“Don't forget, Coffee! The gun from the Carolina!”
The hunting-shirt men lie waiting by the cypress swamp. On their near left is Papa Plauche and his “Fathers of Families.” Beyond these is a half company of regulars, which the General has brought up from the near-by post. On the Bayou Road, between the regulars and the river, is the General himself, with a brace of small field pieces.
It is a moonless night, and what light the stars might furnish is withheld by a blanket-screen of thick clouds. No night could be darker; for, lest an occasional star find a cloud-rift and peer through, a fog drifts up from the river. This is good for the English, since it hides their watch fires, which one by one are lost in the mists. The darkness deepens until even the hawk-eyed hunting-shirt men, trained by much night fighting to a nocturnal keenness of vision, are unable to make out their nearest comrades.
The pitch blackness, and the fog chill creeping over him, tell on Papa Plauche. He whispers sorrowfully to his friend St. Geme.
“Neighbor St. Geme,” he says, “these differences should be adjusted by argument, and not by deadly guns. I see that he who would either shoot or be shot by his fellow-man; is in an erroneous position.”
Before the kindly St. Geme may frame response, a liquid tongue of flame illuminates the broad dark bosom of the river. It is followed sharply by a crashing “Boom!” This is the word from the Carolina.
The signal carries dismay into the hearts of the English, since Commodore Patterson, whose genius is thoroughgoing, is at pains to load the gun with two pecks of slugs, and eighty-four killed and wounded are the red English harvest of that one discharge. The frightened drums beat the alarm, and the ranks of English form. As they grasp their arms the nine broadside guns of the Carolina begin to rake them. With this the English fall slowly back from the river.
The rearward movement, while managed slowly because of the darkness, brings discouraging results. The English retreat into the hunting-shirt men, who are skirmishing up from the cypress swamp. The English are first told of this new danger by the spitting flashes which remind them of needles of fire, and the crack of the long squirrel rifles like the snapping of a whip. Here and there, too, a groan is heard, as the sightless lead finds some English breast. This augments the blind horror of the hour.
The trapped English reply in a desultory fashion, and make a bad matter worse. The hunting-shirt men locate them by the flash of their guns, at which they shoot with incredible quickness and accuracy. With men falling like November's leaves, the English give ground to the south, which saves them somewhat from both the Carolina and the hunting-shirt men.
Guessing the English direction, the hunting-shirt men follow, loading and firing as they advance. Now and then a hunting-shirt man overtakes an individual foe, and settles the national differences which divide them with tomahawk and knife. It is cruel work—this unseeing bloodshed in the dark, and disturbingly new to the English, who express their dislike for it.
While the hunting-shirt men drive the English along the fringe of the cypress swamp, the General, a half mile nearer the river, is working his two field pieces. Affairs proceed to his warlike satisfaction—and this is saying a deal for one so insatiate in matters of blood—until a flying ounce of lucky English lead wounds a horse on the number two gun. This brings present relief to those English in the General's front; for the hurt animal upsets the gun into the ditch. It takes fifteen minutes to put it on its proper wheels again. The accident disgruntles the General; but he bears it with what philosophy he may, and in good truth is pleased to find that the gun carriage has not been smashed in the upset.
“Save the gun!” is his word to the artillery men; and when it is saved he praises them.
At the booming signal from the Carolina, the intrepid Papa Plauche cries out:
“Forwards, brave Fathers of Families! Forwards, heroes!”
The “Fathers” respond, and go on with the hunting-shirt men. But their pace is sedate; and this last results in an impoliteness which disturbs the excellent Papa Plauche to the core.
The hunting-shirt men are, for the major portion, riotous young blades from the backwoods. Moreover, they are used to this prowling warfare of the night. Is it wonder then that they advance more rapidly than does Papa Plauche with his “Fathers,” whose step is measured and dignified as becomes the heads of households?
Thus it befalls that, do their dignified best, Papa Plauche and his “Fathers” are left behind by the hunting-shirt men, who, deploying more and still more to the left, extend themselves in front of Papa Plauche. This does not suit the latter's hardy tastes, and he frets ferociously. He grows condemnatory, as the spitting rifle flashes show him that the vainglorious hunting-shirt men are between him and those English whom he hungers to destroy. Indeed, he fumes like tiger cheated of its prey.
“But we shall extricate ourselves, neighbor St. Geme!” cries Papa Plauche. “We shall yet extricate ourselves! Behold!”
The “Behold!” is the foreword of certain masterly maneuvers by Papa Plauche among the sugar stubble. The maneuvers free the farseeing Papa Plauche and his “Fathers” from those obstructive, unmannerly hunting-shirt men, who have cut off their advance even in its indomitable bud. The “Fathers” being better used to shop floors than plowed fields, however, make difficult work of it. At last courage has its reward, and the “Fathers” uncover their dauntless front.
“Oh, my brave St. Geme!” cries Papa Plauche, when his strategy has put the hunting-shirt men on his right, where they belong, “nothing can save the caitiff English now! Those ruffians in hunting tunics who protected them no longer impede our front. Forwards!”
The final word has hardly issued from between the clenched teeth of Papa Plauche when a rustling in the stubble apprises him of the foe.
“Fire, Fathers of Families, fire!” shouts Papa Plauche, and such is the fury which consumes him that the shout is no shout, but a screech.
It is enough! One by one each “Father” discharges his flintlock. The procession of reports is rather ragged, and now and again a considerable wait occurs between shots, like a great gap in a picket fence. Still, the last “Father” finally finds the trigger, and the command of Papa Plauche is obeyed.
The “Fathers” hurt no one by this savage volley, for their aim like their hearts is high. It is quite as well they do not. The stubble-disturbing force in front chances to be none other than that half company of regulars, to whose rear it seems the inadvertent Papa Plauche, in freeing them from the hunting-shirt men, has led his “Fathers.” The regulars are in a towering rage with Papa Plauche; but since no one has been injured, and Papa Plauche is profuse in his apologies, their anger presently subsides. The regulars again take up their bloody work upon the retreating English, while the discouraged Papa Plauche and the “Fathers,” full of confusion and chagrin at twice being balked, remain where they are.
“After all, neighbor St. Geme,” observes Papa Plauche, “the mistake was theirs. Did they not usurp the place which belonged to the English, in thus getting in front of us? It should teach them to beware how they put themselves in the path of my 'Fathers,' whose wrath is terrible.”
For two black, sightless hours the huntingshirt men crowd the English to the south. Then the General draws them off. They come, bringing as captives one colonel, two majors, three captains, and sixty-four privates. Also they have killed and wounded two hundred and thirteen of the English, which comforts them marvelously. They themselves have suffered but slightly, and the backloads of English guns they carry will gladden many an unarmed Kentucky heart.
Now when he has them together, the beloved Coffee at their head, the General leads the way to the thither side of the Roderiquez Canal, where he plans a line of breastworks. Arriving, the weary hunting-shirt men build fires, and make themselves easy for the balance of the night.
After a brief rest, the thoughtful General detaches a party with one of the field guns, to interest the English until daylight.
“For I think, Coffee,” says he, “that if we keep them awake, they will be apt to sleep tomorrow; and so leave us free to work on our defenses.”
IT is the day before Christmas when the General lays out his line for fortifications. The Roderiquez Canal is no canal at all, but a disused mill race, which an active man can leap and any one may wade. The General will make a moat of it, and raise his breastworks along its mile-length muddy course, between the river and the cypress swamp. He keeps an army of mules and negroes, with scrapers and carts, hard at work, heaping up the earth. A boat load of cotton is lying at the levee. The cotton bales are rolled ashore, and added to the heaped-up earth. This pleases Papa Plauche.
“It is singular,” he remarks to neighbor St. Geme, “that cotton, which has been my business support for years, should now defend my life.”
There is a low place to the General's front. He cuts the levee; and soon the Mississippi furnishes three feet of water, to serve as a wet drawback to any English advance. The latter, however, are not thinking on an advance. Supports have come dripping from the swamp, and swollen their numbers to threefold the General's force; but none the less their hearts are weak. That horrifying night attack, when their blood was shed in the dark, has broken the heart of their vanity, and a paralyzing fear of those dangerous hunting-shirt men lies all across the English like a cloud. More and worse, the Carolina swings downstream, abreast of their position, and her broadsides drive them to hide in ditches and the cypress borders of the swamp. There is no peace, no safety, on the flat, stubble ground, while light remains by which to point the Carolina's guns.
Nor does nightfall bring relief. Those empty-handed Kentuckians must be provided for; and, no sooner does the sun go down, than the hunting-shirt men by two and three go forth in search of English muskets. They shoot down sentries, and carry away their dead belongings. Does an English group assemble round a camp fire, it becomes an invitation seldom neglected. A party of hunting-shirt men creep within range and begin the butchery. There is never the moment, daylight and dark, when the unhappy English are not within the icy reach of death. There is no repose, no safety! A chill dread claims them like a palsy!
The English complain bitterly at this bushwhacking; which, to the hunting-shirt men, reared in schools of Indian war, is the merest A B C of battle. The harassed English denounce the General as a barbarian, in whose savage bosom burns no spark of chivalry. They recall how in their late campaigns in Spain, English and French pickets spent peace-filled weeks within fifty yards of one another, exchanging nothing more deadly than coffee and compliments.
The grim General refuses to be affected by the French-English example. He continues to pile up his earthworks, while the hunting-shirt men go forth to pot nightly English as usual. The situation wears away the courage of the English to a white and paper thinness.
While the General is fortifying his lines, and the hunting-shirt men are stalking English sentinels, peace is signed in Europe between America and England. But Europe is far away; and there is no Atlantic cable. And so the General continues at his congenial labors undisturbed.
Christmas does not go unrecognized in the General's camp. He himself attempts nothing of festival sort, and only drives his fortifying mules and negroes the harder. But the hunting-shirt men celebrate by cleaning their rifles, molding bullets, refilling powder horns, and whetting knives and tomahawks to a more lethal edge.
As for Papa Plauche and the “Fathers of Families,” they become jocund. Their wives and daughters purvey them roast fowls in little wicker baskets, and the warmest wines of Burgundy in bottles. Whereupon Papa Plauche and his “Fathers” wax blithe and merry, singing the songs of France and talking of old loves.
And now Sir Edward Pakenham arrives, and relieves General Keane in command of the English. With him comes General Gibbs. The two listen to the reports of General Keane, and shrug polite shoulders as he speaks of the savage valor of the Americans. It is preposterous that peasants clad in skins, and not a bayonet among them, should check the flower of England. General Keane does not reply to the polite shrug. He reflects that the General, with his hunting-shirt men, can be relied upon to later make convincing answer.
Upon the morning which follows the advent of General Pakenham, the English see a moment of good fortune. A red-hot shot sets fire to the Carolina, as she swings downstream on her cable for that daily bombardment, and burns her to the water line. This cheers the English mightily; and does not discourage Commodore Patterson, who transfers his activities to the decks of the Louisiana.
Sir Edward gives the General three uninterrupted days. This the latter warrior improves so far as to rear his earthworks to a height of four feet, and mount five guns. On the fourth day the English are led out to the assault. Sir Edward does not say so, but he expects to march over those four-foot walls of mud and cotton bales as he might over any other casual four-foot obstruction, and go up to the city beyond.
The sequel does not justify Sir Edward's optimism. The moment the English approach within two hundred yards of the General's line, a sheet of fire hisses all along. The English melt away like smoke. They break and run, seeking refuge in the cross ditches which drain the stubble lands. Once in the ditches, they are made to sit fast by the watchful hunting-shirt men, whose aim is death and who shoot at every exposed two square inches of English flesh and blood.
All day the English must crouch in the saving mud and water of those ditches, and it ruffles their self-regard. With darkness for a shield, Sir Edward brings them off. He explains the disaster to his staff by calling it a “reconnoissance.” General Keane also calls it a “reconnoissance”; but there is a satisfied grin on his war-worn face. Sir Edward has received a taste of the mettle of those “peasants,” and may now take a more tolerant, and less politely cynical, view of what earlier setbacks were experienced by General Keane. As for the seventy dead who lie, faces to the quiet stars, among the sugar stubble, they say nothing. And whether it be called a “reconnoissance” or a defeat matters little to them.
“What do you think of it?” asks Sir Edward of his friend, General Gibbs, as the two confer over a bottle of port.
“Sir Edward,” returns the General, “I should call a council of war.”
Sir Edward winces. It is too great an honor for the brother-in-law of Lord Wellington to pay a “Copper Captain” like the General. For all that he calls it; and the call assembles, besides Generals Gibbs and Keane, those saltwater soldiers, Admirals Cochrane, Codrington and Malcolm, and Captain Hardy whom Nelson loved. Sir John Burgoyne, the chief of the English engineers, is also there. The solemn debate lasts hours. The decision is to regard the General's position as “A walled and fortified place, to be reduced by regular and formal approaches.” Which is flattering to the General's engineering skill.
The council breaks up. The next morning Sir John Burgoyne commits a stroke of genius. He rolls out of the storehouses to the English rear countless hogsheads of sugar. Night sets in, foggy and black. Under its protecting cover, Sir John trundles his hundreds of hogsheads to a point not six hundred yards from the General's mud walls. Till daybreak the English work. They set the hogsheads on end—four close-packed thicknesses of them, two tier high. Ingenious portholes are left to receive the muzzles of the guns, and thirty cannon, which have been dragged through the cypress swamp from the fleet, are placed in position.
Those hogsheads of sugar, with the thirty black muzzles frowning forth, impress folk as a most formidable fortalice, when the upshooting sun rolls back the fog and offers a view of them. The General, however, does not hesitate; he instantly opens with his five, and the thirty guns of the English bellow their iron response. Hardly a whit behind the General, the active Commodore Patterson drops downstream with the Louisiana, and throws the weight of her broadsides against the English.
The big-gun duel is hot and furious, and the rolling clouds of powder smoke shut out the fighters from one another. They do not pause for that, but fire blindly through the smoke, sighting their guns by guess. When the smoke has cloaked the scene, Sir Edward orders two columns of the English foot to storm the General's mud walls.
The columns advance, and run headforemost into the hunting-shirt men. The sleety rain of lead which greets them rolls the columns up like two red carpets. The recoiling columns break, and the English take cover for a second time in those saving ditches. They declare among themselves that mortal man might more easily face the fires of hell itself, than the flame-filled muzzles of the hunting-shirt men, who seem to be Death's very agents upon earth.
As the broken English crouch in those ditches the fire of Sir John Burgoyne's big guns begins to falter. The smoke is so thick that no one may tell the cause. At last the English volleys altogether end, and the General orders Dominique and Bluche, with their swarthy pirate crews from Barrataria, and what other artillerists are serving his quintette of guns, to cease their stormy work. With that a silence falls on both sides.
The breeze from the river tears the smoky veil aside; and lo! that noble fortification of sugar hogsheads is heaped and piled in ruins. The General's solid shot go through and through those hogsheads of sugar, as though they are hogsheads of snow. Five of the thirty English guns are smashed. The proud work of Sir John Burgoyne presents a spectacle of desolation, while the English who serve the batteries go flying for their lives. Not all! The three-score dead remain—the only English whose honor is saved that day!
Sir Edward's cheek is white as death. He blames Sir John Burgoyne, who has erred, he says, in constructing the works. Sir John did err, and Sir Edward is right. Forty years later, the same Sir John will repeat the same mistake at Sebastapol; which shows how there be Bourbons among the English, learning nothing, forgetting nothing.
As the English skulk in clusters, and ragged, beaten groups for their old position beyond the General's long reach, the fear of death is written on their faces. It will take a long rest, and much must be forgotten, e'er they may be brought front to front with the General again.
Among the hunting-shirt men are exultation and crowing triumph. Only Papa Plauche is sad. During the fight, the cotton bales in front of Papa Plauche and the “Fathers” are sorely knocked about. As though this be not enough, what must a felon hot shot do but set one of them ablaze! The smoke fills the noses of Papa Plauche and his “Fathers,” and makes them sneeze. It burns their eyes until the tears the “Fathers” shed might make one think them engaged upon the very funeral of Papa Plauche himself.
In the tearful sneezing midst of this anguish, a vagrant flying flake of cotton, all afire, explodes an ammunition wagon to the heroic rear of Papa Plauche and the “Fathers,” and the shock is as the awful shock of doom.
The fortitude of Hercules would fail at such a pinch! Papa Plauche and the “Fathers” actually and for the moment think on flight! But whither shall they fly? They are caught between Satan and a deepest sea—the ammunition wagon and the English! Also to the right, plying sponge and rammer, are the pirate Barratarians who are as bad as the English! While to the left is the General, who is worse than the ammunition wagon.
“It is written!” murmurs Papa Plauche; “our fate is sure! We must perish where we stand!” Papa Plauche extends his hands, and cries: “Courage, my heroes! Give your hearts to heaven, your fame to posterity, and show history how 'Fathers of Families' can die!” From the cypress swamp a last detachment of reënforcements emerges, and meets the beaten English coming back. General Lambert, with the reënforcements, is shocked as he reads their broken-hearted story in their eyes. “What is it, Colonel?” he whispers to Colonel Dale of the Highlanders. “In heaven's name, what stopped you?”
“Bullets, mon!” returns the Scotchman. “Naught but bullets! The fire of those de'ils in lang shirts wud 'a' stopped Caesar himsel'!”