The Canadian Brothers; Or, The Prophecy Fulfilled Part 29

"Gerald Grantham!" repeated the Commandant, musingly, as though endeavoring to bring back the recollection of such a name.

The prisoner looked at him stedfastly in return, yet without speaking.

"Is there another of your name in the British squadron?"

continued Colonel Forrester, fixing his eye full upon his prisoner.

"There are many in the British squadron whose names are unknown to me," replied Gerald, evasively, and faintly coloring.

"Nay," said Colonel Forrester, "that subterfuge more than any thing betrays you. Though not answered, I am satisfied.

How we are to account for seeing a gallant sailor attacking us in our trenches, in the humble garb of a private soldier, and so out of his own element, I cannot understand; but the name of Gerald Grantham, coupled with your manner and appearance, a.s.sures us we are making personal acquaintance with one to whose deeds we are not strangers. Gentlemen,"

addressing his officers, "this is the Lieutenant Grantham, whose vessel was captured last autumn at Buffalo, and of whose gallant defence, my cousin, Captain Edward Forrester, has spoken so highly. Lieutenant Grantham," he pursued, advancing, and offering his hand, "when I had the happiness to save your life this day, by das.h.i.+ng aside the fuze that would have been the agent in your destruction, I saw in you but the brave and humble soldier, whom it were disgrace not to have spared for so much n.o.ble daring. Judge how great must be my satisfaction to know that I have been the means of preserving, to his family and country, one whose name stands so high even in the consideration of his enemies."

Poor Gerald! how bitter and conflicting must have been his feelings at that moment. On the one side, touched by the highest evidences of esteem a brave and generous enemy could proffer--on the other, annoyed beyond expression at the recollection of an interposition which had thwarted him in his fondest, dearest hope--that of losing, at the cannon's mouth, the life he loathed. What had been done in mercy and n.o.ble forbearance, was to him the direst punishment that could be inflicted:--yet how was it possible to deny grat.i.tude for the motive which had impelled his preservation, or fail in acknowledgment of the appreciation in which he thus found himself personally held.

"It would be idle, Colonel Forrester," he said, taking the proffered hand, "after the manner in which you have expressed yourself, to deny that I am the officer to whom you allude. I feel deeply these marks of your regard, although I cannot but consider any little merit that may attach to me very much overrated by them. My appearance in this dress, perhaps requires some explanation.

Presented by the shallowness of the river from co-operating with the army in my gun-boat, and tired of doing nothing, I had solicited and obtained permission to become one of the storming party in the quality of volunteer, which of necessity induced the garb in which you now behold me.

You know the rest."

"And yet, Colonel," said a surly-looking backwoodsman, who sat with one hand thrust into the bosom of a hunting frock, and the other playing with the richly ornamented hilt of a dagger, while a round hat, surmounted by a huge c.o.c.kade, was perched knowingly over his left ear, covering, or rather shadowing, little more than one fourth of his head--"I reckon as how this here sort of thing comes within the spy act. Here's a commissioned officer of King George, taken not only in our lines, but in our very trenches in the disguise of a private soger. What say you, Captain Buckhorn?" turning to one somewhat younger and less uncouth, who sat nest him habited in a similar manner. "Don't you think it comes within the spy act?"

Captain Buckhorn, however, not choosing to hazard an opinion on the subject, merely shrugged his shoulders, puffed his cigar, and looked at the Colonel as if he expected him to decide the question.

"As I am a true Tennessee man, bred and born, Major Killdeer," said the Aid-de-Camp Jackson, "I can't see how that can lie. To come within the spy act, a man must be in plain clothes, or in the uniform of his enemy. Now, Liftenant Grantham, I take it, comes in the British uniform, and what signifies a whistle if he wears gold lace or cotton tape, provided it be stuck upon a scarlet coat, and that in the broad face of day, with arms in his hand,--aye, and a devil of a desperation to make good use of them too"--he added, with a good naturedly malicious leer of the eye towards the subject of his defence.

"At all events, in my conceit, it's an attempt to undervally himself," pursued the tenacious Kentuckian Major. "Suppose his name warn't known as it is, he'd have pa.s.sed for a private soger, and would have been exchanged for one, without our being any the wiser; whereby the United States' service, I calculate, would have lost an officer in the balance of account."

"Although there cannot be the slightest difficulty,"

observed Colonel Forrester, "in determining on the doubt first started by you, Major Killdeer, I confess, that what you have now suggested involves a question of some delicacy. In the spirit, although not altogether in the letter, of your suggestion, I agree; so much so, Mr.

Grantham," he added, turning to Gerald, "that in violence to the inclination I should otherwise have felt to send you back to your lines, on parole of honor, I shall be compelled to detain you until the pleasure of my government be known as to the actual rank in which you are to be looked upon. I should say that, taken in arms as a combatant without rank, we have no right to know you as any thing else; but as I may be in error, I am sure you will see how utterly impossible it is for me to take any such responsibility upon myself, especially after the difficulty you have just heard started."

Gerald, who had listened to this discussion with some astonishment, was not sorry to find the manner of its termination. In the outset he had not been without alarm that the hero of one hour might be looked upon and hanged as the spy of the next; and tired as he was of life, much as he longed to lay it down, his neck had too invincible a repugnance to any thing like contact with a cord to render him ambitious of closing his existence in that way. He was not at all sorry, therefore, when he found the surly looking Major Killdeer wholly unsupported in his sweeping estimate of what he called the "spy act."

The gentlemanly manner of Colonel Forrester, forming as it did so decided a contrast with the unpolished--even rude frankness of his second in command, was not without soothing influence upon his mind, and to his last observation he replied, as he really felt, that any change in his views as to his disposal could in no way effect him, since it was a matter of total indifference whether he returned to Amherstburg, or was detained where he was.

In neither case could he actively rejoin the service until duly exchanged, and this was the only object embraced in any desire he might entertain of the kind.

"Still," added the Colonel, "although I may not suffer you to return yet into Canada, I can see no objection to according you the privilege of parole of honor, without at all involving the after question of whether you are to be considered as the soldier or the officer. From this moment therefore, Mr. Grantham, you will consider yourself a prisoner at large within the fort--or, should you prefer journeying into the interior, to sharing the privations and the dullness inseparable from our isolated position, you are at liberty to accompany Captain Jackson, my Aid-de-Camp, who will leave this within thirty-six hours, charged with dispatches for the Governor of Kentucky."

Gerald had already acknowledged to himself that, if any thing could add to his wretchedness, it would he a compulsory residence in a place not only dest.i.tute itself of all excitement, but calling up, at every hour, the images of his brave companions in danger--men whom he had known when the sun of his young hopes shone unclouded, and whom he had survived but to be made sensible of the curse of exemption from a similar fate; still, with that instinctive delicacy of a mind whose natural refinement not even a heavy weight of grief could wholly deaden, he felt some hesitation in giving expression to a wish, the compliance with which would, necessarily, separate him from one who had so courteously treated him, and whom he feared to wound by an appearance of indifference.

"I think, Mr. Grantham," pursued Colonel Forrester, remarking his hesitation, "I can understand what is pa.s.sing in your mind. However I beg you will suffer no mere considerations of courtesy to interfere with your inclination. I can promise you will find this place most dismally dull, especially to one who has no positive duty to perform in it. If I may venture to recommend, therefore, you will accompany Captain Jackson. The ride will afford you more subject for diversion than any thing we can furnish here."

Thus happily a.s.sisted in his decision. Gerald said, "since, Sir, you leave it optional with me, I think I shall avail myself of your kind offer and accompany Captain Jackson. It is not a very cheering sight," he pursued, anxious to a.s.sign a satisfactory reason for his choice, "to have constantly before one's eyes the scene of so signal a discomfiture as that which our arms have experienced this day."

"And yet," said Colonel Forrester, "despite of that discomfiture, there was nothing in the conduct of those engaged that should call a blush into the cheek of the most fastidious stickler for national glory. There is not an officer here present," he continued, "who is not prepared to attest with myself, that your column in particular behaved like heroes. By the way, I could wish to know, (but you will use your own discretion in answering or declining the question, recollect,) what was the actual strength of your attacking force?"

"I can really see no objection to a candid answer to your question, Colonel," returned Gerald, after a moment's consideration. "Each division was, I believe, for I cannot state with certainty, little more than two hundred strong, making in all, perhaps, from six hundred to six hundred and fifty men. In return, may I ask, the number of those who so effectually repulsed us?"

"Why I guess only one hundred and fifty, and most all my volunteers," somewhat exultingly exclaimed Major Killdeer.

"Only one hundred and fifty men!" repeated Gerald, unable to disguise his vexation and astonishment.

"That ere's a poser for him," said the Major, turning and addressing Captain Buckhorn in an undertone, who replied to him with a wink from his nearest eye.

"Even so, Mr. Grantham," replied the Colonel. "One hundred and fifty men of all arms, save artillery, composed my force at the moment when your columns crossed the plain.

To-night we muster one hundred and forty nine."

"Good Heaven!" exclaimed Gerald warming into excitement, with vexation and pique, "what a disgraceful affair."

"Disgraceful, yes--but only in as far as regards those who planned, and provided (or rather ought to have provided) the means of attack. I can a.s.sure you, Mr.

Grantham, that although prepared to defend my post to the last, when I saw your columns first emerge from the wood, I did not expect, with my small force, to have been enabled to hold the place one hour; for who could have supposed that even a school boy, had such been placed at the head of an army, would have sent forward a storming party, without either fascines to fill a trench, or ladders to ascend from it when filled. Had these been provided, there can be no doubt of the issue, for, to repulse the attempt at escalade in one quarter, I must have concentrated the whole of my little force--and thereby afforded an unopposed entrance to the other columns--or even granting my garrison to have been sufficient to keep two of your divisions in check, there still remained a third to turn the scale of success against us."

"I can understand the satisfaction with which you discovered this wretched bungling on the part of our leaders," remarked Gerald with vexation.

"No sooner had I detected the deficiency," pursued Colonel Forrester, "than I knew the day would be my own, since the obstacles opposed to your attempt would admit of my spreading my men over the whole line embraced within the attack. The result, you see has justified my expectation.

But enough of this. After the fatigues of the day you must require both food and rest. Captain Jackson, I leave it to you to do the honors of hospitality towards Mr.

Grantham, who will so shortly become your fellow traveller, and if, when he has performed the ablutions he seems so much to require, my wardrobe can furnish any thing your own cannot supply to transform him into a backwoodsman, (in which garb I would strongly advise him to travel,) I beg it may be put under contribution without ceremony."

So saying, Colonel Forrester departed to the rude log hut that served him for his head quarters, first enjoining his uncouth second to keep a sufficient number of men on the alert, and take such other precautions as were necessary to guard against surprise--an event, however, of which little apprehension was entertained, now that the British troops appeared to have been wholly withdrawn.

Sick, wearied, and unhappy, Gerald was but too willing to escape to the solitude of retirement, to refuse the offer which Captain Jackson made of his own bed, it being his intention to sit up all night in the mess room, ready to communicate instantly with the Colonel in the event of any alarm. Declining the pressing invitation of the officers to join in the repast they were about to make for the first time since the morning, and more particularly that of Captain Buckhorn, who strongly urged him to "bring himself to an anchor and try a little of the Wabash," he took a polite but hasty leave of them all, and was soon installed for the night in the Aid-de-Camp's dormitory.

It would be idle to say that Gerald never closed his eyes that night--still more idle would it be to attempt a description of all that pa.s.sed through a mind whose extent of wretchedness may be inferred from his several desperate, although unsuccessful, efforts at the utter annihilation of all thought. When he met Colonel Forrester and his officers in the mess room at breakfast, he was dressed, as had been recommended, in the hunting frock and belt of a backwoodsman; and in this, his gentlemanly figure looked to such advantage as to excite general attention --so much so indeed, that Major Killdeer was more than once detected in eying his own heavy and uncouth person, as if to ascertain if the points of excellence were peculiar to the dress or to the man. Sick and dispirited as he was, Gerald felt the necessity of an attempt to rally, and however the moralist may condemn the principle, there is no doubt that he was considerably aided in his effort by one or two gla.s.ses of bitters which Captain Buckhorn strongly recommended as being of his wife's making, and well calculated to put some colour into a man's face--an advantage in which, he truly remarked, Grantham was singularly deficient.

Accurate intelligence having been obtained from a party of scouts, who had been dispatched early in the morning to track their course, that the British General with his troops and Indians had finally departed, preparations were made about midday for the interment of the fallen.

Two large graves were accordingly dug on the outer brow of the ravine, and into these the bodies of the fallen soldiers were deposited with all the honors of war. A smaller grave, within the fort, and near the spot where they so n.o.bly fell, was considerately allotted to Cranstoun and Middlemore. There was a composedness on the brow of the former that likened him, even in death, to the living man; while, about the good-humoured mouth of poor Middlemore, played the same sort of self satisfied smile that had always been observable there, when about to deliver himself of a sally. Gerald, who had imposed upon himself the painful duty of attending to their last committal to earth, could not help fancying that Middlemore must have breathed his last with an inaudible pun upon his lips--an idea that inexpressibly affected him. Weighed down with sorrow as was his own soul, he had yet a tear for the occasion--not that his brave comrades were dead, but that they had died with so much to attach them to life--while he whose hope was in death alone had been chained, as by a curse, to an existence compared with which death was the first of human blessings.

On the following morning, after an early breakfast, he and Captain Jackson quitted the fort--Colonel Forrester, (who had appeared to remark that the brusque manner of his Aid-de-Camp was not altogether understood by his charge,) taking occasion at parting to a.s.sure the latter that, with all his eccentricity he was a kind hearted man, whom he had selected to be near him more for his personal courage, zeal, and general liberality of feeling, than for any qualifications of intellect he possessed.

The means provided for their transport into the interior were well a.s.similated to the dreariness of the country through which they pa.s.sed. Two common pack horses, lean, galled by the saddle, and callous from long acquaintance with the admonitory influence both of whip and spur, had been selected by Captain Jackson as the best within the fort, and, as a first evidence of the liberality ascribed to him by his Commander, the fastest of these (if a choice there was) he selected for his own use. Neither were the trappings out of keeping with the steeds they decked.

Moth eaten saddles, almost black with age, beneath which were spread pieces of dirty blanket to prevent further excoriation of the already bared and reeking back--bridles, the original thickness of which had been doubled by the incrustation of mould and dirt that pertinaciously adhered to them--stirrups and bits, with their accompanying buckles (the absence of curb chains being supplied by pieces of rope) covered with the rust of half a century --all afforded evidence of the wretchedness of resource peculiar to a back settlement population. Over the hard saddles, however, had been strapped the blankets which, when the travellers were fortunate enough to meet with a hut at the close of their day's ride, or, as was more frequently the case, when compelled to bivouac in the forest before the fire kindled by the industry of the hardy Aid-de-Camp, served them as their only couch of rest, while the small leather valise tied to the pummel of the saddle, and containing their scanty wardrobe, was made to do the duty of the absent pillow. The blanket Gerald found to be the greatest advantage of his grotesque equipment--so much so indeed, that when compelled, by the heavy rains which took place shortly after their departure, to make it serve after the fas.h.i.+on of a backwoodsman as a covering for his loins and shoulders, he was obliged to own that his miseries, great as they were, were yet susceptible of increase.

Notwithstanding Captain Jackson had taken what, he considered to be, the best of the two Rosinantes for himself, Gerald had no reason to deny the character for kind-heartedness given of him by Colonel Forrester.

Frequently, when winding through some dense forest, or moving over some extensive plain where nothing beyond themselves told of the existence of man, his companion would endeavour to divert him from the abstraction and melancholy in which he was usually plunged, and, ascribing his despondency to an unreal cause, seek to arouse him by the consolatory a.s.surance that he was not the first man who had been taken prisoner--adding, that there was no use in snivelling, as "what was done couldn't be undone, and no great harm neither, as there was some as pretty gals in Kaintuck as could be picked out in a day's ride; and that to a good looking young fellow like himself, with nothing to do but to make love to them, THAT ought to be no mean consideration, enabling him, as it would, to while away the tedium of captivity." At other times he would launch forth into some wild rhapsody, the invention of the moment, or seek to entertain his companion with startling anecdotes connected with his encounters with the Indians on the Wabash, (where he had formerly served,) in the course of which much of the marvellous, to call it by the most indulgent term, was necessarily mixed up--not perhaps that he was quite sensible of this himself, but because he possessed a const.i.tutional p.r.o.neness to exaggeration that rendered him even more credulous of the good things he uttered than those to whom he detailed them.

But Gerald heard without being amused, and, although he felt thankful for the intention, was distressed that his abstraction should be the subject of notice, and his despondency the object of care. To avoid this he frequently suffered Jackson to take the lead, and following some distance in the rear with his arms folded and the reins loose upon his horse's neck, often ran the risk of having his own neck broken by the frequent stumbling of the unsure-footed beast. But the Captain as often returned to the charge, for, in addition to a sincere desire to rally his companion, he began at length to find it exceedingly irksome to travel with one who neither spoke himself nor appeared to enjoy speech in another; and when he had amused himself with whistling, singing, hallooing, and cutting a thousand antics with his arms, until he was heartily tired of each of these several diversions, he would rein in his horse to suffer Gerald to come up, and, after a conciliating offer of his rum flask, accompanied by a slice of hung beef that lined the wallet depending from his shoulder, (neither of which were often refused,) enter upon some new and strange exploit, of which he was as usual the hero. Efforced in a degree to make some return for the bribe offered to his patience, Gerald would lend--all he could--his ear to the tale; but long before the completion he would give such evidence of his distraction as utterly to disconcert the narrator, and cause him finally to have recourse to one of the interludes above described.

In this manner they had journeyed some days, when the rains suddenly commenced with a violence, and continued with a pertinacity, that might have worn out the cheerfulness of much less impatient spirits than those of our travellers, who, without any other protection than what was afforded by the blanket tightly girt round the loins, and fastened over the shoulder, in front of the chest, presented an appearance quite as wild as the waste they traversed. It was in vain, that in order to promote a more rapid circulation, they essayed to urge their jaded beasts out of the jog-trot in which they had set out. Accustomed to this from the time when they first emerged from colthood into horsehood, the aged steeds, like many aged senators of their day, were determined enemies to any thing like innovation on the long established customs of their caste; and although, unlike the said senators, they were made to bear all the burdens of the state, still did they not suffer themselves to be driven out of the sluggish habits in which sluggish animals, of every description, seem to feel themselves privileged to indulge. Whip and spur therefore were alike applied in vain, as to any accelerated motion in themselves; but with this advantage at least to their riders, that, while the latter toiled vigorously for an increase of vital warmth, through the instrumentality of their con-complying hacks, they found it where they least seemed to look for it--in the mingled anger and activity which kept them at the fruitless task.

It was at the close of one of those long days of wearying travel throughout a vast and unsheltered plain, (where only here and there rose an occasional cl.u.s.ter of trees, like oases in the desert,) that, drenched to the skin with the steady rain which, commencing with the dawn, had continued without a moment's intermission, they arrived at a small log-hut, situate on the skirt of a forest forming one of the boundaries of the vast savannah they had traversed. Such was the unpromising appearance of this apology for a human dwelling that, under any other circ.u.mstances, even the "not very d----d particular"

Jackson, as the Aid-de-Camp often termed himself, would have pa.s.sed it by without stopping; but after a long day's ride, and suffering from the greatest evils to which a traveller can well be subjected--cold, wet, and hunger--even so wretched a resting-place as this was not to be despised; and accordingly a determination was formed to stop there for the night. On riding up to the door, it was opened to their knock, when a tall man--apparently its only occupant, came forth--and, after surveying the travellers a moment with a suspicious eye, inquired "what the stranngers wanted?"

"Why, I guess," said Jackson, "it doesn't need much conjuration to tell that. Food and lodging for ourselves, to be sure; and a wisp of hay and tether for our horses.

--Hospitality in short; and that's what no true Tennessee man, bred and born, ever refused yet. No, not even to an enemy, such a night as this."

"Then you must go further in search of it," replied the woodsman, surlily, "I don't keep no tavern, and ha'nt got no accommodation; and what's more, I reckon, I'm no Tennessee man."

"But any accommodation will do, friend. If you hav'nt got beds, we'll sit up all night, and warm our toes at the fire, and spin long yarns, as they tell in the Eastern sea-ports. Anything but turn a fellow out such a night as this."

"But I say, strannger," returned the man, fiercely and determinedly, "I a'nt got no room any how, and you shan't bide here."