The Canadian Brothers; Or, The Prophecy Fulfilled Part 38

Gerald expressed himself with the effort of one laboring under strong bodily pain; and as he spoke he again sank exhausted upon the ground.

"This packet," he continued, taking one from the breast of the hunting frock he wore, and handing it to his brother, who, silent and full of agony, had again raised his head from the ground and supported it on his shoulder; "this packet, Henry, written at various times during the last fortnight, will explain all that has pa.s.sed since we last parted, in the Miami. When I am no more, read it; and while you mourn over his dishonor, pity the weakness and the sufferings of the unhappy Gerald."

Henry was nearly frantic, the hot tears fell from his burning eyes upon the pale emaciated cheek of his brother--and he groaned in agony.

"Oh, G.o.d!" he exclaimed, "how shall I ever survive this blow--my brother! oh, my brother! tell me that you forgive me."

"Most willingly; yet what is there to be forgiven? You took me for an enemy and hence alone your error. It was fate, Henry. A dreadful doom has long been prophesied to the last of our race. We are the last--and this is the consummation. Let it console you however to think that, though your hand had not slain me another's would. In the ranks of the enemy I should have found--Henry, my kind, my affectionate brother--your hand--there--there-- what dreadful faintness at my heart--Matilda, it is my turn now--Oh, G.o.d have mercy, oh--"

While this scene was pa.s.sing by the road side between the unfortunate brothers, the main body of the British force had come up to the spot where the General still lay expiring in the arms of De Courcy, and surrounded by the princ.i.p.al of the medical staff. The majority of these were of the Regiment previously named--veterans who had known and loved their gallant leader during the whole course of his spotless career, and more than one rude hand might be seen das.h.i.+ng the tear that started involuntarily to the eye. As the colors of the Forty-Ninth pa.s.sed before him, the General made an effort to address some language of encouragement to his old corps, but the words died away in indistinct murmurs, and waving his hand in the direction of the heights, he sank back exhausted with the effort, and resigned his gallant spirit for ever.

For some minutes after life had departed, Henry Grantham continued to hang over the body of his ill-fated brother, with an intenseness of absorption that rendered him heedless even of the rapid fire of musketry in the advance.

The sound of De Courcy's voice was the first thing that seemed to call him to consciousness. De Courcy had heard the cry uttered by the latter, on receiving the fatal shot, and his imagination had too faithfully portrayed the painful scene that had ensued. A friend of both brothers, and particularly attached of late to the younger from the similar nature of their service, he was inexpressibly shocked, but still cheris.h.i.+ng a hope that the wound might not be attended with loss of life, he expected to find his antic.i.p.ations realized by some communication from his friend. Finding however that the one rose not, and remarking that the general demeanour of the other was that of profound despair, he began at length to draw the most unfavorable conclusion, and causing the body of his Commander to be borne under cover of the building, until proper means of transport could be found, he hastened to ascertain the full extent of the tragedy.

The horror and dismay depicted in his friend's countenance were speedily reflected on his own, when he saw that the unfortunate Gerald, whose blood had completely saturated the earth on which he lay, was indeed no more. Language at such a moment would not only have been superfluous, but an insult. De Courcy caught and pressed the hand of his friend in silence. The unfortunate young man pointed to the dead body of his brother, and burst into tears.

While these were yet flowing in a fulness that promised to give relief to his oppressed heart, a loud shout from the British ranks arrested the attention of both. The sound seemed to have an electric effect on the actions of Henry Grantham. For the first time he appeared conscious there was such a thing as a battle being fought.

"De Courcy!" he said starting up, and with sudden animation, "why do we linger here--the dead," and he pointed first to the body of the General in the distance--and then to his brother "the wretched dead claim no service from us now."

"You are right, Henry, our interest in those beloved objects has caused us to be mindless of our duty to ourselves.--See, too, how the flankers have cleared the brow of the hill for the advance of the main body. Victory is our own--but alas! how dearly purchased!"

"How dearly purchased, indeed!" responded Henry, in a tone of such heart-rending agony as caused his friend to repent the allusion. "De Courcy keep this packet, and should I fall, let it be sent to my uncle, Colonel D'Egville."

De Courcy accepted the trust, and the young men mounted their horses, which a Canadian peasant had held for them in the mean time, and das.h.i.+ng up the ascent, soon found themselves where the action was hottest.

Burning with revenge, the flank companies had already succeeded, despite of a hot and incessant fire, in gaining the heights, and here for a considerable time they maintained the struggle unsupported against the whole force of the enemy. Already their bayonets had cleared for themselves a pa.s.sage to the more even ground, and the Americans, dismayed at the intrepidity of this handful of a.s.sailants, were evidently beginning to waver in their ranks. A shout of victory, which was answered by the main body of the English troops, just then gaining the summit of the hill, completed their disorder. They stood the charge but for a moment, then broke and fled, pursued by their excited enemies in every direction. The chief object of the Americans was to gain the cover of a wood that lay at a short distance in their rear, but a body of militia with some Indians having been sent round to occupy it the moment the landing of the Americans was made known, they were driven back from this their last refuge upon the open ground, and with considerable loss.

Thus hemmed in on both sides--the rifles of the militia and Indians on one hand; the bayonets of the British force on the other--the Americans had no other alternative than throw down their arms or perish to the last. Many surrendered at discretion, and those who resisted were driven at the point of the bayonet, to the verge of the terrific precipices which descend abruptly from the Heights of Queenston. Here their confusion was at the highest--some threw down their arms and were saved, others precipitated themselves down the abyss, where their bodies were afterwards found, crushed and mangled in a manner to render them scarcely recognizable even as human beings.

It was at the moment when the Americans, driven back by the fire from the wood, were to be seen flying in despair towards the frowning precipices of Queenston, that De Courcy and Grantham, quitting their horses at the brow of the hill, threw themselves in front of the victorious and still leading flank companies. Carried away by the excitement of his feelings, Grantham was considerably in advance of his companion, and when the Americans, yielding to the panic which had seized them, flew wildly, madly, and almost unconscious of the danger, towards the precipice, he suddenly found himself on the very verge, and amid a group of irregulars, who arriving at the brink and seeing the h.e.l.l that yawned beneath, had turned to seek a less terrific death at the hands of their pursuers. Despair, rage, agony, and even terror, were imprinted on the countenances of these, for they fought under an apparent consciousness of disadvantage, and utterly as men without hope.

"Forward! victory!" shouted Henry Grantham, and his sword was plunged deep into the side of his nearest enemy.

The man fell, and writhing in the last agonies of death, rolled onward to the precipice, and disappeared for ever from the view.

The words--the action had excited the attention of a tall, muscular, ferocious looking rifleman, who, hotly pursued by a couple of Indians, was crossing the open ground at his full speed to gain the main body of his comrades. A ball struck him just as he had arrived within a few feet of the spot where Henry stood, yet still leaping onward, he made a desparate blow at the head of the officer with the b.u.t.t end of his rifle. A quick movement disappointed the American of his aim, yet the blow fell so violently on the shoulder that the stock snapped suddenly asunder at the small of the b.u.t.t. Stung with pain, Henry Grantham turned to behold his enemy.

It was Desborough! The features of the settler expressed the most savage and vindictive pa.s.sions, as with the barrel of the rifle upraised and clenched in both his iron hands, he was about to repeat his blow. Ere it could descend Grantham had rushed in upon him, and his sword still reeking with the blood it had so recently spilt, was driven to the very hilt in the body of the settler.

The latter uttered a terrific scream in which all the most infernal of human pa.s.sions were wildly blended, and casting aside his rifle, seized the young officer in his powerful gripe. Then ensued a contest the most strange and awful; the settler using every endeavour to gain the edge of the precipice, the other struggling, but in vain, to free himself from his hold. As if by tacit consent, both parties discontinued the struggle, and became mere spectators of the scene.

"Villain!" shouted De Courcy, who saw with dismay the terrible object of the settler, whose person he had recognized--"if you would have quarter, release your hold."

But Desborough, too much given to his revenge to heed the words of the Aid-de-Camp, continued silently, yet with advantage, to drag his victim nearer and nearer to the fatal precipice; and every man in the British ranks felt his blood to creep as they beheld the unhappy officer borne, notwithstanding a desperate resistance, at each moment nigher to the brink.

"For Heaven's sake, advance and seize him" exclaimed the terrified De Courcy, leaping forward to the rescue.

Acting on the hint, two or three of the most active of the light infantry rushed from the ranks in the direction taken by the officer.

Desborough saw the movement, and his exertions to defeat its object became, considering the loss of blood he had sustained from his wounds, almost Herculean. He now stood on the extreme verge of the precipice, where he paused for a moment as if utterly exhausted with his previous efforts. De Courcy was now within a few feet of his unhappy friend, who still struggled ineffectually to free himself, when the settler, suddenly collecting all his energy into a final and desparate effort, raised the unfortunate Grantham from the ground, and with a loud and exulting laugh, dashed his foot violently against the edge of the crag, and threw himself backward into the hideous abyss.

A cry of horror from the lips of De Courcy was answered by a savage shout of vengeance from the British ranks.

On rushed the line with their glittering bayonets, and at a pace which scarcely left their enemies time to sue for, much less obtain quarter--shrieks and groans rent the atmosphere, and above the horrid din, might be heard the wild and greeting cry of the vulture and the buzzard, as the mangled bodies of the Americans rolled from rock to rock, cras.h.i.+ng the autumnal leaves and dried underwood in their fall, some hanging suspended by their rent garments to the larger trees encountered in their course--yet by far the greater number falling into the bottom of a chasm into which the sunbeam had never yet penetrated. The picked and whitened bones may be seen, s.h.i.+ning through the deep gloom that envelopes every part of the abyss, even to this day.

THE END.