Tales of the Chesapeake Part 15

And will not stir till morning breaks.

"What is't I see, low cl.u.s.tering there, Beyond those broadening bays and lakes, That yonder point familiar makes?-- Is it New Amstel, lowly fair, And this the Delaware?"

VIII.--THE ECHO.

Lord Herman hugged his horse with pride; He raised his horn and blew so loudly, That more than echoes back replied: Horns answered louder; hors.e.m.e.n cried, And muskets banged, as if avowedly On Stuyvesant's errand proudly!

"Die, traitor; fleer! though thou 'scape Our ambush on thy devil's racer, Caught here upon this marshy cape, Thy bones the muskrat's brood shall sc.r.a.pe, The sturgeon suck--Death thy embracer!"

So shouts each sanguine chaser.

To die in sight of Amstel's walls, And gallant Joost to die beside him?-- O foolish blast, such fate that calls!

O river that the heart appalls!

Dear Joost may live. And _they_ bestride him?

"By h.e.l.l! none else shall ride him!

"My steed, thy limbs like mine are sore!

Few years are left us ere the billows Roll over both. Come but once more, And to the bottom or the sh.o.r.e, Bear me and thee to happy pillows, Or 'neath the water willows!"

He strokes old Joost. He bends him low.

He winds his horn and laughs derision.

One spring!--they've cleared the bog and sloe, And down the ebb tide buoyant go-- That stately tide. So like a vision Of home, to Norse and Frisian,

Where full a league spread Maas and Rhine, And in the marsh the rice-birds twitter; The long cranes pasture and the kine Loom lofty in the misty s.h.i.+ne Of dawn and reedy islands glitter: Yet death all where is bitter.

Ere out of range a volley peals, But greed too great made aye a blunder.

His horse Lord Herman's self conceals, Yet once his horse and he go under, And rise again. No wound he feels.

They hold their fire in wonder!

Short of the mark the bullets splash: "Now drown thee, wizard! at thy pleasure,"

The Dutchmen hiss through teeth they gnash.

He answers not; for o'er the plash Of waves he hears Joost's gasping measure Of breath's fast wasting treasure.

IX.--PEGASUS.

The sighs when dying comrades fall, Struck by the foe, are only sad; They leaped the ditch and climbed the wall, And shared the purpose of us all; The fame they have; the joy they had: "Rest in thy tracks, brave lad!"

But thou, poor beast! unknown to fame, Whose heart is reached while ours is bounding, Amidst the victory's acclaim-- By thee we kneel with more of shame, That bore us through the fight resounding, And dumbly took our wounding!

Lord Herman saw the blood drops seethe, The nag's neck droop, the nostril bubble, And loosed the bridle from his teeth; Yet swam the old legs underneath, Invincibly. The gap they double; But further swim in trouble.

And lovely Nature stretched her aid, Her sympathetic tow and eddy; The oars of air with azure blade, And silent gravities persuade And waft them onward, slow and steady-- On duteous deeds aye ready.

High leaped the perch. The hawk screamed joy.

Under Joost's belly musically The ripples broke. Bright clouds convoy The brute that man would but destroy, And all instinctive agents rally Strong and medicinally.

In vain! The gurgling waters suck That old life under. Herman swimming Seized but the horse tail. Like a buck Breasting a lake in wild woods' pluck, Joost rose, the glaze his bright eyes dimming, And blood his sockets br.i.m.m.i.n.g.

Then voices speak and women cry.

The treading feet find soil to stand.

Above them the green ramparts lie, And twixt their shadows and the sky, The wondering burghers crowd the strand, And Herman help to land:

"Now to Newcastle's English walls, Hail, Herman! and thy matchless stud!"

Joost staggers up the bank and falls, And dying to his master crawls.

Yields up his long solicitude, And spills his veins of blood.

In Herman's arms his neck is prest, With martial pride his dark eye glazes; He feels the hand he loves the best Stroke fondly, and a chill of rest, As if he rolled in pasture daisies And heard in winds his praises:

"O couldst thou speak, what wouldst thou say?

I who can speak am dumb before thee.

Thine eyes that drink Olympian day Where steeds of wings thy soul convey, With pride of eagles circling o'er thee: Thou seest I adore thee!

"Bound to thy starry home and her Who brought me thee and left earth hollow!

An honored grave thy bones inter, And painting shall thy fame confer, Ere in thy s.h.i.+ning track I follow, Thou courser of Apollo!"

NOTE TO HERMAN OF BOHEMIA MANOR.[1]

The singular incident of this poem was published in 1862, in Rev. John Lednum's "Personal Rise of Methodism," and in the following words:

"It is said that the Dutch had him (Herman) a prisoner of war, at one time, under sentence of death, in New York. A short time before he was to be executed, he feigned himself to be deranged in mind, and requested that his horse should be brought to him in the prison. The horse was brought, finely caparisoned. Herman mounted him, and seemed to be performing military exercises, when, on the first opportunity, he bolted through one of the large windows, that was some fifteen feet above ground, leaped down, swam the North River, ran his horse through Jersey, and alighted on the bank of the Delaware, opposite Newcastle, and thus made his escape from death and the Dutch. This daring feat, tradition says, he had transferred to canvas--himself represented as standing by the side of his charger, from whose nostrils the blood was flowing."--Page 277.

Such a singular and improbable story attracted great local attention, and in 1870, Francis Vincent, publis.h.i.+ng his "History of Delaware,"

wrote: "The author found this incident in both Lednum and Foot, and has seen a copy of this painting. It is in the possession of James R.

Oldham, Esq., of Christiana Bridge, the only male descendant of Herman in Delaware State. He is the seventh in descent from Augustin Herman."--Page 469.

In 1875, Rev. Charles P. Mallery, of Chesapeake City, a part of the Bohemia Manor, wrote in the Elkton (Md.) _Democrat_ as follows: "Herman resided on the Manor for more than twenty years, during which time he once rode to New York on the back of his favorite horse, to reclaim his long-neglected possessions there. He found his land occupied by squatters.... They secured him, as they thought, for the night; but he soon found means to escape by leaping his horse through a forced opening, swimming the North River, and continuing his flight through New Jersey until he reached the sh.o.r.e opposite Newcastle, where he swam his horse across the Delaware and was safe.... Dr.

Spotswood, of Newcastle, told me that there was a tradition in his town that the horse was buried there." Augustin Herman made the first drawing of New Amsterdam, and early maps of Maryland and New England.

He was the first speculator in city real estate in America.

[Footnote 1: The Bohemia Manor is a tract of 18,000 acres of the best land on the Delaware peninsula. It was granted to Augustine Herman, Bohemian, whose tombstone, now lying in the yard of Richard Bayard, on the site of Herman's park, bears date 1661. He received the manor for making an early map of Maryland, and granted a part of the land to the sect of Labadists. In the course of a century it became the homestead of Senator Richard Ba.s.sett, heir of the last lord of the manor, and of his son-in-law, Senator James A. Bayard, the first. Herman was the princ.i.p.al historic personage about the head of the Chesapeake, and was Peter Stuyvesant's diplomatist to New England as well as Maryland. The argument he made for the priority of the Dutch settlement on the Delaware was the basis of the independence of Delaware State. The legend of his escape from New York is told in several local books and newspapers, and it was the subject of one of his paintings, as he was both draughtsman and designer. G. A. T.]

In 1876 I visited the relics of Herman on the Manor, and observed the topography and foliage. I then undertook to put this legend into verse, but struck a short, ill-accommodating stanza, in which I nevertheless persevered until the tale was told. I found that Herman had bought, in 1652, "the Raritan Great Meadows and the territory along the Staten Island Kills from Ompoge, or Amboy, to the Pechciesse Creek, and a tract on the south side of the Raritan, opposite Staten Island" (see Broadhead, page 537). It at once occurred to me to put the seat of Herman's capture by squatters on this property, and to take Staten Island's bold scenery as a contrast to that of the head of the Chesapeake, whence Herman had ridden. He could, besides, more reasonably swim the Kills than the North River with a horse, as a gentle prelude to swimming the Delaware.

One year before buying the above property (see Broadhead's "History of New York," page 526), Peter Stuyvesant vindictively persecuted Herman, Lockerman, and others, who retired to Staten Island to brood. These men belonged to "the popular party." I therefore had a hint to make Stuyvesant himself the incarcerator of Herman in a fort, and the most available period seemed to be subsequent to the capture of Dutch New York by the English, but before the Dutch settlements on the Delaware were yielded. Stuyvesant surrendered New York September 8th, 1664. It was not until October 10th that Newcastle on the Delaware surrendered.

The theory of the poem is that Herman, hearing New York to be English, like Maryland where he resided, repaired to his possessions.

Stuyvesant rallies the squatters against him and makes use of a fort on Staten Island, not yet noticed by the English, as Herman's place of punishment. On Herman's escape this fort is blown up. When Herman returns to Newcastle, it is no longer Dutch, but English. Four days is the time of the action. The device of the carrier pigeons is possibly an anachronism, and also the age of Herman. I have aimed to make the story reasonable, if not creditable.

KIDNAPPED.

A celebrated apostle of the Methodist sect, on the Eastern sh.o.r.e of Maryland, was the Rev. t.i.tus Bates. He had been twenty-six years engaged in the ministry, and was now a bronzed, worn, failing man, consumed by the zeal of his order, but still anxious to continue his work and die at his post. Like all his tribe, he was an itinerant, moving from town to town every second year--these towns being his places of abode, while his fields of labor were called "circuits," and comprised many houses of wors.h.i.+p scattered through the surrounding district. He had chosen his wife with reference to his vocation, and she was equally earnest with himself. She attended the sick, prayed with the dying, taught Sabbath-schools, and organized religious meetings among the women. They had but one son, Paul, an odd, silent little fellow, who was thought to be more bashful than bright; but his parents loved him tenderly, and argued the highest usefulness from his still, sober, thoughtful habits. He was of a singularly dark complexion, with fine black eyes and curling hair, and he was now old enough to ride to and fro with his father upon the long pastoral journeys.

Paul's sixth birthday occurred on a raw Sunday in December. He had been promised, as a special treat on that occasion, a visit to Hogson's Corner, an old meeting-house near the bay-side, twenty miles distant. His mother woke him at an early hour, and, while he breakfasted, the gray pony Bob came to the door in the "sulky." His mother bade him to be a good boy, and kissed him; he took his seat upon a stool at his father's feet, and watched the stone parsonage fade quickly out of sight. The last houses of the town vanished; they pa.s.sed some squalid huts of free negroes; and when, after an hour, they came to a grim, solitary hill, the snow began to fall. It beat down very fast, whitening the frozen furrows in the fields, making pyramids of the charred stumps, and bleaching the sinuous "worm-fences" which bordered the road. After a while, they found a gate built across the way, and Paul leaped out to open it. The snow was deep on the other side, and the little fellow's strength was taxed to push it back; but he succeeded, and his father applauded him. Then there were other gates; for there were few public highways here, and the routes led through private fields. It seemed that he had opened a great many gates before they came to the forest, and then Paul wrapped his chilled wet feet in the thick buffalo hide, and watched the dreary stretches of the pines moan by, the flakes still falling, and the wheels of the sulky dragging in the drifts. The road was very lonely; his father hummed s.n.a.t.c.hes of hymns as they went, and the little boy shaped grotesque figures down the dim aisles of the woods, and wondered how it would be with travellers lost in their depths. He was not sorry when they reached the meeting-house--a black old pile of planks, propped upon logs, with a long shelter-roof for horses down the side of the graveyard. A couple of sleighs, a rough-covered wagon, called a "dearbourn," and several saddled horses, were tied beneath the roof. Two very aged negroes were seen coming up one of the cross-roads, and the s.h.i.+ning, surging Chesapeake, bearing a few pale sails, was visible in the other direction. Some boors were gossiping in the churchyard, slas.h.i.+ng their boots with their riding-whips; one lean, solemn man came out to welcome the preacher, addressing him as "Brother Bates;" and another led the sulky into the wagon-shed, and treated Bob to some ears of corn, which he needed very much.

Then they all repaired to the church, which looked inside like a great barn. The beams and s.h.i.+ngles were bare; some swallows in the eaves flew and twittered at will; and a huge stove, with branching pipes, stood in the naked aisle. The pews were hard and prim, and occupied by pinch-visaged people; the pulpit was a plain shelf, with hanging oil-lamps on either side; and over the door in the rear projected a rheumatic gallery, where the black communicants were boxed up like criminals. A kind old woman gave Paul a ginger-cake, but his father motioned him to put it in his pocket; and after he had warmed his feet, he was told to sit in the pew nearest the preacher on what was called the "Amen side." Then the services began, the preacher leading the hymns, and the cracked voices of the old ladies joining in at the wrong places. But after a while a venerable negro in the gallery tuned up, and sang down the shrill swallows with natural melody. The prayers were long, and broken by e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns from the pews. The text was announced amid profound silence, after everybody had coughed several times, and then the itinerant launched into his sermon. At first it was dry and argumentative, then burdened with divisions and quotations, but in the end he closed the great book, and made one of those fierce, feeling appeals--br.i.m.m.i.n.g with promises of grace and threatenings of h.e.l.l--in words so homely that all felt them true, while the wild, interpolated cries of the believers thrilled and terrified the young.

Little Paul heard with pale lips these grim, religious revelations, and his child's fancy conjured up awful pictures of worlds beyond the grave. He wondered that the birds dared riot in the roof: the sky in the gable window was full of cloudy marvels; and the snow beat under the door, like a shroud blown out of one of the churchyard tombs. The closing prayer was said at last, the unconverted walked away, but five or six communicants remained to tell their experience in the cla.s.s-meeting. Paul's father gave him permission to go into the yard if he liked, and the boy got into the sulky, beneath the buffalo, and heard the sobs and hymns floating dismally on the wind. Grim shapes thronged his mind again, wherein the Bible stories were mingled with tales of ghosts and strange nursery fables. They chased each other in and out, generating others as they went, and then came drowsiness, and Paul slept.