The Road to Paris Part 9

CHAPTER VII.

THE MARCH THROUGH MAINE.

It was on Monday morning, September 11th, that d.i.c.k and Tom marched with their fellow riflemen from Prospect Hill, bound first for Newburyport, thence by sea for the mouth of the Kennebec River, and thence through the Maine wilderness into Canada and to Quebec.

The little army of 1,100 men, consisting of the two Pennsylvania rifle companies,--one from c.u.mberland County and one from Lancaster County,--Captain Morgan's company of Virginia riflemen, and two divisions of New England infantry, set forth in gay spirits. Its commander, Col. Benedict Arnold, of Connecticut, had recently arrived in Cambridge from his achievement with Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga, his deeds on Lake Champlain, and his capture of St. John's. He was a short, stout, ruddy, handsome man, with a face complacent but resolute. His soldiers admired his bravery, and the most ungovernable of them yielded to his great persuasiveness.

d.i.c.k found himself more immediately under the command of Capt. Daniel Morgan, who led the division composed of all three rifle companies; a large, strong man, whose usually severe mien softened on occasion into a singularly kindly one; a rigid disciplinarian, impetuous yet sagacious, easily aroused but soon calmed. d.i.c.k's own captain, William Hendricks, was tall and n.o.ble-looking, gentle and heroic in face and heart. The two lieutenants, John M'Cleland and Michael Simpson, were both old acquaintances of d.i.c.k's, the former being notable for his openness of character, the latter for his gaiety and his skill as a singer. Sergeant Grier was a faithful, reliable man, whose stout and intrepid wife accompanied him on the campaign and without difficulty kept the respect of the soldiers. The Lancaster company's captain, Matthew Smith, was soldierly and good-looking, but unlettered and turbulent. Two of his best men were a pair of adventurous youths no older than d.i.c.k,--Archibald Steele and John Joseph Henry.

Of the two New England divisions, one was under Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Greene, of Rhode Island, the other under Lieutenant-Colonel Enos, of Connecticut. But d.i.c.k, on the march, came little in contact with the Yankee troops.

Sleeping by the way on the first night of the expedition, the army reached the little town of Newburyport on Tuesday, and camped here several days, completing its equipment. It was joined here by several volunteers, including two young men named Aaron Burr and Matthew Ogden, and Colonel Arnold attached these two to his staff. On Monday afternoon, September 18th, the army embarked on ten transports, which set sail in the evening, and which, under a fair, strong breeze, reached the mouth of the Kennebec at dawn. Continuing on the transports a short distance up this river, to Gardiner, the army left them at Colonel Colborn's s.h.i.+p-yard, and proceeded in two hundred bateaux to Fort Western,--on whose site the city of Augusta was later built,--reaching that place on Sat.u.r.day, September 23d, having camped by the river during the nights.

Here Colonel Arnold sent forward a pioneer party to explore the river and to blaze a way through the wilderness at each place where boats could not navigate and where the men would have to go by land. d.i.c.k openly envied the lucky fellows selected for this duty,--Steele, Henry, four more of Smith's men, and three of Morgan's. As, from the camp on a pine-clad slope, he watched them set out, he would have given much for a place in one of their two light birch-bark canoes, each of which was partly laden with pork, meal, and biscuit.

"Hoot toot, lad!" said MacAlister, divining the boy's feelings. "It's work enough ye're like to have, whether ye gang before or behint, ere ye set eyes on the inside of Quebec town!"

It was d.i.c.k's lot not to go behind. The rifle companies const.i.tuted the van of the army, and set out from Fort Western in their bateaux a day in advance of the second division, Greene's, which in turn by a day preceded Eno's division, the third and last. This order was to be maintained until the army should have gone some way up the Kennebec, marched to that stream's branch, the Dead River, proceeded thereon, and made thence to the Chaudiere, where all should unite for the advance on Quebec. Colonel Arnold waited at Fort Western till the last division was off, then took a canoe, with Indians at the paddles, pa.s.sed the third and second divisions, and overtook the advance at Norridgewock Falls, in the country of the moose deer.

d.i.c.k now found himself in a wilderness more solitary and picturesque than his own Pennsylvania forests. The last cabin of white settlers had been left behind. Civilized habitation would not again be seen until the army should reach the French settlements in Canada. The river, pursuing a turbulent way among rocks and over cataracts, was set amidst solitudes of fir-trees, hemlocks, birch, and other species, and these crowned the eminences that rose now gently, and now abruptly, on every hand. Within sound of the eternal tumult of Norridgewock Falls, were the ruins of a deserted Indian village, and as d.i.c.k lay at night under his blanket on his bed of evergreen branches, listening to the noise of the waterfall, and of MacAlister's snoring, he would look through his tent opening and imagine the ghosts of bygone red men, or that of the good French priest, Father Ralle, who had come to this village in 1698, and been killed when a party from Ma.s.sachusetts suddenly attacked the place in 1724.

It was the task of d.i.c.k and his fellow riflemen to open the way, remove impediments from the streams, learn the fords, explore the portages or carrying-places where, the waters not being navigable, the boats had to be carried over land, and free these last of obstructions. For this work their attire was more suitable than was such garb as d.i.c.k had discarded on joining them; it consisted of hunting-cap, flannel s.h.i.+rt, cloth or buckskin breeches, buckskin leggings, moccasins, and outside hunting-s.h.i.+rt of brown linsey-woolsey, with a belt in which a knife and a tomahawk were carried. Each of Morgan's men wore on his cap a front-piece inscribed with the words, "Liberty or Death." This ever present reminder to the men, of the cause for which they toiled and suffered, came not amiss. It was not from the rifle companies that the desertions occurred, which united with swamp-fever and fatigue to reduce the army to fewer than a thousand able men before October 13th.

d.i.c.k soon realized the truth of old Tom's prediction concerning hard work. At the times when some of the men marched along the river banks, while some forced the bad and heavy bateaux, with their loads of provisions and other supplies, up the rapid stream, the lot of the former, struggling through thickets and swamps and over rocks, was no worse than the lot of the latter, wading and pus.h.i.+ng against the current, which oftentimes upset or swamped their boats, and damaged provisions, arms, and ammunition. More than once a whole day was spent in getting around some single cataract, the men unloading the cargoes, carrying them--and sometimes the boats also--on their shoulders, then relaunching and reloading for another tug against the swift stream.

Before the Great Portage, from the Kennebec to the Dead River, had been traversed, d.i.c.k was inured to the life of an amphibious being, as well as to that of some swamp-infesting animal or of some inhabitant of the underbrush. His breeches and leggings were torn almost from his legs by thickets, which spared not the skin under them, and below the hips he was thoroughly water-soaked. But he still slept and ate well, there being at this time plenty of trout and salmon in the ponds and streams, with which to eke out the diet of pork, meal-cakes, and biscuit. As yet the weather, though cold at night, caused no suffering to a youth of d.i.c.k's hardiness, or to a veteran as well seasoned as MacAlister.

"I prophesy that will be the langest fifteen mile ye'll often gang over," said Old Tom, when he and d.i.c.k came to a halt at last on the bank of the Dead River, having put behind them the Great Portage and its three intervening lakelets, after days of dragging and pus.h.i.+ng of boats over a rough ridge, and through ponds and bogs. "I gather from offeecial sources," continued the Fiddler, "that we're like to reach the Chaudiere River in eight or ten days, though I hae my doots, seeing it's mony a mile up this river we'll be ganging, and then over G.o.d knows what kind of country after that. Weel, weel, lad, it's Quebec or nothing now, if ye hauld out, for devil a bit will ony mon of us gang willingly back over the road we've come by!"

So jubilant were the men at having overcome the difficulties of the great carrying-place, that they whistled and jested as they launched their boats on the sluggish waters of the Dead River. They acted as if the end of their journey were in sight. Colonel Arnold had already sent an Indian messenger to General Schuyler, whose army from the province of New York had in August started under Montgomery from Ticonderoga to enter Canada below Montreal and eventually unite with Arnold's force before Quebec. The colonel thought to receive an answer to this letter on arriving at the Chaudiere.

"It's a blithe lot of men, true for ye, wi' their whistling and capering," said old Tom, in an undertone, as he and d.i.c.k stood recovering their breath after much pulling and shoving of boats. "All looks weel and bonny the day, but ye maun put nae trust in appearances.

Do ye moind, ayont Curritunk, afore we left the Kennebec, how ye steppit sae merrily on the green moss that seemed to cover level ground for sae lang a stretch, and how ye found 'twas rotten bog beneath the surface, and full of them snags that tripped ye up and cut your feet in the devil's ain way? Mony's the mon like that,--and woman, too!"

Up the Dead River for eighty-three miles the army proceeded, the riflemen still leading. Seventeen times they had to unload their boats and carry the loads past places that were not navigable. On this part of the journey the men were a.s.sailed by rains and cold weather. Lieutenant M'Cleland, more fragile in body than in spirit, was one of many whose const.i.tutions began to yield to these a.s.saults. With a cold in the lungs, he toiled on, performing his duties and refusing aid, until his increasing weakness compelled him to relinquish the former and accept the latter, on his comrades' insistence and his captain's orders. When the chosen route departed from the Dead River, to cross a mountain, M'Cleland was placed on a litter and so carried forward.

"If I can only hold out till we enter Quebec!" he said from his litter, one bleak, drizzling day, while Captain Hendricks, d.i.c.k, MacAlister, and others bore him up the wooded mountain-side,--for the captain took his turn at the litter with the others.

Captain Hendricks cheerily said there could be no doubt of that, and Lieutenant Simpson, who happened to be walking immediately behind the litter, predicted that the sufferer would begin to mend as soon as the troops should reach the Chaudiere, and reminded him, for the tenth time, that a boat was being carried across the mountain purposely to take him down that river while his comrades should march along the banks.

The lieutenant brightened up at this rea.s.surance that he was not to be left behind,--as more than one ailing man had necessarily been,--and, turning his eyes to d.i.c.k, said:

"Do you remember the morning, d.i.c.k, when I galloped up to your house with the news of the beginning of this business? How long ago that seems, and how far away!" His voice had sunk, and he was silent and thoughtful for a moment. Then he resumed, with as much cheerfulness as his weakened state would allow him to show, "We didn't imagine ourselves, that morning, marching into Quebec together, as we shall be before many a day!"

d.i.c.k's answer was prevented by a fit of coughing on M'Cleland's part, after which the sufferer closed his eyes and went into a feverish doze.

Old Tom glanced down at him, and for a moment looked grimmer than usually.

Before starting to cross this mountain, which was one of the great snow-covered chain running northeastwardly, Colonel Arnold and the first division had camped at the base to rest. The tents had been flooded by heavy rains and by sudden torrents from the mountains. The inundation had upset several boats, destroyed provisions, and dampened the spirits as well as the bodies of the men. Rations were shortened, and the dejecting news went round that there remained a journey of twelve or fifteen days in a wilderness devoid of supplies. After consulting with the officers on the ground, Arnold sent orders back to Colonel Greene and Colonel Enos to bring forward as many men as they could furnish with fifteen days' provisions, and to send the rest of their forces back to Norridgewock. These orders despatched, Arnold and the riflemen started on their march across the mountain.

Drenched with rain at the outset, they were soon chilled by wintry winds, and presently impeded by snow and ice. But at last the crest of the mountain no longer crossed the bleak sky ahead. Valleys, set with icy streams and frozen lakes, came into view, their sombreness not lessened by the color of their dark evergreens. The down-hill and cross-country march of the scantily fed men brought them at last to Lake Megantic, the source of the Chaudiere. Here they met a courier whom Colonel Arnold had sent ahead to the valley of the Chaudiere to sound the French _habitans_, whose humble farms would be the first human abodes reached in Canada. This emissary said that the peasants would give the American army a hospitable reception. Colonel Arnold thereupon chose to precede the army down the Chaudiere, with a foraging party, that he might obtain and send back supplies and also have provisions collected for the army's use on its arrival at the habitations. He therefore caused the little remaining food to be given out equally to the companies, ordered them to follow as best they could to the Chaudiere settlements, and set out with a birch canoe and five bateaux.

In the colonel's party was Archibald Steele, with whose pioneer force the riflemen had reunited at the Dead River, and whom d.i.c.k, compelled as before to remain behind with the main advance, again had reason to envy.

"Whist, lad!" quoth old Tom. "The post of honor, ye'll find, is back where the starving will be. There'll be low spirits henceforth, I'm thinking, and waurk for the fiddle, hearting up the men when they've leetle dourness left to fa' back on and it's devil a bit of difference whether they live or die. Lord, Lord! It's a gang of living ghaists we are, d.i.c.kie. Wi' the clothes of us torn to flinders by the stanes and briars, and wi' nowt left to our shoes but the tops, we'd do fine to scare away the crows from the corn fields in a ceevilized country. Sure, the wind is like to pull the tatters frae our backs, and make us a shocking sight to the ladies when we march in triumph into Quebec!"

"If we ever get to Quebec," said a soldier, dismally, who had overheard Tom's last words.

"We'll get to Quebec!" said d.i.c.k, positively; and he involuntarily put back his hand and felt his queue.

d.i.c.k now went to speak to his friend M'Cleland, who had been placed in a boat, which was to be navigated across the lake and down the Chaudiere by Sergeant Grier and several others.

"Mind you land him safe!" called out the sergeant's buxom wife, as the boat moved off; and the sergeant replied he would do his best.

"I'm afraid the poor lieutenant finds it a long way to Quebec," said Mrs. Grier, taking place in the line of riflemen as it started for the Chaudiere by land.

"It's a lang way for some more of us," replied Tom MacAlister, who marched behind her. "There's that puir blind Shafer, the drummer in the Lancaster company. Look at him now, yonder. It's ten to one he can't see a dozen foot ahead of his nose, yet he's always in his place, next man to one ahint Captain Smith,--except when he fa's into a bog, through lack of eyesight. It must be the sense of hearing keeps him sae straight after the heels of young Henry afore him. Sure, if every man was like him, Captain Morgan would never have to look black and curse inside because of stragglers from the camp."

"It's a sin," said Mrs. Grier, "the tricks the men play on him, stealing his cakes away from under his very eyes. Och! there he goes now, tumbling off the log into the gully, drum and all! You're right, MacAlister,--the way to Quebec is a long one to Shafer, the drummer."

"Yet I'd wager a pound or two, if I had it," said Tom, "the puir, blind, naked, hungry body will be beating his drum at Quebec, when mony a stout rascal that laughs at him now will be sleeping here in these gullies wi'

the bitter wind for bed-covering."

The troops came presently to a pond, which would require so wide a detour to skirt, that the far shorter way was to cross it. Trying the ice that covered it, the men found that too thin to bear their weight.

With dogged resignation, they began to break the ice with their guns, and waded in. Mrs. Grier raised her skirts above her waist and followed the man ahead, through the chilling water, to the opposite sh.o.r.e. d.i.c.k and Tom waded immediately after her. No one offered either smile or comment. On the tired troops marched, in Indian file, hungry, s.h.i.+vering, aching, each man feeling that the next step might be his last.

When they reached the Chaudiere, many of the riflemen did not wait for the order to halt, but exhaustedly sank to the frosty ground in line.

Tom, always respecting discipline, trudged on till the word came, followed through force of example by d.i.c.k; and then these two also dropped in their places.

"Chaudiere," said MacAlister, glancing down that stream. "That means caldron, and frae the look of things down yonder I won't gainsay the fitness of the name. It's unco' wild navigation we're like to have, down that there boiling torrent, I'm thinking!"

And so it proved, when an attempt was made to launch boats. Every one that was put into the river was stove in by rocks, on being hurled forward by the rapids. But Captain Morgan persisted, until he had lost all of his boats. The ammunition, arms, and other equipments were thereupon taken up by the men, who proceeded along the banks of the turbulent stream.

It happened that d.i.c.k and Tom were at the front of the division, when they turned the corner of a projecting rock, and came unexpectedly on a group that stood around a fire, beside which a man was lying. It required but a glance to inform d.i.c.k that this group consisted of Sergeant Grier's party and that the man on the ground was Lieutenant M'Cleland. The sight of a damaged boat, and of a rock near the verge of a cataract, told the story,--that the boat had lodged on the rock, and that the men had managed to bring the feeble lieutenant ash.o.r.e in time to save him from speedy death. In a moment d.i.c.k was kneeling at his side, whither he was soon followed by Captain Hendricks and Lieutenant Simpson.

"It was a foolish thing to let you go by the river," said Hendricks to the prostrate man, whose breath came in quick, feeble movements, and whose weather-browned features had an ashy pallor.

"We'll carry you on as we did over the mountain,--all the way to Quebec," said d.i.c.k, pressing M'Cleland's hand.

But the lieutenant merely smiled faintly, took on a look of drowsy resignation, essayed to shake his head, and whispered the word, "Farewell!" d.i.c.k had to yield the hand he held, and his place by his friend's side, that his captain and certain of his comrades might clasp the hand once ere it should be cold. Even as d.i.c.k was thinking of the sunny April morning when his friend had ridden up, all life and animation, with the news of Lexington, the soldier sighed his last farewell.

When the troops took up their march and left the dead man there, as they had left many another in those bleak wilds, d.i.c.k had a moment of heart-sickness, when all seemed dark before him, and when he wished that he and M'Cleland might be back in their Pennsylvania valley, and that there had never been a war.

"Heart up, lad!" came over his shoulder, softly, the voice of old Tom.

"It's mony a friend ye'll leave cauld by the wayside ere ye come to lie there cauld yoursel'. Ye'll learn to keep looking forward, as ye gang over the hills and far away. Sae hauld up your head, and swallow your Adam's apple, and fasten your mind's eye on Quebec!"

And d.i.c.k braced himself and did so.