Part 16 (1/2)
”Well, sir, right or wrong, your, duty is to obey orders,” said Helm with brutal severity.
”We had better not quarrel, Captain,” Beverley replied. ”I have not signified any unwillingness to obey your commands. Give them, and you will have no cause to grumble.”
”Forgive me, old fellow,” cried the impulsive commander. ”I know you are true as steel. I s'pose I'm wound up too tight to be polite. But the time is come to do something. Here we are with but five or six men--”
He was interrupted by the arrival of two more half-breed scouts.
Only three miles away was a large flotilla of boats and canoes with cannon, a force of Indians on land and the British flag flying,--that was the report.
”They are moving rapidly,” said the spokesman, ”and will be here very soon. They are at least six hundred strong, all well armed.”
”Push that gun to the gate, and load it to the muzzle, Lieutenant Beverley,” Helm ordered with admirable firmness, the purple flush in his face giving way to a grayish pallor. ”We are going to die right here, or have the honors of war.”
Beverley obeyed without a word. He even loaded two guns instead of one--charging each so heavily that the last wad looked as if ready to leap from the grimy mouth.
Helm had already begun, on receiving the first report, a hasty letter to Colonel Clark at Kaskaskia. He now added a few words and at the last moment sent it out by a trusted man, who was promptly captured by Hamilton's advance guard. The missive, evidently written in installments during the slow approach of the British, is still in the Canadian archives, and runs thus:
”Dear Sir--At this time there is an army within three miles of this place; I heard of their coming several days beforehand. I sent spies to find the certainty--the spies being taken prisoner I never got intelligence till they got within three miles of town. As I had called the militia and had all a.s.surances of their integrity I ordered at the firing of a cannon every man to appear, but I saw but few. Captain Buseron behaved much to his honor and credit, but I doubt the conduct of a certain gent. Excuse haste, as the army is in sight. My determination is to defend the garrison, (sic) though I have but twenty-one men but what has left me. I refer you to Mr. Wmes (sic) for the rest. The army is within three hundred yards of the village. You must think how I feel; not four men that I really depend upon; but am determined to act brave--think of my condition. I know it is out of my power to defend the town, as not one of the militia will take arms, though before sight of the army no braver men. There is a flag at a small distance, I must conclude.
”Your humble servant,
”Leo'd Helm. Must stop.”
”To Colonel Clark.”
Having completed this task, the letter shows under what a nervous strain, Helm turned to his lieutenant and said:
”Fire a swivel with a blank charge. We'll give these weak-kneed parly-voos one more call to duty. Of course not a frog-eater of them all will come. But I said that a gun should be the signal. Possibly they didn't hear the first one, the d.a.m.ned, deaf, cowardly hounds!”
Beverley wheeled forth the swivel and rammed a charge of powder home.
But when he fired it, the effect was far from what it should have been.
Instead of calling in a fresh body of militia, it actually drove out the few who up to that moment had remained as a garrison; so that Captain Helm and his Lieutenant found themselves quite alone in the fort, while out before the gate, deployed in fine open order, a strong line of British soldiers approached with st.u.r.dy steps, led by a tall, erect, ruddy-faced young officer.
CHAPTER IX
THE HONORS OF WAR
Gaspard Roussillon was thoroughly acquainted with savage warfare, and he knew all the pacific means so successfully and so long used by French missionaries and traders to control savage character; but the emergency now upon him was startling. It confused him. The fact that he had taken a solemn oath of allegiance to the American government could have been pushed aside lightly enough upon pressing occasion, but he knew that certain confidential agents left in Vincennes by Governor Abbott had, upon the arrival of Helm, gone to Detroit, and of course they had carried thither a full report of all that happened in the church of St. Xavier, when Father Gibault called the people together, and at the fort, when the British flag was hauled down and la banniere d'Alice Roussillon run up in its place. His expansive imagination did full credit to itself in exaggerating the importance of his part in handing the post over to the rebels. And what would Hamilton think of this? Would he consider it treason? The question certainly bore a tragic suggestion.
M. Roussillon lacked everything of being a coward, and treachery had no rightful place in his nature. He was, however, so in the habit of fighting windmills and making mountains of molehills that he could not at first glance see any sudden presentment with a normal vision. He had no love for Englishmen and he did like Americans, but he naturally thought that Helm's talk of fighting Hamilton was, as his own would have been in a like case, talk and nothing more. The fort could not hold out an hour, he well knew. Then what? Ah, he but too well realized the result.
Resistance would inflame the English soldiers and madden the Indians.
There would be a ma.s.sacre, and the belts of savages would sag with b.l.o.o.d.y scalps. He shrugged his shoulders and felt a chill creep up his back.
The first thing M. Roussillon did was to see Father Beret and take counsel of him; then he hurried home to dig a great pit under his kitchen floor in which he buried many bales of fur and all his most valuable things. He worked like a giant beaver all night long. Meantime Father Beret went about over the town quietly notifying the inhabitants to remain in their houses until after the fort should surrender, which he was sure would happen the next day.
”You will be perfectly safe, my children,” he said to them. ”No harm can come to you if you follow my directions.”