Part 2 (1/2)

She looked around at me, pretty brows raised in quaint displeasure.

”Does the insolence of a rebel really amuse you, Mr. Renault?”

I was taken aback. Even among the British officers here in the city it had become the fas.h.i.+on to speak respectfully of the enemy, and above all of his Excellency.

”Why should it not amuse me?” I asked lightly.

She had moved her head again, and appeared to be absorbed in the view.

Presently she said, still looking out over the city: ”That was a n.o.ble church once, that blackened arch across the way.”

”That is Trinity--all that is left of it,” I said. ”St. Paul's is still standing--you may see it there to the north, just west of Ann Street and below Vesey.”

She turned, leaning on the railing, following with curious eyes the direction of my outstretched arm.

”Please tell me more about this furnace you call a city, Mr. Renault,”

she said, with a pretty inflection of voice that flattered; and so I went over beside her, and, leaning there on the cupola rail together, we explored the damaged city from our bird's perch above it--the city that I had come to care for strangely, nay, to love almost as I loved my Mohawk hills. For it is that way with New York, the one city that we may love without disloyalty to our birthplace, a city which is home in a larger sense, and, in a sense, almost as dear to men as the birth-spot which all cherish. I know not why, but this is so; no American is long strange here; for it is the great hearth of the mother-land where the nation gathers as a family, each conscious of a share in the heritage established for all by all.

And so, together, this fair young English girl and I traced out the wards numbered from the cardinal points of the compa.s.s, and I bounded for her the Out-Ward, too, and the Dock-Ward. There was no haze, only a living golden light, clear as topaz, and we could see plainly the sentinels pacing before the Bridewell--that long two-storied prison, built of gloomy stone; and next to it the Almshouse of gray stone, and next to that the ma.s.sive rough stone prison, three stories high, where in a cupola an iron bell hung, black against the sky.

”You will hear it, some day, tolling for an execution,” I said.

”Do they hang rebels there?” she asked, looking up at me so wonderingly, so innocently that I stood silent instead of answering, surprised at such beauty in a young girl's eyes.

”Where is King's College?” she asked. I showed her the building bounded by Murray, Chapel, Barckley and Church streets, and then I pointed out the upper barracks behind the jail, and the little lake beyond divided by a neck of land on which stood the powder-house.

Far across the West Ward I could see the windows of Mr. Lispenard's mansion s.h.i.+ning in the setting sun, and the road to Greenwich winding along the river.

She tired of my instruction after a while, and her eyes wandered to the bay. A few s.h.i.+ps lay off Paulus Hook; the Jersey sh.o.r.e seemed very near, although full two miles distant, and the islands, too, seemed close in-sh.o.r.e where the white wings of gulls flashed distantly.

A jack flew from the Battery, another above the fort, standing out straight in the freshening breeze from the bay. Far away across the East River I saw the accursed _Jersey_ swinging, her black, filthy bulwarks gilded by the sun; and below, her devil's brood of hulks at anchor, all with the wash hung out on deck a-drying in the wind.

”What are they?” she asked, surprising something else than the fixed smile of deference in my face.

”Prison s.h.i.+ps, madam. Yonder the rebels die all night, all day, week after week, year after year. That black hulk you see yonder--the one to the east--stripped clean, with nothing save a derrick for bow-sprit and a signal-pole for mast, is the _Jersey_, called by another name, sometimes----”

”What name?”

”Some call her '_The h.e.l.l_,'” I answered. And, after a pause: ”It must be hot aboard, with every porthole nailed.”

”What can rebels expect?” she asked calmly.

”Exactly! There are some thousand and more aboard the _Jersey_. When the wind sets from the south, on still mornings, I have heard a strange moaning--a low, steady, monotonous plaint, borne inland over the city.

But, as you say, what can rebels expect, madam?”

”What is that moaning sound you say that one may hear?” she demanded.

”Oh, the rebels, dying from suffocation--clamoring for food, perhaps--perhaps for water! It is hard on the guards who have to go down every morning into that reeking, stifling hold and drag out the dead rebels festering there----”

”But that is horrible!” she broke out, blue eyes wide with astonishment--then, suddenly silent, she gazed at me full in the face.