For Love of Country: A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution by Brady (ebook reader wifi .txt) 📖

is dead. I had almost forgotten him. He evidently met and fought those fellows at the landing. We found him at the foot of the steps by the boat-landing with two bodies. That reminds me, one of them was alive when we came by. I told the men to bring all three of the bodies up. Here they are now. Are any of them alive yet, Caesar?"

"No, suh, dey 'se all ob 'em daid."

"Take the two redcoats into the dining-room with the other one. Lay Blodgett here in the hall. He must have been killed instantly. Well; good-by, I shall be over in the morning," he exclaimed, extending his hand.

"Good-by, sir," said the seaman, taking it in his own huge palm. "Take care of Lieutenant Seymour."

"Oh, never fear; we will."

"And may God give the men who did this into our hands!" added Bentley, raising his arms solemnly.

"Amen," said Talbot, with equal gravity.

Seymour was tenderly lifted into the carriage, and attended by Talbot, who sat by his side. Followed by two servants who had orders to get the horses, which they found tied where they had been left, the carriage drove off to the Hall. With what different thoughts was the mind of the young man busy! Scarcely an hour had elapsed since he galloped over the road, a light-hearted boy, flushed with hope, filled with confidence, delighted in his decision, anticipating a reception, meditating words of love. In that one hour the boy had changed from youth to man. The love which he had hardly dreamed was in his heart had risen like a wave and overwhelmed him; the capture and abduction of his sweetheart, the whole brutal and outrageous proceeding, had filled him with burning wrath. He could not wait to strike a blow for liberty against such tyranny now, and his soul was full of resentment to the mother he had loved and honored, because she had held him back; all of the devoted past was forgotten in one impetuous desire of the present. To-morrow should see him on the way to the army, he swore. He wrung his hands in impotent passion.

"Katharine, Katharine, where are you?" he murmured. Seymour stirred.
"Are you in pain, my friend?"

"No," said the sailor quietly, his heart beating against the blood-stained handkerchief, as he echoed in his soul the words he had heard: "Katharine, Katharine, where are you? where are you?"

CHAPTER X

A Soldier's Epitaph

Left to himself in the deserted hall, the old sailor walked over to the body of the old soldier. Many a quaint dispute these two old men had held in their brief acquaintance, and upon no one thing had they been able to agree, except in hatred of the English and love of their common country. Still their disputes had been friendly, and, if they had not loved, they had at least respected each other.

"I wish I had not been so hard on the man. I really liked him," soliloquized the sailor. "Poor Blodgett, almost forgotten, as Mr. Talbot says. He died the right way, though, doing his duty, fighting for his country and for those he loved. Well, he was a brave man—for a soldier," he murmured thoughtfully.

Out on the river the little sloop was speeding rapidly along. Ride as thou wilt, Philip, she cannot be overtaken. Most of the exhausted men lay about the decks in drunken slumber. Johnson stood moodily by the man at the helm; his triumph had been tempered by Desborough's interference. Two or three of the more decent of his followers were discussing the events of the night.

"Poor Joe!" said one.

"Yes, and Evans and Whitely too," was the reply.

"Ay, three dead, and nobody hurt for it," answered the other.

"You forget the old fellow at the landing, though."

"Yes, he fought like the devil, and came near balking the whole game. That was a lucky shot you got in, Davis, after Evans missed and was hit. That fellow was a brave man—for a rebel," said the raider.

In the cabin of the sloop Colonel Wilton was sitting on one of the lockers, his arm around Katharine, who was leaning against him, weeping, her hands before her face. Desborough was standing respectfully in front of them.

"And you say he made a good fight?" asked the colonel, sadly.

"Splendid, sir. We stole up to the boat-house with muffled oars, wishing to give no warning, and before he knew it half of us were on the wharf. He challenged, we made a rush; he shot the first man in the breast and brained the next with his clubbed musket, shouting words of warning the while. The men fell back and handled their pistols. I heard two or three shots, and then he fell, never making another sound. But for Johnson's forethought in sending a second boat load to the upper landing to get to the back of the house, you might have escaped with the warning and the delay he caused. He was a brave man, and died like a soldier," continued the young man, softly.

"He saved my life at Cartagena, and when I caught the fever there, he nursed me at the risk of his own. He was faithfulness itself. He died as he would have liked to die, with his face to the enemy. I loved him in a way you can hardly understand. Yes, he was a brave man,—my poor old friend."

On the rustic bench beside the driveway overlooking the river sat a little woman, older by ten years in the two hours which had elapsed since she looked after the disappearing figure of her son.

She heard the sound of wheels upon the gravel road, and recognized Colonel Wilton's carriage and horses coming up the hill; there were her own two horses following after, but neither of the riders was her son. What could have happened? She rose in alarm. The carriage stopped near her.

"What, mother, are you still here?" said Hilary, opening the door and stepping out, his voice cold and stern.

"Yes, my son; what has happened?"

"Dunmore's men have raided the Wilton place. Katharine and her father have been carried away by that brute Johnson, who commanded the party. Seymour has been wounded in defending Katharine. I have brought him here. This is the way," he went on fiercely, "his majesty the king wages war on his beloved subjects of Virginia."

"'They that take the sword, shall perish with the sword,'" she quoted with equal resolution.

"And Blodgett is killed too," he added.

"What else have those who rebel against their rightful monarch a right to expect?" she replied. "Is Mr. Seymour seriously wounded?"

"No, madam," answered that young man, from the carriage; "but I fear me my cause makes me an unwelcome visitor."

"Nay, not so, sir. No wounded helpless man craving assistance can ever be unwelcome at my—at the home of the Talbots, whatever his creed. How died Blodgett, did you say, Hilary?"

"Fighting for his master, at the foot of the path, shot by those ruffians."

"So may it be to all enemies of the king," she replied; "but after all he was a brave man. 'T is a pity he fell in so poor a cause."

And that was thy epitaph, old soldier; that thy requiem, honest
Blodgett,—from friend and foe alike,—"He was a brave man."

BOOK II KNIGHTS ERRANT OF THE SEA CHAPTER XI

Captain John Paul Jones

"You would better spread a little more canvas, Mr. Seymour. I think we shall do better under the topgallantsails. We have no time to lose."

"Ay, ay, sir," replied the young executive officer; and then lifting the trumpet to his lips, he called out with a powerful voice, "Lay aloft and loose the topgallantsails! Man the topgallant sheets and halliards!"

The crew, both watches being on deck, were busy with the various duties rendered necessary by the departure of a ship upon a long cruise, and were occupied here and there with the different details of work to be done when a ship gets under way. Some of them, their tasks accomplished for the moment, were standing on the forecastle, or peering through the gun ports, gazing at the city, with the tall spire of Christ Church and the more substantial elevation of the building even then beginning to be known as Independence Hall, rising in the background beyond the shipping and over the other buildings which they were so rapidly leaving. In an instant the quiet deck became a scene of quick activity, as the men left their tasks and sprang to their appointed stations. The long coils of rope were thrown upon the deck and seized by the groups of seamen detailed for the purpose; while the rigging shook under the quick steps of the alert topmen springing up the ratlines, swarming over the tops, and laying out on the yards, without a thought of the giddy elevation, in their intense rivalry each to be first.

"The main royal also, Mr. Seymour," continued the captain. "I think she will bear it; 'tis a new and good stick."

"Ay, ay, sir. Main topgallant yard there."

"Sir?"

"Aloft, one of you, and loose the royal as well."

"Ay, ay, sir."

After a few moments of quick work, the officers of the various masts indicated their readiness for the next order by saying, in rapid succession,—

"All ready the fore, sir."

"All ready the main, sir."

"All ready the mizzen, sir."

"Handsomely now, and all together. I want those Frenchmen there to see how smartly we can do this," said the captain, in reply, addressing Seymour in a tone perfectly audible over the ship.

"Let fall! Lay in! Sheet home! Hoist away! Tend the braces there!" shouted the first lieutenant.

Amid the creaking of blocks, the straining of cordage, and the lusty heaving of the men, with the shrill pipes of the boatswain and his mates for an accompaniment, the sheets were hauled home on the yards, the yards rose on their respective masts, and the light sails, the braces being hauled taut, bellied out in the strong breeze, adding materially to the speed of the ship.

"Lay down from aloft," cried the lieutenant, when all was over.

"Ay, that will do," remarked the captain. "We go better already. I am most anxious to get clear of the Capes before nightfall. Call the men aft, and request the officers to come up on the quarterdeck. I wish to speak to them."

"Ay, ay, sir.—Mr. Wilton," said the young officer, turning to a young midshipman, standing on the lee-side of the deck, "step below and ask the officers there, and those forward, to come on deck. Bentley," he called to the boatswain, "call all hands aft."

"Ay, ay, sir."

Again the shrill whistling of the pipes was heard, followed by the deep tones of Bentley, which rolled and tumbled along the decks of the ship in the usual long-drawn monotonous cry, which could be heard, above the roar of the wind or the rush of the water or the straining of the timbers, from the truck to the keelson: "All hands lay aft, to the quarter-deck."

The captain, standing upon the poop-deck, was not, at first glance, a particularly imposing figure. He was small in stature, scarcely five and a half feet high at best, with his natural height diminished, as is often the case with sailors, by a slight bending of the back and stooping of the shoulders; yet he possessed a well-knit, vigorous, and not ungraceful figure, whose careless poise, and the ease with which he maintained his position, with his hands clasped behind his back, in spite of the rather heavy roll and pitch of the ship, in the very strong breeze, indicated long familiarity with the sea.

His naturally dark complexion was rendered extremely swarthy by the long exposure to weather, and tropic weather at that, which he had undergone. The expression of his face was of that abstract and thoughtful, nay, even melancholy, cast which we commonly associate with the student rather than the man of affairs. He was dressed in the prescribed uniform of a captain of the American navy, in the Revolutionary period: a dark blue