CHAPTER III.
TICONDEROGA.
At the alarm-post next morning the men were in high spirits again.Everyone seemed to be posted in the day's work ahead. The Frenchhad thrown up an outwork on the landward end of the ridge; anengineer had climbed Rattlesnake Mountain at daybreak and conned itthrough his glass, and had brought down his report two hours ago.The white-coats had been working like niggers, helped by somereinforcements which had come in overnight--Levis with the RoyalRoussillon, the scouts said: but the thing was a rough-and-readyaffair of logs and the troops were to carry it with the bayonet.John asked in what direction it lay, and thumbs were jerked towardsthe screening forest across the river. The distance (some said) wasnot two miles. Colonel Beaver, returning from a visit to thesaw-mill, confirmed the rumour. The 46th would march in a couple ofhours or less.
At breakfast Howe's death seemed to be forgotten, and John found notime for solemn thoughts. Bets were laid that the French would notwait for the assault, but slip away to their boats; even with Levisthey could scarcely be four thousand strong. Bradstreet, havingfinished his bridge, had started back for the landing-stage to haul adozen of the lighter bateaux across the portage and float them downto Lake Champlain filled with riflemen. Bradstreet was a glutton forwork--but would he be in time? That old fox Montcalm would never lethis earths be stopped so easily, and to pile defences on the ridgewas simply to build himself into a trap. A good half of the officersmaintained that there would be no fighting.
Well, fighting or no, some business was in hand. Here was thebattalion in motion; and, to leave the enemy in no doubt of ourmartial ardour, here were the drums playing away like mad. The echoof John's feet on the wooden bridge awoke him from these vain showsand rattlings of war to its real meaning, and his thoughts again kepthim solemn company as he breasted the slope beyond and began thetedious climb to the right through the woods.
The scouts, coming in one by one, reported them undefended: andthe battalion, though perforce moving slowly, kept good order.Towards the summit, indeed, the front ranks appeared to straggle andextend themselves confusedly: but the disorder, no more thanapparent, came from the skirmishers returning and falling back uponeither flank as the column scrambled up the last five hundred yardsand halted on the fringe of the clearing. Of the enemy John couldsee nothing: only a broad belt of sunlight beyond the last fewtree-trunks and their green eaves. The advance had been well timed,the separate columns arriving and coming to the halt almost atclockwork intervals; nor did the halt give him much leisure to lookabout him. To the right were drawn up the Highlanders, their darkplaids blending with the forest glooms. In the space between, Beaverhad stepped forward and was chatting with their colonel. By and bythe dandified Gage joined them, and after a few minutes' talk Beavercame striding back, with his scabbard tucked under his armpit, to beclear of the undergrowth. At once the order was given to fixbayonets, and at a signal the columns were put in motion and marchedout upon the edge of the clearing.
There, as he stepped forth, the flash of the noonday sun upon linesof steel held John's eyes dazzled. He heard the word given again tohalt, and the command "Left, wheel into line!" He heard the callsthat followed--"Eyes front!" "Steady," "Quick march," "Halt, dress"--and felt, rather than saw, the whole elaborate manoeuvre; the rearranks locking up, the covering sergeants jigging about like dancersin a minuet--pace to the rear, side step to the right--the pivot menwith stiff arms extended, the companies wheeling up and dressing; allhappening precisely as on parade.
What, after all, was the difference? Well, to begin with, theclearing ahead in no way resembled a parade-ground, being strewn andcriss-crossed with fallen trees and interset with stumps, somecleanly cut, others with jagged splinters from three to ten feethigh. And beyond, with the fierce sunlight quivering above it, rosea mass of prostrate trees piled as if for the base of a tremendousbonfire. Not a Frenchman showed behind it. Was _that_ what they hadto carry?
"The battalion will advance!"
Yes, there lay the barrier; and their business was simply to rush it;to advance at the charge, holding their fire until within thebreastwork.
The French, too, held their fire. The distance from the edge of theclearing to the abattis was, at the most, a long musket-shot, and fortwo-thirds of it the crescent-shaped line of British ran as in apaper-chase, John a Cleeve vaulting across tree-trunks, leaping overstumps, and hurrahing with the rest.
Then with a flame the breastwork opened before him, and with a shockas though the whole ridge lifted itself against the sky--a shockwhich hurled him backward, whirling away his shako. He saw the lineto right and left wither under it and shrink like parchment held to acandle flame. For a moment the ensign-staff shook in his hands, asif whipped by a gale. He steadied it, and stood dazed, hearkening tothe scream of the bullets, gulping at a lump in his throat. Then heknew himself unhurt, and, seeing that men on either hand were pickingthemselves up and running forward, he ducked his head and ran forwardtoo.
He had gained the abattis. He went into it with a leap, a dozen menat his heels. A pointed bough met him in the ribs, piercing histunic and forcing him to cry out with pain. He fell back from it andtugged at the interlacing boughs between him and the log-wall,fighting them with his left, pressing them aside, now attempting toleap them, now to burst through them with his weight. The walljetted flame through its crevices, and the boughs held him fastwithin twenty yards of it. He could reach it easily (he toldhimself) but for the staff he carried, against which each separatetwig hitched itself as though animated by special malice.
He swung himself round and forced his body backwards against thetangle; and a score of men, rallying to the colours, leapt in afterhim. As their weight pressed him down supine and the flag sank inhis grasp, he saw their faces--Highlanders and redcoats mixed.They had long since disregarded the order to hold their fire; andwere blazing away idly and reloading, cursing the boughs that impededtheir ramrods. A corporal of the 46th had managed to reload and waslifting his piece when--a bramble catching in the lock--the chargeexploded in his face, and he fell, a bloody weight, across John'slegs. Half a dozen men, leaping over him, hurled themselves into thelane which John had opened.
Ten seconds later--but in such a struggle who can count seconds?--John had flung off the dead man and was on his feet again with hisface to the rampart. The men who had hurried past him were there,all six of them; but stuck in strange attitudes and hung across thewithering boughs like vermin on a gamekeeper's tree--corpses everyone. The rest had vanished, and, turning, he found himself alone.Out in the clearing, under the drifted smoke, the shattered regimentswere re-forming for a second charge. Gripping the colours hestaggered out to join them, and as he went a bullet sang past him andhis left wrist dropped nerveless at his side. He scarcely felt thewound. The brutal jar of the repulse had stunned every sense in himbut that of thirst. The reek of gunpowder caked his throat, and histongue crackled in his mouth like a withered leaf.
Someone was pointing back over the tree-tops toward RattlesnakeMountain; and on the slopes there, as the smoke cleared, sure enough,figures were moving. Guns? A couple of guns planted there couldhave knocked this cursed rampart to flinders in twenty minutes, orplumped round shot at leisure among the French huddled within.Where was the General?
The General was down at the saw-mill in the valley, seated at histable, penning a dispatch. The men on Rattlesnake Mountain wereJohnson's Indians--Mohawks, Oneidas, and others of the Six Nations--who, arriving late, had swarmed up by instinct to the key of theposition and seated themselves there with impassive faces, askingeach other when the guns would arrive. They had seen artillery,perhaps, once in their lives; and had learnt what it cost ourGenerals some seventy more years to learn--imperfectly.
Oh, it was cruel! By this time there was not a man in the army butcould have taught the General the madness of it. But the General wasdown at the sawmill, two miles away; and the broken regimentsreformed and faced the rampart a
gain. The sun beat down on theclearing, heating men to madness. The wounded went down through thegloom of the woods and were carried past the saw-mill, by scores atfirst, then by hundreds. Within the saw-mill, in his cool chamber,the General sat and wrote. Someone (Gage it is likely) sent down,beseeching him to bring the guns into play. He answered that theguns were at the landing-stage, and could not be planted within sixhours. A second messenger suggested that the assault on the ridgehad already caused inordinate loss, and that by the simple process ofmarching around Ticonderoga and occupying the narrows of LakeChamplain Montcalm could be starved out in a week. The Generalshowed him the door. Upon the ridge the fight went on.
John a Cleeve had by this time lost count of the charges. Some hadbeen feeble; one or two superb; and once the Highlanders, with agallantry only possible to men past caring for life, had actuallyheaved themselves over the parapets on the French right. They hadgone into action a thousand strong; they were now six hundred.Charge after charge had flung forward a few to leap the rampart andfall on the French bayonets; but now the best part of a companypoured over. For a moment sheer desperation carried the day; but thewhite-coats, springing back off their platforms, poured in a volleyand settled the question. That night the Black Watch called itsroll: there answered five hundred men less one.
It was in the next charge after this--half-heartedly taken up by theexhausted troops on the right--that John a Cleeve found himselfactually climbing the log-wall toward which he had been straining allthe afternoon. What carried him there--he afterwards affirmed--wasthe horrid vision of young Sagramore of the 27th impaled on a pointedbranch and left to struggle in death-agony while the regimentsrallied. The body was quivering yet as they came on again; and John,as he ran by, shouted to a sergeant to drag it off: for his own lefthand hung powerless, and the colours encumbered his right. In frontof him repeated charges had broken a sort of pathway through theabattis, swept indeed by an enfilading fire from two angles of thebreastwork, slippery with blood and hampered with corpses; but thegrape-shot which had accounted for most of these no longer whistledalong it, the French having run off their guns to the right to meetthe capital attack of the Highlanders. Through it he forced his way,the pressure of the men behind lifting and bearing him forwardwhenever the ensign-staff for a moment impeded him. He noted thatthe leaves, which at noon had been green and sappy, with only aslight crumpling of their edges, were now grey and curled into tightscrolls, crackling as he brushed them aside. How long had the daylasted, then? And would it ever end? The vision of youngSagramore followed him. He had known Sagramore at Halifax andinvited him to mess one night with the 46th--as brainless andsweet-tempered a boy as ever muddled his drill.
John was at the foot of the rampart. While with his injured hand hefumbled vainly to climb it, someone stooped a shoulder and hoistedhim. He flung a leg over the parapet and glanced down? moment at theman's face. It was the sergeant to whom he had shouted just now.
"Right, sir," the sergeant grunted; "we're after you!"
John hoisted the colours high and hurrahed.
"Forward! Forward, Forty-sixth!"
Then, as a dozen men heaved themselves on to the parapet, a fierypang gripped him by the chest, and the night--so long held back--camesuddenly, swooping on him from all corners of the sky at once.The grip of his knees relaxed. The sergeant, leaping, caught thestandard in the nick of time, as the limp body slid and droppedwithin the rampart.