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expand2003 (1)
1Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Add
 Title:  Eutaw  
 Published:  2003 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: It is surely an early hour for the whip-poor-will to begin her monotonous plainings, sitting on her accustomed hawthorn, just on the edge of the swamp. The sun has hardly dropped from sight behind the great pine-thickets. His crimson and orange robes still flaunt and flicker in the western heavens; gleams from his great red eyes still purple the tree-tops; and you may still see a cheerful light hanging in the brave, free atmosphere; while gray shapes, like so many half-hooded friars, glide away through the long pine-avenues, inviting you, as it would seem, to follow, while they steal away slowly from pursuit into the deeper thickets of the swamp. “My child, my dear Bertha: To you alone can I look for the rescue of your brother and myself. We are in the power of an enemy, who requires your hand in marriage for the safety of my own and my son's life. We have forfeited the security of British law. My own offences are such that, delivered to the commandant of Charleston, as I am threatened, my death — an ignominious death — must follow. Your brother is a captive also, charged with murdering the king's soldiers without a warrant. He is suffering in health by his unavoidable confinement. He can not long live in the condition in which he is kept; and his release and mine are made to depend entirely on you. Let me implore you, my child, to come to our succor, and to save us. Become the wife of Captain Inglehardt, and suffer us once more to see the light of heaven, and enjoy the freedom of earth. Come, my beloved child, to our rescue; and, in making the sacrifice of your choice, to my own, receive the blessings of your fond, but fettered father. [P. S.] You will readily conceive our exigency, when I tell you that my wrists and feet are even now in manacles of iron, and have been so from the first day of my captivity. For a time, indeed, your brother Henry was held in similar fetters.” “Sorry, my dear colonel, to cut short your roving commission; doubly sorry that it has not yet resulted as you could wish. But we can spare you from the main action of the drama no longer. We are now, I think, approaching the denouément, and require all our heroes on the stage. Stewart is in rapid march downward — a little too strong for us yet, particularly with the reinforcements which he will get from the lower posts. We hear of these in motion from several quarters, as many as a thousand or twelve hundred men. These, in addition to his estimated strength at present of twenty-three hundred, will give heavy odds against us, unless our mounted men come out much more numerously than usual. Greene is on the march, somewhat recruited, but very little strengthened. Congress has done nothing — can or will do nothing — not even give us arms and ammunition! Three hundred of our people are still without serviceable weapons of any kind, and seven hundred without jackets or breeches. It is really lucky that we have hot weather. We must make up in zeal what we lack in men and munitions, and only fight the harder from having but little means with which to fight at all! That, my dear Sinclair, is a new philosophy for the management of armies, but it is one that will not seem altogether silly in the estimation of the true patriot. At all events, it is about the best that I can give to you, who know how to fight so well on short commons; and it affords the only hope upon which I have fed (very like fasting) for a long season! Once more, then, my dear Sinclair, let me regret the necessity which requires that you rejoin your brigade, and defer, for a brief season, the painfully interesting personal enterprises upon which you are engaged.
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