University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.
Robin is separated from his fellow fugitive, and after wandering
through the wilderness, stumbles on his old friends the Bloody
Volunteers; and, with that corps of heroes, is taken prisoner by
the Spaniards of Florida.

I asked Captain Brown the particulars of our escape;
but he said “he knew nothing about it, except
that the blasted pine” (meaning the tree he was
bound to,) “came down like the mast of an Injieman
in an ox-eye off Good Hope, and so snapped
him loose; and then he had cut me free, sink him;
and that was all he knew of it; except that if he
ever turn'd Injun again, the devil might fry him in
butter for breakfast, split him.”

And with that, he bade me paddle away, which I
did with all my strength, asking him, the while,
very anxiously, what we were to do, and what was
the prospect we had of making good our escape
from among the Indians. He replied that we could
do nothing better than paddle down the stream as
fast as we could, during the night—that it was lined
with Creek towns, which, however, we could easily
pass unobserved—that two nights' paddling would
carry us out of the heart of the Creek settlements; after
which, we could proceed on by day as well as
by night; and so, he supposed, that in four or five

days we should reach some American fort or other
on the Alabama River.

“But what,” asked I, anxiously, “during these
four or five days, are we to do for food, having none
with us, and no means of procuring any?”

“What are we to do? Why, starve,” quoth
Captain Brown, coolly—“a thing I have had great
practice in; for once, hang me, I lived nine days on
a pair of shoes and a gallon of rum; and, another
time, fourteen days on nothing, except the hind leg
of a niggur, which was none of the best, because
how, it wasn't cooked, and no rum, salt, or pepper
to make it savoury. And as for starving five or six
days, here on a fresh river, where one may fall to
on the dry grass like a hippopotamus, (and shiver
my timbers, I don't believe grass is such bad eating
neither, because why, how do the cows get so fat on
it?) I don't think that any great matter. And
mayhap, if we have luck, we may catch a young
alligator or two for dinner; though, split me, it
wouldn't be wonderful if we were snapped up ourselves
by the old ones.”

I liked not at all the prospect of fasting four or five
days, or feeding on dry grass and alligators; but the
thought that I was escaping from the savage stake
determined me to meet my fate with fortitude. It
was not my fate, however, to starve long in the
company of Captain Brown.

The storm that followed the hurricane lasted but
a short time, but it rained violently during nearly
the whole night—a circumstance we esteemed no
great misfortune, as it gave us the better hope of
passing the Creek villages unnoticed. We paddled
on, therefore, with zeal and confidence; and by and
by, when the rain ceased as it did a little before

daylight, we had left the torture-ground many a
long league behind us.

But while congratulating ourselves upon our success,
we had the misfortune, while rounding a point
on the right bank of the river, suddenly to come in
contact with a great sawyer, as I believe they call
it, by which our bark was turned topsy-turvy and
wrecked, and ourselves tumbled into the tide.

Every body has heard of the drowning sailor,
who caught hold of the anchor for preservation, and
went with it to the bottom. In the confusion of
the moment, I was guilty of a somewhat similar
piece of folly; for I grasped the tree which had
wrecked us, and upon which I was no sooner
mounted than it plumped under water, then up,
then down again, giving me such a tremendous
seesawing, and all between wind and water, that I
lost the little wits left me by the immersion, and so
was on the point of drowning, before I could think
of making an effort for safety. I was partly recalled
to my senses by a sudden snorting from Captain
Brown, who immediately roared out, a little down
the stream, whither he had been carried by the current,
“I say, split me, hilloa there, my hearty! have
you gone to the bottom? Here's the bank near;—
swim, you horse-mackerel!”

But, alas, the voice of Captain Brown, pealing
over the river, awoke upon that solitary bank
he recommended me to swim to, and which he was,
doubtless, himself striving to reach, certain echoes,
the most disagreeable and fearful that could fall
upon my ears. They were nothing less than the
yells of Indians—first, a single startling shriek, that
was responded to by a multitude of voices, as of a
party that had just been roused from sleep; and in
the midst of the uproar, a dozen or more rifles were

fired off in the dark, as I supposed, at Brown; and
then I heard, or fancied I heard, the noise of
mocasined feet jumping into canoes, and the rattling
of paddles against their wooden sides.

Roused by the new danger, I immediately let go
my hold of the tree, and swam to the other side of
the river; where, not pausing to look for Brown,
or even to think of him, because I fancied the Indians
in their canoes were close behind me, I ran up
the bank, and was presently in the depths of a trackless
forest. I then, indeed, thought of Brown, but
it was too late to look for him, supposing he had
escaped to the bank as I had done; and, besides, I
dare not stop for such a purpose. It was now
almost dawn; in half an hour the Indians would be
able to follow me by my trail; and well I knew
how necessary it was to make the most of the advance
I had of them. I ran on, therefore, through
the woods; and, by sunrise, I reckoned I had left
the river five or six miles behind me. I then
slackened my pace somewhat, but not much, being
still in fear the Indians might overtake me.

Towards midday, I felt a little more at ease, and
was able to collect my thoughts, and consider—
though I did not come to a stand to do so—what I
was to do, thus left by my cruel fate alone in a wide
wilderness. I had treasured in my memory all
that Captain Dicky and Brown had said of American
armies entering the Creek nation from the East
and South, and of forts recently built on the Alabama
river. But how I was to find either an army
or fort, unless I should stumble upon them by mere
accident, was not very clear, as the East was a wide
quarter of the compass, and the Alabama a pretty
long river. It appeared to me but a hopeless task
to go in search of either; yet, as it was necessary

to go in some direction, I thought my best course
would be to proceed to the Southwest, which, from
a general notion I had of the country, I fancied
would bring me to the Alabama river, near to its
confluence with the Tombecbee, where I hoped to
find myself in the neighbourhood of forts or settlements.

But, alas, I soon discovered it was much easier to
resolve upon a course than to pursue it. The sun,
upon which I chiefly depended to guide me on my
way, presently refused to shine, and for not that
day only, but several others, for it was now November,
the month of fog and storm; and, when night
came, and was even clear, I found there was no
seeing the stars through the overarching boughs of
the forest, that spread around me, apparently without
end. I could, indeed, sometimes manage to determine
the points of the compass; but the end was,
that I soon became bewildered, lost in the wild
desert, in which—not to dwell upon an adventure
that was varied only by my fears and distresses—I
wandered for seven weary, dreary days, subsisting
upon nuts, when I had the good fortune to find
them, which did not happen every day, and more
especially towards the last, when I entered upon a
barren, sandy country, upon which nothing grew
but pine trees; and where, therefore, I had the best
prospect of dying of famine. But there was relief
in store for me, and it came at a moment when,
being quite worn out with hunger and fatigue, and
reduced to despair, I stood most in need of it.

It was the seventh day of my flight, in the afternoon,
and I had thrown myself upon the ground, as
I almost hoped, to die; when I heard at a distance a
sudden firing of guns, at first a volley, and then an
irregular succession of discharges, which convinced

me there was a battle waging nigh at hand. This
dispelled my despair, and my first thought was to
fly, not doubting that, where there was fighting, there
there must be Indians also; but remembering that
although Indians might be engaged on one side, there
must be white men on the other, and being emboldened
by my desperate condition, I resolved to steal
towards the field of contention, and, if possible,
effect a junction with the supposed white men.

This proved to be no very difficult matter; for
although the firing suddenly ceased, so that I was
deprived of the means of directing my course, I presently
saw a body of men, twelve in number, marching
pretty rapidly through the woods towards me,
all of them armed, and all, as I knew by their clothes,
good American backwoodsmen. I ran towards them,
crying out that I was “a friend,” not desiring they
should shoot at me as an enemy; and, accordingly,
I arrived among them unharmed, and immediately
discovered myself in the midst of my old friends,
the Bloody Volunteers—or what remained of that
once formidable company, their gallant leader, Captain
Dicky Dare, still marching at their head.

Yes! there they were, twelve heroes and men of
might, who finding their return to the brigade cut
off, had carved their way through the heart of the
Indian nation, and fighting and flying together, had
arrived in the piny desert, bringing, not merely
famine and fatigue such as I endured, but a host of
enemies, by whom their march was continually
harassed, and their numbers thinned, and from
whom they owed their daily escapes only to the
military genius of their commander. Where they
were, or whither they were going, they knew no
more than I; nor had they known for many days.
Some attempts the valiant Dicky had made to penetrate

both to the east and west, to execute his preconcerted
plan, in case of necessity, of effecting a
junction with one of the American armies; but those
quarters were precisely the ones in which he found
it impossible to proceed; and during the last four or
five days, he had been content to march to any point
of the compass which his fate, or his foes, permitted.

Great as were the wonder and joy on both sides
—for the Bloody Volunteers were all rejoiced to
see me alive again, having supposed me long since
dead, and Captain Dicky, who looked half starved
himself, pulled a handful of corn from his pocket,
being all the food he had remaining, and generously
divided it with me—there was no time to indulge
in congratulations. There were Indians close behind;
the Bloody Volunteers had just repelled their
attack, but it might be at any moment repeated.
“Push on,” was the word; and away we went—
whither, as I said before, no one knew, but with the
encouraging assurance of our Captain, that, “whichever
way we went, we must, sooner or later, come
to some place or other.”

Fortunately, our commander's words were soon
verified; for we had not continued the march more
than an hour, when our ears were unexpectedly
saluted by the tones of a bugle pealing through the
woods. Whence could such a sound proceed save
from some American fort or camp? We pressed
onward with renewed speed, and, by and by, caught
sight, not of a fort or camp, but of a train of forty
or fifty mounted men, all in handsome uniform,
who came trooping along through the forest, but at
sight of us, suddenly halted; and we perceived them
unslinging carbines, which they had hanging at
their backs, as if preparing to meet an enemy. Then

galloping towards us, they came to a second halt
within a hundred paces of us; while their leader,
parting from them, rode up nearer, and saluted us,
to our surprise, in the Spanish language, demanding
who we were, and whence we came; questions
which I, being the only one of the company who
understood the language, interpreted to the Bloody
Volunteers, as well as the reply of Captain Dicky
to the officer, that we were a detachment of such a
brigade of such a division of the Tennessee army.
Upon this, the officer very politely informed us we
were his prisoners, and begged we would do him
the favour to surrender our arms to those of his Majesty
the King of Spain, upon whose territories we
were now unlawfully bearing them; hinting, at the
same time, that our refusal to do so would place him
under the disagreeable necessity of cutting us to
pieces.

This was a greater surprise than the other, though,
it proved by no means painful to the Bloody Volunteers;
who, repelling a suggestion of the indomitable
Dicky that “he thought they might whip the
haughty Dons, if they would, for all of their numbers,”
insisted upon laying down their arms immediately,
whereby they would escape all future danger
from the Indians, as well as the pangs of
starvation that now afflicted them.

“Well,” said Captain Dicky, with a sigh, “it can't
be helped, then; and perhaps the American government
would not sustain us, even if we trounced them;
because we are at peace with Spain. But the consolation
is, the greatest generals and bravest soldiers
have been sometimes prisoners of war.—Tell the
officer,” said he, “we surrender to the arms of his
Majesty the King of Spain.”

So the twelve of fame gave up their arms, and
were forthwith marched off to the town of Pensacola,
from which we were only twenty or thirty miles distant,
and which we reached early in the afternoon
of the following day, being treated very well on the
road, and sumptuously feasted.