 | CHAPTER X. Lionel Lincoln, or, The leaguer of Boston |  |
10. CHAPTER X.
“Kill and knock down! Throw them into Thames!—
“What noise is this I hear? Dare any be so bold to sound
“Retreat or parly; when I command them kill?”
King Henry IV.
It was rarely, indeed, that the equal minded
Polwarth undertook an adventure with so fell
an intent, as, was the disposition with which he
directed the head of the hunter to be turned towards
the dock-square. He had long known the
residence of Job Pray, and often in passing from
his lodgings, near the common, into the more
fashionable quarter of the town, the good-natured
epicure had turned his head to bestow a nod
and a smile on the unsophisticated admirer of his
skill in the culinary art. But now, as the pung
whirled out of Corn-hill into the well-known area,
his eye fell on the low and gloomy walls of the
warehouse with a far less amicable design.
From the time he was apprized of the disappearance
of his friend, the captain had been industriously
ruminating on the subject, in a vain
wish to discover any probable reason that might
induce a bridegroom to adopt so hasty, and apparently
so unjustifiable, a step as the desertion of
his bride, and that, too, under circumstances of
such peculiar distress. But the more he reasoned
the more he found himself involved in the
seize on the slightest clue which offered, to lead
him from his obscurity. It has already been
seen in what manner he received the intelligence
conveyed through the gorget of M`Fuse,
and it now remains for us to show with what
commendable ingenuity he improved the hint.
It had always been a matter of surprise to
Polwarth, that a man like Lionel should tolerate
so much of the society of the simpleton, nor had
it escaped his observation that the communications
between the two were a little concealed
under a shade of mystery. He had overheard
the foolish boast of the lad, the preceding day, relative
to the death of M`Fuse, and the battered
ornament, in conjunction with the place where it
was found, which accorded so well with his grovelling
habits, had tended to confirm its truth. The
love of Polwarth for the grenadier was second
only to his attachment for his earlier friend.
The one had avowedly fallen, and he soon began
to suspect that the other had been strangely
inveigled from his duty by the agency of this
ill-gifted changeling. To conceive an opinion,
and to become confirmed in its justice, were
results, generally, produced by the same operation
of the mind, with this disciple of animal philosophy.
Whilst he stood near the tomb of the
Lechmeres, in the important character of chief
mourner, he had diligently revolved in his mind
the brief arguments which he found necessary to
this conclusion. The arrangement of his ideas
might boast of the terseness of a syllogism. His
proposition and inference were something as
follows—Job murdered M`Fuse; some great
evil has occurred to Lionel; and therefore Job
has been its author.
It is true, there was a good deal of intermediate
argument to support this deduction, at which
the captain cast an extremely cursory glance,
but which the reader may easily conceive, if
at all gifted in the way of imagination. It would
require no undue belief of the connexion between
very natural effects and their causes, to show that
Polwarth was not entirely unreasonable in suspecting
the agency of the simpleton, nor in harbouring
the deep and bitter resentment that so much
mischief, even though it were sustained from the
hands of a fool, was likely to awaken. Be that
as it may, by the time the pung had reached
the point already mentioned, its rapid motion,
which accelerated the ordinarily quiet circulation
of his blood, together with the scene through
which he had just passed, and the recollections
which had been crowding on his mind, conspired
to wind up his resolution to a very obstinate
pitch of determination. Of all his schemes, embracing,
as they did, compulsion, confession, and
punishment, Job Pray was, of course, destined to
be both the subject and the victim.
The shadows of evening were already thrown
upon the town, and the could had long before driven
the few dealers in meats and vegetables, who continued
to find daily employment around the illfurnished
shambles, to their several homes. In
their stead there was only to be seen a meager
and impoverished follower of the camp, stealing
along the shadows of the building, with her
half-famished child, as they searched among the
offals of the market for some neglected morsel,
to eke out the scanty meal of the night. But
while the common mart presented this appearance
of dullness and want, the lower part of the square
exhibited a very different aspect.
The warehouse was surrounded by a body of
men in uniform, whose disorderly and rapid movements
proclaimed at once, to the experienced eye
of the captain, that they were engaged in a seene
of lawless violence. Some were rushing furiously
into the building, armed with such weapons as
the streets first offered to their hands, while
others returned, filling the air with their threats
and outcries. A constant current of eager soldiers
was setting out of the dark passages in the
neighbourhood towards the place, and every window
of the building was crowded with excited
witnesses, who clung to the walls, apparently animating
those within by their cheers and applause.
When Polwarth bade Shearflint pull the
reins, he caught the quick, half-formed sentences
that burst from the rioters, and even before he
was able, in the duskiness of the evening, to discover
the facings of their uniform, his ear detected
the well-known dialect of the Royal Irish.
The whole truth now broke upon him at once,
and throwing his obese person from the sleigh,
in the best manner he was able, he hobbled into
the throng, with a singular compound of feeling,
which owed its birth to the opposing impulses, of
a thirst for vengeance, and the lingering influence
of his natural kindness. Better men than the captain
have, however, lost sight of their humanity,
under those fierce sympathies that are awakened in
moments of tumult and violence. By the time he
had forced his person into the large, dark apartment
that formed the main building, he had, in a
great degree, suffered himself to be worked into a
sternness of purpose which comported very ill
with his intelligence and rank. He even listened,
with unaccountable pleasure, to the threats
and denunciations which filled the building; until,
he foresaw, from their savage nature, there
discovery of Lionel, was likely to be frustrated by
their fulfilment. Animated anew by this impression,
he threw the rioters from him with prodigious
energy, and succeeded in gaining a position where
he might become a more efficient actor in the fray.
There was still light enough to discover Job
Pray placed in the centre of the warehouse, on
his miserable bed, in an attitude between lying
and sitting. While his bodily condition seemed to
require the former position, his fears had induced
him to attempt the latter. The large, red blotches
which covered his unmeaning countenance, and
his flushed eye-balls, too plainly announced that
the unfortunate young man, in addition to having
become the object of the wrath of a lawless
mob, was a prey to the ravages of that foul
disorder which had long before lighted on the town.
Around this squalid subject of poverty and disease,
a few of the hardiest of the rioters, chiefly
the surviving grenadiers of the 18th, had gathered;
while the less excited, or more timid among
them, practised their means of annoyance at a
greater distance from the malign atmosphere of
the distemper. The bruised and bloody person
of the simpleton manifested how much he had
already suffered from the hands of his tormentors,
who happily possessed no very fatal weapons,
or the scene would have been much earlier
terminated. Notwithstanding his great bodily debility,
and the pressing dangers that beset him
on every side, Job continued to face his assailants,
with a sort of stupid endurance of the pains they
inflicted.
At the sight of this revolting spectacle, the
heart of Polwarth began greatly to relent, and
he endeavoured to make himself heard, in the
clamour of fifty voices. But his presence was
ignorant men, wildly bent on vengeance.
“Pul the baist from his rags!” cried one—
“'tis no a human man, but a divil's imp, in the
shape of a fellow cratur!”
“For such as him to murder the flower of the
British army!” said another—“his small-pox is
nothing but a foul invintion of the ould one, to
save him from his daisarrevings!”
“Would any but a divil invent such a disorder
at all!” interrupted a third, who, even in his anger,
could not forget his humour. “Have a care,
b'ys, he may give it to the whole family the naat'ral
way, to save the charges of the innoculation!”
“Have done wid ye'r foolery, Terence,” returned
the first; “would ye trifle about death,
and his unrevenged! Put a coal into his filth,
b'ys, and burren it and him in the same bonfire!”
“A coal! a coal! a brand for the divil's burning!”
echoed twenty soldiers, eagerly listening,
in the madness of their fury, to the barbarous
advice.
Polwarth again exerted himself, though unsuccessfully,
to be heard; nor was it until a dozen
voices proclaimed, in disappointment, that the
house contained neither fire nor fuel, that the
sudden commotion in the least subsided.
“Out of the way! out of the way wid ye!”
roared one of gigantic mould, whose heavy nature
had, like an overcharged volcano, been slowly
wrought up to the eve of a fearful eruption—
“Here is fire to destroy a salamander! Be he
divil or be he saint, he has great need of his
prayers!”
As he spoke, the fellow levelled a musket, and
another instant would have decided the fate of
Job, who cowered before the danger with instinctive
dread, had not Polwarth beat up the piece
them.
“Hold your fire, brave grenadier,” he said,
warily adopting a middle course between the
language of authority and that of counsel. “This
is hasty and unsoldier-like. I knew, and loved
your late commander well; let us obtain the
confessions of the lad before we proceed to punishment—there
may be others more guilty than
he.”
The men regarded the unexpected intruder
with such furious aspects as augured ill of their
deference for his advice and station. “Blood
for blood,” passed from mouth to mouth, in
low, sullen mutterings, and the short pause which
had succeeded his appearance was already
broken by still less equivocal marks of hostility,
when, happily for Polwarth, he was recognised,
through the twilight, by a veteran of the grenadiers,
as one of the former intimates of M`Fuse.
The instant the soldier communicated this discovery
to his fellows, the growing uproar again
subsided, and the captain was relieved from no
small bodily terror, by hearing his own name
passing among them, coupled with such amicable
additions as, “his ould fri'nd!” “an offisher
of the light troops”—“he that the ribbils
massacred of a leg!” &c. As soon as this explanation
was generally understood, his ears were
greeted with a burst from every mouth, of—
“Hurrah! for captain Pollywarreth! His
fri'nd! the brave captain Pollywarreth!”
Pleased with his success, and secretly gratified
by the commendations that were now freely lavished
on himself, with characteristic liberality, the
mediator improved the slight advantage he had
obtained, by again addressing them.
“I thank you, for your good opinion, my
friends,” he added, “and must acknowledge it is
entirely mutual. I love the Royal Irish, on account
of one that I well knew, and greatly esteemed,
and who I fear was murdered in defiance of
all the rules of war.”
“Hear ye that, Dennis? murdered!”
“Blood for blood!” muttered three or four
surly voices at once.
“Let us he deliberate, that we may be just,
and just that our vengeance may be awful,” Polwarth
quickly answered, fearful that if the torrent
once more broke loose, it would exceed his powers
to stay. “A true soldier always awaits his
orders; and what regiment in the army can boast
of its discipline, if it be not the 18th! Form
yourselves in a circle around your prisoner, and
listen, while I extract the truth from him. After
that, should he prove guilty, I will consign him
to your tenderest mercy.”
The rioters, who only saw, in the delay, a
more methodical execution of their own violent
purpose, received the proposition with another
shout, and the name of Polwarth, pronounced
in all the varieties of their barbarous idioms,
rung loudly through the naked rafters of the building,
while they disposed themselves to comply.
The captain, with a wish to gain time to
command his thoughts, required that a light
should be struck, in order, as he said, to study
the workings of the countenance of the accused.
As the night had now gathered about them in
good earnest, the demand was too reasonable for
objection, and with the same headlong eagerness
that they had manifested a few minutes before, to
shed the blood of Job, they turned their attention,
with thoughtless versatility, to effect this harmless
object. A brand had been brought, for a very
proposed, and it had been cast aside again with
the change of purpose. A few of its sparks were
now collected, and some bundles of oakum, which
lay in a corner of the warehouse, were fired, and
carefully fed in such a manner as to shed a strong
light through every cranny of the gloomy edifice.
By the aid of this fitful glare, the captain succeeded,
once more, in marshalling the rioters in
such a manner that no covert injury could be
offered to Job. The whole affair now assumed,
in some measure, the character of a regular investigation.
The curiosity of the men without, overcame
their fears of infection, and they crowded
into the place, in earnest attention, until, in a
very few moments, no other sound was audible
but the difficult and oppressed respiration of
their victim. When all the other noises had ceased,
and Polwarth, perceived, by the eager and
savage countenances, athwart which the bright
glare of the burning hemp was gleaming, that
delay might yet be dangerous, he proceeded, at
once, in his inquiries.
“You may see, Job Pray, by the manner in
which you are surrounded,” he said, “that judgment
has at length overtaken you, and that your
only hope for mercy lies in your truth. Answer,
then, to such questions as I shall put, and keep the
fear of God before your eyes.”
The captain paused to allow this exhortation
to produce its desired effect. But Job, perceiving
that his late tormentors were quiet, and to all
appearance bent on no immediate mischief, sunk
his head languidly upon his blankets, where he lay
in silence, watching, with rolling and anxious eyes,
the smallest movements of his enemies. Polwarth
soon yielded to the impatience of his listeners,
and continued—
“You are acquainted with Major Lincoln?”
“Major Lincoln!” grumbled three or four of
the grenadiers—“is it of him that we want to
hear!”
“One moment, my worthy 18ths, I shall come
at the whole truth the sooner, by taking this indirect
course.”
“Hurrah! for captain Pollywarreth!” shouted
the rioter—“him that the ribbils massacred of a
leg!”
“Thank you—thank you, my considerate
friends—answer, fellow, without prevarication;
you dare not deny to me, your knowledge of
Major Lincoln?”
After a momentary pause, a low voice was
heard muttering among the blankets—
“Job knows all the Boston people; and Major
Lincoln is a Boston boy.”
“But with Major Lincoln you had a more
particular acquaintance—restrain your impatience,
men; these questions lead directly to
the facts you wish to know.” The rioters,
who were profoundly ignorant of what sort of
facts they were to be made acquainted with by
this examination, looked at each other in uneasy
doubt, but soon settled down again into their former
deep silence.—“You know him better than
any other gentleman of the army?”
“He promised Job to keep off the grannies,
and Job agreed to run his ar'n'ds.”
“Such an arrangement betrays a greater intimacy
than is usual between a wise man and a
fool! If you are then so close in league with him,
I demand what has become of your associate?”
The young man made no reply.
“You are thought to know the reasons why
he has left his friends,” returned Polwarth, “and
I now demand that you declare them.”
“Declare!” repeated the simpleton, in his
most unmeaning and helpless manner—“Job was
never good at his schooling.”
“Nay, then, if you are obstinate, and will not
answer, I must withdraw, and permit these brave
grenadiers to work their will on you.”
This threat served to induce Job to raise his
head, and assume that attitude and look of instinctive
watchfulness that he had so recently
abandoned. A slight movement of the crowd
followed, and the terrible words of “blood for
blood,” again passed among them in sullen murmurs.
The helpless youth, whom we have been
obliged to call an idiot, for want of a better term,
and because his mental imbecility removed him
without the pale of legal responsibility, now
stared wildly about him, with an increasing expression
of reason, that might be ascribed expression
the force of that inward fire which preyed upon
his vitals, and which seemed to purify the spirit
in proportion as it consumed the material dross
of his existence.
“Its ag'in the laws of the Bay, to beat and torment
a fellow-creature,” he said, with a solemn
carnestness in his voice, that would have melted
hearts of ordinary softness; “and what is more,
its ag'in His holy book! If you hadn't made
oven-wood of the old North, and a horse-stable
of the old South, you might have gone to hear
such expounding as would have made the hair
rise on your wicked heads!”
The cries of—“Have done wid his foolery;”
“the imp is playing his games on us!” “As
if his wooden mockery was a church at all fit
for a ra'al Christian!” were heard on every side,
and they were succeeded by the often-repeated
and appalling threat, of “blood for blood!”
“Fall back, men, fall back,” cried Polwarth,
flourishing his walking-stic in such a manner as
effectually to enforce his orders; “wait for his
confession before you judge. Fellow, this is the
last and trying appeal to your truth—your life
most probably depends on the answer. You
are known to have been in arms against the
crown.—Nay, I myself saw you in the field on
that day when the troops a-a-a countermarched
from Lexington; since when you are known to
have joined the rebels while the army went out
to storm the entrenchment on the heights of
Charlestown.” At this point in the recapitulation
of the offences of Job, the captain was suddenly
appalled by a glimpse at the dark and threatening
looks that encircled him, and he concluded with a
laudable readiness—“On that glorious day when
his majesty's troops scattered your provincial rabble
like so many sheep driven from their pastures,
by dogs!”
The humane ingenuity of Polwarth was rewarded
by a burst of loud and savage laughter. Encouraged
by this evidence of his power over his
auditors, the worthy captain proceeded with an
increased confidence in his own eloquence.
“On that glorious day,” he continued, gradually
warming with his subject, “many a gallant gentleman,
and hundreds of fearless privates, met
their fate. Some fell in open and manly fight,
and according to the chances of regular warfare.
Some—he-e-m—some have been multilated; and
will carry the marks of their glory with them to
the grave.” His voice grew a little thick and
husky as he proceeded, but shaking off his weakness,
he ended with an energy that he intended
should curdle the heart of the prisoner, “while,
fellow, some have been murdered!”
“Blood for blood!” was heard again passing
its fearful round. Without attempting any longer
to repress the rising spirit of the rioters,
Polwarth continued his interrogatories, entirely
led away by the strength of his own feelings on
this sensitive subject.
“Remember you such a man as Dennis
M`Fuse?” he demanded in a voice of thunder;
“he that was treacherously slain in your inmost
trenches, after the day was won! Answer me,
knave, were you not among the rabble, and did
not your own vile hand the bloody deed?”
A few words were heard from Job, in a low, muttering
tone, of which only “the rake-hellies,” and
“the people will teach 'em the law!” were sufficiently
distinct to be understood.
“Murder him! part him sowl from body!”
exclaimed the fiercest of the grenadiers.
“Hold!” cried Polwarth; “but one moment
more—I would relieve my mind from the debt I
owe his memory. Speak, fellow; what know you
of the death of the commander of these brave
grenadiers?”
Job, who had listened to his words attentively,
though his uneasy eyes still continued to watch
the slightest movements of his foes, now turned
to the speaker with a look of foolish triumph,
and answered—
“The 18th came up the hill, shouting like
roaring lions! but the Royal Irish had a death-howl,
that evening, over their tallest man!”
Polwarth trembled with the violence of the
passions that beset him, but while with one
hand he motioned to the men to keep back,
with the other he produced the battered gorget
from his pocket, and held it before the eyes
of the simpleton.
“Know you this?” he demanded; “who
sënt the bullet through this fatal hole?”
Job took the ornament, and for a moment
regarded it with an unconscious look. But his
countenance gradually lighting with a ray of
unusual meaning, he laughed in scornful exultation,
as he answered—
“Though Job is a fool, he can shoot!”
Polwarth started back aghast, while the fierce
resentments of his ruder listeners broke through
all restraint. They raised a loud and savage
shout, as one man, filling the building with
hoarse execrations and cries for vengeance.
Twenty expedients to destroy their captive were
named in a breath, and with all the characteristic
vehemence of their nation. Most of them
would have been irregularly adopted, had not the
man who attended the burning hemp caught
up a bundle of the flaming combustible, and
shouted aloud—
“Smodder him in the fiery flames!—he's an
imp of darkness; burren him, in his rags, from
before the face of man!”
The barbarous proposition was received with
a sort of frenzied joy, and in another moment
a dozen handsful of the oakum were impending
above the devoted head of the helpless lad. Job
made a feeble attempt to avert the dreadful
fate that threatened him, but he could offer no
other resistance than his own weakened arm,
and the abject moanings of his impotent mind.
He was enveloped in a cloud of black smoke,
through which the forked flames had already
begun to play, when a woman burst into the
throng, casting the fiery combustibles from her,
on either side, as she advanced, with a strength
that seemed supernatural. When she had reached
the bed, she tore aside the smoking pile with
before the victim, like a fierce lioness, at
bay, in defence of her whelps. In this attitude
she stood an instant, regarding the rioters with
a breast that heaved with passions too strong
for utterance, when she found her tongue, and
vented her emotions with all the fearlessness of
a woman's indignation.
“Ye monsters in the shape of men, what is't
ye do!” she exclaimed, in a voice that rose above
the tumult, and had the effect to hush every
mouth. “Have ye bodies without hearts! the
forms without the bowels of the creatures of
God! Who made you judges and punishers of
sins! Is there a father among you, let him
come and view the anguish of a dying child!
Is there a son, let him draw near, and look
upon a mother's sorrow! Oh! ye savages,
worse than the beasts of the howling wilderness,
who have merey on their kinds, what is't
ye do—what is't ye do!”
The air of maternal intrepidity with which
this burst from the heart was uttered, could not
fail to awe the worst passions of the rioters,
who gazed on each other in stupid wonder,
as if uncertain how to act. The hushed, and
momentary stillness was, however, soon broken
once more by the low, murmuring threat of,
“Blood for blood!”
“Cowards! Dastards! Soldiers in name and
demons in your deeds!” continued the undaunted
Abigail—“come ye here to taste of human
blood! Go—away with you to the hills! and
face the men of the Bay, who stand ready
to meef you with arms in their hands, and
come not hither to bruise the broken reed!
Poor, suffering, and stricken as he is, by a
meet you there, to your shame, in the cause of
his country, and the law!”
This taunt was too bitter for the unnurtured
tempers to which she appealed, and the dying
spark of their resentment was at once kindled
into a blaze by the galling gibe.
The rioters were again in motion, and the cry
of “burn the hag and the imp together,” was
fiercely raised, when a man of a stout, muscular
frame forced his way into the cenfre of the crowd,
making room for the passage of a female, whose
gait and attire, though her person was concealed
by her mantle, announced her to be of a rank
altogether superior to the usual guests of the warehouse.
The unexpected appearance, and lofty,
though gentle bearing of this unlooked-for visiter,
served to quell the rising uproar, which was immediately
succeeded by so deep a silence that
a whisper could have been heard in that throng
which so lately resounded with violent tumult and
barbarous execrations.
| CHAPTER X. Lionel Lincoln, or, The leaguer of Boston | |