University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.

“Bustle, my lads—bustle! These are stirring times,” exclaimed
Habershaw, riding with an air of great personal consequence into
the midst of the troop, as they were gathered, still on horseback,
under the chestnut. “We have made a fine night's work of it,
and, considering that we fought in the dark against men ready
armed for us, this has not been such a light affair. To be sure,
in point of numbers, it is a trifle; but the plan, Peppercorn—the
plan, and the despatch, and the neatness of the thing—that's what
I say I am entitled to credit for. Bless your soul, Peppercorn,
these fellows were sure to fall into my trap—there was no getting
off. That's the effect of my generalship, you see, Peppercorn.
Study it, boy! We could have managed about twenty more of
the filthy rebels handsomely; but this will do—this will do. I
took, as a commanding officer ought always to do, the full responsibility
of the measure, and a good share of the fight. Did I not,
Peppercorn? Wasn't I, in your opinion, about the first man in
the river?”

“I'll bear witness, valiant and victorious captain,” answered the
dragoon, “that you fired the first shot; and I am almost willing
to make oath that I saw you within at least twenty paces of the
enemy, exhorting your men.”

“Now lads—wait for the word—dismount!” continued the captain,
“and make up your minds to pass the night where you are.
Peppercorn, the prisoners I put under your identical charge.
Remember that! keep your eyes about you. Set a guard of four
men upon them; I will make you accountable.” He then added,
in an under tone, “hold them safe until to-morrow, man, and I
promise you, you shall have no trouble in watching them after
that.”

“You shall find them,” replied peppercorn.

“Silence,” interrupted the captain; “hear my orders, and give
no reply. Now, sir, before you do anything else, call your roll,
and report your killed, wounded, and missing.”

Upon this order, the dragoon directed the men, after disposing
of their horses, to form a line. He then called over the squad by
their real names, and immediately afterwards reported to his
superior, who, in order to preserve a proper dignified distance,
had retreated some paces from the group, the following pithy and
soldier-like account:—

“Two men wounded, noble captain, in the late action; two
missing; one horse, saddle and bridle lost; one horse and two prisoners
taken from the enemy.”

“The names of the wounded, sir?”

“Tom Dubbs and Shadrach Green; one slightly scratched, and
the other bruised by a kick from the blacksmith.”

“The missing, sir?”

“Dick Waters, commonly called Marrow Bone, and Roger
Bell, known in your honor's list by the name of Clapper
Claw.”

“They have skulked,” said the captain.

“Marrow Bone is as dead as a door nail, sir,” said the orderly
with perfect indifference, and standing affectedly erect. “He fell
in the river, and the probability is that Clapper Claw keeps him
company.”

“What!” roared Habershaw, “have the diabolical scoundrels
made away with any of my good fellows? Have the precious
lives of my brave soldiers been poured out by the d—d rebels?
By my hand, they shall feel twisted rope, Peppercorn!—cold iron
is too good for them.”

“Softly, captain!” said the orderly. “You don't blame the
enemy for showing fight? We mustn't quarrel with the chances
of war. There is not often a fray without a broken head, captain.
We must deal with the prisoners according to the laws of war.”

“Of Tory war, Peppercorn, aye, that will I! String the dogs
up to the first tree. The devil's pets, why didn't they surrender
when we set upon them! To-morrow: let them look out
to-morrow. No words, orderly; send out two files to look for the

bodies, and to bring in the stray horse if they can find him. A
pretty night's work! to lose two good pieces of stuff for a brace of
black-hearted whigs!”

The two files were detailed for the duty required, and immediately
set out, on foot, towards the scene of the late fray. The rest
of the troop were dismissed from the line.

“I would venture to ask, sir,” said Butler, addressing the captain,
“for a cup of water: I am much hurt.”

“Silence, and be d—d to you!” said Habershaw gruffly,
“silence, and know your place, sir. You are a prisoner, and a
traitor to boot.”

“Don't you hear the gentleman say he is hurt?” interposed
Robinson. “It's onnatural, and more like a beast than a man to
deny a prisoner a little water.”

“By my sword, villain, I will cleave your brain for you, if you
open that rebel mouth of yours again!”

“Pshaw, pshaw! Captain Habershaw, this will never do,” said
Peppercorn; “men are men, and must have food and drink.
Here, Gideon Blake, give me your flask of liquor and bring me
some water from the river. It is my duty, captain, to look after
the prisoners.”

Gideon Blake, who was a man of less savage temper than most
of his associates, obeyed this command with alacrity, and even
added a few words of kindness, as he assisted in administering
refreshment to the prisoners. This evidence of a gentler nature
did not escape the comment of the ruffian captain, who still
remembered his old grudge against the trooper.

“Away, sir,” he said in a peremptory and angry tone, “away
and attend to your own duty. You are ever fond of obliging
these beggarly whigs. Hark you, Peppercorn,” he added, speaking
apart to the dragoon, “take care how you trust this skulking vagabond:
he will take bribes from the rebels, and turn his coat whenever
there is money in the way. I have my eye upon him.”

“If I chose to speak,” said Gideon Blake.

“Hold your peace, you grey fox,” cried the captain. “Not a
word! I know your doublings. Remember you are under martial
law, and blast me, if I don't make you feel it! There are more
than myself suspect you.”

“I should like to know,” said Butler, “why I and my companion
are molested on our journey. Have we fallen amongst
banditti, or do you bear a lawful commission? If you do, sir, let
me tell you, you have disgraced it by outrage and violence exereised
towards unoffending men, and shall answer for it when the
occasion serves. On what pretence have we been arrested?”

“Hark, my young fighting-cock,” replied the captain. “You
will know your misdemeanors soon enough. And if you would
sleep to-night with a whole throat, you will keep your tongue
within your teeth. It wouldn't take much to persuade me to give
you a little drum-head law. Do you hear that?”

“It is my advice, major,” whispered Robinson, “to ax no questions
of these blackguards.”

“Be it so, sergeant,” said Butler, “I am weary and sick.”

When other cares were disposed of, and the excited passions of
the lawless gang had subsided into a better mood, the dragoon
took Butler's cloak from the baggage and spread it upon the
ground beneath the shelter of the shrubbery, and the suffering
officer was thus furnished a bed that afforded him some small
share of comfort, and enabled to take that rest which he so much
needed. Robinson seated himself on the ground beside his companion,
and in this situation they patiently resigned themselves to
whatever fate awaited them.

Soon after this the whole troop were busy in the preparations
for refreshment and sleep. The horses were either hobbled, by a
cord from the fore to the hind foot, and turned loose to seek
pasture around the bivouac, or tethered in such parts of the forest
as furnished them an opportunity to feed on the shrubbery. The
fire was rekindled, and some small remnants of venison roasted
before it; and in less than an hour this reckless and ill-governed
band were carousing over their cups with all the rude ribaldry that
belonged to such natures.

“Come, boys,” said Peppercorn, who seemed to take a delight
in urging the band into every kind of excess, and who possessed
that sort of sway over the whole crew, including their leader no less
than the privates, which an expert and ready skill in adapting
himself to the humor of the company gave him, and which faculty
he now appeared to exercise for the increase of his own influence,

“come, boys, laugh while you can—that's my motto. This soldiering
is a merry life, fighting, drinking, and joking. By the God of
war! I will enlist the whole of you into the regular service—
Ferguson or Cruger, which you please, boys! they are both fine
fellows and would give purses of gold for such charming, gay,
swaggering blades. Fill up your cans and prepare for another
bout. I'm not the crusty cur to stint thirsty men. A toast, my
gay fellows!”

“Listen to Peppercorn,” cried out some three or four voices.

“Here's to the honor of the brave captain Hugh Habershaw, and
his glorious dogs that won the battle of Grindall's ford!”

A broad and coarse laugh burst from the captain at the
announcement of this toast.

“By my sword!” he exclaimed, “the fight was not a bad fight.”

“Can you find a joint of venison, Gideon?” said Peppercorn,
aside. “If you can, give it, and a cup of spirits, to the prisoners.
Stop, I'll do it myself, you will have the old bull-dog on your
back.”

And saying this the dragoon rose from his seat, and taking a
few fragments of the meat which had been stripped almost to the
bone, placed them, together with a canteen, beside Butler.

“Make the best of your time,” he said, “you have but short
allowance and none of the best. If I can serve you, I will do it
with a good heart; so, call on me.”

Then turning to the sergeant, who sat nigh, he whispered in his
ear, and, with a distinct and somewhat taunting emphasis, inquired,

“Friend Horse Shoe, mayhap thou knowest me?”

“That I do, James Curry,” replied the sergeant, “and I have a
mean opinion of the company you keep. I don't doubt but you
are ashamed to say how you come by them.”

“All is fish that comes into the Dutchman's net,” said Curry.
“To-night I have caught fat game. You are a sturdy fellow,
master Blacksmith, and good at a tug, but remember, friend, I owe
you a cuff, and if you weren't a prisoner you should have it.”

“Show me fair play, James Curry, and you shall have a chance
now,” said Horse Shoe; “I'll keep my parole to surrender when it
is over.”

“Silence, fool!” returned Curry, at the same time rudely pinching

Robinson's ear. “You will be a better man than I take you
to be, if you ever wrestle with me again. I have not forgotten
you.”

The dragoon now rejoined his comrades.

“Peppercorn,” cried Habershaw, “d—n the prisoners, let them
fast to-night. The lads want a song. Come, the liquor's getting
low, we want noise, we want uproar, lad! Sing, bully, sing!”

“Anything to get rid of the night, noble captain. What shall
I give you?”

“The old catch, master Orderly. The Jolly Bottle, the Jolly
Bottle,” cried Habershaw, pronouncing this word according to
ancient usage, with the accent on the last syllable, as if spelt
“bottel;” “give us the Jolly Bottle, we all know the chorus of that
song. And besides it's the best in your pack.”

“Well, listen, my wet fellows!” said Peppercorn, “and pipe
lustily in the chorus.”

Here the orderly sang, to a familiar old English tune, the following
song, which was perhaps a common camp ditty of the period.

“Chorus, my lads; out with it!” shouted the singer; and the
whole crew set up a hideous yell as they joined him.

Here the song was interrupted by the return of the two files
who had been sent to bring in the bodies of the dead. They had
found the missing horse, and now led him into the circle laden
with the corpses of Bell and Waters. The troopers halted immediately
behind the ring of the revellers, and in such a position as
to front Peppercorn and the captain, who were thus afforded a
full view of the bodies by the blaze of the fire.

“Easy,” almost whispered Habershaw, now half intoxicated, to
the two troopers, as he lifted his hands and motioned to them to
halt; “put them down gently on the ground. Go on, Peppercord;
let the dead help themselves: finish the song! That chorus
again, my boys!” And here the last chorus was repeated in the
highest key of merriment.

Peppercorn cast an eye at the bodies which, during the interval,
had been thrown on the earth, and while the men who had just
returned were helping themselves to the drink, he proceeded, in
an unaltered voice, with the song.

“There they are, captain,” said one of the returning troopers,
after the song, to which he and his companions had stood listening
with delighted countenances, was brought to an end, “there
they are. We found Dick Waters lying in the road, and when
we first came to him he gave a sort of groan, but we didn't lift

him until we came back from hunting Roger Bell; by that time
the fellow was as dead as a pickled herring. Where do you
think we found Clapper Claw? Why, half a mile, almost, down
the stream. He was washed along and got jammed up betwixt
the roots of a sycamore. We had a long wade after him, and
trouble enough to get him—more, I'm thinking, than a dead man
is worth. So, give us some more rum; this is ugly work to be
done in the dark.”

“Scratch a hole for them, lads, under the bushes,” said Habershaw:
“put a sod blanket over them before morning. That's the
fortune of war, as Peppercorn calls it. How are the wounded men
getting along?”

“Oh bravely, captain,” replied Shad Green, or, according to
his nick-name, Red Mug: “this here physic is a main thing for a
scratch.”

“Bravely!” echoed Screech Owl, or Tom Dubbs, the same who
had been reported by the dragoon as “kicked by the blacksmith;”
“we are plastering up sores here with the jolly bottle:—

“What's a cracked crown, so as it holds a man's brains?” continued
the drunken carouser, whilst a laugh deformed his stupid
physiognomy.

“How are we off for provisions, quarter-master?” inquired the
captain of one of the gang.

“Eaten out of skin, from nose to tail,” replied Black Jack.

“Then the squad must forage to-night,” continued Habershaw.
“We must take a buck, my sweet ones; there are plenty along
the river. Get your rifles and prepare lights, and, to keep out of
the way of our horses, don't stop short of a mile. Be about it,
lads. Black Jack, this is your business.”

“True, Captain,” replied the person addressed: “I shall have all
things ready directly.”

It was near midnight when Black Jack, having prepared some
faggots of pitch-pine, and selected three or four of the best marksmen,
left the bivouac to look for deer. Habershaw himself, though

lazy and inordinately impressed with a sense of his own dignity,
and now confused with liquor, could not resist the attraction of
this sport. He accordingly, not long after the others had departed,
took a rifle, and, attended by his bull-dog, whom he never parted
from on any occasion, slowly followed in the direction chosen by
the hunters.

Those in advance had scarcely walked along the margin of the
river a mile before they lighted their faggots, and began to beat
the neighboring thickets; and their search was not protracted
many minutes when the light of their torches was thrown full upon
the eyes of a buck. A shot from one of the marksmen told with
unerring precision in the forehead of the animal.

The report and the light brought the corpulent captain into the
neighborhood. He had almost walked himself out of breath;
and, as he did not very well preserve his perpendicularity, or a
straight line of march, he had several times been tripped up by
the roots of trees, or by rocks and briers in his path. Exhausted,
at length, and puzzled by the stupefaction of his own brain, as
well as by the surrounding darkness, he sat down at the foot of a
tree, determined to wait the return of the hunting party. His
faithful and congenial “Beauty,” not less pursy and short-winded
than himself, and not more savage or surly in disposition, now
couched upon his haunches immediately between his master's legs;
and here this pair of beastly friends remained, silent and mutually
soothed by their own companionship. During this interval the
person who bore the fire, followed by one of the marksmen, crept
slowly onward to the vicinity of the spot where the captain had
seated himself. The lapse of time had proved too much for
Habershaw's vigilance, and he had, at length, with his head resting
against the trunk of the tree, fallen into a drunken slumber. The
short crack of a rifle at hand, and the yell of his dog awakened
him. He started upon his feet with sudden surprise, and stepping
one pace forward, stumbled and fell over the dead body of his
favorite Beauty, who lay beneath him weltering in blood. The shot
was followed by a rush of the hunter up to the spot: it was
Gideon Blake.

“Buck or doe, it is my shot!” cried Gideon, as he halted immediately
beside Habershaw.

“May all the devils blast you, Gideon Blake!” thundered out
the incensed captain. “You have sought my life, you murdering
wolf, and your bullet has killed Beauty.”

“I shot at the eyes of what I thought a deer,” returned Blake.
“You were a fool, Hugh Habershaw, to bring a dog into such a
place.”

“My poor dog! my brave dog! Beauty was worth ten thousand
such bastard villains as you! And to have him killed! May
the devil feast upon your soul this night, Gideon Blake! Go!
and account for your wickedness. Take that, snake! tiger! black-hearted
whig and rebel! and be thankful that you didn't come to
your end by the help of hemp!” and in this gust of passion he
struck his knife into the bosom of the trooper, who groaned, staggered,
and fell.

At this moment the person bearing the fire, hearing the groan
of his comrade, rushed up to the spot and seized Habershaw's
arm, just as the monster was raising it over the fallen man to
repeat the blow.

“Damn him! see what he has done!” exclaimed the captain,
as he lifted up the dead body of the dog so as to show in the
light the wound inflicted by the ball between the eyes; “this
poor, faithful, dumb beast was worth a hundred such hell-hounds
as he!”

“I am murdered,” said the wounded man; “I am murdered in
cold blood.”

The noise at this place brought together the rest of the hunters,
who were now returning with the buck thrown across a horse that
had been led by one of the party. Blake's wound was examined
by them, and some linen applied to staunch the blood. The man
had fainted, but it was not ascertained whether the stab was
mortal. Habershaw stood sullenly looking on during the examination,
and, finding that life had not instantly fled, he coolly wiped
his knife and restored it to his girdle.

“The fellow has no idea of dying,” he said with a visible concern,
“and has got no more than he deserves. He will live to be
hung yet. Take him to quarters.”

“Make a hurdle for him,” said one of the bystanders, and, accordingly,
two men cut a few branches from the neighboring wood,

and twisting them together, soon constructed a litter upon which
they were able to bear the body of the wounded hunter to the
rendezvous. The others, scarcely uttering a word as they marched
along, followed slowly with the buck, and in half an hour the
troop was once more assembled under the chestnut.

For a time there was a sullen and discontented silence amongst
the whole crew, that was only broken by the groans of the wounded
trooper. Occasionally there was a slight outburst of sedition
from several of the troop, as a sharper scream, indicating some
sudden increase of pain, from Gideon Blake, assailed their ears.
Then there were low and muttered curses pronounced by Habershaw,
in a tone that showed his apprehension of some vengeance
against himself; and these imprecations were mingled with hints
of the disloyalty of the trooper, and charges of a pretended purpose
to betray his fellow-soldiers, evidently insinuated by the captain
to excuse his act of violence. Then he approached the sick
man and felt his pulse, and examined his wound, and pronounced
the hurt to be trifling. “It will do him good,” he said, with affected
unconcern, “and teach him to be more true to his comrades
hereafter.” But still the fate of the man was manifestly doubtful,
and the rising exasperation of the troop became every instant
more open. Alarmed and faint-hearted at these symptoms of discontent,
Habershaw at last called the men into a circle and made
them a speech, in which he expressed his sorrow for the act he
had committed, endeavored to excuse himself by the plea of passion
at the loss of his dog, and, finally, perceiving that these excuses
did not satisfy his hearers, acknowledged his drunken condition
and his unconsciousness of the deed he had done until the
horrible consequences of it were before his eyes. Here Peppercorn
interposed in his favor, alleging that he had examined
the wound, and that, in his opinion, the trooper's life was not in
danger.

“And as the captain is sorry for it, lads,” he concluded, “why,
what is to be done but let the thing drop? So, if there's another
canteen in the squad, we will wet our whistles, boys, and go to
sleep.”

This appeal was effectual, and was followed by a hearty cheer.
So, draining the dregs of the last flask, this debauched company

retired to rest—Habershaw sneaking away from them with a heart
loaded with malice and revenge.

A few men were employed, for a short time, in burying the
bodies of the troopers who were killed in the fray; and, excepting
the guard, who busied themselves in skinning the buck and broiling
some choice slices before the fire, and in watching the prisoners,
or attending upon their sick comrade, all were sunk into
silence if not repose.