XI.—“REMEMBER PAOLI.”
Hist!—It is still night; the clear sky arches above; the dim woods are
all around the field; and in the centre of the meadow, resting on the grass
crisped by the autumnal frosts, sleep the worn veterans of the war, disheartened
by want, and wearied by the day's march.
It is still night; and the light of the scanty fire falls on wan faces, hollow
eyes, and sunken cheeks; on tattered apparel, muskets unfit for use,
and broken arms.
It is still night; and they snatch a feverish sleep beside the scanty fire,
and lay them down to dream of a time when the ripe harvest shall no more
be trodden down by the blood-stained hoof—when the valley shall no more
be haunted by the Traitor-Refugee—when Liberty and Freedom shall walk
in broadcloth, instead of wandering about with the unshodden feet, and the
tattered rags of want.
It is still night; and Mad Anthony Wayne watches while his soldiers
sleep.
He watches beside the camp-fire. You can mark his towering form, his
breadth of shoulders, and his prominence of chest. You can see his face
by the red light of the fire—that manly face, with the broad forehead, the
marked eye-brows, over-arching the deep hazel eye, that lightens and gleams
as he gazes upon the men of his band.
You can note the uniform of the Revolution—the wide coat of blue,
varied by the buckskin sword-belt, from which depends the sword that
Wayne alone can wield,—the facings of buff, the buttons rusted by the dews
of night, and the march-worn trooper's boots, reaching above his knees,
with the stout iron spurs standing out from each heel.
Hist! The night is still, but there is a sound in yonder thicket.
Look! can you see nothing?
No. The night is still—the defenceless Continentals sleep in the centre
of the meadow—all around is dark. The sky above is clear, but the stars
give forth no light. The wind sweeps around the meadow—dim and indistinct
it sweeps, and is silent and still. I can see nothing.
Place your ear to the earth. Hear you nothing?
Yes—yes. A slight sound—a distant rumbling. There is thunder growling
in the bosom of the earth, but it is distant. It is like the murmur on
the ocean, ere the terrible white squall sweeps away the commerce of a nation—but
it is distant, very distant.
Now look forth on the night. Cast your eye to the thicket—see you
nothing?
Yes—there is a gleam like the light of the fire-fly. Ha! It lightens on
the night—that quivering gleam! It is the flash of swords—the glittering
of arms!
“Charge upon the Rebels! Upon them—over them—no quarter—no
quarter!”
Watcher of the night, watcher over the land of the New World, watching
over the fortunes of the starved children of Freedom—what see you now?
A band of armed men, mounted on stout steeds, with swords in their uplifted
hands. They sweep from the thicket; they encompass the meadow;
they surround the Rebel host!
The gallant Lord Grey rides at their head. His voice rings out clear
and loud upon the frosty air.
“Root and branch, hip and thigh, cut them down. Spare not a man—
heed never a cry for quarter. Cut them down! Charge for England and
St. George!”
And then there was uplifting of swords, and butchery of defenceless men,
and there was a riding over the wounded, and a trampling over the faces of
the dying. And then there was a cry for quarter, and the response—
“To your throats take that! We give you quarter, the quarter of the
sword, accursed Rebels!”
There was a moment, whose history was written with good sharp
swords, on the visages of dying men.
It was the moment when the defenceless Continental sprang up from his
hasty sleep, into the arms of the merciless death! It was the moment
when Wayne groaned aloud with agony, as the sod of Paoli was flooded
with a pool of blood that poured from the corses of the slaughtered soldiers
of his band. It was the moment when the cry for quarter was mocked—
when the Rebel clung in his despair to the stirrup of the Britisher, and
clung in vain; it was the moment when the gallant Lord Grey—that gentleman,
nobleman, Christian—whose heart only throbbed with generous impulses;
who from his boyhood, was schooled in the doctrines of mercy,
halloed his war-dogs on to the slaughter, and shouted up to the star-lit
Heavens, until the angels might grow sick of the scene—
“Over them—over them—heed never a cry—heed never a voice! Root
and branch cut them down!—No quarter!”
It is dark and troubled night; and the Voice of Blood goes up to God,
shrieking for vengeance!
It is morning; sad and ghastly morning; and the first sunbeams shine
over the field, which was yesternight a green meadow—the field that is now
an Aceldema—a field of blood, strewn with heaps of the dead, arms torn
from the body, eyes hollowed from the sockets, faces turned to the earth,
and buried in blood, ghastly pictures of death and pain, painted by the hand
of the Briton, for the bright sun to shine down upon, for men to applaud,
for the King to approve, for God to avenge.
It is a sad and ghastly morning; and Wayne stands looking over the
slaughtered heaps, surrounded by the little band of survivors, and as he
gazes on this scene of horror, the Voice of Blood goes shrieking up to God
for vengeance, and the ghosts of the slain darken the portals of Heaven,
with their forms of woe, and their voices mingle with the Voice of Blood.
Was the Voice of Blood answered?
A year passed, and the ghosts of the murdered looked down from the
portals of the Unseen, upon the ramparts of Stony Point.
It is still night; the stars look calmly down upon the broad Hudson; and
in the dim air of night towers the rock and fort of Stony Point.
The Britishers have retired to rest. They sleep in their warm, quiet
beds. They sleep with pleasant dreams of American maidens dishonored,
and American fathers, with grey hairs dabbled in blood. They shall have
merrier dreams anon, I trow. Aye, aye!
All is quiet around Stony Point: the sentinel leans idly over the wall
that bounds his lonely walk; he gazes down the void of darkness, until his
glance falls upon the broad and magnificent Hudson. He hears nothing—
he sees nothing.
It is a pity for that sentinel, that his eyes are not keen, and his glance
piercing. Had his eye-sight been but a little keener, he might have seen
Death creeping up that rampart in some hundred shapes—he might have
seen the long talon-like fingers of the skeleton-god clutching for his own
plump British throat. But his eye-sight was not keen—more's the pity for
him.
Pity it was, that the sentinel could not hear a little more keenly. Had
his ears been good, he might have heard a little whisper that went from two
hundred tongues, around the ramparts of Stony Point.
“General, what shall be the watch-word?”
And then, had the sentinel inclined his ear over the ramparts, and listened
very attentively indeed, he might have heard the answer, sweeping up to
the Heavens, like a voice of blood—
“Remember Paoli!”
Ho—ho! And so Paoli is to be remembered—and so the Voice of
Blood shrieked not in the ears of God in vain.
And so the vengeance for Paoli is creeping up the ramparts of the fort!
Ho—ho! Pity Lord Grey were not here to see the sport!
The sentinel was not blessed with supernatural sight or hearing; he did
not see the figures creeping up the ramparts; he did not hear their whispers,
until a rude hand clutched him round the throat, and up to the Heavens
swept the thunder-shout—
“Remember Paoli!”
And then a rude bayonet pinned him to the wood of the ramparts, and
then the esplanade of the fort, and its rooms and its halls were filled with
silent avengers, and then came Britishers rushing from their beds, crying for
quarter, and then they had it—the quarter of Paoli!
And then, through the smoke, and the gloom, and the bloodshed of that
terrible night, with the light of a torch now falling on his face, with the
gleam of starlight now giving a spectral appearance to his features, swept on,
right on, over heaps of dead, one magnificent form, grasping a stout broadsword
in his right hand, which sternly rose, and sternly fell, cutting a
British soldier down at every blow, and laying them along the floor of the
fort, in the puddle of their own hireling blood.
Ghosts of Paoli—shout! are you not terribly avenged?
“Spare me—I have a wife—a child—they wait my return to England!
Quarter—Quarter!”
“I mind me of a man named Shoelmire—he had a wife and a child—a
mother, old and grey-haired, waited his return from the wars. On the night
of Paoli, he cried for quarter! Such quarter I give you—Remember Paoli!”
“Save me—quarter!”
How that sword hisses through the air!
“Remember Paoli!”
`I have a grey-haired father! Quarter!”
“So had Daunton at Paoli! Oh, Remember Paoli!”
“Spare me—you see I have no sword!—Quarter!”
“Friend, I would spare thee if I dared. But the Ghosts of Paoli nerve
my arm—`We had no swords at Paoli, and ye butchered us!' they shriek.”
“Oh, Remember Paoli!”
And as the beams of the rising moon, streaming through yonder narrow
window, for a moment light up the brow of the Avenger—dusky with battle-smoke,
red with blood, deformed by passion—behold! That sword
describes a fiery circle in the air, it hisses down, sinks into the victim's
skull? No!
His arm falls nerveless by his side; the sword, that grim, rough blade,
dented with the records of the fight of Brandywine, clatters on the floor.
“It is my duty—the Ghosts of Paoli call to me—but I cannot kill you!'
shouts the American Warrior, and his weaponless hands are extended to
the trembling Briton.
All around is smoke, and darkness, and blood; the cry for quarter, and
the death-sentence, Remember Paoli! but here, in the centre of the scene
of slaughter—yes, in the centre of that flood of moonlight, pouring through
the solitary window, behold a strange and impressive sight:
The kneeling form—a grey-haired man, who has grown hoary doing
murder in the name of Good King George,—his hands uplifted in trembling
supplication, his eyes starting from the dilating lids, as he shrieks for the
mercy that he never gave!
The figure towering above him, with the Continental uniform fluttering
in ribands over his broad chest, his hands and face red with blood and
darkened with the stain of powder, the veins swelling from his bared throat,
the eye glaring from his compressed brow—
Such were the figures disclosed by the sudden glow of moonlight!
And yet from that brow, dusky with powder, red with blood, there broke
the gleam of mercy, and yet those hands, dripping with crimson stains,
were extended to lift the cringing Briton from the dust.
“Look ye—old man—at Paoli—” and that hoarse voice, heard amid the
roar of midnight conflict, grew tremulous as a child's, when it spoke those
fatal words—at Paoli; “even through the darkness of that terrible night, I
beheld a boy, only eighteen years old, clinging to the stirrup of Lord Grey;
yes, by the light of a pistol-flash, I beheld his eyes glare, his hands quiver
over his head, as he shrieked for `Quarter!' ”
“And he spared him?” faltered the Briton.
“Now, mark you, this boy had been consigned to my care by his
mother, a brave American woman, who had sent this last hope of her
widowed heart forth to battle —”
“And he spared him—” again faltered the Briton.
“The same pistol, which flashed its red light over his pale face, and
quivering hands, sent the bullet through his brain. Lord Grey held that
pistol, Lord Grey heard the cry for mercy, Lord Grey beheld the young
face trampled into mangled flesh by his horse's hoofs! And now, sir—
with that terrible memory of Paoli stamped upon my soul—now, while that
young face, with the red wound between the eyes, passes before me, I
spare your life;—there lies my sword—I will not take it up again! Cling
to me, sir, and do not part for an instant from my side, for my good soldiers
have keen memories. I may forget, but hark! Do you hear them?
They do not massacre defenceless men in cold blood—ah, no! They
only—
