Fort Amity | Page 2

but have we, on our part, no vexillum? Brother Romulus presents
his compliments to Brother Remus, and begs leave to answer 'Wolfe!'
'Tis scarce forty-eight hours since Wry-necked Dick brought his ships
into harbour with the Brigadier on board, and already I have seen him
and--what is more--fallen in love. 'What like is he?' says you. 'Just a
sandy-haired slip of a man,' says I, 'with a cock nose': but I love him,
Jack, for he knows his business. We've a professional at last. No more
Pall Mall promenaders--no more Braddocks. Loudons, Webbs! We live
in the consulship of Pitt, my lad--deprome Caecubum--we'll tap a cask
to it in Quebec. And if Abercromby's your Caesar--"

Here a bugle sounded, and Ensign John a Cleeve of the 46th Regiment
of Foot (Murray's) crushed his friend's letter into his pocket and sprang
off the woodpile where he had seated himself with the regimental
colours across his knees. He unfolded them from their staff, assured
himself that they hung becomingly--gilt tassels and yellow silken
folds--and stepped down to the lake-side where the bateaux waited.
The scene is known to-day for one of the fairest in the world. Populous
cities lie near it and pour their holiday-makers upon it through the
summer season. Trains whistle along the shore under its forests;
pleasure-steamers, with music on their decks, shoot across bays
churned of old by the paddles of war-canoes; from wildernesses where
Indians lurked in ambush smile neat hotels, white-walled, with green
shutters and deep verandas; and lovers, wandering among the hemlocks,
happen on a clearing with a few turfed mounds, and seat themselves on
these last ruins of an ancient fort, nor care to remember even its name.
Behind them--behind the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains--and
pushed but a little way back in these hundred and fifty years, lies the
primeval forest, trodden no longer now by the wasting redman, but
untamed yet, almost unhandselled. And still, as the holidaymakers
leave it, winter closes down on the lake-side and wraps it in silence,
broken by the loon's cry or the crash of a snow-laden tree deep in the
forest--the same sounds, the same aching silence, endured by French
and English garrisons watching each other and the winter through in
Fort Carillon or Fort William Henry.
"The world's great age begins anew." . . . It begins anew, and hourly,
wherever hearts are high and youth sets out with bright eyes to meet his
fate. It began anew for Ensign John a Cleeve on this morning of July 5,
1758; it was sounded up by bugles, shattering the forest silence; it
breathed in the wind of the boat's speed shaking the silken flag above
him. His was one of twelve hundred boats spreading like brilliant
water-fowl across the lake which stretched for thirty miles ahead, gay
with British uniforms, scarlet and gold, with Highland tartans, with the
blue jackets of the Provincials; flash of oars, innumerable glints of steel,
of epaulettes, of belt, cross-belt and badge; gilt knops and tassels and
sheen of flags. Yonder went Blakeney's 27th Regiment, and yonder the

Highlanders of the Black Watch; Abercromby's 44th, Howe's 55th with
their idolised young commander, the 60th or Royal Americans in two
battalions; Gage's Light Infantry, Bradstreet's axemen and bateau-men,
Starke's rangers; a few friendly Indians--but the great Johnson was
hurrying up with more, maybe with five hundred; in all fifteen
thousand men and over. Never had America seen such an armament;
and it went to take a fort from three thousand Frenchmen.
No need to cover so triumphant an advance in silence! Why should not
the regimental bands strike up? For what else had we dragged them up
the Hudson from Albany and across the fourteen-mile portage to the
lake? Weary work with a big drum in so much brushwood! And play
they did, as the flotilla pushed forth and spread and left the stockades
far behind; stockades planted on the scene of last year's massacre.
Though for weeks before our arrival Bradstreet and his men had been
clearing and building, sights remained to nerve our arms and set our
blood boiling to the cry "Remember Fort William Henry!" Its shores
fade, and somewhere at the foot of the lake three thousand Frenchmen
are waiting for us (if indeed they dare to wait). Let the bands play
"Britons strike home!"
Play they did: drums tunding and bagpipes skirling as though Fort
Carillon (or Ticonderoga, as the Indians called it) would succumb like
another Jericho to their clamour. The Green Mountains tossed its
echoes to the Adirondacks, and the Adirondacks flung it back; and
under it, down the blue waterway toward the Narrows, went Ensign
John a Cleeve, canopied by the golden flag of the 46th.
The lake smiled at all his expectations and surpassed them.