Fort Amity | Page 5

for a
while in the dry undergrowth; re-embarked under the stars and, rowing
on through the dawn, reached the lake-end at ten in the morning. Here
they found the first trace of the enemy--a bridge broken in two over the
river which drains into Lake Champlain. A small French rear-guard
loitered here; but two companies of riflemen were landed and drove it

back into the woods, without loss. The boats discharged the British
unopposed, who now set forward afoot through the forest to follow the
left bank of the stream, which, leaving the lake tranquilly, is broken
presently by stony rapids and grows smooth again only as it nears its
new reservoir. Smooth, rapid, and smooth again, it sweeps round a long
bend; and this bend the British prepared to follow, leaving a force to
guard the boats.
Howe led, feeling forward with his light infantry; and the army
followed in much the same disposition they had held down the lake;
regulars in the centre, provincials on either flank; a long scarlet body
creeping with broad blue wings--or so it might have appeared to a bird
with sight able to pierce the overlacing boughs. To John a Cleeve,
warily testing the thickets with the butt of his staff and pulling the
thorns aside lest they should rip its precious silken folds, the advance,
after the first ten minutes, seemed to keep no more order than a gang of
children pressing after blackberries. Somewhere on his right the rapids
murmured; men struggled beside him--now a dozen redcoats, now a
few knowing Provincials who had lost their regiments, but were
cocksure of the right path. And always-- before, behind and all around
him--sounded the calls of the parade-ground:--"Sub-divisions--left
front--mark time! Left, half turn! Three files on the left--left
turn--wheel!--files to the front!" Singular instructions for men
grappling with a virgin forest!
If the standing trees were bad, the fallen ones--and there seemed to be a
diabolical number of them--were ten times worse. John was straddling
the trunk of one and cursing vehemently when a sound struck on his
ears, more intelligible than any parade-call. It came back to him from
the front: the sharp sound of musketry--two volleys.
The parade-calls ceased suddenly all around him. He listened, still
sitting astride the trunk. One or two redcoats leaped it, shouting as they
leaped, and followed the sound, which crackled now as though the
whole green forest were on fire. By and by, as he listened, a
mustachioed man in a short jacket--one of Gage's light infantry--came
bursting through the undergrowth, capless, shouting for a surgeon.

"What's wrong in front?" asked John, as the man--scarcely regarding
him--laid his hands on the trunk to vault it.
"Faith, and I don't know, redcoat; except that they've killed him.
Whereabouts is the General?"
"Who's killed?"
"The best man amongst us: Lord Howe!"
A second runner, following, shouted the same news; and the two
passed on together in search of the General. But already the tidings had
spread along the front of the main body, as though wafted by a sudden
wind through the undergrowth. Already, as John sat astride his log
endeavouring to measure up the loss, to right and left of him bugles
were sounding the halt. It seemed that as yet the mass of troops
scarcely took in the meaning of the rumour, but awoke under the shock
only to find themselves astray and without bearings.
John's first sense was of a day made dark at a stroke. If this thing had
happened, then the glory had gone out of the campaign. The army
would by and by be marching on, and would march again to-morrow;
the drill cries would begin again, the dull wrestle through swamps and
thickets; and in due time the men would press down upon the French
forts and take them. But where would be the morning's cheerfulness,
the spirit of youth which had carried the boats down the lake amid
laughter and challenges to race, and at the landing-place set the men
romping like schoolboys? The longer John considered, the more he
marvelled at the hopes he and all the army had been building on this
young soldier--and not the army only, but every colony. Messengers
even now would be heading up the lake as fast as paddles could drive
them, to take horse and gallop smoking to the Hudson, to bear the
tidings to Albany, and from Albany ride south with it to New York, to
Philadelphia, to Richmond. "Lord Howe killed!" From that long track
of dismay John called his thoughts back to himself and the army.
Howe--dead? He, that up to an hour ago had been the pivot of so many
activities, the centre on which veterans rested their confidence, and
from which young soldiers drew their high spirits,