Fort Amity | Page 8

had worked like heroes, but the bridge would
not be ready to carry troops before the early morning. A wooden
saw-mill stood beside it, melancholy and deserted; and here the General
took up his quarters, while the army cooked its supper and disposed
itself for the night in the trampled clearing around the mill and in the
forest beyond. The 46th lay close alongside the river, and the noise of
Bradstreet's hammers on the bridge kept John for a long while awake
and staring up at the high eastern ridges, black as ink against the
radiance of a climbing moon. In the intervals of hammering, the swirl
of the river kept tune in his ears with the whir-r-r of a saw in the rear of
the mill, slicing up the last planks for the bridge. There was a mill in
the valley at home, and he had heard it a hundred times making just
such music with the stream that ran down from Dartmoor and past
Cleeve Court. His thoughts went back to Devonshire, but not to linger
there; only to wonder how much love his mother would put into her
prayers could she be reached by a vision of him stretched here with his
first battle waiting for him on the morrow. He wondered, not bitterly, if

her chief reflection would be that he had brought the unpleasant
experience on himself when he might have been safe in a priest's
cassock. He laughed. How little she understood him, or had ever
understood!
His heart went out to salute the morrow--and yet soberly. Outside of his
simple duties of routine he was just an unshaped subaltern, with eyes
sealed as yet to war's practical teachings. To him, albeit he would have
been puzzled had anyone told him so, war existed as yet only as a
spiritual conflict in which men proved themselves heroes or cowards:
and he meant to be a hero. For him everything lay in the will to dare or
to endure. He recalled tales of old knights keeping vigil by their arms in
solitary chapels, and he questioned the far hill-tops and the stars--What
substitute for faith supported him? Did he believe in God? Yes, after a
fashion--in some tremendous and overruling Power, at any rate. A
Power that had made the mountains yonder? Yes, he supposed so. A
loving Power--an intimate counsellor--a Father attending all his steps?
Well, perhaps; and if so, a Father to be answered with all a man's love:
but, before answering, he honestly needed more assurance. As for
another world and a continuing life there, should he happen to fall
to-morrow, John searched his heart and decided that he asked for
nothing of the sort. Such promises struck him as unworthy bribes,
belittling the sacrifice he came prepared to make. He despised men who
bargained with them. Here was he, young, abounding in life, ready to
risk extinction. Why? For a cause (some might say), and that cause his
country's. Maybe: he had never thought this out. To be sure he was
proud to carry the regimental colours, and had rather belong to the 46th
than to any other regiment. The honour of the 46th was dear to him
now as his own. But why, again? Pure accident had assigned him to the
46th: as for love of his country, he could not remember that it had
played any conspicuous part in sending him to join the army. The
hammering on the bridge had ceased without his noting it, and also the
whirr of the great hands-driven saw. Only the river sang to him now:
and to the swirl of it he dropped off into a dreamless, healthy sleep.
CHAPTER III.

TICONDEROGA.
At the alarm-post next morning the men were in high spirits again.
Everyone seemed to be posted in the day's work ahead. The French had
thrown up an outwork on the landward end of the ridge; an engineer
had climbed Rattlesnake Mountain at daybreak and conned it through
his glass, and had brought down his report two hours ago. The
white-coats had been working like niggers, helped by some
reinforcements which had come in overnight--Levis with the Royal
Roussillon, the scouts said: but the thing was a rough-and-ready affair
of logs and the troops were to carry it with the bayonet. John asked in
what direction it lay, and thumbs were jerked towards the screening
forest across the river. The distance (some said) was not two miles.
Colonel Beaver, returning from a visit to the saw-mill, confirmed the
rumour. The 46th would march in a couple of hours or less.
At breakfast Howe's death seemed to be forgotten, and John found no
time for solemn thoughts. Bets were laid that the French would not wait
for the assault, but slip away to