Arundel (76 page)

We were pinched between the river and the cliff. Against the cliff were warehouses; and the high tides had thrown ice-cakes close against their fronts, so that we picked our way between and over blocks of ice, painfully and slowly, slipping and stumbling.

We were bearing to the right, rounding into the Lower Town. The drive of the snow was against the sides of our heads and not into our faces. Cap had just turned to me and said hoarsely: “They passed back word the Hôtel Dieu’s up there, if that makes you any warmer,” when far off we heard a harmless thud, as though a twig had slapped a pillow. More thuds followed in quick succession.

A bell clanged high up above us in the snow and the darkness; and other bells joined in. Dogs barked. We could hear shouts from the towering cliff at our right. There was a rattle of musketry behind us; and from the cliff came stabs of flame, ghostlike in the whirling snowflakes. The whole side of the cliff burst out with flashes. Above them were sheets of light and the crash of cannon, stupendous bellowing crashes that seemed to press snow into my ears and hold it there.

I heard Cap foolishly shouting: “They seen us! They seen us!”

I strove to find a mark at which to shoot. When I would have shot at a flash, my musket missed fire and I was jostled forward by those behind. There were no shots at all from our column, for our powder and everything else had been wetted by the driving snow.

Somehow those on the cliff threw fire balls over our heads: balls that sent up a red flame the height of a man, even when they fell in deep drifts. We moved between the walls and the fire balls, through a hideous tumult of bell-ringing and musket fire and the smashing of bombs and cannon. There were flirtings in the air, like the whir of the little birds that fly from underfoot when one hunts in a marsh in the late summer. These flirtings were the sound of passing bullets.

I saw one of the Virginians on his hands and knees beside the path. When Cap reached out and pulled him to his feet and released him, he fell full length in the snow. We went on by him; for the labor of getting through the drifts was great, and there was no use dragging a wounded man.

We came to three more sprawled beside the path. One of them, face up, said something in a wheezy, bubbly voice. When I stooped over him, he asked to be turned face down. I did as he asked, and hurried ahead, hoping to God I wouldn’t meet the same end.

Since there was a wider space between the cliff and the river, I shouted to Cap and we moved out of the footsteps of those that preceded us and struggled along more quickly.

This did us no good; for the column stopped. Before we knew it we came up with a cluster of men standing there as if wondering whether to go on or go back.

I heard a man say, “Get me up! Get me up!” It was Arnold’s rasping, excited voice.

“Jesus!” Cap said. “They got Arnold!”

I could see him, then, hanging to Ogden’s neck: at his foot a black stain in the snow.

“Spread out, boys!” he said. “Spread out, so you won’t be a mark! And for God’s sake get forward!”

Morgan began to bellow: “God damn it! Who’s in command!”

“Greene!” Arnold said. “It doesn’t matter! Get forward! We’re not fifty yards from the barrier! Get at it!”

“Let me have ’em!” Morgan shouted. “I’ve been through this before!”

“Go ahead!” Arnold snapped.

Morgan shook his fist at us. “Come on!” he roared. “We’ll show ’em, by God!” He went plowing through the snow like an angry moose. The rest of us followed, as fast as we could for our muskets and pikes and scaling ladders. I saw Ogden catch at a Virginian to help him with Arnold, and heard Arnold shouting: “Don’t give up! Go on, boys! Go on, boys!”

It made me a little sick to hear his voice fading behind us, urging on the others, urging them on; for this was the end of all his laboring and scheming, and the end had been plucked out of his hands, leaving him hurt and bleeding in the snow, and the rest of us without his resourcefulness and his wild courage.

The cliff and the river seemed to come together. We ran shouting around a shoulder of the cliff and into a narrow street, the Sault-au-Matelot—a narrow, narrow street, barred by a stockade of logs. The stockade would have been higher than our heads but for the snow which had drifted so deep against it that we could scramble across. Morgan was over it with a bellow, and close behind him those who were unburdened with ladders or pikes. The rest of us heaved over the pikes and ladders as best we could and went blundering after, into the teeth of the howling storm.

There was a higher barrier beyond the stockade, a barrier with two ports in it. One of the ports burst in my face, a hot white glare that seemed to rip the lids off my eyeballs. It must have been that the charge went over our heads; for we came safe to the foot of the wall, all of us. There were four scaling ladders against it in less time than it takes to peel an onion.

Cap blew out his breath at me with a great whoosh. “My God! I don’t like it!”

There were men crouched on each ladder, as if waiting to be pushed up. Morgan reached out and caught one of them, pulling him backward into the snow. “Get up here!” he bawled in that bellowing teamster’s voice of his, and was up it like a cat—up it and into a blaze of light from the muzzles of a dozen muskets. He fell backward off the ladder, and his Virginians set up an angry roar.

“Jesus!” Cap said, “they got Morgan, too!” He went to the nearest ladder and pulled a Virginian off it, going clumsily up. Before he reached the top Morgan had scrambled out of the snow and up his ladder, yelling like a madman. I threw my pike after Cap and went up too, jumping blindly into the pit beyond and scrambling forward so those behind me might not break my neck. I seemed to be on a gun platform, for I fell off it headfirst into the snow. Cap was there, snapping the hammer of his musket at running figures, and cursing wildly when it missed fire, which it steadily did.

Morgan hobbled in a circle near us, favoring his right leg and shouting for the men to hurry. We could see them scrambling over the wall behind us; hear them falling and cursing on the gun platform.

I scuffed in the snow for my pike without finding it. Musket fire began to smash against our faces from the windows of a log house into which the running figures had disappeared.

“Prime your guns!” Morgan shouted. “Get down here and prime your guns! Prick ’em out; they’re wet!”

We went to priming and snapping at the windows of the house. Melted snow must have run down the barrels, for never a one would fire.

“To hell with that!” Morgan roared. “Run ’em out!”

He went lumbering at the house. When we scrambled through the windows with our pikes and bayonets, we found the guards tumbling frantically out of the rear door. A Virginian caught one of them on his pike and pitchforked him screaming through a window.

Morgan’s shouts were deafening. “Ladder men!” he bawled. “Ladder men! Bring over three ladders and leave one! Get ’em over here! The rest of you get after those guards! Get ’em before they reach the next barrier!”

We stumbled out of the guardhouse and hurried after the others. The street was narrow—so narrow the buildings seemed toppling on us in the pallid, snow-swept dark, but there was no musketry or cannon fire to pester us. I doubt any Britisher could have kept up with me in my running, because of my eagerness to get under the second barricade before its defenders opened on us. It may be the others felt as I did; for we were on the guards and they disarmed in little more time than it had taken us to get in and out of the guardhouse.

We pushed them against a wall, fifty of them, and were taking their muskets for our own use when there came another spatter of musketry from farther along the street. Cap Huff found me in the press and dragged me after him.

“Come on!” he shouted. “I want to get at these lice with a dry musket! By God, Stevie, they’re scareder than I am, and I’m damned scared!”

Natanis and Hobomok were clinging to him. We set off again down the narrow street, holding our new muskets under our coats to keep them dry. We saw a musket flash from a window on the right and heard Morgan shouting to get them. The Virginians started a sort of jeering howl and ran up under the windows, thrusting their new muskets through the panes and letting them off in the rooms, at which there arose a crying and complaining from the interior.

Cap Huff put his shoulder against the door and smashed it in, shouting, “Come out!” There stumbled into the street a motley throng of folk, business men playing at soldier, all muddled and heavy with drink. At their head was a portly gentleman with a splendid uniform showing under his blanket coat, but so drunk he could scarce stand up without catching at one of us. By good luck or ill, he caught hold of Cap, and Cap held him firmly.

He was indignant, this fine gentleman, and wished to talk about it in spite of the cold and the snow. “Very unsporting!” he said. “Not thing do ’tall, swear ’tain’t, not Noorsheve—not Noorearsheave.”

He hiccupped noisily.

“Take their arms!” Morgan shouted. “Push ’em in a corner and put ’em with the others. Take ’em back in the house, Huff, and stand guard until the others come up. Come on, boys.”

We herded these raddled fighters back into their house while Morgan and his men ran on. Cap held their leader until the last.

“That’s a lovely uniform you got on, Captain,” I heard him say.

“Man after m’own heart!” the leader said, pawing Cap. “Not sporting thing do, come interfering gen’lemen Noorearseve, bu’s all right. S’pose you’re one those damned Americans, eh?”

“Listen!” Cap said, shaking him fiercely, “I want those clothes! Take ’em off!”

The fine gentleman pawed protestingly at Cap. “No! Not clothes! Shoard! You want shoard! Fortunes war!”

Cap snarled at him. “Sword and clothes too! Quick about it if you don’t want this pin pushed through you!” He jabbed his bayonet against his captive’s stomach.

“Not sporting!” the captive protested.

Cap snatched his fine laced hat from him and clapped it on. “This ain’t sport! Leastways, I ain’t seen none yet! Get out of those two coats!” He seized the Englishman’s blanket coat and had him out of it like stripping the husks from an ear of com. “Now the uniform coat! Off with it!”

He seized the uniform coat as well; then threw his own stained coats, sodden with snow, to the protesting captive. Seeing that some of Goodrich’s men had caught up with us, Cap, important in his fine new garb, issued orders concerning the prisoners with as much assurance as Morgan himself. Then he took me by the arm and hurried onward.

How far we had come I couldn’t tell. We must have been more than half a mile from Palace Gate; and from the manner in which we had curved to the right, it seemed we must be near the center of the Lower Town, and approaching the tip of the point on which Quebec stands sentinel at the juncture of the two rivers.

We passed more prisoners, hunched over miserably, their backs to the driving sheets of snow, and came suddenly on the second barrier with our men milling at its foot. They, too, had prisoners. Between the two barriers we must have captured more than one hundred and twenty men. There was a turmoil at the barrier, with Virginians and Maine men and Rhode Islanders mixed together seemingly without leaders. From their way of speaking and moving I knew their nerves were frayed and jumpy, like my own. It seemed to me we had floundered through the snow for hours; yet there were no signs that day would ever break.

Far back, in the direction from which we had come, there was still the confused noise of cannonading and musketry fire. Captain Thayer ran past me and kicked open the door of a house close to the barricade. I followed, asking for Morgan.

“Good grief!” he said, “he’s gone ahead alone to see what’s happening.”

“Can’t we go ahead too?”

He hissed despairingly. “We’re stuck! We’ve got more prisoners than ourselves. If they get away, they can turn the guns on us from either barricade!”

“Where the hell are the others?” Cap growled, crowding behind me.

“Where’s Montgomery?” Thayer countered. “Montgomery ought to be here! This is where we meet! Mountain Street’s just beyond the barrier. We can’t even set fire to the town till we know where he is. The wind might carry the flames down on him!”

“Gosh!” Cap said, looking at the dark buildings that leaned over us, “what a box to be caught in!”

“We’ll have to take to the houses!” Thayer said, stamping through the doorway. “At least we can shoot from ’em with dry powder if we have to!”

Natanis came close to us where we stood looking after Thayer. “There is a door in the barrier. The street is empty beyond. The guards have run in a panic.”

We followed him to the log face of the barrier. At the left end, where it joined a house, there was a narrow sally port, closed with a tight-fitting door of logs, a loopholed door. Hobomok stood by the door, his eye at a loophole. As we came up he opened the door and went through, and so did we. Beyond the barrier the street bent to the right, then divided, one of the divisions curving upward and the other running along the base of the cliff, as had the Sault-au-Matelot. The streets lay empty and snow-filled before us, shrouded in a pallid, wind-swept darkness.

“I’m going up into the other town,” Cap said. “This curving street is Mountain Street. Somewheres beyond it are the steps that go up into the Market Place. What was it you said? A hundred and thirty paces to the right; turn to the left and go eighty paces; turn to the right and go thirty paces downhill; and the house is on the right. That’s it, ain’t it?”