In the Van or The Builders Part 42

"Where are they keeping him, father?"

"In a cottage near the battlefield, on the Niagara River. If they can hold the place they will retain the settlers' houses for the use of the wounded until they are well enough to be removed."

"Who nurses the men, I wonder?" was Maud's next question.

"There won't be much nursing," replied the judge. "The men will do what they can to carry out the doctors' orders, but the poor fellows will have a tough time of it no doubt. It is always the case in a military campaign, no matter where you go or who is injured."

"And can we do nothing?"

"Nothing whatever, my dear. It is beyond the pale of civilization, one might say. Throughout that region there are few settlements and no good roads. Supplies are taken in with great difficulty, and often have to be carried in on the backs of the soldiers. As for people here going over to help, by the time they got there, the whole place might be deserted."

"You are a Job's comforter, father."

"Father's quite right," said Eugenia. "But it is terrible to think of poor, brave Captain Morris suffering so frightfully. I wish those dastardly Yankees were in----."

"Not in Halifax," interrupted the judge with a smile. "We don't want them here even if we could whip them, which I am not so sure about. But you are on the wrong tack Genie. The Yankee soldiers are not dastardly.

They are just as brave as ours are, and in that very battle lost as many men as we did."

"But when the battle was over, and the Americans retreated," said Eugenia, "who looked after their wounded?"

"The British, of course."

"And dressed the wounds of their enemies just the same as those of their own men?"

"Certainly. That's the only bit of civilization in it."

"And what would the Americans do if they were the victors?"

"Just as the English do."

"There's Christianity in war after all," said Maud.

"Another paradox," said the judge. "It is always the Christian nations that do the most fighting."

"Were not Napoleon's wars an exception?"

"Not by any means. It was the Christian nations that opposed him; and half of his own men professed the faith."

"But how soon do they expect to hear again of the wounded?" Maud asked somewhat impatiently.

"The way is open now and word will come every week," replied her father.

"And thank G.o.d the war will soon be over!"

Captain Morris' letter affected Maud differently to Dr. Beaumont's. It stirred the martial enthusiasm in her nature to know that he had been a hero in the fight. But the feeling changed as she thought on. He had fallen bravely, probably without a murmur, but it was weeks ago. How was he now? and in any case how intensely he must have suffered! And then to know that he had written that letter, the only one she had ever received from him, only a day or two before the fight that may have cost him his life. Over and over again she read it; every word seemed to have a new meaning. Was it not sad in tone--premonitory of coming evil? Was there not a shadow behind the hand rendering dark the future, filling his life with the elusiveness of love, and producing in his heart pa.s.sionate disdain?

She s.h.i.+vered when she thought of what might have happened to him there, and while proud that such a man should give her his confidence, she was carried away with a pa.s.sion of feeling that at the time she could neither a.n.a.lyze nor understand.

Would a letter reach him? If it only could? At any rate she must do her part and send him a message. This time she wrote rapidly. She seemed to be under physical obligation to do her most and her best, without a thought of anyone but the wounded captain. After a while she finished the letter and went to bed.

Notwithstanding the restless tossing and wakefulness that followed, she rose early to post it. Then her mind wandered off beyond Niagara to Penetang; and, taking out another letter which she had often read before, she thoughtfully perused it again.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

The ebb and flow of battles on sea and land in the War of 1812 and '14 do not belong to this story. Sir John Sherbrooke's despatch of men fresh from the European wars to Eastport, Castine, Bangor and Machias, Maine, and the retention of the _Pen.o.bscot_ and _St. Croix_ by the British till the war was over, are matters of history. So also is the victory of the American General Macomb at Plattsburg, where with five s.h.i.+ps of war and fifteen hundred men he drove back twice as many British vessels and troops under the command of their weak and incapable head. No wonder that officers broke their swords and vowed they would never fight again under such a leader. But on the war dragged, sometimes with success on one side, sometimes on the other; and if it had not been for the hara.s.sing blockade of the Atlantic seaboard, when Britain's navy, let loose from European conflict, came over to fight the battles of her colonies, it is hard to tell where the fratricidal war would have ended.

Month after month pa.s.sed by. Villages were pillaged; forts were captured and recaptured; cities were bombarded and wasted; York was ransacked; Niagara was burned; Was.h.i.+ngton was stormed by shot and sh.e.l.l and its buildings set on fire. Even after peace was declared, the final battle of New Orleans still had to be fought, where two thousand of the flower of the British troops were lost within the trenches, their general slain and the remainder put to flight, while only a handful of the American defenders in their entrenched position were either wounded or slain.

Such is war with its mighty agony, its seas of flowing blood, its tumultuous pa.s.sion, its frenzied rage, the most inhuman of all human things; and yet withal, the purifier and enn.o.bler of the races of men, who would not do without it, and thank G.o.d that it was abolished? And yet, when rights are trampled on, when liberty is invaded, when oppression is rampant, with Empire in the van, who would not draw the sword again, and thank G.o.d that by its glitter and fury, wrong could be righted and truth made plain?

At last peace was declared, and the tired people of both nations but of the one race, wondered what they had been fighting about.

Without solving the question they smoked the calumet, offering up the fumes as incense while they fervently prayed that the tyrannies of life should never again force them to draw swords against each other.

To Penetang, however, the din of battle did not come. Month after month during that first long summer, the troops revelled in the ways of peace; and it was astonis.h.i.+ng what progress they made in the practice of the mechanical arts. In Captain Payne's engineering corps were carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, saddlers, tailors, and men who had followed a dozen other trades--all useful, aye, more than useful--in the founding and establishment of the new garrison.

By the end of August the walls of the stone fort were up and an army of men were working with energy towards its completion. The design was to have it ready for occupation before winter arrived. The trail cut through to Little York had also proved of service, for as the months pa.s.sed by, mail matter and goods were carried regularly over to Penetang.

While all else denoted prosperity, the non-return of the _b.u.mble Bee_ caused much anxiety; for throughout the long summer nothing was heard of it, not a single word came from either Corporal or Skipper. Many were the conjectures, and night after night was the subject discussed around the camp fires of the little garrison.

Mrs. Bond had a little room in Mrs. Hardman's quarters, and from her larger experience and fuller confidence in her husband, she was the more hopeful of the two.

"Whatever has happened to Latimer, Peter Bond will be sure to come back.

He's the honestest man alive, and he'd die before he'd turn traitor,"

were her words.

"That's true; but suppose the Yankees 'ave shot the men and cabbaged the boat?" suggested her pessimistic friend.

"It might be," returned Mrs. Bond, tightly drawing in her lips, "but the _b.u.mble Bee_ wasn't a fighting craft. Yankees might steal her, and all she 'ad aboard, but it wouldn't be natural for 'em to kill the men.

They'll both turn up sometime. I'll warrant that."

"She's just right," returned Private Hardman. "They may 'ave taken 'em prisoners and looted the craft, but that's the worst that could 'ave 'appened 'em."

"An' vat about de voman?" asked Bateese, who had just come down from Helen's cottage.

"They'd set her free, and she's hanging round till her ole man gets off," said Hardman.

"Mebbe," commented his wife.

"Yes, mebbe," said Hardman. "They're not dead anyway. The Corporal will come back again in time, but Latimer and his wife mayn't. Why should they? They're gone three months. What 'ud be the use?"

"We'll miss the woman worst," said his wife. "She's like one of ourselves. It's too bad, when there's so few of us."

"If my man turns up I won't care much about the rest," said Mrs. Bond.

"Though I did hear Mrs. Manning say that if it hadn't been for Latimer's wife, when she first come, she didn't know what she would 'a done. But my! She had a sperit. She kep' the ole fellow in his place I tell you."