Cardigan Part 98

"Be silent!" I said, sharply; "do you wish to have us all arrested? I shall go to Lexington to-night, I tell you, pa.s.s or no pa.s.s; and, before I go, you shall tell me where I may find Miss Warren."

"A mile out of Lexington on the Bedford Road," he replied. "How can you pa.s.s the Neck guard, without the Governor's leave, sir?"

"I will show you," said I, "if you choose to accompany me."

"You mean to ride for it?" he asked, excitedly.

I was silent.

"And risk a chain-shot from their twenty-four-pounders?" he persisted.

"Mr. Foxcroft," I said, "you may do as you please, but there is nothing under the moon, yonder, which can keep me from going to Lexington. Have you a horse stabled here? No? Can you hire one? Then hire him, in Heaven's name, and get into your saddle if you mean to go with me. Shemuel, find a good horse for Mr. Foxcroft, and another for Jack Mount. You must pay for them; I have no money. It is half-past ten o'clock; I will wait ten minutes."

Shemuel scurried back into the mews; Foxcroft followed, and in a moment his portly figure was lost to sight in the dusky alley.

I looked up at the lighted windows of Province House, wondering how on earth I was to go to Lexington. Music was sounding from the ballroom; I looked out across the dark city; the moon hung over the bay; the rigging of a war-s.h.i.+p rose black against the silvery disk.

Instinctively I turned my eyes towards the steeple of the Old North Meeting-House. The steeple was dark; the troops had not yet started.

Musing there in the moonlight, hands clasped on the pommel of my saddle, the dull thunder of hoofs from the stable aroused me, and presently Mr. Foxcroft came clattering out of the mews, followed by Shemuel, also mounted, a grotesque lump of a shape, crouched on the saddle, his flat, three-cornered hat crammed over his great ears, his nose buried in his neck-cloth. He led a third horse behind him.

"Now, sir," panted Foxcroft, "I am prepared to ride to the devil with you and put this Tory Governor's nose out o' joint!"

"Do you also ride with us, Shemuel?" I asked.

He replied faintly in the affirmative. The little creature was frightened. His devotion touched me very deeply.

Walking our horses along Common Street, we were almost immediately accosted by dragoons, who, on learning that our destination was the "Wild Goose Tavern," cursed us roundly, promising to clean out that nest of rebels at no distant date. Their officer also began to harangue us, but I pushed my horse past him and cantered on into the Mall and out through Green Lane, wheeling into the alley behind the "Wild Goose."

Of the half-score gentlemen whom I had left there, sitting their rain-drenched horses, none remained. However, Mount was in the tavern, and he came at my whistle, explaining that the balance of the company had chosen to risk crossing the bay under the guns of the _Somerset_, rather than attempt to force the Neck.

"G.o.d go with them!" said I; "here's Shemuel with a horse for you.

We'll ride to the sh.o.r.e and see what can be done."

Mount, who had been busily embracing Shemuel, gave the little Jew a mighty slap of affection, vaulted into his saddle, pa.s.sed my rifle to me, and fell back beside the peddler, while Mr. Foxcroft and I rode through the Mall once more, down towards the sh.o.r.e, where, in the darkness, faint flashes through the trees came and went as the waves of the bay caught the moonlight.

"Is it too far to swim?" I asked Mr. Foxcroft.

"Too far," he replied, with a s.h.i.+ver. "All is marsh beyond; the mud would smother us ere we landed. That shoal yonder is dry at low-water."

"Mr. Foxcroft," said I, "we must swim for it somewhere. Could we not make the Charles River at a pinch?"

"No, nor Stony Brook," he said. "A good swimmer might circle the floating battery and make his way outside the Neck, but he could not last, Mr. Cardigan."

We had been slowly approaching the sh.o.r.e while we spoke. For some time I had fancied I heard sounds in the darkness like the stirring and movement of a body of men a.s.sembling. At first I fancied the swelling murmur of the tide deceived me, yet at moments it seemed as though I could distinguish a trampling sound which could not have been the beat of the ocean's steady squadrons on the beach.

Then, as we came out through the fringe of trees from which the land fell away to the water's edge, a stirring sight lay spread before us: below, in the dazzling moonlight, the sh.o.r.e swarmed with soldiers, teamsters, and boatmen, moving hither and thither along the water's edge. Companies of grenadiers were marching towards the wooden wharf at the end of Hollis Street; companies of light infantry and marines were embarking in the boats which lay rocking along the sh.o.r.e; horses snorted, gathered in groups, while boatmen poled flat-boats towards a cove from which already a scow, freighted with horses, was being pushed out into the bay.

Although there was no talking, save the half-whispered commands of the officers, the movement of so many boats, the tread of a thousand men, the stamping and noises of horses, all swelled into a heavy, ceaseless sound, which mingled with and intensified the murmur of the mounting tide, stirred to its flood by the silver magic of the rising moon.

Hundreds of soldiers had already embarked; we could distinguish the dark line of their boats, all strung out as though fastened together, stem and stern, rising and falling on the glittering surface of the bay, ever lengthening, as new boats, loaded deep with soldiers, put out to fall into line and sail bobbing away into the darkness, only to reappear again under the flood of moonlight.

"Suppose," whispered Mount, "we lead our horses aboard that scow yonder!"

In another moment, scarcely aware of what I was actually about, I had dismounted, and was leading Warlock straight down to the sh.o.r.e towards a cove, where half a dozen boatmen were standing in a scow, resting on their long sea-poles.

"If they ask questions, knock them into the water!" said Mount, calmly.

He repeated the instructions to Foxcroft and Shemuel as we filed along the dim sh.o.r.e past a throng of boatmen, grooms, officers' servants, and teamsters, and made straight towards the scow that lay a few yards off sh.o.r.e in the little, shadowy cove.

It was a desperate attempt; had I given myself one minute's reflection, I should rather have risked a dash across the Neck and a chain-shot on the causeway. Yet its very audacity was in our favour; the boatmen, when they saw us leading our horses down to their cove, hastily lowered a plank bridge from their heavy scow, and Mount coolly waded out into the water, guiding his horse aboard as calmly as though it were his own stable, and these Tory boatmen his paid grooms.

I followed with Warlock, who snorted and pawed when the salt water rose to his fetlocks, but he danced up the plank incline and entered the boat without coaxing. Shemuel's horse, a sleek, weasel-bellied animal, with a wicked eye and a bunch o' hackle for a tail, swung round in the water, slinging the little Jew on his face in the mud, and then, with a vicious squeal, flung up his heels and cantered off, scattering a company of marines drawn up a hundred yards down the sh.o.r.e.

Draggled and dripping, Shemuel, standing knee-deep in salt water, watched the flight of his horse, but I bade him come aboard at once, and he did so, casting sidelong glances at the boatmen, who regarded him with astonishment.

Mr. Foxcroft, meanwhile, had dragged his horse aboard, and Mount ordered the boatmen to push off at once.

As the men took up their heavy sea-poles, I heard them whispering to each other that Mount and I must be scouts sent ahead to spy for the soldiers, and I caught them eying our buckskins curiously as they lay on their poles, pus.h.i.+ng out towards the broad belt of moonlight which glistened beyond.

The wind whipped our cheeks as we swung clear of the land; the boatmen presently took to their oars, which I noticed were m.u.f.fled midway between blade and handle. The row-locks, also, had been padded with bunches of wheat-straw and rags.

Now that we were safely afloat, misgivings seized me. I had never before been on salt water; the black waves which came slapping on our craft disturbed me; the shadowy hulk of the war-s.h.i.+p which lay athwart our course loomed up like doom, seeming to watch us with its wicked little green and red eyes, marking us for destruction.

The wind freshened furiously in my face; the waves came rolling in out of the darkness, rap! rap! slap! rap! crus.h.i.+ng into stinging gusts of spray, soaking us to the skin.

Far to our left the line of boats floated, undulating across the bay; the beacon in Boston flared out red as we rounded Fox Hill; the light on Mount Wh-d-m twinkled.

Presently Mount touched my arm and pointed. High up in the dark haze above the city two bright lights hung. So we knew that Rolfe was watching from the belfry of the Old North Meeting-House, and that Paul had read the twin lamps' message and was now galloping west through the Middles.e.x farms.

Shemuel, s.h.i.+vering in his wet and muddy garments, crept up beside me to ask where we were to be landed.

I did not know, nor dared I ask, fearing to awake suspicion. Besides, we were close under the sprit of a tall, black frigate, so close that I could see the candles flaring in the battle lanthorns and the dead bay-weeds hanging from the chains, and I could even read her name, the _Falcon_.

Then, suddenly, out of the shadow under the black frigate's hulk, a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l came dancing towards us, with an officer in the stern, who played his lanthorn on us and waved his arm.

"Move into line with the s.h.i.+p's boats!" he called out, with many a strange sea-oath; and our brawny oarsmen pulled northeast once more towards the long line of boats which now stretched almost across the bay.

"You land at Phipps's Farm, sir?" inquired a sweating boatman of Mount.

"Phipps's Farm!" broke in Mr. Foxcroft. "It's in the marshes o'

Lechemere! I'm d.a.m.ned if I'll be landed at Phipps's!"

"Isn't that where the troops land, sir?" asked the boatman, resting his oar.

Mount shook his head mysteriously.

"We are on special service, lads," he said. "Ask no questions, but put us ash.o.r.e at Willis Creek, and tell the colonel to give you a guinea apiece for me."