Part 2

“This sergeant posed as a deserter only for the better concealment of his purpose; he went upon this very errand we are speaking of. He is in New York now, and is not only unable to accomplish his object, but is in hourly danger of apprehension and death as a spy.”

“Pardon me, Colonel Hamilton,” I broke in, “but you should not have sent, as they say, a boy to mill. This man would be helpless if only for the reason that he comes from the ranks. Arnold was always a stickler for the state and grandeur of his office; a common soldier could never get near enough to plot against him.”

“Again you have touched upon the heart of the matter, Captain Page. The commander-in-chief suffered the sergeant to go in the first instance (he volunteered for the enterprise, you understand) because he was only a sergeant, and it was not thought to be an errand upon which a commissioned officer could honorably go. But now the affair is all in confusion. The enterprise promises to fail, and our man may easily lose his life on the gallows.”

I rose to terminate the interview.

“Are there any special instructions for me, Colonel Hamilton?” I asked.

The general’s aide laughed like a pleased child and bade me sit down again.

“What a hot-headed firebrand you are, to be sure, Captain!” he said warmly. “I was certain you would not fail us. Have you no curiosity to learn how the choice fell upon you?”

“None whatever,” I replied. “I’m vastly fonder of action than of the whys and wherefores.”

“Then I need only say that you have me to thank for the choice. When it was decided to seek for a stronger head than the sergeant’s seems to be, the choice of the man was left to me, and it was agreed that no one else should know. So this is strictly between us two, as it should be. Colonel Baylor merely knows that you have been detailed for special duty.”

“Good,” I commented. It was best so. By this means I should stand or fall quite alone, as the leader of a forlorn hope should be willing to do.

“As for your instructions, there can be none at all. Our information from the sergeant is most meager; and if it were not, we should not hamper you. Haste and success are your two watchwords. Have you money?”

I had. The Page tobacco of the year before had escaped the clumsy British blockade, and when we Pages sell our tobacco, we lack for nothing in reason.

“That is a comfort,” he smiled. “Our sergeant begged for five guineas in one of his letters, and I promise you we had to scratch painstakingly before we found them. Now for your plan: have you any?”

“The first move is simple enough,” I rejoined. “I shall desert, as the sergeant did, and throw myself into the arms of the enemy. After that--well, sufficient unto the moment will be the evil thereof. I must be guided wholly by conditions as I find them.”

“So you must. And for your communications with me, you may use the same channel the sergeant is using--a Mr. Baldwin, of Newark, who will carry your letters. How will you reach New York?”

I thought a moment upon it.

“The river is the quicker. I have a boat at Nyack; the one in which I pulled from Teller’s Point to-day.”

There was a little pause after this, and I saw that my companion was staring thoughtfully into the fire.

“We have been going at too fast a gallop, Captain Page,” he said at the end of the pause. “We must go back a moment to that point that was raised in the beginning. If you could go with your troop at your back and cut the traitor out and bring him home that would be one thing--and I know of no man fitter to attempt it. But to go as you must go, and use guile and subterfuge ... truly, Captain Page, you must sort this out for yourself; to determine how far in such a cause an officer and a man of honor may go. I lay no commands upon you.”

I put the scruple aside impatiently.

“Benedict Arnold has put himself beyond the pale, Colonel Hamilton. There can be no question of honor in dealing with such as he.”

“Perhaps not,” was the low-toned reply; “though that word of yours is most sweeping and far-reaching. I mean only to leave you free, Captain Page. Our desires, keen as they are, shall not run farther than your own convictions of an honorable man’s duty.” Then he looked at his watch. “The tide serves at eleven, and you have the borrowed horse to return to Nyack. It is best so, since in that way you will seem to be returning to your troop at Salem.”

His mention of the borrowed horse first set me to wondering how he came to know that I had borrowed a horse; but a moment later the wonder went out in a blaze of sudden recollection. As I am a living man, up to that instant I had clean forgotten that I was pledged to meet Captain Howard Seytoun at dawn-breaking in the grass cove at the river’s edge!

I was on my feet and breathing hard when I broke out hotly: “Good heavens, Colonel Hamilton! I can not go to-night; it is impossible! A thing I had forgotten----”

He rose in his turn and faced me smiling.

“Tell me where she lives, Captain Page,” he said slyly, “and I’ll promise to go in person to make your excuses. Nay, no cunningly devised fables, sir, if you please; it is always a woman who hangs to our coat-skirts at the plunging moment. But seriously,” and now his face was grave, “there should not be an hour’s delay. Not to mention our sergeant’s safety, which seems to be hanging in a most precarious balance, there is a sharp chance of your missing the target entirely. Word has come that Arnold is embodying, or has embodied, a regiment with which he may take the field at any moment. No, you must go to-night, if you go at all.”

“But you were not expecting me here from Colonel Baylor’s camp until midnight,” I protested, trying to gain time for the shaping of some excuse that would hide the truth and still seem something less than childish.

“For the anticipating of which expectation by some hours, we are discussing this matter here in comfort before my fire, instead of on horseback and on the southward road, Captain Page. I had planned to ride with you to our outposts, enlisting you as we went.”

“Yet--good lord, Mr. Hamilton! if I could tell you--if I only dared tell you what it will cost me to go to-night....”

He spread his slender hands in a most gentlemanly way.

“I have laid no commands upon you for the services, Captain Page; as I have said, your going rests entirely with yourself. Nor must you think I am trying to bribe you when I point out that the man who carries the enterprise through will have earned much at the hands of his country and of the army. It is for you to decide whether this obstacle of yours is great enough to weigh against the arguments for instant despatch--remembering that these arguments may well include the life of the worthy soldier who has piloted out the way for you.”

It has always been my failing to omit to count the personal cost of anything until the day of reckoning rises up to slap me in the face.

“I’ll go--to-night,” I said grittingly. “But if I could leave an explanatory word with Pettus----”

Again he stopped me in mid-career with a hand laid affectionately on my shoulder.

“You would cancel my permission with your own sober second thought, my dear Captain. That second thought will tell you that there must be no hint, no word or whisper that could remotely point toward your purpose. Further, you must go back to Pettus, smooth over as best you can your visit to me here, and lull his curiosity, if he have any. Then, if you can not tell him point-blank the lie about your returning northward to-night, wait until he is asleep, and make your escape as you can.”

We went somewhat beyond this, but not far; Hamilton telling me of his sergeant’s present besetment, and of how all his plans had come to naught. When I had it all he went with me to the door and I was out of the ante-room when he took leave of me and bade me God-speed; out under the stars and with only the half-mile walk between me and Jack Pettus for the cooking up of all these raw conditions thus thrust masterfully upon me. I saw well enough what I must face; how, when I should turn up missing, Seytoun would lose no time and spare no pains in black-listing me from one end of the army to the other. Yet if I could go quickly and return alive, dragging our Judas with me as the result of the endeavor ... well, then Seytoun would still say that I had deliberately provoked a quarrel which I knew I could not carry out to the gentlemanly conclusion.

It was the cursedest dilemma, no matter how I twisted and turned it about. And to cap the pyramid of misery, there was a lurking fear that Mistress Beatrix Leigh might come to hear some garbled misversion of it, even in far-away Virginia, and would not know or guess the truth. Up to the very present moment, Seytoun owed his immunity solely to her, or rather to a promise I had made her the year before when I came out of the home militia to join Colonel Baylor’s new levies. When she should know the provocation, she might generously forgive the duel, though she had exacted the promise that I would not fight him; but would any explanation ever suffice to gloze over the fact that I had struck the man, and afterward had run away to escape the consequences?--for this is how the story would shape itself in Seytoun’s telling of it.

I saw no loophole of escape, no light on the dark horizon, save at one uncertain point. Seytoun was brave enough on the battle-field; all men said that for him. Yet he was a truculent bully, and bullies are often weak-kneed where the colder kind of courage is required. What if he had pocketed my affront?--had failed to send his friend to Jack Pettus?

The slender chance of such a happy outcome sent me on the faster toward the legion cantonments; and when I saw the scattering of tents and log shelters looming in the starlight I fell to running.

Pettus was waiting for me when I kicked open the door of the low-roofed shelter and entered, and it was my good genius that prompted me to sit by the fire and ask for a pipe and a crumbling of Jack’s tobacco, and otherwise to mask the fierce desire I had to put my fate immediately to the touch. For my Jack was as quick-witted as a woman, and I remembered in good time that I had to deceive him. So my first word was not of Seytoun, or of the quarrel, but of Colonel Alexander Hamilton and the despatches I had been supposed to bring from my colonel.

“Curious how a rumor breeds out of nothing,” I commented, when we were comfortably befogged in the tobacco smoke. “Melton seemed to be sure that I must be the bearer of despatches; and Colonel Hamilton accused me of having ridden over from Nyack on a borrowed horse.”

“The which you did, despatches or no despatches,” laughed Pettus. “But how did you get on with Mr. Hamilton?”

“As one gentleman should when he meets another for a joint shin-toasting before a blazing fire of logs. We chatted amicably, after Mr. Hamilton learned that I brought no word from Colonel Baylor; and when I could break off decently I came away.”

After this silence came and dwelt with us for a while, and when the fierce desire could be no longer suppressed I said, as indifferently as I could: “You have news for me, Jack?”

“If you call that news which we were both expecting--yes. Lieutenant Cardrigg has been here, in Captain Seytoun’s behalf.”

My gasp of disappointment slipped out--or in--before I could prevent it, and it did not go unremarked by Pettus.

“What’s that, Dick? You sigh like the furnace of affliction itself. Twice, already, you have changed your mind about this little riffle with Seytoun. It is far too late to change it again. I warn you as a friend.”

“Truly, it is indeed far too late,” I echoed, agreeing parrot-wise. Then: “You arranged the business as we talked?----to-morrow morning, in the grass cove at the mouth of the creek?”

“How else would I arrange it?” said Pettus querulously. “You were as precise in your instructions as any girl prinking herself for a rout.”

“It is well to be precise,” I offered half absently. The worst had befallen now, and my brain was busy with the shameful consequences which must ensue.

“Cardrigg haggled a little over the trooper’s swords,” Pettus went on reflectively, after a moment. “He is a chip of the same upstart block out of which our red-faced captain was hewn. He said you might have chosen rapiers, if only out of consideration for the captain’s standing; meaning to imply thereby that the captain, at least, was a gentleman, and should be allowed to fight with a gentleman’s weapon.”

“You yielded him the point?” I questioned, trying to show an interest which I could not feel.

“Not I, damn him. I gave him to understand flatly that we stood upon our rights, and that the trooper’s sword was good enough for his principal--or for him and me, if it came to that.”

“It is a small matter,” I said, thinking bitterly that Pettus could not vaguely guess how small a matter this dispute over the weapons had suddenly become. Then I saw how I might perhaps fend off the last and worst of the consequences of the morrow’s revealments; but it was necessary first to pave the way cautiously and carefully.

“The captain is a good swordsman, whatever else may be said of him,” I began after another interval of silence. “It may easily happen that the man who fights with him will cross a wider river than this Hudson of ours, Jack.”

“Bah!” Pettus spat the word out contemptuously. Then he added the friendly smiting, as I expected he would. “Don’t try to make me see you in any other light than that of a true man, Dick.”

“I would not willingly do that, Jack, believe me. But there are always chances, and the wise man, though he were the bravest that ever drew steel out of leather, will provide against them. If I should not come off from this night’s--from to-morrow morning’s work with a tongue to speak for itself, will you carry a word for me?”

“Surely I will. But to whom?”

“To Beatrix Leigh. Tell her she must go down to her grave believing that I was no craven. Tell her----”

“I’m listening,” said Pettus, when the pause had grown to an impossible length.

My lips were dry, and I moistened them and swallowed hard. After all, what word was there that I could send to the woman I loved without taking the risk of betraying my trust as an officer and the confidant of Mr. Hamilton?

“It isn’t worth the trouble,” I went on, when the hopelessness of it became plain. “She will understand without my message; or she will refuse to understand with it.”

Jack laughed boisterously. “I’m no good at conundrums, Dick. I’ll tell her the captain challenged you for brushing a fly from his face. Will that do?”

I smiled in spite of my misery. There would be nothing to tell Beatrix Leigh or any one else about the meeting which was already impossible for one of the combatants.

“Let it go, Jack, and pinch the candle out. Didn’t you hear the drum-roll? We’ll have the patrol in upon us presently. Do you turn in, and catch your few hours of beauty sleep. It’s one of my notions to sit alone before the fire on my birthday night, casting up the year’s accounts. You’ll indulge me, won’t you?”

Jack did it, grumbling a little at what he was pleased to call my churlishness. It was weary work killing the time till he should be safely asleep. I was young, vigorous, and for all my youth, somewhat of a seasoned veteran, but that lonely hour or more spent before Jack Pettus’s fire went nearer to sapping my determination than any former trial I could recall.

I might have made my exit sooner, I suppose. Though he tossed restlessly in his bunk, Jack was asleep before I had filled my second pipe. But there was no object in my reaching Nyack before tide-turning, and I stayed on, dreading the moment which would set the wheels fairly a-grind on my hazard of new fortunes.

It was the hour of guard-changing when I rose noiselessly, struggled into my watchcoat, slung my sword around my neck so that it should not drag and waken Jack, and cautiously secured the little portmanteau which held all the impedimenta I had brought with me from the camp at Salem.

I was carefully inching the door ajar to let me out when Pettus stirred afresh and threw his arms about, muttering in his sleep. I waited till he should be quiet again, and while I stood and held the door, the mutterings took on something like coherence.

“I say you shall drink it! Up, man, up! Now, then; here’s to the loyalty of the Old Dominion, and may the next Virginian who smirches it----”

I whipped through the half-closed door and closed it behind me, softly. It was sobering enough to do what I had to do, without staying to listen to such a word of leave-taking from the dearest friend I owned.

I found the borrowed horse where I had left him at the hitching-rope, and had the saddle on, and the portmanteau strapped to the cantle, when Middleton came up with the guard relief.

“Ho, Captain Page!” he chuckled, when the patrol had thrown the lantern light into my face, “I thought I had caught another deserter in the very act. Has your leave expired so soon?”

I forced a laugh and said it had, more was the pity. And then he asked how I expected to get across the river at that hour; whereupon I told him a part of the truth, saying that I should ride back to Nyack, and from there take the small boat in which I had drifted and rowed down from Teller’s Point.

At this he had the saddle flung upon his own beast, and mounted and rode with me to put me past the sentries on the Nyack road; and now I was enough recovered to grin under cover of the darkness and to picture his rage and astonishment when, within a day or so, he should learn that he had been setting another deserter safely on his way to the British lines. For I made no doubt that the camp, and all the others in the Highlands, would presently be ringing with the news that a captain of Baylor’s Horse had been the latest to go over to the enemy--as, indeed, I hoped they would, since my best guaranty of safety in New York would be in the hue and cry I might leave behind me.

Lieutenant Middleton bade me God-speed at a turn in the road about a mile from his cantonments, and from this on to Nyack I pushed the borrowed nag smartly. At Van Ditteraick’s stable there was only a sleepy horse-boy to rouse up and meet me, and when I had paid the horse’s hire, I made him go with me to the waterside to help me embark, so there might be a witness of the way I went and the manner of my going.

It was the boy himself who pushed me off and saw me lay the boat’s head up the river. And, sleepy as he was, he had wit enough to mumble in broken Dutch that the dunderhead captain had taken the wrong turn of the tide for a pull up the stream.

I headed upward and currentward only until I had made sure that my small boat could not be seen from the western shore. Then I turned the boat’s bow down-stream and pulled lustily for half an hour to warm me, for the gray and cloudy day had cleared into a night of bitter cold.

It was near midnight, as I judged, when I made out by the configuration of the shore lines my passing from the great lake of the Tappan Zee to the narrower channel of the river proper. Here, where King’s Ferry crossed from bank to bank, lay my greatest chance of danger; and taking the mid-channel for it, I unshipped the oars and let the boat drift as it would in the tideway. So floating, when I was well past the line of the ferry, past all hazard of being discovered by one of our patrol boats, as I imagined, I ventured to step the mast and to hoist the little leg-of-mutton sail with which the boat was provided. The showing of the small triangle of white cloth was my undoing. The little craft had scarcely felt the wind-pull, when a dark shape shot swiftly out from the shadow of the western shore and a voice came bellowing at me across the water.

“Ahoy, there! Spill your wind and come to, or we’ll fire upon you!”

My answer was to ship the oars as silently as possible, and to settle down to the long lifting stroke old Uncle Quagga, our black boatman, had taught me on the quiet waters of the James River in the peaceful days before the war began. It promised to be a hopeless flight, with only my two arms against a dozen; but what disquieted me most was the stentorian voice that came booming once again across the gap, cursing me and commanding me to heave to. For the yell was Seytoun’s; and now I remembered that Jack had told me something about Seytoun’s being on boat duty for the middle watch of the night.

III

IN WHICH I SHED MY RANK

IT IS little less than marvelous how the mind’s eye sweeps all the horizons instantly at the apexing point of a crisis. Seytoun’s cursing hail, the sheering cut-water hiss of the well-manned boat as it drove out to head me off, the panic helplessness of my attempt to escape--none of these was distracting enough to cloud the picture of the frightful consequences which would follow my overtaking.

Mr. Hamilton might save me from a deserter’s death; I supposed he would find means to do that much, though all the army would be clamoring for vengeance on me. But every other humiliation the wrath of man could devise would be mine; and in all the mad hurry of the moment one grim determination stood apart in my brain and held itself in readiness to act. I would never be taken alive. If the bullets which would presently begin to spit from the muskets in the watchboat should not put me out of misery, I could at least go overboard with the skiff’s anchor stone to hold me under for the necessary choking time.

The bullets came quickly enough, a ragged fire of them buzzing high overhead to emphasize Seytoun’s second warning. If the marksmen in the watchboat had been my men, I thought I should have a word to say to them about holding well down on a target when powder and lead were worth their weight in gold--as they were with us in that winter of 1780. They wasted a dozen shots on me, I think, before a long drum-roll boomed across the water to tell me that now the camp was aroused and more boats would be coming.

That was only an incident, however. My business was to put my heart and soul into the oars and to keep the narrow gap between me and Seytoun’s boat from closing any more swiftly than it had to. It was closing certainly enough, and by leaping boat-lengths, when my straining ears caught the sound of other oars rolling in muffled row-locks, and a guarded hail came from somewhere in the darkness just ahead of me. I dared not turn around to try to descry the fresh peril. Seytoun’s marksmen were doing better now, and coincident with the low-toned hail ahead a bullet struck the stern of my shallop and neatly stuck a splinter in the calf of my leg.

Another volley from the guardboat would have settled matters, but the volley was never fired--at me. At the flint-snapping crisis my boat’s bow crashed in among banked oars, dark shapes loomed suddenly all around me, and a gruff voice shouted, “Avast there, you lubber! Heave to, or we’ll sink you!”

I needed no command to stop me. The collision with the banked oars, and a dozen hands gripping the gunwales of my shallop, did that for me. What I most needed was the discretion to throw myself flat in the bottom of my boat to escape the storm of lead that was promptly hurled at my pursuers--and that I had, too.

When it was all over, and Seytoun’s boat had turned tail to claw out of harm’s way in frantic haste, I learned to what I owed my opportune deliverance. I had pulled straight into the midst of a British boat expedition (one of the many since Admiral Sir George Rodney had come to Sir Henry Clinton’s aid), sent up from New York to take a chance of surprising some one of our outpost camps. I was rejoicing secretly that my ill-luck had killed the chance of such a surprise, when I was brought roughly to book by the officer in command of the expedition.