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Read Ebook: Harper's Round Table December 10 1895 by Various
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Ebook has 230 lines and 30014 words, and 5 pages
PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1895. FIVE CENTS A COPY.
FOR KING OR COUNTRY.
A Story of the Revolution.
BY JAMES BARNES.
AN UNINTENTIONAL VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.
The tide ran so swiftly that at first it appeared to George that he did not gain an inch on the drifting boat, and the short choppy waves dashing against his face almost drove his breath away at times. The day when his brother William had saved him from drowning at Stanham Mills came back to him.
But surely he was drawing nearer! he could see the hull much more distinctly, and could hear the loose oars rolling across the thwarts.
Desperately he forged along; he was calling on his nerves, his vital force, for a last effort. In a moment more he reached the stern, and, placing his knee on the rudder, fell inside the boat.
To save himself he could not lift a finger now; he lay there perfectly conscious, sprawled in the stern sheets, his chest heaving, his head thrown back--played out in every muscle. It was fully half an hour before he moved, and when he did so the sense of his position came fully upon him.
All about reached the opaque white wall, and although a short time before it had been so warm, George now felt chilled--his teeth were rattling. This reminded him of the coats, and the letter in Carter's pocket that had nearly cost his life.
Getting on his knees he perceived to his astonishment that the boat was half filled with water, and that the coats were floating in it at his feet.
At once he set to work, and there being nothing else to use he took his hat and Carter's and baled with both hands.
This exercise warmed him, and started his blood and pulse going once again.
"One of the Colonel's schemes," said George to himself. But this did not seem so important as a memorandum in Carter's hand, made on a slip of paper, and showing the disposition of the American forces on Long Island.
He tore up the latter, but Colonel Hewes's address to the convention he attached to a bit of iron that he found, ready at a moment's notice to drop it overboard.
"I haven't the least idea where I am," he remarked, "so I had best be content with being alive. Oh, if this abominable fog would only clear away!"
It had been quite late in the afternoon when the boys had left the little cove at the foot of Brooklyn Heights, and now the light that filtered through the mist was growing dimmer. The ebb was still on, for the boat was drifting slowly. Another half-hour passed.
"What is that?" exclaimed George, suddenly, for a lapping sound came to his ears; it was the noise of the little tide waves against the prow of a vessel at anchor--he had heard it often along the wharves. As he peered out with his face over the side he heard loud and distinct, almost above him, the rattle and click of a block and tackle.
"'Vast 'eeaving there," called out a voice, so close that George started. "Belay, you lubbers," called the voice again.
A strange odor filled the air, a smell compounded of so many things that it cannot be described. George knew it to be that of a crowded ship--the smell of a man-of-war.
"I must be right among them," he murmured.
All at once, so close to him that he could almost reach it with an oar, loomed a great black shape, and over his head extended the muzzles of a line of guns, and above them another, and still above, a third.
"A seventy-four!" said George, crouching down in the bottom of the boat beneath the sail.
Slowly he drifted past; he could see the white streaks on her sides, and hear snatches of songs and the hum of voices. At last he was directly beneath the bulging quarter galleries, and a voice called out,
"What's that below?"
"A boat, sir, adrift," some one answered, in gruff sailor tones.
"Any one in her, Quartermaster?" inquired the first again.
"Can't see, sir," was the reply.
"Tumble into the cutter, then, and take after her," came the order.
The shrilling of a boatswain's pipe followed, and the hoarse bawl, "All first cutters away," started George to action.
"Now for another swim," he said, as he passed the battle-ship's mighty stern. "The shore of Staten Island must be off there to the left."
He hove both coats into the water, and, taking Mr. Hewes's epistle in his teeth, lowered himself after them. He hated to sacrifice the spy-glass, but overboard it went with the rest.
He had taken but a few dozen strokes when the thrumming of oars sounded plainly, and he rolled over on his back to listen--the oars stopped.
"Cutter there!" came from the deck of the seventy-four. "Have you found that boat?"
"Ay, ay, sir," the cutter hailed in return. "There's nothing in it but a hat."
George smiled and struck out again. "That shore's a long ways off," he thought, after he had swum for some time steadily, and as he made this remark to himself his knee struck something hard; he dropped his feet to sound, and found that the water scarcely reached his waist.
Tired and faint, he waded up to a shelving beach and fell forward in the sand. But he could not stay there long, for he knew that Staten Island was overrun with English soldiers. He must find some place to hide.
The fog had lessened, but it was growing dark. A ship's bell struck the hour, and the sound was taken up by a hundred others in a chorus of clanging and ding-donging out in the mist.
George walked up the beach. The water's edge was littered with d?bris from the fleet--baskets and empty boxes, crates, and drift-wood of all sorts. Something caught his eye, and he stooped and picked up a stout-handled boat-hook.
"Some poor fellow got the rope's end for losing this," he said. "It may come in handy for me." He shouldered it and walked quickly away. A few rods further on he came across a narrow pier or causeway that ran from the bank above the beach to a boat-landing some distance out.
THE BREAKING STORM.
The reason that Carter did not hail, as tacitly agreed upon, is simply told. He could not have raised his voice if the fate of the country depended on his doing it, for he never remembered reaching land at all.
When George had left him, Carter had kept straight ahead, but made the great mistake of trying to fight against the swiftly running tide.
It buffeted him hither and thither, until he became utterly exhausted, and could just keep himself afloat and no more by weakly treading water. The direction of the shore he lost completely for some minutes, when all at once he heard the rippling sound again. Desperately he struck out, and then, oh joy! he heard the sound of voices.
Carter tried to shout, but a sturdy wave catching him fair in the face muffled the cry and almost foundered him. He remembered taking two or three strokes after that; then all went black.
"I'm certain I heard a cry out here," said a voice in the fog. High-pitched and distinct, the tones were very different from those that answered.
"You have ears like a rabbit's, then," growled a deep bass. "For I heard nothing. Come, as I was saying--"
"Pardon me. Just hearken for a minute. It may sound again," interrupted the first speaker.
Two figures leaned out over the Battery wall.
The owner of the deep voice was a large man who sloped off in all directions. A huge scratch-wig was pulled over his forehead. The other would have attracted attention anywhere. Above a tightly buttoned snuff-colored coat appeared a thin pinched face, whose little eyes looked out above prominent cheek bones, and whose chin was thrust forward from a voluminous neckcloth. His movements were quick and active as a weasel's. As he peered through the mist he pointed with his finger as if he were following something of whose constantly changing position he were not exactly sure.
"Yes; there it is," he said at last. "Gadzooks, it's a man's body! Here goes for it."
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