CHAPTER V

How the Americans Came to York, April 27, 1813.

"Steady, man," said Dr. Tam, with his hand on Edgar's arm. "The laddie's threatening to disinherit you, instead of waiting for you to do it to him. Now, listen, I'm an officer in Ferguson's regiment, and no matter what he puts in private letters, which are none of my business, I want to tell you something. Down at Lake Champlain the Governor-General, Prevost, visited us. We were to make an attack on the Yankee camp, and the night before I heard Ferguson preaching to the men. He told them that being ready to die made a man more fit to live. A Christian soldier can do his duty more calmly and bravely and be more true to the king and obedient to his officers.

"He was standing on a box by a camp fire, with the men all 'round him listening in deep silence. I saw the colonel come up with Governor Prevost, who seemed surprised at a soldier's preaching. The colonel said to Captain Haslem, who was there--'What kind of man is Ferguson? Does he do his duty?'. The captain said--'He is always ready for any call; all I ever heard against him is his preaching, and reproving the men for swearing.' The Governor said--'I think we will let him go on then. The army needs some chaplains.'

"The Yankees were gone when we went the next day. Our men plundered the farms quite a bit. I kept my eye on Ferguson, and saw that he not only never touched a thing, but kept the men near him better behaved than they would have been. Now, you let the lad be till the lake opens. There'll be stiff fighting then, and if he does his duty let him have what religion he likes."

Edgar nodded grumpily, and as Ned left the room, he added, "If he fails I'll send him off. I've worked too hard to make a name here to have it disgraced by a Methodist coward."

He said very little to Ned during the next two months. On the twenty-fifth of April, the ice had cleared from Toronto Bay, and Bee, in her serge habit and plumed hat, sat very upright on her horse as she rode by Sir John along the muddy water front to the wharves.

"They are very slow with those ships," she remarked, with the air of a naval expert. "Major Edgar says there is too much red tape."

"Ladies shouldn't talk of war or politics. The feminine mind cannot understand such things," but Sir John smiled on Bee with kindly toleration as he spoke, for he was very fond of the outspoken, affectionate girl. Then his face clouded again. Three ships should have been ready by now, and only one stood complete--the "Gloucester", which was then leisurely taking her guns on board. The second ship was ready for launching, and men were working hard on the third. Sir John had not been able to adapt himself to the new conditions 'round him, as a younger man might. He was mainly responsible for the delay with the ships, for Archy had been recommended to him as a practical ship-builder, and the stately baronet had been so scandalized by Archy's free and easy manners and lack of grammar, that when that young man pointed out a score of makeshifts that could be used on the new ships, and quoted the Americans as having built a vessel of sixty-six guns at Sackett's Harbor, eighty days after her first timbers had been laid, Sir John told him firmly that such things would not do in British ship-building. So snubbed him, that Archy had given no more advice. Work on the ships had been stopped continually, while "proper equipments" were being dragged up the long trail from Quebec.

"Old man means well, and I kinder like him," Archy told Edgar, "but he's so stiffened up with pipeclay that he can't move except according to regulations. I'm getting sorrier all the time that General Brock's dead. Them Shawanese at Detroit wouldn't have acted up so if he'd been round, and these ships would have got done."

Blake, the pompous captain of the "Gloucester", came to speak to Sir John, and Bee, looking round, saw Susie walking with Ned in his militia uniform, along Palace Street. Susie looked very pretty in her short skirted house dress of homespun, with white collar and a knot of red ribbon, and one of two young officers riding by stared at her with impertinent admiration. The other, who was Vere, pretended not to see Ned, but as they reached Sir John, Roke, his friend, remarked, "Pretty thing over there with the red ribbons."

"That lady is the wife of Major Edgar, sir," said Sir John coldly. He disliked Roke, whom he blamed for enticing Vere into the drinking and gambling bouts which were continually unfitting him for duty, and bitterly disappointing his grandfather.

"We don't speak of a lady under a colonel's wife," said Roke to Vere as they rode on. "A captain's wife may be a woman, but under that they are only things; and militia titles don't count."

Vere laughed, because he was afraid of being laughed at if he didn't, though he was secretly disgusted with Roke's coarseness. Unfortunately, Archy, passing by, heard the doubtful joke. He repeated it to four militia men who knew Edgar and his wife well, adding, "There's a dance to-night at their Palace place, and Mrs. Edgar will be there sure, with most of our women. Now I haven't anything against most of the crowd they'll meet--a bit too starched for my taste that's all. But that there Roke doesn't get to no dance in York with our women, and I guess you boys will have to help me find him another engagement for to-night."

The ball was at its height that evening (and away at the other end of the lake, two frigates with a dozen transports stood out from Sackett's Harbour to attack York) when Sheaffe was asking why Roke was not there, he having sent for him.

Roke finally entered, smothered in mud from head to foot. He said that as he drove to the ball with his servant, five masked men stopped them. One cut the horse loose and drove him on. The others lifted the light cart and turned it over with its occupants imprisoned beneath it in a deep mud hole. When they got out, the five had vanished, but Roke accused Ned and some companions, for he imagined the young man had resented his look at Susie. It was easily proved, however, that Ned had not left home that evening, and his name was dropped, though Roke still thought him responsible.

All York talked of Roke's mishap the next day, and Sheaffe attempted vainly to find the mysterious five. Then Roke was forgotten, for at four in the afternoon Gibraltar Point signalled that the enemy's fleet was in sight, about twenty miles away, and approaching them.

York called out her defenders, two hundred regulars, three hundred militia, and one hundred Indians. These last were stationed in little groups in the woods round Humber Bay, Edgar and Tahata being with them. The white men spent the night under arms in Fort Toronto, while in the town the women buried silver, and tore up linen for bandages.

Before dawn Ned was hurrying through the bush with Archy and his company, very afraid that a queer feeling he had was fear. Hideous faces daubed in black and white and blood red, peered at them as they passed. The Indians were waiting for the fight in their war-costume of loin-cloth and paint. Only the chiefs wore buckskin shirts and leggings, though their faces looked like demon masks. Suddenly Ned met his father, dressed as he had seen him first at Quebec, with a belt of wampum as his badge of office. Now he only held out his hand, but his grip and smile steadied Ned's nerves. He felt that his father believed in him, and it gave him confidence in himself.

He crouched in the woods by Humber Bay, watching the enemy's ships. They seemed very close now, ghostly looking shapes in the morning twilight. Their boats were being loaded with troops to land beyond the range of Fort Toronto's guns.

The boats came in, black shapes on the dawn-lit water, and from every point in the woods on the shore came the wildest, most blood-curdling sound Ned had ever heard--a long drawn out unearthly yell--the war-whoop of the Mohawks. At the same time they fired, not in volleys, but each Indian picking out his man. Then Fort Toronto spoke in fire, for the two warships were nearing the entrance to the harbour. They answered instantly with their heavier guns, and a rolling cloud of smoke shut out the sight of the risen sun from Humber Bay, and the roar of the cannonading dulled the noise of the conflict on the shore. A mass of blue-clad men had landed there, to be met by a savage scattering fire from the Indians and a sheet of flame from the ambushed militia. Ned, for the first time, was firing at living men. His nervousness had vanished, he forgot his scruples against war. He fired, loaded, and fired again, in almost mechanical obedience to orders.

He stopped firing on command, for out of the fort came a wave of scarlet tipped with steel--the regulars were charging with the bayonet on those blue lines forming on the shore.

"My happy grandmother!" ejaculated Archy, "there's something besides starch in those fellows, swinging into battle like that. I just hate to fight out in the open; you see----"

Ned never knew what. The order to charge came to them, and he was dashing out of cover at Archy's heels. He gasped as the man beside him fell in a crumpled heap, and the bullets whistled past his ears. Then he forgot himself in that mêleé of battling men.

* * *

The sun, a fierce red ball, gleamed through the smoke, and by the green woods men in red coats, men in gray coats, and men in no coats at all, flung themselves on the blue lines which wavered, and stumbled backward into the shallows of the lake. Now more boats were coming from the ships, the American general, Pike, standing in the foremost, as he cheered on his men.

Ned was parted from his companions in the rush. He sprang over a log, and fired at an American officer who came at him with uplifted sword. The man fell, and all the delirium of battle passed from Ned's brain, as he stared horror-struck at his fallen foe. The American was on his feet again, and the dark blood streaming from his shoulder. He leaned weakly against a tree, and raised his sword. Ned looked round and saw a young Indian, frightful with his naked painted body and a dripping scalp at his girdle, levelling his musket at the wounded man. Instantly Ned was between them--"Stop, Kawque," he cried to the Indian, "the man is wounded. He has surrendered."

"I have not," said the American, adding with biting contempt, "I do not surrender to a renegade. I prefer to be shot, rather than massacred as my countrymen were, who surrendered to yours at Detroit."

Ned heard the Indian move behind him, and knew in a moment that he would see the wounded man shot down. Something in the American's proud eyes gave him an inspiration, and he cried, "Are you Eli Goode? I am Ned Edgar, and I know your sister. For Bee Goode's sake, surrender now."

The American's face changed, as quickly as Bee's often did. He lowered his sword, exclaiming, "Bee wrote of you in England."

The Indian glided away, and Eli sank fainting to the ground again. Ned cut his coat away, bandaging the wound with a skill he had learnt from Dr. Brown. He did not knew that for a few minutes he and Eli had been alone in the thicket, but that they were then surrounded by the advancing Americans. For an instant Ned was covered by a dozen rifles, which were raised as quickly as his occupation was discovered. He stood up very dismayed, but the foremost American was speaking. "Reckon you took the captain prisoner, and now we have taken you, so an exchange will be all right. Better chase yourself out of this, stranger." Ned snatched up his rifle and ran.

He was soon back to the woods, where his friends had retreated. It was now ten o'clock, and the battle was lost. Fort Toronto's fortifications had been ruined, and her guns silenced by the enemy's fire. Her garrison had left and fallen back on Western Battery, where the scattered men from Humber Bay joined them. As Ned came in he saw the American flag rise over the ruins of their first fort. Just then he did not love his enemies at all.

He saw Sir John sitting on his horse as composed in that hour of defeat and danger as if he had been on parade. Ned watched him giving orders to the waiting men 'round him, with a great respect for British discipline. Then Edgar hurried by, his stern face softening as he saw his son. He went to Sir John who sent him on to burn the ships on the stocks, and wrote another order for Vere to take to the captain of the "Gloucester", that she must be blown up. Then after speaking to the men who were spiking the guns of Western Battery, he rode off towards Half-moon Fort where Sheaffe was waiting. Ned and his companions followed, plodding along like the weary defeated men they were.

Outside Western Battery, Pike and the advancing Americans had halted, summoning the silent fort. But they got no answer, the regulars were just leaving, Vere riding by their captain. Ned saw flames bursting from the new ships, and immediately after was thrown to the ground by an explosion that shook the earth beneath him. The powder magazine of Western Battery had blown up--an awful volcano of flame and smoke, the debris of a fort, and the high-hurled broken bodies of three hundred men.

Americans, including General Pike, and English were killed alike, and the explosion itself was a mystery. Certainly neither army could have been intentionally responsible for it, entailing as it did, the lives of so many men on each side.

Ned picked himself up unhurt, and looked back in horror. He saw Vere stumble up from beside his dead horse, and run a few steps, then fall again, brought down by a sharpshooter's bullet. Many of the scattered Americans were sheltering in the woods.

Only remembering the old schoolboy friendship, Ned crept from stump to stump, till he was crouching by Vere in the slender cover of a pile of brushwood. Vere's face was drawn, and his eyes, wild with fear, stared at Ned as he spoke in panting jerks--"I'm dying, Ned."

"You're not dying, Vere," said Ned, as he skilfully bandaged the wound. It was in the leg, dangerously near a large artery. Ned knew it needed better attention than he could give, but how was Vere to be got to Half-moon Fort, across the common swept by the enemy's fire? Ned knelt down, managed to get Vere on his back, and praying the bandage might not slip, stepped out boldly. Very slowly he walked along beside the forest in whose shades Death crouched, but with American chivalry no man fired, and they reached Half-moon in safety.

There Ned was hailed by Archy. "Hello, didn't know what had become of you. We've got to get out of here. The women from the Palace are in town--Mrs. Haslem and Miss Bee are at your place and the Yankees won't hurt anything in petticoats; Sheaffe and the regulars, and the wounded in wagons, are making tracks for the Don bridge, and as the Yankees won't take the militia prisoners, if they come in and give their parole, he says we can do as we like. You can bet your sweet life I ain't going to give no parole, but I'm not going to Kingston with Sheaffe either. I'm off to the bush till I can find a general who does things, but it'll be all right for you to look after your redcoat friend."

So the very independent militia captain went off, with most of his companions, to look for a commander they approved of. Ned meanwhile found a surgeon, and helped put Vere in the last of the hurrying wagons, that took the wounded past sullen little York, and crossing the Don bridge, plunged into the woods along the Quebec Road (Kingston Highway). Vere sat up and held out his hand to Ned as the wagon reached the Don, for Ned was one of the rear guard who were to fire the bridge, after the retreating party had crossed. They did this, and Ned managed to be left on the Toronto side of the river. Then he made for the woods behind York, hoping to find his sagacious, ungrammatical captain.

The smoke from the burning bridge joined that of the fire by the wharves, wrapping Edgar, as he stood on the shore, impatiently waiting for the messenger with the order that should prevent the capture of the "Gloucester". The Americans had been delayed by the confusion following the death of Pike, but Edgar was expecting to see their frigates off the wharves every minute. He had already been once to beg the captain to blow her up without the order. He could tell him it had been given, and its non-delivery was no doubt owing to the messenger's death in the explosion. But Blake had declined to take orders--or advice--from a militia officer, and Edgar had fumed on shore, to hurry back as his quick eye saw the enemy's ships advancing slowly through the smoke.

But Half-moon Battery was empty with her guns spiked, and without a crew, the "Gloucester" could not fight. Still her captain refused to destroy her till the last minute, and before Edgar could convince him it had come, the frigates bore triumphantly down on them, and they were ignominiously captured. York surrendered at once, and at two in the afternoon, the American flag was raised over the town. The parliament buildings were sacked and fired, the town escaping by payment of a money requisition, but the stores were emptied and many houses robbed of silver, the enemy getting a spoil, mainly in furs, of half a million dollars.

The officers of the "Gloucester" were sent on shore. Only Edgar stayed. A lean American pointed at him accusingly--"You are the renegade who called yourself Kaanah," he cried.

"That is my name in the lodges of the Mohawks," Edgar answered carelessly. "If you mean to hang me you have a good chance." He glanced at the yardarm above his head, and threw open his collar, adding, "I am also a British subject, and England will make you pay for my murder. It would be nothing else, for you cannot find a man who can say I have done anything unworthy of my race."

But the men round him were possessed by that hate of the Indian which has so often hurried men of the new world into thoughtless reprisal, and Edgar would have died, had not a girl appeared among the soldiers on the shore. She was holding the arm of an American officer, white-faced and with a bandaged shoulder. Eli had got himself billeted on Susie to protect his sister and her friends, and he had gone out with Bee to look for Edgar, whom he knew would be in danger if recognized among the prisoners. Bee saw Edgar, and Eli sent her back at once, going on board himself. "Gentlemen," he said to Edgar's judges, "fifteen years ago my father met Mr. Edgar, both travelling through the Ohio valley. They were captured by the Shawanese. Mr. Edgar was spared because he was English, and Tecumseh was hoping for the friendship of the English against us. My father was to be burned at the stake, but Mr. Edgar risked sharing his fate by pleading and offering bribes, and instead of both dying, both were spared, and the Indians named this man Kaanah, 'One-who-is-a-Friend'. They were close friends till my father's death, when he left my only sister to Mr. Edgar's guardianship. England may have shamed her civilization by her alliance with savages, but though as a soldier Mr. Edgar could not choose his duties, I am certain he has never been a renegade to his white blood."

Eli's defence of his father's friend was accepted, and Edgar was sent to the other prisoners at the palace. It was night now; in conquered York the women grieved for their dead, and prayed for their living--the men who were in the woods, and who would not surrender.

As Edgar entered the big room where the English prisoners were, he saw Roke among them, and heard him saying--"The worst of all is letting them get the 'Gloucester', and Sir John gave Ensign Haslem the order for her captain. I heard him. And I saw young Haslem being carried to a wagon by Ned Edgar, and also saw him hold out his hand to Ned, evidently giving him something. Now, that order was not delivered, and as Ned is not among the dead or prisoners, it means that he ran without doing what he was ordered."

"You lie," said Edgar promptly. Roke turned on him angrily, but the other men interfered. Exhaustion was more responsible for peace than forebearance, however, and Roke, with most of the others, was asleep, when he was awakened some time later by Edgar.

"I'm going to escape," said the militia officer briefly, "I know more about this Palace than the men who think they are guarding us, and you are going with me. You called my son a coward, and when we find Ensign Haslem, and when he says, as I know he will, that it was not to Ned that he gave the letter, I shall take great pleasure in shooting you."