Chapter 20: The Trumpet’s Peal

Major George Augustus Braithwaite, scholar of William and Mary College, man of refinement and experience, commissioned officer who had been in the assault at Ticonderoga, and who had stood victoriously with Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, leaned upon a bastion at Fort Prescott and watched one of the wildest nights that he had ever seen. He wore his three-cornered military hat, but the rain flowed steadily in a little stream from every corner. He was wrapped in an old military coat, badge of distinguished service, but the rain, too, ran steadily from every fringe of its hem and gathered in puddles about the military boots that enclosed his feet.

He thought nothing of rain, or hat, or cloak, or boots. The puddles grew without his notice. The numerous flashes of lightning disclosed his face, worn and anxious, and with lines that had deepened perceptibly in the last few days. Beside him stood the second in command at Fort Prescott, Gregory Wilmot, a middle-aged man, and the brave scout, Seth Cole. They, too, seemed unconscious of the rain, and looked only at the river that flowed beneath them, a dark and troubled stream.

The storm had gone on long and it showed no signs of abating. It was the fiercest that any of them had ever seen in the Ohio Valley, and the lightning was often so brilliant and so near that they were compelled to shrink back in fear.

“How long has it been since the boy Henry Ware left us?” asked Major Braithwaite.

“A week to-day,” replied the scout.

“And the fleet has not yet come,” said the Major, as much to himself as to the others. “I’ve always believed until to-night that it would come. That boy inspired confidence. I had to believe in him. I had no choice.”

“Nor I, either,” said Gregory Wilmot. “I believed in him, and I do now.”

“It’s the lack of news that troubles me so much,” said the Major sadly. “The leaguer of the fort has grown closer and tighter, and it seems that nothing can get through now.”

“I tried to get out last night,” said the scout, “but a snake would have had to grease himself to slip by. It’s their great chief, Timmendiquas, who is doing it all, and he doesn’t mean that we shall know a single thing about what is going on outside.”

“He is certainly carrying out his intentions. I give him all credit for his generalship,” said Major Braithwaite.

The three relapsed again into silence and stared at the river, now a dark, flowing current, and then molten metal in the dazzling glare of the lightning. The time, the place, and his troubles stirred Major Braithwaite deeply. To-night the wilderness oppressed him with its immensity and its unknown, but none the less deadly, dangers. Things that he had read, scraps of old learning at college, floated through his head.

“Magna pars fui,” he murmured, looking at the river and the black forest beyond.

“What did you say, sir?” asked the scout.

“I merely meant,” replied the Major, “that we, too, have our part in great events. This, with distance’s long view, may seem obscure and small to the great world elsewhere, but it is not obscure and small to us. Could any spectacle be more tremendous than the one we behold to-night?”

“If the fleet does not come it is not likely that we shall behold any more spectacles of any kind,” said Gregory Wilmot. “The red men hold their cordon, and in time our food must become exhausted.”

“That is so,” said the Major. “Some of the women have given up already, and look upon themselves as dead.”

“We are not lost,” said the scout. “He’ll come, that boy, Henry Ware, will. He’s only a boy, Major, but he’s got a soul like that of the great chief, Timmendiquas. He’ll come with the fleet.”

Major Braithwaite wished to believe, but it was hard to do it. How could anything come out of that darkness and storm and through the Indian host? A soldier, he recognized the mental grasp and energy of Timmendiquas and the thoroughness of the leaguer of both fort and river. He left the bastion presently and went into one of the log cabins where some of the wounded men lay. He made it a point to visit them and cheer them whenever he could, and he would not neglect it to-night. He spent a half hour with them and then he returned to the bastion.

“What have you seen?” he asked.

“Nothing but the river and the woods and much lightning,” replied Gregory Wilmot.

“Nor heard anything?”

“Only the thunder and the wind.”

“I am weary of both. Surely they cannot last much longer.”

Neither Gregory Wilmot nor the scout replied. Both were soaked with water, but they had forgotten it, and none of the three spoke again for at least ten minutes. Then Major Braithwaite, whose eyes had roved from the river, saw the scout lean forward and press himself against the wooden crest of the bastion. It was as if a sudden quiver had run through him, but his ear was toward the river and he leaned still further forward as if he would get yet nearer to hear. It was only by a flash of lightning that the Major saw this, but it was enough to arouse his interest.

“What is it? Do you hear anything?” he asked.

The lightning flashed again, and the scout raised his hand.

“I don’t know yet whether I’ve heard anything but the thunder an’ the wind,” he replied, “but I seemed to hear somethin’. It wuz fur away, an’ it growled low and threatenin’ like thunder. An’ it wuzn’t eggzackly like thunder, either. I don’t quite seem to make it out. Hark! thar she goes ag’in!”

Major Braithwaite and Gregory Wilmot also leaned forward eagerly, but they could hear only the fiendish shrieking of the wind and the sullen mutter of certain thunder.

“You believe you heard a sound that was neither the thunder nor the wind?” said the Major.

“Yes,” replied the scout, “an’ I’ve heard it twice. Ef it wuzn’t fur the second time I wouldn’t be so shore. Listen, thar she goes ag’in, like thunder, but not thunder eggzackly.”

“Can you make out what it is?”

“I wuz in the big French an’ Injun War, too, when I wuz jest a mite uv a boy,” replied the scout, “and when I wuz layin’ in the woods one day an’ one uv them battles wuz goin’ on I heard a sound that’s like the one I’ve been hearin’ now.”

“What was it?” exclaimed the Major eagerly.

“It wuz the fust time I ever heard it. I wuz layin’ close in the thicket, a’ it wuz at least five miles away. But I’ve never forgot that sound. It wuz a cur’us thing. It wuz like a voice talkin’. It kep’ a-sayin’ somethin’ like this, ‘Look out fur me! Look out fur me!’ It wuz a cannon shot, Major, an’ it’s a cannon shot that I’ve been hearin’ now, once, twice, an’ now three times, an’ it’s sayin’ jest ez it did years an’ years ago, ‘Look out fur me! Look out fur me! Look out! Look out!’ an’ it’s a-sayin’ to me at the same time that the fleet’s a-comin’.”

“Do you really think so?” exclaimed the Major joyfully.

“I shorely do, an’ I do more than think, I know. The cannon that them Injuns an’ renegades had hez been sunk. Thar ain’t any others in all the west except them on the fleet, an’ it’s them that’s been talkin’. Ez shore ez we live, Major, the fleet’s buttin’ its way through the darkness and the wind an’ the thunder an’ the lightnin’ and the rain an’ the Injuns an’ the renegades, an’ is comin’ straight to Fort Prescott.”

The scout stood up, and Major Braithwaite saw by the lightning that his face was transfigured. Hope and certainty had replaced fear and uncertainty.

“Thar!” he exclaimed. “The fourth time. Don’t you hear it, louder than before?”

A low, deep note which certainly differed from that of the thunder now came to the ears of Major Braithwaite, and his own experience of battle fields told him its nature.

“It is cannon! it is surely cannon!” he exclaimed joyously. “And you are right! It is the fleet coming to our relief! The boy got through!”

Major Braithwaite’s face glowed, and so did that of Gregory Wilmot, who was also now sure that they had heard the sound of the white man’s great guns. But they kept it to themselves for the present. There must be no false hope, no raising of the garrison into joy merely to let it fall back deeper into gloom. So they waited, and the far note of the cannon did not come again, although they pressed themselves against the wooden bastion and strained ears to hear.

The heart of Major Braithwaite gradually sank again. It might have been an illusion. A heart so eager to hear might have deceived the ear into hearing. The darkness seemed to have closed in thicker and heavier than ever. The flashes of lightning, although as vivid as before, were not so frequent, but the wind rose, and its shrieking got upon the ears of the three.

“I wish it would stop!” said the Major angrily. “I want to hear something else! Was it imagination about the cannon? Could we have deceived ourselves into hearing what we wanted to hear? Is such a thing possible?”

The scout shook his head.

“It wuzn’t no deception,” he said. “I shorely heard cannon. Mebbe they’ve quit firin’ ‘em, an’ are comin’ on now with the rifles an’ the pistols. It must be that. I’m like you, Major, I believe in that boy, Henry Ware, an’ he’s comin’ right now with the fleet to save all them women an’ children behind us.”

“God grant that you may be right,” said Major Braithwaite devoutly.

The three still leaned against the crest of the wooden wall, and the rain yet drove upon them, unnoticed. They listened, with every nerve taut, for a sound that did not come, and whenever the lightning flashed they strained their eyes down the dark reaches of the river to see something that they did not see. Over an hour passed, and they scarcely moved. Then the scout straightened up.