When Men Grew Tall, or The Story Of Andrew Jackson

“Easy, boys!” he cries. “Remember your ranges! Don’t fire until they are within two hundred yards!”

On rush the English. At six hundred yards they are met by the fire of the artillery. They heed it not, but press sullenly forward, closing up the gaps in their ranks, where the solid shot go crashing through, as fast as made. Five hundred yards, four hundred, three hundred! Still they come! Two hundred yards!

And now the hunting-shirt men! A line of fire unending glances from right to left and left to right, along the crest of those mud walls, and Death begins his reaping. The head of the English column burns away, as though thrust into a furnace! The column wavers and welters like a red ship in a murky sea of smoke! It pauses, falteringly – disdaining to fly, yet unable to advance!

“Forward, men!” shouts General Gibbs. “This is the way you should go!”

As he points with his sword to those terrible mud walls, he falls riddled by the hunting-shirt men.

CHAPTER XVII – THE SLAUGHTER AMONG THE STUBBLE

WHEN the main advance begins, Sir Edward is in the center with the Highlanders. The latter are not to move until he has word of their success from General Keane with Rennie’s rifle corps, and General Gibbs with the main column – the one by the river and the other by the cypress swamp. He has not long to wait; a courier dashes up from the river – eye haggard, disorder in his look!

“General Keane?” cries Sir Edward, his apprehension on edge.

“Fallen!” returns the courier hoarsely.

“And Rennie?”

“Dead. The Rifles are in full retreat!” Sir Edward stands like one stricken. Then he pulls himself together.

“Bring on your Highlanders!” he cries to Colonel Dale. “We must force their lines in front of General Gibbs. It is our only chance!”

Sir Edward dashes across to General Gibbs, in the shadow of that significant cypress swamp. He sees General Gibbs go down! He sees the red column torn and twisted by that storm of lead which the hunting-shirt men unloose.

As the English reel away from those low-flying messengers of death, Sir Edward seeks to rally them.

“Are you Englishmen?” he cries. “Have you but marched upon a battlefield to stain the glory of your flag?”

Sir Edward’s gesticulating arm falls, smashed by a bullet from some sharp-shooting hunting-shirt man. He seems not to know his hurt! He is on fire with the thought that those honors, won upon forty fields, are to be wrested from him by a “Copper Captain,” backed by a mob of peasants in buckskin! He rushes among the shaken English to check the panic which is seizing them!

The Highlanders come up!

“Hurrah! brave Highlanders!” he shouts.

At Sir Edward’s welcoming shout, Colonel Dale waves a salute! It is his last; the huntingshirt men are upon him with those unerring rifles, and he falls dead before his General’s eyes. Coincident with the fall of his beloved Dale, Sir Edward is struck by a second bullet. It enters near the heart. As his aide catches him in his arms, he beckons feebly to Sir John Tylden.

“Call up Lambert with the reserves!” he whispers.

As he lies supported in the arms of his aide, a third bullet puffs out his lamp of life, and England loses a second Sir Philip Sidney.

The main column falls into renewed disorder! It begins to retreat; the retreat becomes a rout! Only the Highlanders stay! They cannot go forward; they will not go back! There they stand rooted, until five hundred and forty of their nine hundred and fifty are shot down.

As the main column breaks, Major Wilkinson turns to Lieutenant Lavack.

“This is too much disgrace to take home!” says he.

Like Colonel Rennie, a mile away by the river, Major Wilkinson charges the mud walls. Lieutenant Lavack, sharing his feelings, shares with him that desperate, disgrace-defying charge. Through the singing, droning “zip! zip!” of the bullets, they press on! They reach the ditch, and splash through! Up the mud walls they swarm! Major Wilkinson falls inside, dead, three times shot through and through! Lieutenant Lavack, with a luck that is like a charm, lands in the midst of the hunting-shirt men without a scratch! They receive him hilariously, offer whisky and compliments, and assure him that they like his style. Lieutenant Lavack accepts the whisky and the compliments, and gains distinction as the one live Englishman over the General’s mud walls this January day.

The field is swept of hostile English; all is silent in front, and not a shot is heard. Now when the firing is wholly on one side, the General passes the word for the hunting-shirt men to cease.

The hard-working Coffee comes up, face a-smudge of powder stains; for he has been taking his turn with a rifle, like any other hunting-shirt man. He finds the General as drunk on battle as some folk are on brandy.

“They can’t beat us, Coffee!” cries the General, wringing his friend’s big hand. “By the living Eternal they can’t beat us!”

The General unslings his ramshackle telescope, and leaps upon the mud walls for a survey of the field. The less curious Coffee devotes himself to wiping the sweat and powder smudges from his face. His impromptu toilet results only in unhappy smears, which make him resemble an overgrown sweep. He looks at his watch.

“Sharp, short work!” he mutters, as he notes that they have been fighting but twenty-five minutes.

Those plantation buildings are still blazing, no more than half-burned down, and the smoke hides the scene toward the river. The General turns his ramshackle spyglass upon his immediate front. The ground is fairly carpeted with dead English. As he gazes he calls to Colonel Coffee, who is now broadening the powder smears ingeniously with the sleeve of his hunting shirt.

“Jump up here, Coffee!” cries the General. “It’s like resurrection day!”

Thus urged, Colonel Coffee abandons his attempts to improve his looks, and joins the General on the mud walls. He is in time to behold four hundred odd Highlanders scramble to their brogues among those five hundred and forty who will never march again, and come forward to surrender.

It has been a hot and bloody morning. Of those six thousand whom Sir Edward takes into action – for the reserves with General Lambert are never within range – over twenty-one hundred are fallen. Seven hundred and thirty are killed as they stand in their ranks; and of the fourteen hundred marked “wounded,” more than six hundred are to die within the week. Among the twenty-one hundred killed and wounded, sixteen hundred go to swell the red record of the dire hunting-shirt men.

The two attacks, being at the ends of the General’s lines, involve no more than two-thirds of his thirty-two hundred. Papa Plauche’s “Fathers” in the center, as well as General Adair’s Kentuckians who act as reserves, are merest spectators.

That his “Fathers” are not called upon to fire a shot, in no wise depresses Papa Plauche. He harangues his brave followers, and eloquently explains:

“It is because of your sanguinary fame, my heroes!” vociferates Papa Plauche. “The English knew your position, and avoided you. They went as far to the right and to the left as they could, to escape that destruction you else would have infallibly meted out to them. Ah! my ‘Fathers,’ see what it is to have a terrible name! You must sit idle in battle, because no foe dare engage you! Be comforted, my glorious heroes! Achilles could have done no more!”

Colonel Coffee, still busy with the powder smears, calls the General’s attention to an English group of three, made up of a colonel, a bugler, and a soldier bearing a white flag. The trio halt six hundred respectful yards away. The bugler sounds a fanfare; the soldier waves his white flag.

The General dispatches Colonel Butler with two captains to receive their message. It is a note signed “Lambert,” asking an armistice of twenty-four hours to bury the dead.

“Who is Lambert?” asks the General, and sends to the English colonel, with his bugler and white flag, to find out.

The three presently return; this time the note is signed “John Lambert, Commander-in-Chief.” The alteration proves to the General’s liking, and the armistice is arranged.

The seven hundred and thirty dead English are buried where they fell. Thereafter the superstitious blacks will defy lash and torture rather than plow the land where they lie. It will raise no more sugar cane; but in time a cypress grove will sorrowfully cover it, as though in mournful memory of those who sleep beneath. The General carries his own dead to the city. They are not many, four dead and four wounded being the limit of his loss.

General Lambert and the beaten English go wallowing, hip-deep, through the swamps to their boats. They will not fight again. The booming of the batteries, or mayhap the unusual warmth of the sun, has roused from their winter beds a scaly host of alligators. These saurians uplift their hideous heads and gaze sleepily, yet inquisitively, at the wallowing retreating English. Now and then one widely yawns, and the spectacle sends an icy thrill along what English spines bear witness to it.

In the end the beaten English are all departed. That tremendous invasion which, with “Beauty and Booty!” for its cry, sailed out of Negril Bay six weeks before to the sack of New Orleans, is abandoned, and the last defeated man jack once more aboard the ships and mighty glad to be there. The fleet sails south and east; but not until the tallest ship is hull down in the horizon does the General march into New Orleans.

The General cannot bring himself to believe that the retreat of the English is genuine. They have still, as they sail away, full thirteen thousand fighting men aboard those ships, with a round one thousand cannon, and munitions and provisions for a year’s campaign. He judges them by himself, and will not be convinced that they have fled. With this on his mind, he plants his pickets far and wide, and insists on double vigilance.

Now when fear of the English is rolled like a stone from their breasts, the folk of New Orleans fret under the General’s iron rule. With that the prudent General tightens his grip. Even so excellent a soldier as Papa Plauche complains. He says that the hearts of the “Fathers of Families” are bursting with victory. His valiant “Fathers” burn to express their joy.

The General suggests that the joy-swollen “Fathers” repair to the Cathedral, and hear the Abbé Duborg conduct a Te Deum.

Papa Plauche points out that, while a Te Deum is all very well in its way, it is a rite and not a festival. What his “Fathers” – who are thunderbolts of war! – desire is to give a ball.

The General says that he has no objections to the ball.

Papa Plauche explains that a ball is not possible, with the city held fast in the controlling coils of military law. The rule that all lights must be out at nine o’clock, of itself forbids a ball. As affairs stand the “Fathers” are helpless in their happiness. No one may dance by daylight; that would be too fantastic, too bizarre! And yet who, pray, can rejoice in the dark? It is against human nature, argues Papa Plauche.