Chapter VII: Preface (7)

It was late in September, “in the dark of the moon,” when Hale slipped away from the British on Long Island and strolled down to the water’s edge where he was to meet the sloop and sail back to his own army. He waited some time for the ship, but it did not come. After some delay a sailboat came in sight and made up to the shore. He was greatly relieved, for it did not occur to him that there was anything wrong. As the boat drew near he hailed it with a happy shout. When it was too late, Hale saw that some of the men in the boat were in British uniform. In a moment more, he was their prisoner. He had been betrayed--it was never known by whom. He had a Tory cousin who was blamed at first, but his innocence was proven in time.

_From the painting by F. O. C. Darley_]

He was taken to General Howe’s headquarters. The telltale sketches and data were found in his shoes. He did not attempt to deny that he was a spy. It was not necessary to try him after he confessed. He was turned over to the provost marshal to be hanged next day.

Of course, no one knows what Nathan Hale thought that last night, but it may well be believed that he did not waste his last hours in despairing regrets. If he was permitted to write farewell letters that night, they were never delivered. In the morning Hale asked if he might speak with a minister, but that was curtly denied him. “Will you lend me a Bible a moment, then?” was his dying request. “No!” snapped the marshal.

A kind-hearted British officer, who noticed the pure, honest face of the young American spy, offered him shelter from the sun in his tent during a brief delay. The heart of this enemy captain was touched, and it was he who preserved Nathan Hale’s noble words for future ages. If the young spy could have known that his death would strengthen the hearts of patriots to fight for liberty, and that what he was about to say would go resounding down the ages, it would have added to his joy that hot September day. A poet has described the moment when they came and led him out:

“To drum-beat and heart-beat
A soldier marches by;
There is color in his cheek,
There is courage in his eye;
Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat,
In a moment he must die.”

They led him to an apple tree near at hand. While they were fastening his arms behind him and tying a rope around his ankles, he gazed up into the tree. On his handsome face rested the resigned expression which is shown in the bronze and marble statues of Nathan Hale in the Yale yard where he used to play, and in the park before City Hall, in New York.

“Well, have you any confession to make?” asked the marshal. This called Nathan Hale’s mind back. He smiled at the needless question, for he had confessed the night before and had thus made a trial unnecessary. Hesitating only a moment, he answered the officer with simple courtesy, in the bravest words ever uttered by mortal man:

“_I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country._”

LAFAYETTE, THE BOY HERO OF TWO WORLDS

In a great stone building among the tree-covered hills in the south of France there lived a little boy who at birth received fourteen names and titles. He belonged to the noble French family of the Lafayettes, who had been knights for at least seven hundred years. The boy never saw his father, for shortly before the child was born, his brave young soldier father was killed in a battle with the English. The home in which this fatherless boy lived was a castle, but it looked like a great prison or a modern storage warehouse with a huge, round tower at each end. Across its few small windows were iron bars.

Out of all the Lafayette boy’s names, the family called him Gilbert. When he was eleven years old Gilbert was sent to a school in Paris where sons from French gentlemen’s families were taught the things it was thought proper for young nobles to know. First of all, they studied heraldry, which explained the coats-of-arms of their royal and noble relations and was really a sort of family history of France. The boys also learned to ride and to fence and to talk politely--even wittily, if they happened to be bright enough. Besides their own French language they learned Latin so that they could write and even speak it. Then the youths who had a taste for history were instructed in that study, not the history of the whole French people, but the records of the royal and great families, and the battles and schemes of the kings and princes.

In this boys’ college the rooms were very small, dark, and narrow, like prison cells, and the pupils were locked in at night. Gilbert was never allowed a holiday. If his mother came to see him she was permitted to talk with him in the presence of a tutor, almost as if he were a prisoner. The masters feared that a good, motherly chat with her son would distract the boy’s mind from his studies.

Madame de Lafayette wished to do all she could to help her son in his future life. So she moved to Paris and was presented at court; that is, she was introduced to the king and queen and the highest nobles of France. When Gilbert was thirteen his mother died, leaving her son almost alone in the world. He had a rich uncle who might have been his guardian, but he also died, leaving young Lafayette another fortune and making him a very wealthy marquis.

Boys and girls in French noble families were often betrothed in infancy and brought up expecting to marry each other when old enough. Marriage seemed to be rather a question of the family fortunes than of the young people’s real love for each other. When young Marquis de Lafayette was left without parents to plan a proper marriage for him, a rich duke who was a great favorite with King Louis decided to arrange for the orphan boy to marry his own daughter Adrienne. In order to bring this about, Adrienne’s parents invited Gilbert de Lafayette to come and live in their palace, where they all could care for him as a son until it was proper for him to marry their daughter. There was a wonderful wedding when Lafayette was sixteen and Adrienne fourteen years old.

From that time, besides all the wealth of the Lafayettes, the riches of his father-in-law, the duke, gave the young marquis a splendid position at the court of France. If the boy bridegroom only had enjoyed that sort of high life he might have been very happy. But the things which interested the young nobleman were of quite a different sort. While he was at a dinner, in honor of a younger brother of George the Third, king of England, he heard that the American people had started their fight for independence. Lafayette’s sympathies for the unhappy people across the sea were so aroused that he began at once to plan to leave his palace home, his lovely young wife, and his baby daughter, in order to help the American people in their struggle. To find out how best to do this, he went to see Dr. Franklin and Silas Deane, the agents for the United States in France. Knowing how much the American people needed Lafayette’s money and influence, these statesmen encouraged him in every way.

The young marquis fitted out a ship and made ready to start, taking with him several Frenchmen of high rank who also expected to be made officers in the American Army. But Lafayette’s father-in-law did not relish the youth’s idea of fighting for the common people against kings and nobles, so he persuaded the king to order the marquis not to leave the country. In spite of King Louis’s command, Lafayette walked on board his own ship, under the detectives’ noses, disguised as the bodyservant of a stranger from another country who also was going to fight for American liberty.

The Marquis de Lafayette reached the American army, near Philadelphia, after many dangers and hardships. General Washington could not help smiling at the earnestness of “Major-General” Lafayette, aged nineteen, who could command only as much of the English language as he had learned while crossing the Atlantic. Though “the Marquis,” as everyone learned to call him, volunteered to serve anywhere without pay, Washington offered him a place on his staff. Once when the commander-in-chief asked Lafayette how to improve the discipline of the American troops, the noble youth replied, “I am here, General, to learn, not to teach.”

General Lafayette received his first wound in the Battle of Brandywine, where he fought hard to keep the British back from Philadelphia. While riding his horse at the head of his men he was shot in the leg. He recovered from this wound in time to come to Valley Forge and suffer with Washington the hardships of the long, bitter winter there.

While at Valley Forge the young general was sent to keep the British from coming out from Philadelphia and attacking the American camp. Lafayette took his station at Barren Hill near the Schuylkill River. When the British commander had word of this he sent out three companies to surround the boy general from three directions, and make him their prisoner. So sure were they of making this capture that they planned a dinner in honor of their noble French prisoner, and invited their friends in Philadelphia to be present and meet the Marquis de Lafayette.

But the boy general was too shrewd for them all. Quick as a flash he saw a way out of the trap they had set for him. Ordering the heads of his columns to stand in the edge of a grove where they could be seen as if in battle array, he ordered a retreat by a secret path. When the three British lines marched up the hill, even the Americans in the edge of the woods had disappeared, and the companies only met one another and looked sheepish as they marched down again. Their game had gotten away, and they had to eat that dinner without their prisoner-guest.

Howe and his men soon heard that the French were sending ships and men to help their American friends, so they went away from Philadelphia as quickly as possible. On the way to New York, Washington met them and gave battle at Monmouth, New Jersey. He appointed General Lafayette second in command; but General Charles Lee was offended because “that French boy” was placed above him. To relieve his chief, Lafayette gave up the command. This was the battle in which Lee disobeyed Washington’s command and prevented the American army from winning a real victory. It was Lafayette who saw that something was going wrong and helped to save the day for the Americans.

Hearing of his wife’s illness and his little daughter’s death, Lafayette asked leave of absence to go home to France. He returned to America as soon as he could, after persuading the French government to send more money, more men, and more ships to help bring the long war with England to an end. Soon after his return, “the Marquis” was sent with his regiment to meet Cornwallis and defend Virginia.

Cornwallis laughed when he saw that “the Boy” had been sent against him. But “the Boy” was more than a match for the British commander in the south. He kept retreating and advancing up and down the James River. One day Cornwallis would think he was trapping Lafayette, but the next day he found himself only moving farther from his base of supplies. “The Boy” did this just to gain time, for he had learned that the expected fleet was in American waters with a French army on board, and that Washington was on his way down from near New York to meet the French ships and men and surround Cornwallis. It was now the British general’s turn to retreat. He retired to Yorktown, where he was surrounded by the Americans and French and was soon forced to surrender.

As soon as the fighting was ended, General Washington gave a dinner to the French officers and their English prisoner, Lord Cornwallis. The defeated general was so well treated by Washington and his men that the two commanders became good friends.

When the Americans had gained their independence, General Lafayette returned to France, where he was received as a hero, even by the king whose command he had disobeyed by running away to help America. The people were so fond of the brave young marquis, that King Louis appointed him a marshal of France, though he was only twenty-four.

The French Revolution soon broke out, but it was very different from the American Revolution, because the people of France had the wrong idea of liberty. They killed the king, the queen, and many of the nobles in a savage and cruel way. They even imprisoned and put to death some of their early leaders, who loved liberty, but who were not willing to do such savage deeds to obtain it. Lafayette was one of the lovers of liberty who suffered much from the French people during the Revolution, because he did not believe in going to extremes.

Washington and Lafayette did not forget each other. They wrote devoted letters to each other as if they were father and son. The French nobleman named his son for Washington, who, during the troublous years in France, received and cared for the boy as if he were a grandson.

Nearly fifty years after Lafayette’s first coming to America, he made his fourth voyage to our country, bringing with him his son, George Washington de Lafayette. He came, at the invitation of President Monroe and Congress, as the guest of the United States. Because of the enthusiasm with which he was welcomed all over the country, his visit was remembered as one of the brightest times in the history of the United States.

One hundred and forty years after the Marquis de Lafayette’s first coming to help America, four millions of American young men were enrolled to rescue republican France from her brutal enemy. A million soldiers had crossed the ocean, and another million were on their way when a company of Americans visited the last resting-place of Lafayette. As they laid a wreath upon the tomb of the “Friend of America,” General Pershing, the commander of the American forces, exclaimed, “Lafayette, we are here!”

THE IMMORTAL REPLY OF JOHN PAUL JONES

Of the millions of boys who have had “sea fever,” perhaps none suffered with it more than John Paul, a bright, sandy-haired Scotch lad. His father was a gardener on the estate of a noble lord. John went to school but little, yet he studied hard while he was there. He had learned to sail a boat quite well when he had a chance, at twelve years old, to go to America as a cabin boy. When the owner of the ship soon after failed in business, John Paul entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman. He learned all he could in the short time he was a “middy,” but, as his father was poor, he saw no chance to get ahead there.

He left the navy and found work on a merchant ship running between Scotland and the West Indies. Coming back from a voyage to Jamaica, the ship’s captain and mate both died, and John Paul, though still a mere boy, sailed the ship home. So he became a captain before he was twenty. In those days, shipmasters treated their men roughly, and once young Captain Paul had to flog the ship’s carpenter. The man died some time afterward of fever, and, to spite the young shipmaster, he claimed that he had been fatally injured by John Paul’s cruelty. After that, on another voyage, the sailors mutinied or turned against their captain, and tried to kill him. In self-defense the young master knocked the leader down stairs and he died of the fall.

The next time John Paul was heard from, he was living in America with a wealthy man named Jones. It was just at the beginning of the War for Independence, and the young Scotchman was so in love with liberty and the new country that he decided to become an American. In doing this he took the name of his new-found friend Jones. Instead of John Paul, the British subject, he now called himself Paul Jones, American. He went to the Congress in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, in May, 1775, to offer his services. He was promptly given command of several ships to defend the colonies against Great Britain. The next year the Declaration of Independence was signed. On the 14th of June, 1777, the Congress appointed him to the command of the American ship-of-war, _Ranger_. On the same day the Congress adopted a flag and made this record:

“_Resolved_, That the flag of the thirteen United States be
thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, and that the union be
thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new
constellation.”

Captain Paul Jones had a silk flag made at once and raised it on the _Ranger_, on the first birthday of the United States, July 4th, 1777. The first voyage of this ship was to France, and the young United States captain announced to the French admiral, in the harbor he was about to enter, that he would expect the French fleet to salute the new American flag. After some delay, the French officer consented and the _Ranger_ sailed into port between two rows of French ships-of-war, which had French flags flying, and French sailors and soldiers manning the yardarms, and cannon booming all along the line, in honor of the Stars and Stripes. That was a great day for the United States, for this was the first time a foreign kingdom recognized the new republic of America.

France not only treated the United States as an equal, but she went to war with England and helped the Americans win their independence. Captain Jones was a little, peppery man, and had been an American only two years, but he was trying to make up for lost time. He believed so much in the people’s right to be free, that he considered being an American citizen the highest honor in the world. He begged the high French officials and Doctor Franklin, who represented the United States in France, to let him take the _Ranger_ out and fight England all by himself. The British had taken American prisoners and treated them as spies and traitors, instead of as prisoners of war. Captain Jones wished to capture some British prisoners and teach the enemy how prisoners of war should be treated.

When the Americans in Paris and the French tried to convince the brave little captain that it would be dangerous for him to go out with but one ship, he replied that he liked nothing better than “going into harm’s way,” and he finally went. He waited outside an English port till the warship _Drake_ came out. The British commander stared at the new flag, for he had never seen it before. “What ship is that?” he asked. “It is the American ship _Ranger_.” Some one on the _Drake_ made fun of the new flag, saying it looked like a patchwork quilt. “Very well,” retorted Captain Jones, “we will cover your Union Jack with it, then.”

The battle between the _Ranger_ and the _Drake_ lasted just one hour and four minutes. When it was over, the _Drake_ had lost her captain and first lieutenant and thirty-eight men, killed and wounded, while the loss on the _Ranger_ was only two killed and six wounded.

When Captain Jones returned to the shores of France he brought with him the _Drake_ as a prize, with a goodly crew of British prisoners to exchange for Americans. As he had promised, the Stars and Stripes were at the _Drake’s_ masthead over the British flag. There was no trouble then about saluting the American flag. All France and America went wild over this victory. In fact, nearly every nation under heaven--excepting Great Britain--was greatly pleased with the escapade of brave little Captain Jones.

Of course, Captain Jones had just had enough to make him long to be “going into harm’s way” on a larger scale. But France now had her own troubles with England. She needed all the ships and men she could raise to make a navy able to beat the big fleet Great Britain was getting ready for a great naval battle. Still, Captain Jones would not be put off. With Doctor Franklin’s help the French found him a poor old ship which they told him to arm and man and go ahead with. Jones did his best, but the foundry did not fill his order for cannon, and he was obliged to take some old guns which were too heavy for the positions he had to give them. It was bad enough to be forced to fight the whole British navy with a poor, slow, rotten old hulk with out-of-date guns, but the men he had to take to do the fighting were worse. Among them were Portuguese and Malays who could not understand orders in either French or English; but, worst of all, there were a hundred or more English prisoners, who would watch their chance to stab or shoot the few Americans in command, and surrender the ship to their own countrymen.

Dr. Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard” almanac had been published as a French book, under the title of “Bonhomme Richard,” or “Goodman Richard.” So Jones, in compliment to his genial friend and helper, named his newly-made-over ship, _Bonhomme Richard_. Before he got this craft ready, several French commanders and crews wished to join him. These men were not capable commanders, but they had better ships and crews than Captain Jones, the one man best able to use them to advantage.

When Jones started out with the _Richard_, he was followed by a sort of private fleet, among which were the _Alliance_ and the _Pallas_. The commanders of the other ships refused to obey orders unless they happened to feel so disposed. Most of the other ships got lost or started off, like pirates, after prizes for themselves, so that when Jones met the leading ships of the British, there were only the _Richard_, the _Alliance_, and the _Pallas_ left.

When the three ships came round a high point called Flamborough Head and saw there the British men-of-war, _Serapis_ and _Countess of Scarborough_, Commander Jones ordered the _Pallas_ to engage the _Countess_ while he, with the _Richard_, tackled the _Serapis_.

The commander had one lieutenant, Richard Dale, an American who had escaped in the most mysterious way from an English prison. Without the heroic aid of this officer Jones might have lost the day--or the night, for the battle did not begin until dark. There were hundreds of people on the shore watching the fight. At the very beginning they saw--and heard--the old cannon on the _Richard_ bursting and killing nearly all the gunners and powder-boys serving them.

Meanwhile the _Serapis_, which was a brand-new ship with twice the number and weight of guns that Jones had, was raking the _Richard_ fore and aft, and shooting great, ragged holes in her sides. The sea came pouring into the ship and the British prisoners came running up, yelling frantically, “We are sinking!” By sheer force of will and fear of eye, Paul Jones and Richard Dale drove those excited Englishmen back into the hold to work the pumps, as though they would pump the North Sea dry.

Jones sailed his ship close to the _Serapis_, intending to catch hold of its side with hooks called grappling-irons. This made it possible for the men on both ships to fight hand to hand. The _Richard_ came alongside with such force that a spar which stuck out at the side (called the jib-boom) was driven into the ropes which held the mast nearest the stern of the _Serapis_ (called the mizzenmast). The grip which Captain Jones now had on the _Serapis_ was like that of a Boston bulldog who has an English mastiff by the throat. If one ship went down, the other would have to go too.

“Well done, my brave lads. We have got her now!” shouted Jones; and he ordered the sailing master to haul the _Richard’s_ cable over and tie the jib-boom of the _Serapis_ to his own mizzenmast. When the cable caught and became tangled the master uttered an oath.

“Don’t swear,” said Jones calmly. “In another moment we may be in eternity; but let us do our duty.”

The ropes and spars of the two ships were now so tangled that the men in the top of the _Richard_ scrambled across into the rigging of the enemy, like monkeys in two treetops. In spite of all the captain’s efforts, the _Richard_ was now on fire in a dozen places. The people on shore cheered, for it looked as if the English were burning the “pirate” ship. The master-at-arms, hearing a report that the captain and Dale had both been killed, started with two others to surrender to the commander of the _Serapis_, all three shouting, “Quarter!” The commander of the _Serapis_, hearing the cry, asked Jones if he was ready to give up.

“No,” shouted the American commander, “_I have not yet begun to fight!_”

By this time even the masts of the _Richard_ were burning; but an American sailor saw a chance to do great harm to the enemy. Seizing a hand grenade, or bomb, he crept across the yardarms of both ships and threw it down upon the deck of the _Serapis_. The bomb fell and burst on a train of gunpowder scattered by broken cartridges. The flame blazed along past several of the big guns, ending in a terrific explosion.

This turned the tide of the battle. The Americans swarmed on board the _Serapis_ and took possession of it. The English commander surrendered by pulling down the flag of his ship. In giving up his sword to Jones he said, with a sneer,

“It is painful to me that I must resign to a man with a halter around his neck.”

The American captain seemed not to notice the intended insult. Every American boy and girl has a right to be proud of Paul Jones for his noble reply:

“Sir, you have fought like a hero.”

The _Pallas_ had captured the _Countess of Scarborough_ after an hour’s fighting. The _Bonhomme Richard_, when cut loose from the _Serapis_, sank to the bottom of the sea. Before the rest of the enemy’s fleet could stop them, Jones and the commander of the _Pallas_ sailed away with the _Serapis_ and the _Countess_ to a safe neutral port in Holland. The British now offered a reward of more than fifty thousand dollars for Captain Paul Jones, dead or alive. The people of Holland begged him not to fly the American flag, as there were two British fleets waiting outside that Dutch harbor to capture him. But Paul Jones insisted on flying the Stars and Stripes, not only in that port, but when he came out and ran the gauntlet of more than forty British men-of-war. He passed them all with colors flying, and reached a French port in safety.

Captain Paul Jones was one of the heroes of the world. The French made him a knight and King Louis presented him with a magnificent gold-handled sword. The United States Congress voted him a gold medal in honor of his greatest victory and passed a resolution commending “his zeal, prudence and intrepidity,” assigned him to the command of a new ship of the line then being built, and proposed to create for him the rank of real admiral, until then unknown in the American navy. General Washington wrote him a letter of congratulation in which he said: “You have won the admiration of the world.”

Thus the son of a poor gardener became our greatest naval hero in the War of the Revolution. But above all the honors he received at home and abroad, this was Paul Jones’s proudest boast: “_I have ever looked out for the honor of the American flag._”

GENERAL MARION, THE CAROLINA “SWAMP FOX”

A hundred years ago, when boys had but few books of any kind, “The Life of General Marion” was their favorite book of adventure, because of its short stories of rare bravery and hairbreadth escapes. General Francis Marion, of whom the book tells, was a southern man, born the same year as General Washington, and a commander of some of the American troops in the War for Independence.

During that war, when the British found that they could accomplish little in the northern states, they decided to carry the war into the south. Lord Cornwallis was the British commander; under him Colonel Tarleton was a cavalry officer notorious for bullying and cruelty who became a terror to the whole region. Another commander of British troops in the south was a former American general, Benedict Arnold, the traitor, who joined the British after he had failed to deliver West Point into the hands of the enemy.

General Horatio Gates was sent by the Congress to defend the south against the British. But General Gates was not a great or brave commander. He was defeated by Cornwallis at Camden, South Carolina. He lost two thousand men, and the rest of his soldiers were scattered. Because of this terrible defeat--the worst in the whole War for Independence--the southern people were deeply discouraged.

What was to be done? In the south there were many Tories, as the people were called who believed that those who fought against England for liberty were rebels. Besides fighting in the British campaigns, the southern Tories went about in bands, shooting and injuring all the “rebels” they

could. So the southern patriots gathered together in small companies to defend their families from the British and the Tories, and to prevent the British from capturing the whole southern country before Washington could send down a better general and another army.

During the months after the defeat at Camden, the fight was carried on in what was called guerrilla warfare--_guerrilla_ being Spanish for “little war.” Small bands of Americans hid in the woods and swamps, and when they caught the British off guard, suddenly pounced upon them, taking or rescuing prisoners. The greatest leader of this kind of warfare on the American side was General Marion.

These southern soldiers had very poor weapons. Most of their guns were the kind used in shooting birds, and were loaded with shot instead of bullets. For swords they had wooden-handled saws with the teeth ground down to a smooth edge. They had but little to eat--often only potatoes, which they could bake in the ashes of their campfires.

Their horses, however, were the finest and fastest in all that country. Although these men had to deny themselves food and clothing, their horses were well fed and groomed, for often the masters’ lives depended on the fleetness of their steeds. And the horses sometimes acted as if they understood and enjoyed the terrible game of life and death their masters were playing.

Some of the bravest men in the south, seeing no other way to save or to serve their country, came and offered themselves to General Marion, to fight under the greatest hardships and risks in the most dangerous adventures. Among these was the famous Sergeant Jasper, who was one of the first to risk his life for the flag. Nine British ships-of-war attacked a fort in Charleston Harbor. They shot away the staff on which the American flag was flying; but Jasper jumped out, caught the banner before it touched the ground, and climbed up and nailed it in place, while the guns were aimed at him as well as at the starry ensign.

While Sergeant Jasper was under General Marion he was often sent out on scout and spy duty. He had a natural talent for disguising himself. He went once to visit a sergeant in a British regiment. While he was there a number of American prisoners were brought in. Taking it for granted that a guard of ten British soldiers, with these prisoners, would pass a certain spring, Jasper left the British camp to obtain help. He found only one American who could go with him. The two hid themselves near the spring, surprised the ten redcoats, disarmed them, and, with the former prisoners, marched gaily back to Marion’s headquarters with the ten captured British soldiers.

Once when General Marion came to a river ferry, he heard that a company of ninety British regulars were taking more than two hundred captured Americans to the prison-ship at Charleston. The prisoners already in the hold of the ship were starved and neglected. Besides, smallpox had broken out among them, and many of the best men among the patriots were dying of that loathsome disease. So General Marion ordered his men to ride through the darkness to the ford where the British and their prisoners had crossed the river a few hours before. Here they learned that the redcoats and their charges were going to stay that night at a country tavern called the Blue House. The Americans approached this place with great caution. When they came to a wooden bridge, they took horse-blankets and laid them down on the bridge to deaden the sound of the horses’ hoofs.

Before deciding how to make an attack, General Marion sent several scouts to find out the lay of the land. With tread as sure and silent as that of moccasined Indians, the scouts returned and whispered this report:

“The officers are carousing in the house. Some of the men are outside. Many of them must be asleep, as we could not get a glimpse of them. A few sentinels are lounging about, without a thought of being attacked.”

Marion told his men to lie down under the trees for a little rest. Very early in the morning, when all the British, including the sentinels, seemed to be asleep, he roused the men and ordered the attack.

The odds were over three to one against them, but Marion’s men were used to that. They were taking a great risk, but there was much to be gained--guns, equipment and British prisoners who could be exchanged so as to release Americans from the prison-ship. Best of all, each man of the thirty might be the means of setting ten other Americans free.

When the men were well awake, General Marion sent a lieutenant ahead, directing him as follows:

“Take a few men with you, make a wide circle, and come in behind the house. Get as close to them as you can, and wait till I give the signal. Then close in on them and see that no one gets away. We must make quick work of this. See that your guns are all right.”

To the men waiting with him he said: “Are you ready?”

“Ready, sir,” they whispered back.

“Come on, then,” he commanded. “Follow me. Don’t make any noise. Don’t speak. Watch me. Don’t fire till I say the word.”

They crept around the Blue House like Indians, testing every twig lest it snap, and feeling their way in the darkness. Suddenly a shot rang out in the early morning air. A sentinel on the other side of the house must have seen the lieutenant’s men. The British soldiers, roused from a sound sleep, jumped about, peering this way and that in the darkness. No one knew what had happened, or what would happen next.

The officers came tumbling out, swearing and yelling. As the Americans came rushing in from all sides, shouting and shooting, the British thought they were attacked by an army instead of by thirty guerrillas. Marion’s men grabbed the rifles of the British soldiers, shooting some and knocking others down. Some of the British shouted, “Quarter!” and General Marion ordered his men to stop firing.

There was a wholesale surrender, and the hundreds of American prisoners were set free. Many of them joined Marion’s men. When the British saw how they and their prisoners had been taken in, ten to one, they looked sheepish.

But the British leader, the bullying Colonel Tarleton, had made his escape. His motto seemed to be--

“He who fights and runs away
Will live to fight another day.”

He ran away, at least, though he did not do any fighting first.

Five months after the battle of Camden, there was another battle at Cowpens. The British army, commanded by Tarleton, was only a little larger than the American. The redcoats were so badly beaten that they lost over nine hundred men, while the American loss was only seventy-two.

One day, not long after, Tarleton was bullying a southern woman in her home, where he and some of his officers were quartered. There was, on the American side, a Colonel Washington, a distant relative of the commander-in-chief. In his insulting way, Tarleton asked, when the lady said this officer was a relative of hers:

“What does Colonel Washington look like? I have never had the pleasure of meeting him.”

“You might have seen him,” said the lady, sweetly, “if you had _looked behind you_ at the Battle of Cowpens!”

This polite way of calling him a coward made Tarleton very angry, but he was no match in wit for a brave and brilliant southern woman.

Though many of the wealthiest people of the south were Tories, some of them were true patriots. A widow named Motte had just built a beautiful home on a hilltop, and had furnished it elegantly, when the British decided that it would make a fine fort, and promptly took possession of it. General Marion and his guerrilla band surrounded the mansion and told Mrs. Motte, who was then staying in a neighbor’s house, that if he could set her house afire he could “smoke out” the British and capture them. That woman patriot was glad to sacrifice her lovely home for the good of her country; so Marion burned down the mansion and made the redcoats his prisoners.

WINNERS OF THE WEST

WOLFE AND MONTCALM, THE RIVAL HEROES OF QUEBEC

More than one hundred years after Champlain returned from France to his beloved Quebec, France and Great Britain were at war. In America this struggle was called the French and Indian War, because the English colonists had to fight against the French and their Indian allies, who came down from Canada to keep the English out of the country along the Ohio River. In Europe this strife, in which several other nations took part, was known as the Seven Years’ War.

During this war young George Washington was first heard of. He was sent into the western wilderness in the dead of winter to carry a message from the English governor of Virginia to the French commander at a fort in western Pennsylvania. A few years later, General Braddock came over with an army of British regulars to fight the French and their allies in the region where the young messenger had been. Major George Washington was on the English general’s staff, and saved many of the British regulars after Braddock fell, defeated, near Fort Duquesne, where Pittsburgh now stands.

The British attacked the French also at Louisburg, in Nova Scotia, and at Ticonderoga, near the southern end of Lake Champlain; but the most important point to attack was Quebec, “the Gibraltar of America,” which Champlain had built nearly one hundred and fifty years before. The general then in military command at Quebec was the Marquis de Montcalm, a true Frenchman, devoted to his king, and to his mother, wife, and children, from all of whom he was separated because of his warm love of country.

In his frequent letters to his mother and his wife, Montcalm told all his troubles with the governor of Canada and the Canadian volunteers. He had brought from France to Quebec an army of regular soldiers. They looked with scorn upon the French Canadian raw recruits, who seemed about as rude as their Indian neighbors. The Canadian governor, on his side, saw with jealous eyes the French marquis who had come from Old France to command the Canadian companies along with his own French troops. It needed rare tact and true love of country for Montcalm to keep friendly with the Canadian governor, who pretended to be the friend of the marquis while secretly turning everybody he could against him.

When the general won a great victory at Oswego, hundreds of miles away, the governor, who was not there, wrote to his friends and the men over him in France about “my” victory and what “I” planned and “I” did with such great success. But though Montcalm wrote about his trials and troubles to his wife and mother, he managed to keep on good terms with the governor and to prevent an outbreak between the French regulars and the Canadian soldiers and Indian warriors.

General Montcalm knew that the British would attack the French stronghold of Quebec. To keep this fortress at the narrow point in the St. Lawrence River might mean the saving not only of all Canada, but also of the French forts and territory along the Wabash and Mississippi rivers, more than a thousand miles away to the southwest.

The fortress at Quebec seemed impossible to take, for it was on top of a high, steep cliff looking over the St. Lawrence. The lower part of the town lay along the level of the river far below, but the town would be of no use whatever to an enemy that could not take the fort, frowning directly overhead. It seemed that the only way the fort might be reached by an enemy was by way of the St. Charles River, just below the town. Troops might be taken up this river, and reach Quebec by going a long distance around back of the city. Montcalm had logs chained together, making a “boom,” and threw that across the St. Charles where it flows into the St. Lawrence. Then no ship or large boat could enter there and land soldiers behind the fort.

Not only was the St. Lawrence River narrow at Quebec, but there were many rocks in the swift channel below, so that no ship without a skilled pilot could pass up to the town. Montcalm, however, wishing to make Quebec doubly safe, posted most of his army below the town, to prevent the approach of the enemy.

Meanwhile William Pitt, the British prime minister, decided, as Montcalm had foreseen, that Quebec must be taken. Pitt made up his mind also that a young British officer named Wolfe was the right man to place in command of the British army, to capture the Canadian fortress. Wolfe’s father had been a general, and from the age of sixteen the son had been a soldier. As a colonel under General Amherst at Louisburg, James Wolfe had shown himself so fearless as to be even rash, and so devoted to his duty that he seemed not to care for his own life. He was so daring and reckless that some one tried to warn the king of England by saying, “That young Wolfe is mad.”

“Mad, is he?” snapped King George. “Then I only hope he will bite some others of my generals!”

Colonel Wolfe was as keen and wise as he was brave; so the king appointed him general and commanded him to capture Quebec.

James Wolfe was as devoted to his mother as Montcalm was to his--even more so, for Wolfe had neither wife nor child to divide his affection. He wrote home often about his army life, his hopes, and his aims. With all his successes and honors, General Wolfe was a very modest young man.

He sailed up the St. Lawrence with a small army--only nine thousand men. Of these he wrote to William Pitt:

“Our troops are good, and if valor can make amends for the want of numbers, we shall probably succeed.”

To the astonishment of Montcalm and the French army and people, the British ships sailed up to the Isle of Orleans opposite Quebec as if there were no dangerous rocks in the rapid river there. Wolfe had taken some Canadian pilots on board farther down the St. Lawrence, and had threatened to hang them if one of the ships ran upon a rock.

Still, Montcalm told the people that there could be no danger. The hated English had only run into a trap. They could go neither upstream nor down, and when winter came their ships would be frozen in the ice and become an easy prey. So the French general refused to risk an attack. He decided to play a waiting game and let time and nature fight for France. On the day when Wolfe’s fleet arrived, a violent storm came up, and several British ships and floats were dashed on the rocks and badly damaged. After that, Montcalm sent out burning ships to set fire to the English fleet and destroy it. But Wolfe’s men bravely towed the French fire-ships out of the way, and the only men lost were the Canadian captain in charge of the fire-ships and six of his sailors, who were burned to death.

Next Wolfe tried to enter the country on the Quebec side of the river, near the Falls of Montmorency, where the water falls two hundred and fifty feet over high cliffs. These falls are so beautiful that some of the English risked being shot by the Canadians in order to see them. The region between the Falls of Montmorency and Quebec was so well guarded by French and Canadians that Montcalm was sure the English could never get behind Quebec. He sent word to the British general: “You will, no doubt, demolish the town, but you shall never get inside of it.” Wolfe answered back: “I will have Quebec if I stay here till the end of November.” But every English attack failed, and even the brave young commander became discouraged. He had never known good health, and he was now quite ill.

When he was urged to attack the English general and capture or drive him back, Montcalm said with a smile, “Let him amuse himself where he is. If we drive him off he may go to some place where he can do us harm.”

But the French made another attempt to set fire to the British fleet with seventy rafts, small boats, and schooners. Again they failed, and the French themselves explained that this was due only to the courage of the English sailors, who swarmed out in little boats to fight the fire before it could do any harm to their fleet.

In August General Wolfe was ill in bed, and it was reported in the British army that he was not likely to live long. But even while he was so ill, the young commander’s one thought was the capture of Quebec. On the last day of August he said to his physician that he now had a plan to carry out if he could only live to lead his army in person. “I know too well that you cannot cure me,” he continued, “but pray make me so that I may be without pain for a few days, and able to do my duty. That is all I want.”

In his letter to his mother that day he wrote:

“The enemy puts nothing to risk, and I can’t in conscience put the
whole army to risk. He has wisely shut himself up so that I can’t
get at him without spilling a torrent of blood, and that perhaps to
little or no purpose. The Marquis de Montcalm is at the head of a
great number of bad soldiers, and I am at the head of a small
number of good ones that wish for nothing so much as to fight him,
but the wary old fellow avoids an action.”

Early in September Wolfe seemed himself again, though he realized that he had only a few days to live. The French saw the British fleet pass their fort on the way up the river at night, although the cannon of the fort belched lightnings and bellowed thunder at them. Montcalm wondered what the English were going to try to do, after all. “They mean to land somewhere,” he said.

Wolfe did “mean to land somewhere,” and that somewhere was the very place Montcalm did not dream of, a steep cliff back of the town. When any one spoke of the danger of the capture of Quebec, the French general would shrug and smile and say, “But the English cannot fly!”

One night when it was very dark, sixteen hundred British soldiers came floating down the river in their ships’ boats till they came opposite the town. Wolfe was with them in person, as he had hoped and prayed to be. As they were slowly floating, the young commander repeated the familiar lines by Gray,

“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour--
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

“I would rather have written those lines,” he said with deep feeling, “than take Quebec to-morrow!”

As their boats stole in to the shore, a sentinel called out in French, “Who goes there?”

“France,” answered a voice in French.

“What regiment?”

“The Queen’s,” again in good French, by a Scotchman who had seen service in France.

A little later another sentryman challenged them.

“What is that?”

The Scotchman whispered, “Provision boats. _Sh!_ the English will hear us!”

In this way they reached a point at the foot of the steep cliff. Twenty-four men started to climb up where it seemed impossible. As they kept on, others started up after them. Then came others, General Wolfe among the number. In a short time quite a large company, in red coats and Scotch kilts, had reached the top and dragged several small cannon after them. The French felt so safe from attack that the small guard on the Plains of Abraham, as the level top was called, was taken by surprise and easily overcome.

_From the painting by Alonzo Chappel_]

An alarm spread. A Frenchman on horseback came dashing over to Montcalm’s headquarters, gasping: “The English--on the Plains of Abraham!”

There was a great fight on top of that cliff. Wolfe was seen here--there--everywhere! But before the British drove the French back, the young general had fallen--shot three times.

“Shall I go for a surgeon?” asked an Englishman.

“There’s no need,” Wolfe whispered. “It’s all over with me.”

A little later a man shouted, “See how they run!”

“Who run?” repeated Wolfe, opening his eyes.

“The enemy, sir. They are giving way everywhere!”

Wolfe roused up long enough to send a brief order to the next in command, telling him just how to go ahead and capture the fort. Then he lay down wearily, smiling as he closed his eyes. “Now God be praised, I shall die in peace,” he said.

The French hero of Quebec also was shot through the body in that last short fight. “How long have I to live?” he asked.

“Not more than twelve hours,” said the surgeon in charge.

“So much the better,” said the dying Montcalm. “I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.”

DANIEL BOONE, THE GREAT INDIAN FIGHTER OF KENTUCKY

Of all the great American hunters, trappers, and Indian fighters, Daniel Boone was the leader. He was born in Pennsylvania, but while still a boy he moved with his parents to North Carolina. Besides learning to do farm work and help his father at the loom and the forge, the

_From the painting by Chappel_]

Boone boy found time for trapping, hunting, and learning the arts of a woodsman. Father Boone, though of Quaker descent, encouraged this son to go hunting and to learn the woodcraft of the Indians. When the lad was twelve his heart was delighted by the gift of a light rifle from his sensible father.

Of course, Daniel did not have much chance to go to school, but he acquired mathematics enough to fit him for the business of backwoods life and to make him a fair land surveyor. But he never had the gift of spelling. For many years a giant beech-tree was pointed out where he had had a bear-fight; it was a kind of monument to Daniel’s poor spelling. In the bark, high on its trunk, he had cut these crooked letters: “D. Boon cilled a bar on this tree in the year 1760.” Yet, although he did not spell even his own name correctly, Daniel Boone was the best educated of all the pioneers, for he had just the kind of knowledge that his country needed most at that time.