The Story of Isaac Brock Part 7

CHAPTER XVII.

OUR HERO MEETS TEc.u.mSEH.

A few minutes only had elapsed when Elliott returned. The sentry's challenge caused Brock to look up from the table, littered with plans and despatches. Another figure darkened the doorway.

"This, sir," said Elliott, "is Tec.u.mseh, the Shawanese chief of whom you have heard, and who desires to be presented to you."

The General, who had removed the stains of travel and was in uniform, rose to his full height, bowed, extended his hand and explained in manly fas.h.i.+on the reason for asking that the firing be stopped. The contrast presented by the two men was striking. The old world and the new, face to face--a scene for the brush of an impressionist. Brock, tall, fair, big-limbed, a blue-eyed giant, imposing in scarlet coat and blue-white riding trousers, ta.s.selled Hessian boots, and c.o.c.ked-hat in hand. On his benevolent face was an irresistible smile.

The Indian, though of middle height, was of most perfect proportions, an athlete in bronze, lithe and supple as a panther. His oval face, set in a frame of glistening black hair, shone like a half-polished copper relief. Overlooking the nose, straight as one of his own arrows, and from which some tinkling silver coins were suspended, a pair of hawk-like eyes, hazel-black and unflinching--in which the secrets of the world seemed slumbering--gleamed upon Brock. His dress, a hunting jacket of tanned deer-skin and close-fitting leggings. Fringed moca.s.sins of the same material, richly embroidered in silk and porcupine quills dyed in divers colours, encased his feet. The light from the open log fire flickered fitfully, half revealing the antlered heads of moose and caribou and other trophies of the chase that, hanging from the rafters, looked down upon the group, adding weirdness to the picture.

Brock briefly explained that he had come to fight the King's enemies, enemies who so far had never seen his back, and who were Tec.u.mseh's enemies also. "Would Tec.u.mseh maintain an honourable warfare?"

Perhaps no eulogy of Brock was ever penned that so well summed up his qualities as did the terse, four-worded certificate of character uttered by the Indian before replying to the British general's appeal. Tec.u.mseh looked "Master Isaac's" commanding physique up and over, over and down--Brock's caution as to waste of powder doubtless weighing with him--until eye met eye, and then, impulsively extending his thin brown hand, turned to his followers, exclaiming in tones of highest admiration:

"_This_ is a man!"

a.s.senting "Ughs" and "Ho-hos" followed in rapid succession, and in response to Brock's invitation the headmen, painted and plumed and in striped blankets, squatted on their stained reed mats and wild-beast skins on the ba.s.swood log floor. Questioned as to the nature of the country westward, Tec.u.mseh took a roll of elm-bark and with the point of his scalping-knife traced on its white inner surface the features of the region--hills, forests, trails, rivers, muskegs and clearings. Rough, perhaps, but as accurate, he said, as if drawn by a pale-face _teebahkee-wayninni_ (surveyor).

That night, after Tec.u.mseh's return, Brock again held council with his staff, proposing an attack on Detroit. Only one of his chief officers, the staunch colonial quartermaster, Lieutenant-Colonel Nichol, agreed with him. Colonel Henry Procter, from whom he had expected whole-hearted support, strongly objected. History teaches us that the conception of a daring plan is the offspring of great minds only. Procter was not of this cla.s.s, as his subsequent record shows. Some of our hero's critics have described his resolve to attack Detroit as "audacious and desperate." Isaac Brock was, of course, nothing if not contemptuously daring. The greater the difficulty that faced him the more was he determined to challenge the obstacle, that to a less confident man would have been rejected as insurmountable. He had, however, resolved and planned not only upon taking Detroit, but, if need be, the pursuit and capture of Hull's entire army, compelling him to either stand and fight or surrender. With habitual prescience he had weighed well the issues and chosen the lesser alternative. His own defeat and possibly his death, on the one hand, against the probable salvation of half a continent on the other. What true soldier could hesitate?

While patiently hearing objections, he brushed the most of them aside as mere flies on the wheel. Surely the way had been opened to him. The seized despatches had revealed the discord among Hull's troops and shown him that while the United States militia, the flower of Ohio and Kentucky, was of good material, the United States soldiers were not. He knew that the situation in Upper Canada called for extreme measures, and that the time to strike was now or never, for his scouts had truly reported that 350 United States mounted troops were pressing close upon his rear. They were, in fact, only a mile or two distant. If his own inferior force was outflanked, or his communication with the Canadian interior cut, it spelled utter disaster. He was in a wilderness without hope of reinforcements. As Colonel Ca.s.s, the United States commander, later reported to the President, Brock was "between two fires and with no hope of succour." Brock knew he must act at once or even retreat might be impossible. With inborn ac.u.men he saw at a glance the peril of his own position, and with cool courage hastened to avert it. He realized that upon the "destruction or discomfiture" of Hull's forces "the safety of the province depended."

Brock listened closely to Procter's argument--by this time he knew, of course, that Hull's own line of communication with his reserves had been cut--then rising, when all who cared to speak had finished, he said: "Gentlemen, I have definitely decided on crossing the river and attacking Fort Detroit. Instead of further advice I must beg of you to give me your hearty support. The general orders for to-morrow will be issued at once."

This decision was typical of the man of action. "Prudent only where recklessness was a fault, and hazardous only when hesitation meant defeat."

CHAPTER XVIII.

AN INDIAN POW-WOW.

It was a picturesque council of white men and Indians that was held at dawn in an open glade of the forest. The fragrant odours of the bush mingled with the pungent smoke of the red willow-bark, puffed from a hundred pipes. Conspicuous at this pow-wow was Tec.u.mseh, who across his close-fitting buckskin hunting jacket, which descended to his knees and was trimmed with split leather fringe, wore a belt of wampum, made of the purple enamel of mussel sh.e.l.ls--cut into lengths like sections of a small pipe-stem, perforated and strung on sinew. On his head he wore a toque of eagle plumes.

"My object," said Brock, addressing the Indians, "is to a.s.sist you to drive the 'Long-knives' [Americans] from the frontier, and repel invasion of the King's country." Tec.u.mseh, speaking for his tribesmen, remarked, not without sarcasm, that "their great father, King George, having awakened out of a long sleep, they were now ready to shed their last drop of blood in that father's service."

"The pale faces," he continued, after an impressive pause--and the fire of his eloquence and his gestures swayed his hearers like the reeds on the river bank--"the Americans who want to fight the British are our enemies.... They came to us hungry and they cut off the hands of our brothers who gave them corn.... We gave them rivers of fish and they poisoned our fountains.... We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum and trinkets and--a grave!... The shades of our fathers slaughtered on the banks of the Tippecanoe can find no rest.... Their eyes can see no herds on the hills of light in the hunting grounds of the dead!... Until our enemies are no more we must be as one man, under one chief, whose name is--Death!... I have spoken."

Tec.u.mseh, it should be known, bore a personal grudge against the Americans, especially against the 4th Regiment, then in garrison at Detroit, the "heroes of Tippecanoe." This was a terrible misnomer, for under General Harrison, with 1,000 soldiers, less than a year before, they had taken part in the slaughter of Tec.u.mseh's half-armed band of 600 men and women on the banks of the Tippecanoe River, during that chief's absence with many of his warriors, and had laid waste his village. With a perhaps pardonable spirit of vindictiveness, such as is shared by both redskin and white man, the human-being in him thirsted for revenge.

Brock, perceiving Tec.u.mseh's sagacity and influence over the savages, invited the Shawanese and Wawanosh, Ojebekun and the other sachems, to a private council. Here he unfolded his plans. Before doing this he made it a condition that no barbarities were to be committed. "The scalping-knife," said he, "must be discarded, and forbearance, compa.s.sion and clemency shown to the vanquished." He told them he wanted to restrict their military operations to the known rules of war, as far as was possible under the singular conditions in which they fought, and exacted a promise from the lofty-minded Tec.u.mseh that his warriors "should not taste pernicious liquor until they had humbled the Big-knives." "If this resolution," remarked Brock, "is persevered in, you must surely conquer."

Brock's rapid ascendency over the Indians was astonis.h.i.+ng; they already revered him as a common father.

That same afternoon our hero, moving up with his entire command to Sandwich, occupied the mansion of Colonel Baby, the great fur-trader, just evacuated by Hull. In the s.p.a.cious hall hooks were nailed to the rafters, from which were suspended great steel-yards, by which the beaver packs were weighed. Scattered on the hewn floor in much profusion were soldiers' accoutrements, service and pack-saddles, iron-bound chests mixed up with bear-traps and paddles, rolls of birch-bark, leather hunting s.h.i.+rts, and the greasy blankets of voyageur and redskin.

The room on the right became Brock's headquarters, and in this room he penned his first demand upon General Hull.

"My force," so he wrote, "warrants my demanding the immediate surrender of Fort Detroit." Anxious to prevent bloodshed, and knowing Hull's dread of the Indians, he also played upon his fears. "The Indians," he added, "might get beyond my control." This summons was carried by Colonel Macdonell and Major Glegg, under a flag of truce, across the river.

The batteries at Sandwich consisted of one eighteen-pounder, two twelve-pounders, and two 51/2-inch howitzers. Back of these artificial breastworks extended both a wilderness and the garden of Canada. Beyond the meadows, aflame with autumn wild-flowers, beyond the cultivated clearings, rose a forest of walnut, oak, ba.s.swood, birch and poplar trees, seared with age, of immense height and girth, festooned with wild honeysuckle and other creepers. In the open were broad orchards bending under their harvest of red and yellow fruit--apples and plums, peaches, nectarines and cherries--and extensive vineyards. Huge sugar maples challenged giant pear trees, whose gnarled trunks had resisted the storms of a century. To the north the floor of the forest was interlaced with trails, which, with the intention of deceiving Hull's spies as to the strength of Brock's forces, had been crossed and recrossed, and countermarched and doubled over, by the soldiers and Tec.u.mseh's half-naked braves.

The air was filled with the fragrance of orchard and forest. Facing our hero, flowed the river, broad, swift and deep; tufted wolf-willow, waving rushes and gray hazel fringing the banks. Across and beyond this almost mile-wide ribbon of water, the imposing walls of Fort Detroit confronted him. Approaching him at a rapid gait he at last espied his two despatch bearers, their scarlet tunics vivid against the green background. They reported that, after waiting upon Hull for two hours without being granted an interview, they were handed the following reply:

"General Hull is prepared to meet any force brought against him, and accept any consequences."

Brock instructed his gunners to acknowledge the receipt of this challenge with the thunder of their batteries, and from then, far into the night, sh.e.l.ls and round-shot shrieked their way across the river, the answering missiles from Hull's seven twenty-four-pounders breaking in a sheet of flame from the very dust created by the British cannon-b.a.l.l.s that exploded on the enemy's breastworks. Through the irony of fate, the first shot fired under Brock's personal orders in the cause of Canadian freedom killed a United States officer, an intimate friend of the British artilleryman who had trained the gun. Such are the arguments of war.

The cannonade proving ineffective, as judged by visible results, Brock issued orders to cross the river at dawn, when he would make the attempt to take the fort by storm--and soldier and militiaman bivouacked on their arms.

Camp fires were extinguished, but the tireless fireflies danced in the blackness of the wood. The river gurgled faintly in the wind-stirred reeds. From out the gloom of the thicket came the weird _coco-coco_ of the horned owl. From the starlit sky above fell the shrill cry of the mosquito hawk, "_peepeegeeceese, peepeegeeceese_!" From an isolated bark tepee came the subdued incantation of the Indian medicine-man, while above the singing of the tree-tops and over all, clear and with clock-like regularity, floated the challenge of the sentry and answering picket:

"Who goes there?"

"A friend."

"All's well."

CHAPTER XIX.

THE ATTACK ON DETROIT.

Morning came all too slowly for Brock's impatient soldiers. At last the _reveille_ warned the expectant camp. The sun rose, a red-hot sh.e.l.l out of the faint August haze, huge and threatening. With its advent the British batteries resumed their fire, aided by the guns on the _Queen Charlotte_ and _Hunter_, which lay in the river, above the village known to-day as Windsor, to cover the embarkation of the troops in batteaux and canoes.

Brock's entire force consisted of only 330 regulars and 400 militia, some of whom, acting on a happy thought, were disguised in discarded uniforms of the 41st. This army was supported by five pieces of artillery. All crossed the river in safety, landing at Spring Wells, four miles below. The Indians, 600 strong, under Tec.u.mseh, in addition to the men of his own nation, consisted of many Sioux, Wyandottes and Dacotahs. The majority of these crossed under cover of the night.

History records no instance of a determined force being stopped by a river. The Detroit River presented an animated picture. Edging their way through a maze of boats and batteaux, and in marked contrast to the scarlet-coated soldiers and blue-s.h.i.+rted sailors, bark canoes on which were drawn in flaring colours a variety of barbaric designs, flitted here and there, their crews of half-naked savages fearsome in fresh war-paint and gaudy feathers. Coo-ees, shrieks and shrill war-whoops--"Ah-oh! Ah-oo!" like the dismal yells of a pack of coyotes--rent the air, the discordant din ever and anon drowned by the thunder of the guns from the Sandwich batteries.

Upon landing Brock mustered his men. The reports showed 750 of all ranks, including the voyageurs left in charge of the river squadron. The 600 Indians deployed in the shelter of the woods, skirmis.h.i.+ng to effect a flank movement. The column, having formed, was moved forward in sections, and at double distance, to lend a fict.i.tious air of strength; the light artillery, of three, six, and two three-pounders, being immediately in rear of the advance guards, the whole preceded by fluttering standards and rolling drums. Three generations ago! Yet you can see it all to-day as plainly as Brock saw it, if you but close your eyes and conjure up the past.

The enemy, over 2,000 strong, drawn up in line upon an overlooking rise, had planted in the roadway, commanding the approach to the town, two twenty-four pounders, each loaded with six dozen grapeshot, around which the gunners stood with burning fuses, challenging our hero's advance.

Up and down, in front of the line, rode Isaac Brock on his gray charger, his brilliant uniform--khaki was unknown in those days--flas.h.i.+ng in the morning sun, a s.h.i.+ning mark. A command here, a kindly rebuke there, a word of encouragement to all ranks; the eyes of Britain and Canada were upon them; they might have to take the fort by storm,--even so, honour and glory awaited them.... Forward then, for King and country!

The rat-a-tat-tat of the kettle-drums, the clear-cut whistle of the fifes, the resonant roll of the big drums, the steady tramp, tramp of armed men--and the human machine was in motion.