“That’s fair; and what’s fair is right.
He wants you to stop till it’s two hours to sundown; and I see reason in the thing.
A man can give up when he’s wrong, if you don’t crowd him too hard; but you crowd a man, and he gets to be like a stubborn ox—the more you beat, the worse he kicks.”
The sturdy notions of independence maintained by Billy neither suited the emergency nor the impatience of Mr. Jones, who was burning with a desire to examine the hid den mysteries of the cave. He therefore interrupted this amicable dialogue with his own voice;
“I command you Nathaniel Bumppo, by my authority, to surrender your person to the law,” he cried.
“And I command you, gentlemen, to aid me in performing my duty.
Benjamin Penguillan I arrest you, and order you to follow me to the jail of the county, by virtue of this warrant.”
“I’d follow ye, Squire Dickens,” said Benjamin, removing the pipe from his month (for during the whole scene the ex-major-domo had been very composedly smoking); “ay! I’d sail in your wake, to the end of the world, if-so—be that there was such a place, where there isn’t, seeing that it’s round.
Now mayhap, Master Hollister, having lived all your life on shore, you isn’t acquainted that the world, d’ye see.”
“Surrender!” interrupted the veteran, in a voice that startled his hearers, and which actually caused his own forces to recoil several paces; “surrender, Benjamin Pengullan, or expect no quarter.’”
“Damn your quarter!” said Benjamin, rising from the log on which he was seated, and taking a squint along the barrel of the swivel, which had been brought on the hill during the night, and now formed the means of defence on his side of the works.
“Look you, master or captain, thof I questions if ye know the name of a rope, except the one that’s to hang ye, there’s no need of singing out, as if ye was hailing a deaf man on a topgallant yard.
May-hap you think you’ve got my true name in your sheep skin; but what British sailor finds it worth while to sail in these seas, without a sham on his stern, in case of need, d’ye see.
If you call me Penguillan, you calls me by the name of the man on whose hand, dye see, I hove into daylight; and he was a gentleman; and that’s more than my worst enemy will say of any of the family of Benjamin Stubbs.”
“Send the warrant round to me, and I’ll put in an alias,” cried Hiram, from behind his cover.
“Put in a jackass, and you’ll put in yourself, Mister Doo-but-little,” shouted Benjamin, who kept squinting along his little iron tube, with great steadiness.
“I give you but one moment to yield,” cried Richard.
“Benjamin! Benjamin! this is not the gratitude I expected from you.”
“I tell you, Richard Jones,” said Natty, who dreaded the sheriff’s influence over his comrade; “though the canister the gal brought be lost, there’s powder enough in the cave to lift the rock you stand on.
I’ll take off my roof if you don’t hold your peace.”
“I think it beneath the dignity of my office to parley further with the prisoners,” the sheriff observer to his companion, while they both retired with a precipitancy that Captain Hollister mistook for the signal to advance.
“Charge baggonet!” shouted the veteran; “march!”
Although this signal was certainly expected, it took the assailed a little by surprise, and the veteran approached the works, crying,
“Courage, my brave lads! give them no quarter unless they surrender;” and struck a furious blow upward with his sabre, that would have divided the steward into moieties by subjecting him to the process of decapitation, but for the fortunate interference of the muzzle of the swivel.
As it was, the gun was dismounted at the critical moment that Benjamin was applying his pipe to the priming, and in consequence some five or six dozen of rifle bullets were projected into the air, in nearly a perpendicular line.
Philosophy teaches us that the atmosphere will not retain lead; and two pounds of the metal, moulded into bullets of thirty to the pound, after describing an ellipsis in their journey, returned to the earth rattling among the branches of the trees directly over the heads of the troops stationed in the rear of their captain.
Much of the success of an attack, made by irregular soldiers, depends on the direction in which they are first got in motion.
In the present instance it was retrograde, and in less than a minute after the bellowing report of the swivel among the rocks and caverns, the whole weight of the attack from the left rested on the prowess of the single arm of the veteran.
Benjamin received a severe contusion from the recoil of his gun, which produced a short stupor, during which period the ex-steward was prostrate on the ground.
Captain Hollister availed himself of this circumstance to scramble ever the breastwork and obtain a footing in the bastion—for such was the nature of the fortress, as connected with the cave.
The moment the veteran found himself within the works of his enemy, he rushed to the edge of the fortification, and, waving his sabre over his head, shouted:
“Victory! come on, my brave boys, the work’s our own!”
All this was perfectly military, and was such an example as a gallant officer was in some measure bound to exhibit to his men but the outcry was the unlucky cause of turning the tide of success.
Natty, who had been keeping a vigalent eye on the wood-chopper, and the enemy immediately before him, wheeled at this alarm, and was appalled at beholding his comrade on the ground, and the veteran standing on his own bulwark, giving forth the cry of victory!
The muzzle of the long rifle was turned instantly toward the captain.
There was a moment when the life of the old soldier was in great jeopardy but the object to shoot at was both too large and too near for the Leather-Stocking, who, instead of pulling his trigger, applied the gun to the rear of his enemy, and by a powerful shove sent him outside of the works with much greater rapidity than he had entered them.
The spot on which Captain Hollister alighted was directly in front, where, as his feet touched the ground, so steep and slippery was the side of the mountain, it seemed to recede from under them.
His motion was swift, and so irregular as utterly to confuse the faculties of the old soldier.
During its continuance, he supposed himself to be mounted, and charging through the ranks of his enemy.
At every tree he made a blow, of course, as at a foot-soldier; and just as he was making the cut
“St. George” at a half burnt sapling he landed in the highway, and, to his utter amazement, at the feet of his own spouse.
When Mrs. Hollister, who was toiling up the hill, followed by at least twenty curious boys, leaning with one hand on the staff with which she ordinarily walked, and bearing in the other an empty bag, witnessed this exploit of her husband, indignation immediately got the better, not only of her religion, but of her philosophy.
“Why, sargeant! is it flying ye are?” she cried—“that I should live to see a husband of mine turn his hack to an inimy! and such a one!
Here I have been telling the b’ys, as we come along, all about the saige of Yorrektown, and how ye was hurted; and how ye’d be acting the same agin the day; and I mate ye retraiting jist as the first gun is fired.
Och! I may trow away the bag! for if there’s plunder, ‘twill not be the wife of sich as yerself that will be privileged to be getting the same.
They do say, too, there is a power of goold and silver in the place—the Lord forgive me for setting my heart on woorldly things; but what falls in the battle, there’s scriptur’ for believing, is the just property of the victor.”
“Retreating!” exclaimed the amazed veteran; “where’s my horse? he has been shot under me—I——”
“Is the man mad?” interrupted his wife—“devil the horse do ye own, sargeant, and ye’re nothing but a shabby captain of malaishy.
Oh! if the ra’al captain was here, tis the other way ye’d be riding, dear, or you would not follow your laider!”
While this worthy couple were thus discussing events, the battle began to rage more violently than ever above them.