“THREE OF US WERE RIDING DOWN THE SLOPE OF THE GREAT, GRASSY HILLS”—page 269From the drawing by W. H. D. Koerner
“THREE OF US WERE RIDING DOWN THE SLOPE OF THE GREAT, GRASSY HILLS”
—page 269
From the drawing by W. H. D. Koerner
“That brought the blood to his face, didn’t it?” he said to the boy, with a laugh.
Beside the road and up over the rising meadows ran a ridge of freshly turned earth. “It looks,” said the boy, after a silence, “as if we wouldn’t make many more trips.”
“Yes. Once they begin pumping oil through that pipe-line, it’s back to the farm for you and me. Well—teaming has been a lift for me, anyway, this winter.”
“I’ve got three hundred dollars all my own,” said the boy, proudly. “It will start me in at college some time—when father comes home.”
“It’s more, I guess, than a good many have saved up.” Denny glanced back along the line of wagons. “And when they’re cut off from their day’s work—I expect there will be trouble.”
The teamsters observed no great secrecy in expressing their emotions and in making threats. In consequence of specific declarations which he had heard, at nine o’clock that night Denny was crossing the Drasnoe oil-field, following the ridge that denoted the pipe-line.
As he walked, he kept his eyes on the ridge, intent for any sign that it had been tampered with. After he had gone a mile he came to a strip of woods, through which the pipe-line was laid, although at this point the road diverged and made a circuit.
The woods were not more than half a mile in area, and except for another clump of forest six miles distant, near the railway station, made the only secluded spot through which the pipe-line passed.
The teamsters all lived in the vicinity of the Drasnoe field.
“They won’t go six miles to cut pipe,” Denny thought. “Right here’s the place to catch ’em.”
The sky had cleared during the afternoon; it was a mild, clear night, with a moon that showed the road from the edge of the woods for some distance.
Denny sat down on a log, lighted the lantern he had brought, and taking a book from his pocket, began to read.
Presently he looked up, and made out a figure approaching across the fields, following the pipe-line. He shielded the lantern and waited. When the approaching man entered the woods he stepped out to meet him.
“Mr. Ross!” Denny ejaculated, contemptuously.
“What are you doing here?” The superintendent’s voice was menacing.
“I’m constable of this borough, Mr. Ross, and I’m here to prevent mischief.”
“Then we’re on the same errand.”
“Are we?” Denny asked. “You’d better go home to bed, Mr. Ross. You don’t want to get mixed up in this. You wouldn’t be any good—and it mightn’t be good for you.”
“Look here, John Denny!” Ross stepped up close; his eyes flashed in the light of the lantern that Denny held aloft. “You the same as called me a coward to-day, and because you’ve got only one arm I can’t resent it! You told me that if I was any good for fighting I’d be somewhere else than here. Now I want you to know one thing—myplans were laid last week to leave for the front next Monday. You think I haven’t wanted to go! I don’t tell my private affairs to you or any other man, but I’ll say this much: over in Oil City I’m leaving a family provided for if anything happens to me.”
“If that’s the case,” Denny said, slowly, “I take it back, Mr. Ross. I take everything back.”
They sat down together on the log and talked amicably. Denny’s thoughts were turned back to his war experience. He told the new recruit stories of campaigning and battle. Ross listened with a respect of which his maimed subordinate became somehow conscious. That tribute of respect from one whom he had both envied and despised, and whom he had come so suddenly to like, swept the bitterness from Denny’s soul.
“You’re giving up a good bit to go,” he said, at last. “Old man Drasnoe likes you; you’ve got a start toward being a millionaire. You throw it all up and go off to the war—and you can’t tell what you may come back to.”
“I’ll have to run my chance,” Ross answered.
“Mr. Drasnoe satisfied to have you leave?”
“Yes,” replied Mr. Ross, quietly, “Mr. Drasnoe is quite satisfied. He likes the man I’ve picked to take my place.” Denny’s interest was at once awakened.
“And who might that be?”
Ross hesitated. “It’s hardly time to talk about it yet.”
“Oh, all right. I wasn’t meaning to pry.”
They arranged to divide the night into watchesDenny was to sleep until twelve, then Ross would rouse him and sleep till four.
At about one o’clock, while Ross, lying at the foot of a tree, was sleeping, the marauders came. Denny saw them as they climbed over the fence by the roadside. He awakened Ross, and said:
“They’re coming. You’d better leave this to me—as constable. If they see you, they’ll get ugly. You go in behind that thicket and wait.”
Ross protested. “You can come out if you’re needed,” Denny said; and the superintendent reluctantly withdrew. Denny put out his lantern, and stepping behind a great oak, awaited the approach.
There were a dozen men, carrying lanterns, mattocks and spades; they passed close by where Denny stood.
“Spread out, now—and rip it up all along!” cried one; and he lifted his mattock and brought it down upon the earth.
Denny stepped forward.
“Boys,” he said, “hold on!”
They faced him, startled. The one who had spoken caught up a lantern and turned it on him.
“Denny!” he exclaimed. “Spyin’ on us!”
“I’m borough constable,” said Denny. “Destroying property has a penalty attached.” The men crowded round him, disturbed, angry, threatening.
“Well, here we are!” said the leader, scornfully. “Arrest us.”
“There won’t be any arrests if there’s no damage done, O’Brien,” Denny answered.
O’Brien turned and struck his mattock into the earth. “Show him a little damage, boys,” he urged. “Yank up the pipe.”
The others set to work, cursing at Denny meanwhile. The dirt flew; they flung it jeeringly at him.
“All right,” said Denny. “You are twelve men against one. Maybe I can’t arrest you to-night, but I’ve got your names.”
In a few moments they had exposed the pipe, which was not buried deep. Then O’Brien knelt and sawed it through in two places, and cast the section at Denny’s feet.
“There!” he said. “How d’ye like the looks of that, Mr. Constable? And now, so’s you won’t follow us and see where else we operate, we’ll just tie you up for a while.”
“You fellows will be piling up trouble for yourselves,” Denny warned them. “Murphy and Conway, there—you ought to have more sense.”
One of these two men, Murphy, spoke in a low voice, unwillingly:
“I guess maybe we’d better quit. If he reports us—”
“He ain’t going to report us!” interrupted O’Brien. “He don’t dare. Come, boys, get a-hold of him, and we’ll tie him up—”
He advanced a step toward Denny, and in the same instant Denny drew a revolver and leveled it at O’Brien’s head.
“Don’t lay a hand on me,” he said, quietly.
“Get behind him and grab him, somebody!” shouted O’Brien. “Spread out and get round him.”
But the men hesitated. “I said we’d ought to have wore masks!” muttered one. “He’s seen us all now.”
O’Brien made a quick dash, trying to circle Denny, who whirled and held the revolver pointed at O’Brien’s face.
“Jump on him now!” shouted O’Brien; and then one, bolder than the others, sprang upon Denny’s shoulders and bore him to the ground. O’Brien was instantly upon him also, got possession of his revolver, and then with breathless imprecations began winding a rope about his ankles.
“All right!” muttered Denny. “You’ve got me—but you fellows will pay for this.”
Then Ross walked into the midst of the group. The leader of the gang looked up from where he knelt. “It’s you, is it?” he said, defiantly.
Ross turned from him to the others.
“Will you give me five minutes?” he asked. “I’m in your power; I’m all alone. Will you let me have five minutes to talk?”
“Go on,” said one of the men.
“Just five minutes, mind,” said O’Brien, truculently. He tightened the rope that bound Denny’s arm behind his back and stood up.
“When I came here to-night,” Ross began, persuasively, “it was with the idea that there might be some trouble over this pipe-line. But though I was expecting trouble, there was only one man that I looked on as my personal enemy, and that was John Denny. He called me a coward to my face this morning; and when I came here a couple of hours ago, and found him on duty as constable, I felt I’dfound more trouble than I was looking for. Well, we talked the whole matter out—and came to an understanding. And maybe, after talking this other matter out, you and I can come to an understanding.
“Here’s the situation. A pump and a pipe together are going to do for almost nothing more than all you men have been in the habit of doing for a good deal of money. They’re going to put you out of business. So you get together and decide to put the pipe out of business. And you mean to keep putting it out of business just as often as it resumes. Isn’t that stating the case.”
Two or three of the men laughed uneasily; there was no dissent.
“Now you can do that to-night; you can keep on doing it for a while. But you must see—your common sense must tell you—that when an economical way of doing a thing is discovered, the expensive way has got to be abandoned. They are to have a pipe-line over in the Deepwater valley, and the teamsters will have to quit; they are to have another up at Anderson, and the teamsters will have to quit; they’re putting pipe-lines in everywhere. It’s a fact you’ve got to face; the day of the teamster in the oil regions is over.
“Just to make it practical—to demonstrate it, not to make threats—listen. You cut this pipe to-night. What happens? There are two witnesses against you—John Denny and myself. All that the law requires is two witnesses. It’s true you have us in your power to-night—but I hardly think any of you mean to do murder in cold blood.You may think of keeping us out of the way for a while—maybe using force on us to make us hold our tongues. But some time you’ll have to let us go free—and I expect we will go free without making any promises.”
He spoke these words with slow distinctness and emphasis; there was an uneasy stirring in the crowd.
“Moreover,” Ross continued, “before I started out to-night I left a note at home, saying where I was going and why. If I should mysteriously disappear, that note will afford a clue. You may all feel that you’re strong enough to defy the law and destroy property and commit violence. But even supposing this is true—what can you gain by it? Do you think the company whose pipe you cut will ever again employ you to drive its wagons? Drasnoe would rather let his oil forever run to waste than be coerced into letting you handle it. And you can’t so easily carry matters with a high hand—”
“You begin to threaten us!” cried O’Brien. “We’ve had enough—”
“I don’t mean to threaten,” Ross replied. “I’m just trying to make a complete statement of the case. In a moment I’ll talk in a way that you can’t regard as threatening. But as to your being able to override the law—you know, of course, what will happen. The company will spend its last cent fighting for its rights. It will hire men to protect its property. The community will be roused against you. You’ll have to fight with the company’s watchmen; you can’t go on cutting itspipe with impunity. And meanwhile you’ll be blacklisted by the company, whereas, if you accept this overturn in a peaceful spirit, the company will try to give work of some kind to as many of you as want it. Now I’ve come to the end of everything that may sound threatening. Are you willing I should go on for a few moments longer?”
“No,” shouted O’Brien. But “Yes!” cried the others; and some of them turned to O’Brien and bade him be still.
“I want you to know that last week I tendered my resignation as superintendent, to take effect next Monday. Next Monday I start for Virginia, to join Grant’s army. It’s just occurred to me that that would be a pretty good thing for those of you to do who are out of a job and so have a hankering to fight somebody.” He spoke the words with a smile; by the lantern-light he could see the smile reflected on the face of some of the men. “I hope you’ll think better of fighting the company—for if you don’t, I’ll have to stay here and deprive General Grant of my services.” This time the smile on his face was echoed by a murmur of laughter. “I’d be mighty glad if those of you who feel bound to fight somebody would join me next Monday and start for the Wilderness. I don’t know that it would be any more of a fight than you’d get by staying here and tackling the company—but I guess it would be enough. That’s all I have to say; and now if you think the only thing is to string me up on one of those trees, I can’t help myself.”
“I guess there won’t be any lynching!” muttered one of the men; from the others there issued onlysheepish, uncomfortable laughter. O’Brien was silent.
“Well,” remarked Murphy, at last. “I don’t know but I may join your soldier squad on Monday, captain. Looks like things will be kind of quiet round here for a full-grown fightin’ man.”
At this there was loud laughter, and Ross knew that he had won.
“You think, Mr. Ross,” said a man, hesitatingly, “if a fellow was to stay, the company might find him a job?”
“I think so. That will be one of the problems for my successor—who, by the way, is lying there with his feet tied.”
The men gazed at one another; Denny lay speechless and amazed. Then one of the men turned to O’Brien.
“O’Brien,” he said, gravely, “if you and me are looking for jobs, suppose we untie his feet.”
At eight o’clock on Monday morning there waited at the railway station a group of ten men, who were starting South to join Grant’s army. Among them was one whom the others half jestingly, yet half-seriously also, called “Captain.” He stepped apart from the rest to speak to a one-armed man and a boy who had just driven up to the platform. The sound of the approaching train made itself heard.
“You’ll be sure to see father for me, won’t you, Mr. Ross?” said the boy.
“Sure. I’m glad you had word he was all right. I’ll send you a letter as soon as I see him—and I’ll tell him all about you. Good-by, Elmer!”
He turned to the one-armed man.
“Good-by, Denny!”
The train rushed along the platform as Denny gripped Ross’s hand.
“Good-by, Mr. Ross—thank you—” His voice broke, but he regained it. “Come back to us—and come back—whole!”
Then, amid the cheers of the few who had gathered to see the departure, the recruits boarded the train, and the train pulled away.
“Hewillcome back!” said Denny to Elmer, with conviction. “Even if the whole of Lee’s army lays a trap for him, he’ll come back.”
By Rowland Thomas
Early one morning, just before the dawn, three of us were riding wearily down the slope of one of the great grassy hills—some people call them mountains—which lie between the provinces of Isabella and Nueva Vizcaya.
We had been travelling all night by moonlight, and now as the east was growing rosy we were winding down to a little wood in the valley, where we hoped to find a mountain stream to give us water for our breakfast, and a thing of far more importance, grazing for the horses, for it was the dry season, and the grass on the hills was parched and dead. The breakfast swung with mocking lightness behind Justin’s saddle, merely a few handfuls of coldrice rolled in the butt of a banana leaf. It was also tiffin and dinner, for we were travelling light and fast, and carried not even chocolate, nothing but the rice.
I was watching the gyrations of the breakfast moodily, for I was sleepy and hungry and sore, when suddenly from the wood below us the crow of a cock rang out, shrill and triumphant. I was surprised, for few people live along a trail used mostly by bandits and head-hunters.
Suddenly from the slope of a farther hill the call rang out again, and then the whole wood echoed with the sounds of the farmyard.
“What town is this?” I asked the boys, although we were at least a day’s journey from any settlement which I knew.
Justin laughed, and even Tranquid smiled stiffly.
“It is no town, señor,” said Justin. “It is themanuk del monte—the wild chicken—which you hear.”
After saddles were off and the horses’ backs were washed, the animals rolled and grazed luxuriously by the swift, clear stream, and Tranquid, prince of servants, dexterously unrolled the breakfast.
He laid stones on the corners of the leaf, and patted the snowy mass of rice out smoothly, and filled a bamboo drinking-cup from the brook, while I pretended not to see. At meal-times Tranquid has a solemn and important air worthy of the most autocratic of London butlers, and I am a babe in his hands.
“Breakfast is served, señor,” said Tranquid, gravely.
“I come,” I replied, with equal gravity, and rolled over twice and came up on my knees, Japanese fashion, beside my lowly table.
Just as I was going to plunge my fingers into the rice, a cock crowed loud and clear among the trees close at hand. A great ferocity of meat hunger swept over me.
“Give me the boom-boom, Justin!” I commanded. “We will have manuk del monte for breakfast.”
The cock crowed often while I stole through the undergrowth, as softly as the ferns and bristly creepers would let me.
As I drew near, the crowing ceased, and I was peering about the brush and shrub for a sight of the cock when—whir! From the lower branches of a tree, fifty feet above my head, a splendid bird shot out with a boom like a partridge and sailed away between the tree trunks, a dazzling vision of white and green and gold.
I was too startled to shoot, for I had never before seen chickens that roost like eagles and flew like pheasants and were as brilliant as humming-birds.
In a moment I heard his strong wings beating on the other side of the valley, and I went back and ate my rice quietly.
That incident began my acquaintance with the wild chickens, and they soon grew to be a very dear part of the forest life, bringing me an odd mixture of pleasant memory and homesickness as I listened to them.
We heard them always when we made and left our one-night homes along the trail. The cocks proved to be just as exacting husbands as theirdomesticated cousins, crowing their families home and abroad with fussy punctuality.
If a gay young cockerel or a giddy pullet lingered too long afield, the lord of the flock grew noisy with anxiety as the sunset faded. With the dawn he woke, brisk and important, and woe betide the sleepyhead of the family.
There was no “Rouse up, sweet slugabed” for him, but an ear-splitting call, and we often chuckled at thought of the sheepish haste of the laggard when that sound penetrated to his sleepy brain.
A tropical forest is a thing of awe and mystery, with its eternal dim twilight and tangled creepers, and innumerable dark vistas which hide inhabitants one seldom hears and never sees. Most of the creatures seem to feel the silent immensity and vagueness as a man does, and seek safety in unobtrusiveness.
These brave, cheery birds alone were unaffected by it, and they crowed and cackled and clucked about their business of living as carelessly as if there were no such thing as fear in the world.
Yet with all their independence they showed a baffling shyness, and many weeks went by before I caught more than a distant glimpse of one.
Tranquid hunted them with painful devotion. But he was a child of the cities, lost in the mountains as a puppy would have been. When a cock crowed near a camping-place, his face would brighten hopefully, and he would go creeping off with the noiselessness of a young elephant. Back and forth he crashed in the brush, pulling branches aside with excessive caution and peeping behind them.
At last the bird would flush from a tree and shoot away in a blur of colored light. Then Tranquid would straighten up with a nervous jerk, and cry triumphantly:
“There, señor, I have found him! There he goes. Look! Look!” pointing up to the tree where he had been.
On these occasions Justin always lay on the grass and laughed.
Justin was a woodland philosopher, and had discovered that town-bred folk and wild chickens had been sent into the world for his amusement. He never deigned to take any further part in the pursuit.
When it came to stalking a deer or running down a pig he was all eagerness and skill, and would lead me for hours without a thought of rest, but chickens were beneath him. Occasionally, however, as we rode along, a crow would caw somewhere above us. Then Justin was full of excitement.
“Look, señor!” he would shout, pointing up to the empty sky. “I have found him. There! There!”
In spite of Justin’s jesting, my desire to see a wild cock face to face only increased with repeated failure.
I never tried to shoot one after that first experience. I would as soon have thought of shooting at a monkey. But I wanted to have one for my own, to look at, and draw pictures of, and show to my poor friends who lived down in the plains through the hot season, and complained of prickly heat. I even dreamed of presenting one to my friend, thecaptain, and letting him create a new and lusty race of fowls, a breed which would meet the hawk in his own element, and laugh at woven-wire fences.
At last, up in a little mountain village, my opportunity came. Tranquid announced, with the respectful elation he sometimes permitted himself, that a man had a wild rooster. Would the señor like to come to see it?
The señor was willing, so we went down the narrow grass-grown street together, stepping carefully over the babies and pigs that were basking in the sun.
In the yard of a little tumble-down shack we found a rusty brown bird tied to a post by a bit of twine about his leg. The old man, his owner, scattered a few kernels of corn, and the poor dingy thing pecked at them in a half-hearted way. A hen came bustling up and he pecked peevishly at her once or twice, and then hopped back to his post and stood there, dull and round-shouldered, like a sulky boy who had decided that the corn was not of much importance, anyway, and had put his hands in his pockets.
I was slow to believe that this could be a brother of the swift, bright bird which had boomed out of a treetop that first morning, but I presently discovered that it was. The long, slender body, the powerful wings, the sharp, heavy bill, were the product of generations of wild life. And under the dust and rustiness of the feathers there were still traces of the green and gold of the forest. The changes were due only to a changed mode of life.
“The man says,” explained Tranquid, “that hehas had this rooster for a long time, and it is dirty. He says he will catch a clean one for the señor, if he pleases.”
Of course the señor pleased; and one bright morning we set out. The old man, our guide, marched in front, most importantly, for it is not every day that one has a chance to show a señor what a clever man one is at catching wild chickens, and the old man knew that his grandchildren would tell their children about this expedition.
Under his arm he carried a red fighting cock. It struck me as a bit odd to carry such an animal on a hunting trip, but I asked no questions. One feels no surprise in the Philippines in meeting people with roosters under their arms; it is quite the usual thing. Tranquid followed the old man, respectfully hopeful. Then came Justin, smiling, and I brought up the rear.
A mile or so from the village the wall of the forest rose, dark and impenetrable. But at one point a stream came down from the hills, and there the field extended into the woods for a little way, making a sort of room, cool and shadowy, and carpeted with short, thick turf.
Here the old man halted, and waited till we all stood about him. Then he drew from the pocket of his blouse a bundle of twine, wound on four pointed sticks. Justin stopped smiling. Anything in the nature of a trap, anything which matched man’s wits against the instinct of the wild creatures, interested Justin.
The old man chose a spot of level ground and set to work. He drove one of the little stakes intothe ground, uncoiled the twine, drove another, and so on, until he had marked out a square, about a yard on a side. On three sides the twine was carried on the stakes a few inches above the ground, and from this fence, every hand’s breadth or so, hung a little noose of fiber.
The fourth side of the square was a wall of brush, and at the center of this the old man now drove a fifth stake, and tied his fighting cock to it by a very short tether. Then he opened all the little nooses and spread them carefully on the ground within the square. Justin inspected the work.
“It is very good,” he announced at last. “One would not believe that this old man could be so wise. The wild rooster hears this one. He wishes to fight. All roosters wish to fight always. He comes from the wood, dancing, so! This one crows and fluffs out his feathers, so! The wild rooster comes to the little fence and they look at each other, so!” said Justin, using Tranquid for illustration. “He cannot pass under the little fence; it is too low. He cannot step over it; it is too high. He hops, so! His foot falls in the noose, and—so!” said Justin, dancing on one foot and cackling shrilly. “Abáa.It is very good. The old man is much wiser than one would think to look at him.”
The old man listened to this monologue with disgust.
“Now we shall go and be very quiet. The manuk del monte does not like noisy ones,” he said, glancing at Justin.
So we went and sat down where some bushes screened us and yet left us a view of the trap. After half an hour Justin curled up and went to sleep. The breeze was cool and the grass was soft, and soon I followed his example.
I was awakened by a bell-like call from the forest. The captive rooster was dancing at his stake. Presently he flapped his wings and stood on tiptoe and answered scornfully. They challenged back and forth till at last, with a boom of wings, the wild cock, the very one I had been dreaming of, dropped on the grass.
As he caught sight of the traitor he spread all his splendid plumage and crowed again. And the red bird answered bravely. After all, it was not his fault that he was a traitor.
The wild bird ran forward with a swift, steady gait very unlike the awkward stride of his tame cousins, and lowered his head, and spread his ruff. Then he stood up straight and scratched sticks and grass into the air with a sturdy leg and crowed. The traitor kicked furiously at his tether, but it held, and the wild cock advanced to the fence.
For a moment the two looked at each other with lowered heads, and then they sprang. The traitor, of course, collapsed in an ignominious heap. As the wild cock landed inside the fence, his foot barely touched the ground. But the touch was enough. One of the little nooses tightened about his legs, and as he sprang again he, too, came down with a jerk.
The birds were rising to face each other when we ran forward, and he turned toward us at thenoise. I expected to see him struggle madly to escape. But the brave little fellow faced us, and flapped his wings and stretched his neck, challenging us fearlessly. In a moment the old man had tossed a handkerchief over his head and loosened the noose, and I held him between my hands.
I could feel the little muscles taut as steel wires beneath my fingers, and the heart beating furiously, but he made no sound and did not struggle. I looked at the lustrous markings of his back and wings, and the long, drooping tail-feathers, and then all at once came a picture of the draggled, spiritless captive back in the old man’s yard. I plucked away the handkerchief and tossed him into the air.
His wings beat very loud in the stillness, and we all started. Then I looked round sheepishly. Tranquid was staring up stupidly, with his mouth in a big, round O. Justin was laughing, but suddenly he pointed excitedly to Tranquid’s mouth and shouted:
“Look, señor! I have found him. There he goes. Look! Look!” And it would be hard to say whether the old man gazed at Justin or at me with the deeper disgust.
By Edward Everett Hale
I suppose that very few casual readers of theNew York Heraldof August 18th observed in an obscure corner among the “Deaths,” the announcement—
“Nolan.Died, on board U. S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2° 11´ S., Long. 131° W., on the 11th of May,Philip Nolan.”
“Nolan.Died, on board U. S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2° 11´ S., Long. 131° W., on the 11th of May,Philip Nolan.”
I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old Mission-House in Makinaw, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer which did not choose to come, and I was devouring to the very stubble all the current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and marriages in theHerald. My memory for names and people is good, and the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at that announcement, if the officer of theLevantwho reported it had chosen to make it thus:—“Died, May 11th,The Man without a Country.” For it was as “The Man without a Country” that poor Philip Nolan had generally been known by the officers who had him in charge during some fifty years, as, indeed, by all men who sailed under them. I dare say there is many a man who has taken wine with him once a fortnight, in a three years’ cruise, who never knew that his name was “Nolan,” or whether the poor wretch had any name at all.
There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature’s story. Reason enough there has been till now, ever since Madison’s administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of honor itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan in successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for theesprit de corpsof the profession, and the personal honor of its members, that to the press this man’s story has been wholly unknown—and, I think, to the country at large also. I have reason to think, from some investigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the Bureau of Construction, that every official report relating to him was burned when Ross burned the public buildings at Washington. One of the Tuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the end of the war; and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported at Washington to one of the Crowninshields—who was in the Navy Department when he came home—he found that the Department ignored the whole business. Whether they really knew nothing about it or whether it was a “Non mi ricordo” determined on as a piece of policy, I do not know.
But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, no naval officer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise.
But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the poor creature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of his story, by way of showing young Americans of to-day what it is to beA Man without a Country.
Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the “Legion of the West,” as the Western division of our army was then called. When Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in 1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as the Devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow, at some dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him, took him a day or two’s voyage in his flat-boat, and, in short, fascinated him. For the next year, barrack-life was very tame to poor Nolan. He occasionally availed himself of the permission the great man had given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the poor boy wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he have in reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneered at him, because he sacrificed in this unrequited affection for a politician the time which they devoted to Monongahela, hazard, and high-low-jack. Bourbon, euchre, and poker were still unknown. But one day Nolan had his revenge. This time Burr came down the river not as an attorney seeking a place for his office, but as a disguised conqueror. He had defeated I know not how many district-attorneys; he had dined at I know not how many public dinners; he had been heralded in I know not how manyWeekly Arguses, and it was rumored that he had an army behind him and an empire before him. It was a great day—his arrival—to poor Nolan. Burr had not been at the fort an hour before he sent for him. That evening he asked Nolan to take him out in his skiff, to showhim a canebrake or a cottonwood tree, as he said,—really to seduce him; and by the time the sail was over, Nolan was enlisted body and soul. From that time, though he did not yet know it, he lived asA Man without a Country.
What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is none of our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and Jefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on the wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the great treason-trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distant Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget’s Sound is to-day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage, and, to while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, forspectacles, a string of court-martials on the officers there. One and another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out the list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was evidence enough,—that he was sick of the service, had been willing to be false to it, and would have obeyed any order to march any-whither with any one who would follow him had the order been signed, “By command of His Exc. A. Burr.” The courts dragged on. The big flies escaped,—rightly for all I know. Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I say; yet you and I would never have heard of him, reader, but that, when the president of the court asked him at the close, whether he wished to say anything to show that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried out, in, a fit of frenzy,—
“D—n the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!”
I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan, who was holding the court. Half the officers who sat in it had served through the Revolution, and their lives, not to say their necks, had been risked for the very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his madness. He, on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in the midst of “Spanish plot,” “Orleans plot,” and all the rest. He had been educated on a plantation where the finest company was a Spanish officer or a French merchant from Orleans. His education, such as it was, had been perfected in commercial expeditions to Vera Cruz, and I think he told me his father once hired an Englishman to be a private tutor for a winter on the plantation. He had spent half his youth with an older brother, hunting horses in Texas; and, in a word, to him “United States” was scarcely a reality. Yet he had been fed by “United States” for all the years since he had been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a Christian to be true to “United States.” It was “United States” which gave him the uniform he wore, and the sword by his side. Nay, my poor Nolan, it was only because “United States” had picked you out first as one of her own confidential men of honor that “A. Burr” cared for you a straw more than for the flat-boat men who sailed his ark for him. I do not excuse Nolan; I only explain to the reader why he damned his country, and wished he might never hear her name again.
He never did hear her name but once again.From that moment, September 23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard the name again. For that half century and more he was a man without a country.
Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. If Nolan had compared George Washington to Benedict Arnold, or had cried, “God save King George,” Morgan would not have felt worse.
He called the court into his private room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a sheet, to say,—
“Prisoner, hear the sentence of the court! The court decides, subject to the approval of the President, that you never hear the name of the United States again.”
Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost his swagger in a moment. Then Morgan added,—
“Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat, and deliver him to the naval commander there.”
The marshal gave his orders and the prisoner was taken out of court.
“Mr. Marshal,” continued old Morgan, “see that no one mentions the United States to the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects to Lieutenant Mitchell at Orleans, and request him to order that no one shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board ship. You will receive your written orders from the officer on duty here this evening. The court is adjourned without day.”
I have always supposed that Colonel Morgan himself took the proceedings of the court to Washington City, and explained them to Mr. Jefferson. Certain it is that the President approved them—certain, that is, if I may believe the men who say they have seen his signature. Before theNautilusgot round from New Orleans to the Northern Atlantic coast with the prisoner on board the sentence had been approved, and he was a man without a country.
The plan then adopted was substantially the same which was necessarily followed ever after. Perhaps it was suggested by the necessity of sending him by water from Fort Adams and Orleans. The Secretary of the Navy—it must have been the first Crowninshield, though he is a man I do not remember—was requested to put Nolan on board a government vessel bound on a long cruise, and to direct that he should be only so far confined there as to make it certain that he never saw or heard of the country. We had few long cruises then, and the navy was very much out of favor; and as almost all of this story is traditional, as I have explained, I do not know certainly what his first cruise was. But the commander to whom he was intrusted—perhaps it was Tingey or Shaw, though I think it was one of the younger men—we are all old enough now—regulated the etiquette and the precautions of the affair, and according to his scheme they were carried out, I suppose, till Nolan died.
When I was second officer of theIntrepid, some thirty years after, I saw the original paper of instructions. I have been sorry ever since that I didnot copy the whole of it. It ran, however, much in this way:—