“After all, neighbor St. Geme,” observes Papa Plauche, “the mistake was theirs. Did they not usurp the place which belonged to the English, in thus getting in front of us? It should teach them to beware how they put themselves in the path of my 'Fathers,' whose wrath is terrible.”
For two black, sightless hours the huntingshirt men crowd the English to the south. Then the General draws them off. They come, bringing as captives one colonel, two majors, three captains, and sixty-four privates. Also they have killed and wounded two hundred and thirteen of the English, which comforts them marvelously. They themselves have suffered but slightly, and the backloads of English guns they carry will gladden many an unarmed Kentucky heart.
Now when he has them together, the beloved Coffee at their head, the General leads the way to the thither side of the Roderiquez Canal, where he plans a line of breastworks. Arriving, the weary hunting-shirt men build fires, and make themselves easy for the balance of the night.
After a brief rest, the thoughtful General detaches a party with one of the field guns, to interest the English until daylight.
“For I think, Coffee,” says he, “that if we keep them awake, they will be apt to sleep tomorrow; and so leave us free to work on our defenses.”
CHAPTER XV—COTTON BALES AND SUGAR CASKS
IT is the day before Christmas when the General lays out his line for fortifications. The Roderiquez Canal is no canal at all, but a disused mill race, which an active man can leap and any one may wade. The General will make a moat of it, and raise his breastworks along its mile-length muddy course, between the river and the cypress swamp. He keeps an army of mules and negroes, with scrapers and carts, hard at work, heaping up the earth. A boat load of cotton is lying at the levee. The cotton bales are rolled ashore, and added to the heaped-up earth. This pleases Papa Plauche.
“It is singular,” he remarks to neighbor St. Geme, “that cotton, which has been my business support for years, should now defend my life.”