The Story of Old Fort Loudon

by Charles Egbert Craddock

CHAPTER X

Demeré was not a man to consider an omen and attach weight to trifling chances, yet he was in some sort prepared for disaster. Within the hall a pair of candles stood on the table where it was the habit to transact official business,—to write letters; to construct maps of the country from the resources of the information of the officers and the descriptions of the Indians; to make out reports and the accounts of the post. Writing materials were kept in readiness here for these purposes—a due array of quills, paper, inkhorn, wafers, sealing-wax, sand-box, and lights. As the door was opened the candles flickered in the sudden draught, bowed to the wicks grown long and unsnuffed, and in another moment were extinguished, leaving the place in total darkness, with the papers on which hung such weighty interests of life and death, of rescue or despair, unread in his hand.

"The tinder-box—the flint—where are they? Cannot you strike a spark?" he demanded, in agitated suspense, of Stuart, who made more than one fruitless effort before the timorous flame was started anew on the old and drooping wicks, which had to be smartly snuffed before they would afford sufficient light to discern the hasty characters, that looked as if they might have been written on a drumhead—as in fact they were.

"Here—read them, John—I can't," said Demeré, handing the package to Stuart, and throwing himself into a chair to listen.

Although the suspense had been of the kind that does not usually herald surcease of anxiety, he was not prepared for the face of consternation with which Stuart silently perused the scrawled lines.

"From Montgomery!" he exclaimed. "But our dispatches evidently have never reached him."

For in the bold strain of triumph Colonel Montgomery acquainted the commandant of Fort Loudon with the successful issue of his campaign, having lost only four men, although he had burned a number of Indian towns, destroyed incalculable quantities of provisions, killed and wounded many braves, and was carrying with him a train of prisoners, men, women, and children. He was now on the march to the relief of Fort Prince George, which the savages had invested, where the garrison was in much distress, not for the want of provisions but for fuel to cook food, since the enemy was in such force that no sortie could be made to the woods to procure a supply. Two of his prisoners he had set at liberty, Fiftoe, and the old warrior of Estatoe, that they might acquaint the nation of his further intentions, for, if the Indians did not immediately sue for peace and deliver up the principal transgressors to justice, he would sally forth from Fort Prince George on another foray, and he would not hold his hand till he had burned every Cherokee town of the whole nation. He deputed Captain Stuart and Captain Demeré to offer these terms to the Upper towns, and let them know that they were admitted to this clemency solely in consideration of the regard of the government for Atta-Kulla-Kulla. This chieftain, the half-king of the Cherokee tribe, had deprecated, it was understood, the renewal of the war, since he had signed the last treaty at the Congarees, and having shown himself friendly on several occasions to the British people his majesty's government esteemed him as he deserved.

The two officers gazed silently at one another. Montgomery was obviously entirely unaware of their situation. Here they were, penned up in this restricted compass, besieged by an enemy so furious that even a hat showing but for one moment above the palisades,—for the soldiers had tried the experiment of poising an old busby on the point of a bayonet,—would be riddled in an instant. Often a well-directed bullet would enter the small loop-holes for musketry, and thus, firing from ambush, endanger the sentinel as he stood within the strong defenses. More than once arrows, freighted with inflammable substances, all ablaze, had been shot into the fort with the effort to fire the houses; it was dry weather mostly, with a prospect of a long drought, and the flames thus started threatened a conflagration, and required the exertions of the entire garrison to extinguish them. This proclivity necessitated eternal vigilance. Ever and anon it was requisite that the cannon should renew their strong, surly note of menace, and again send the balls crashing through the forest, and about the ears of the persistent besiegers. Only the strength of the primitive work saved the garrison from instant massacre, with the women and children and the settlers who had sought safety behind those sturdy ramparts. Of the ultimate danger of starvation the officers did not dare to think. And from this situation to be summoned to send forth threats of sword and fire, and to offer arrogant terms of peace, and to demand the surrender, to the justice of the gibbet, of the principal transgressors in the violation of the treaty!

There were no words that could express what they felt. They could only look at one another, each conscious of the other's sympathy, and say nothing.