“An enemy might steal on us now, like a thief in the night,” was Uncle Lawrence’s morning salutation to Major Gordon. “The fog’s so thick it looks as if one might cut it with a knife.”
“It’s a’most as bad as the fogs off Newfoundland,” put in Mullen, coming up, “where the Marblehead fishermen have a saying they can make steps in ‘em, as if they were rock. Ha! ha!”
“When I was at Newport,” remarked Major Gordon, joining in the humor of the moment, “in the beginning of the war—and Newport’s famous for its fogs, you know—they told me the girls used to hang their heads out of the windows, whenever there was a fog, to bleach their complexions; and certainly the ladies there look almost like wax-work.” And thus speaking, he laughingly passed on.
“Like wax-work!” said Mullen, contemptuously. “Give me an honest tan on the face. A woman ain’t good for much that can’t dig potatoes, or maybe hold a plough a bit, while her husband’s out a fishin’. In these parts, at any rate, a man don’t want a wife that he has to keep in a glass case.”
“Every one to his taste,” interposed Uncle Lawrence. “Now there’s Miss Aylesford would stand but a poor chance digging potatoes with them white little hands of hern, yet she’s a brave gal for all that, as you know, Mr. Mullen.”
“Ay, ay, that do I. Lord A’mighty, how beautiful she looked, when she ran for’ard on that ere wreck to cast off the cable. What a pictur she’d a made. There’s nothing in my old woman’s family Bible as fine.”
As the day wore on, the fog lifted, and Major Gordon’s anxiety was relieved by discovering no signs of the foe. Aware of his as yet insufficient means of defence, he wished to postpone the struggle as long as possible. For though he had several hundred men under his command, and though the number was hourly being augmented, they were wholly undisciplined, and the breastwork, which might have aided him materially, was still unfinished.
Meantime, he urged forward the construction of the fortification, often personally assisting the laborers. He hoped, by another day, to have the defences finished, in which case he thought he could make good his post, even if Pulaski should fail to come up. Nevertheless, he was not over-sanguine. For the thousand disciplined soldiers, marines, and sailors, whom the British were despatching against him, were not to be despised by a brave and prudent commander. Two-thirds of his men had never seen fire; and though their patriotism was unquestionable, no leader, he well knew, could count certainly on such troops.
When, at last, noon arrived, and the fortifications were pronounced half-finished, and when, having swept the river below with his glass, no enemy was seen, Major Gordon went to his meal with something like relief.
Clouds had been hovering all day, however, around the horizon, portending rain; and more than once low growls of thunder had come up faintly from the distance. While the men were at dinner, the threatening vapors culminated, and a storm, as sudden as it was violent, broke upon the little camp. The Major was seated at his meal, in the “best parlor” of the principal dwelling, when his attention was aroused by the unexpected darkness that fell across the room. Almost immediately there came a rush of wind, which dashed the sand against the window-pane like showers of fine shot, while the enormous chestnuts were heard swaying and moaning as if twisted and tortured almost beyond their powers of endurance. Rushing to the casement he saw the air filled with a ghastly dust, through which the light looked lurid, as if the Judgment Day had come. The young saplings were bending like reeds; while some cattle, which had been driven into the camp to be slaughtered, had broken loose, and now ran wildly about, tearing up the loose soil and bellowing in affright: and overhead, the birds, scared from their noontide shelter, flew hither and thither blindly.