Chaos indescribable ruled that hour. Short toiled like a madman to stay the mischief. He stood before his own men and yelled himself hoarse with execration and command. But the soldiers were out of hand. They had suffered much, and in their base minds the hour of vengeance was come.
At length non-commissioned officers succeeded where their superiors had failed. Sergeant Bradridge and others drew off the garrison, and Doctor Macgrath, with his orderlies and many recruits, hastened to the dead and dying. Not a few had already perished; others were mortally wounded.
Recognising Cecil Stark, the doctor approached where he knelt beside his old messmate; but a glance sufficed.
"That man is dead," he said, and hastened on to tend the living.
Those few of this vast host with whom we have been concerned had all gathered here. Knapps was down with a ball in his leg and a bayonet wound in the arm. Mr. Cuffee, uninjured, howled with sorrow beside one Haywood, a black from Virginia, who had perished. The air stank with the smells of blood and smoke. Voices and cries rang in it; deep groans, like the bass of an organ, persisted beneath the high-pitched cries. As the doctors turned or moved a sufferer, some, restored to consciousness, shrieked till the walls rang out their exquisite grief; others sighed and died under the gentle hands now stretching out to succour them. Captain Short had withdrawn his men, and nearly all the Americans were finally driven back to their respective prisons and locked in; but the Commandant and his officers laboured among the wounded and toiled on under torchlight until the last fallen sufferer had been moved to the hospital or dead-house. Seven ultimately deceased, and of those who recovered many lost a limb. The Americans first responsible for the catastrophe nearly all suffered. They were standing beside Burnham and received a point-blank fire.
After the prisoners had been removed, Cecil Stark, who worked with the English to aid them, prepared to return to his quarters when he found himself accosted by a man with a swarthy face and a black beard. Many Hebrew merchants from the surrounding towns swarmed about the prison with garments to sell to the prisoners at this season, and Stark, supposing the man to be a Jew who had entered with hundreds of others after the catastrophe, was turning from him, when the stranger spoke.
"A moment," he said. "'Tis a terrible hour in which I'm come; but this ill wind will blow you good luck and perchance one who's more to you than yourself."
"John Lee!"
"Ay!—I've come, for there was none else that I dared to send. Evil has fallen out to Grace Malherb. This time there must be nothing to keep you from her, or else the worst will happen. Even as it is you may be too late."
"She sent your letter and I told her to fall in with any plan or warning that you might have for her."