With Force and Arms: A Tale of Love and Salem Witchcraft

by Howard Roger Garis

“What is it, Edward?” sobbed Lucille.

“It is life or death,” I answered, as I ran with her into the block house.

The savages were yelling in chorus, like ten thousand devils now. The flames were beginning to take hold of the dry brush, which was crackling and snapping as if hungry to get at us. Inside the little fort were huddled all that was left of the defenders, men, women and children. I set Lucille down, but kept my arm about her. The fuses should have burned to the end by this time. We could hear ourselves breathing while we waited. Carteret turned to speak to me.

The next instant there was a glare that lighted up the sky, turning the space between the palisade and the block from darkness into a noon-day brightness!

Then a crash so loud, so terrifying, so awful, that the very earth and sky seemed rent asunder as by a hundred thunderbolts. The solid ground rocked; a very cradle in the hand of a giant. A great wind blew, howling through the openings in the logs.

The sound deafened us. The blast swayed us as if a hurricane had swooped down from the sky. Men caught their breath. Women screamed. Children wailed as in fright at some unseen spirit of the night.

We heard the north wall of the stockade give a rending crack, succeeded by a mighty crash. Then it fell outward, where the pile of brush had been.

As for the block it pitched and seemed to toss--a frail ship on the billows of the earth.

To the terrible noise and glare succeeded silence and darkness as of the tomb. Slowly our sight and hearing came back.

Carteret and I staggered from the block and looked to where the north wall had been. It was not there. In its place was a chasm, so deep that it would have hidden the fort. Its sides were lined with blazing brands from the scattered brush-heap. By the light of these, and by the glimmer of the stars, we observed scores upon scores of silent dark forms in the big hole, or near it on the earth. Toward the edge of the forest we saw crouching forms hurrying off to bury themselves deeper in the woods, away from the terror behind them.