"If heaven spares me, I shall."
"Then I will return, Miss Lane, if I live."
Their discourse had been friendly, but cold and formal. Fernando had once overstepped the bounds when he declared his love; but he was careful not to do so again. Notwithstanding she had leaped to the redoubt amid screaming shells and whistling balls, to persuade him back to the trenches, he could see nothing more tender than love of humanity in her act. He was so thoroughly convinced that she would wed Lieutenant Matson, that he was once on the point of asking her when the marriage would take place, but the subject was too painful to mention.
She followed him quite to the door, and here he said in a voice that was husky despite his efforts to prevent it:
"Miss Lane,--Morgianna, I had him paroled for your sake. He can remain in the village."
He was gone before she could make any response. His men were mustered at peep of day and marched away to Baltimore.
General Andrew Jackson, to whom Fernando Stevens was marching, was the hero of the war of 1812 in the South. Having utterly crushed the Creek power and wrung from them a treaty which extinguished them politically as a nation, he set about securing that portion of the country against further molestation. The belief that the war in the South was ended proved a deception when the British suddenly appeared in a large force in the Gulf of Mexico. By permission of the Spanish governor of Florida, the British took possession of one of the forts at Pensacola, where they fitted out an expedition for the capture of Fort Bowyer, [Footnote: Now Fort Morgan.] on the eastern shore of the entrance to Mobile Bay. The British attacked the fort, but were repulsed. Jackson, who was at Mobile, hastened to Pensacola and demanded of the Spanish governor a surrender of the forts. The officer sent with the flag to demand the surrender was fired upon, and next day Jackson with his troops charged into the town; when the frightened governor offered to surrender the forts. This was done, and the British blew up one, and abandoned the others.
On his return to Mobile, Jackson found a message from New Orleans, urging him to hasten to the defence of that city, as the British commander in the gulf had declared his intention to invade Louisiana, and sent an inflammatory proclamation among the inhabitants.
Jackson arrived at New Orleans, December 2, 1814, and found the city utterly defenceless, and the people filled with alarm and distracted by petty factions. Danger was imminent. The British troops that left Chesapeake Bay after their repulse at Baltimore had gone to the West Indies, where they were joined by about four thousand veterans under the brave Irish General Keane. The combined forces sailed in the direction of New Orleans, late in November. The wives of many of the officers accompanied them, for not a man doubted that the speedy conquest of Louisiana would be the result of the expedition. The dullness of the voyage was enlightened by music and dancing, and all anticipated exquisite pleasures to be found in the paradise before them. It is said that the British officers had promised their soldiers the privilege of the city, when captured, for three days, and that "booty and beauty," was their watchword.
Fernando Stevens, with his experienced marksmen, joined Jackson at New Orleans on the very day that Jean Lafitte, the pirate of the Gulf, came to offer the services of himself and band to Jackson. The British General had tried to engage the services of this band of outlaws. Lafitte was a shrewd Frenchman, and he and his band had been outlawed by legal proceedings, though their crimes were only violations of the revenue and neutrality laws of the United States. When the invitation of the British was put into his hands, he feigned compliance; but as soon as the bearer had departed, he called his followers around him on the border of the sea, and said: