The Road to Paris: A Story of Adventure

by Robert Neilson Stephens

When they advanced in column to the third attack, they came without knapsacks, and their whole movement was concentrated upon the redoubt and breastwork, while their artillery was sent ahead and so placed as to enfilade the Americans in flank. The red lines were but twenty yards away when Prescott gave the order to fire. The columns wavered at the volley, but recovered form in a moment, and sprang forward with fixed bayonets, without firing in return. Dick, knowing he had fired his last round, and following Tom's example, turned his weapon around to use it as a club. He was now at the southeastern corner of the redoubt.

The British surged up to the southern side, like a tidal wave, their front line being lifted by the men behind. A red-coated officer set foot on the parapet, cried out "The day is ours!" and fell, pierced by the last bullet of some Yankee inside the redoubt. The whole first rank that mounted the parapet was shot down, but there was no powder left for the ranks that followed. Dick brought down his rifle-butt with all his strength on the head of the nearest redcoat. Before he could raise his weapon, he felt in his leg the violent thrust of a British bayonet. He made a wild movement to clutch it, but it was drawn out of him by its owner's hand. Dick fell forward on one knee, and a moment later toppled over the parapet and fell outside the redoubt, upon the quivering body of a dying redcoat, by whose advancing comrades he was soon trodden into insensibility.

When he opened his eyes again it was late in the evening. The mêlée was over. He lay on some hay on the hillside, with a number of other men, some wounded, some apparently whole, all under guard of sentries who paced on every side. He soon perceived that the men under guard were of the Yankee army, while those who guarded them were British, and, as he presently recognized the redoubt not far away, he knew that the British had won the day and that he was a prisoner. Before night a surgeon came and examined his wound, had it washed and tied up by an assistant, and pronounced it of no consequence. Dick passed the night in exhaustion, pain, and thirst, on his bed of hay on the hillside.

The next day, while the British were fitting the redoubt for their own service, and also beginning new works, Dick and his fellow prisoners were marched down to the river, conveyed by boat to Boston, and led through certain streets of that town, some of which were curved, some crooked, some steeply ascending, some flanked by closely built rough-cast houses with projecting upper stories, some by commodious brick or wooden residences in the midst of fine gardens; and so into a stone jail that stood with its walled yard on the south side of the way. At one side of the entrance, within this prison, was a guard-room, into which each prisoner was taken for his name to be entered in the records. Dick was the last to be directed thither. When he had been duly registered by the proper officer, he turned to follow the guard to the cell assigned him.

"So we've got you at last," came, in a slightly Irish accent, from a British officer, who appeared to be in some authority at the prison, but whom Dick had not before observed closely. "Faith, we'll take care you shall stay with us awhile, and we'll not give you a chance to murder English officers, either, as you tried to murder Lieutenant Blagdon in New York. What have you done with my sword, you spalpeen?"

Dick recognized the officer in whose company Blagdon had been at the time of the occurrence in the King's Arms Tavern. He would have made an answer, although the other's question did not in its tone imply expectation of one; but the guard hurried him away, in obedience to a sudden gesture of the Irishman.

"At least," thought Dick, "though that man, as Blagdon's friend, counts himself my enemy, he has done me the service of informing me that Blagdon is not dead. 'Tried to murder Blagdon,' he said. Tom the piper's son was right. And, thinking of Tom, I wonder where he is now. Evidently not a prisoner, for our lot seems to comprise all that were taken. Killed? I can't think that! Does he know what has become of me, I wonder? Shall I ever see him again?"

Having been conducted up a narrow stairway, he was led along a corridor and ushered into a large, bare apartment whose wooden door opened thereupon. But if this apartment was bare as to its wooden walls and floor and ceiling, it was far from empty, being occupied already by half a score of men, some of whom were of the party of prisoners that had come with Dick. The guard now closed the door and fastened it on the outside, Dick having been the last prisoner lodged.

Dick and his roommates had of floor space barely sufficient for all to lie down at once, and of light they had only what came from a single window, which looked across the jail-yard to some rear out-buildings and gardens appertaining to houses in the street beyond. The unpainted wood that encased the cell was interrupted only by the window and in certain places where the inside of the stone outer wall of the prison was visible. There were in the cell two large wooden pails, which were removed and returned once a day.

Regularly each day the door opened to admit men who brought water, bread or biscuit, and sometimes porridge or stew or other food; and the prisoners were now and then taken, singly or in small parties, to walk in the yard. They were made by their guards to suppose themselves recognized not as prisoners of war but as rebels or traitors, and to consider the slightest acts of consideration towards them as unmerited privileges. As the days passed, it became manifest that Dick received fewer such privileges than fell to any of his fellow prisoners. He promptly attributed this to the influence of the Irish officer.