Once Jack fell to talk of how he and I were changed from the quiet Quaker lads we had been, and did I remember our first fight, and Colonel Rupert Forest, and Master Dove? That greater master, War, since then had educated and broadened us. He was more philosophic than I, and liked thus to speculate; but of Darthea he said never a word, though we spoke of many things that memorable night.
At last, when it was near to dawn, Jack jumped up, crying, “Oh, confound that dog!” He had, what I never had, some remnant of the superstitions of our ancestors, and I suspect that the howl of the poor beast troubled him. I guessed at this when he said presently, “I suppose we shall have to carry the place by storm.”
“Now don’t tell me you will get hit,” said I. “You always say that. There are enough dead men to set every dog in Virginia a-howling.”
Jack laughed, but I had shamed him out of any desire to repeat his predictions of disaster, and with the signal-rockets in air, and the resounding thunder of this storm of war ever rising and falling, we went at last to our tents.
For two or three days his Excellency kept me busy; but since, except every third or fourth day, Jack had no active work, his diary at this time is very fully kept. I see from its pages that he thought over and over in this leisure of what we had so largely discussed on that night when we lay upon the hill.
“October 11,” I find written.—“Hugh and I had a long talk over our own lives. It is a good thing and wise at times to take stock, as merchants say, of one’s self and of one’s friends. Indeed, if a man could contrive a moral likeness of his inner self such as he may have of his body, and this at different ages, it were an interesting and perhaps, too, a useful thing. It might much surprise him as the years went on. I think of myself as not so changed as Hugh. I am indeed more shy. As time goes on I arrange to hide it. I am less ambitious. Duty seems to me more and more a thing which I must do by reason of habit, that being strong with me owing much to the constant example set by my friend’s life. If I have in me something of the woman’s nature, as Mistress Wynne used to declare, I do not now so much dislike the notion. It may explain why, as I mature, nothing in life seems to me so greatly to be desired as the love of my fellows. If I think a man I esteem has no affection for me, I will fetch and carry to get it. Thank God I need not for Hugh. For him I would give my life, should he want it, and what more can a man do for his friend? Yes, there is a greater test, but of that I need not think, since she does not love me, nor ever could I think to win her love.
“My Hugh is a big handsome fellow nowadays, builded to be of the bigness of his father, but cleaner fashioned, from early use of his muscles. He has the strong passions of these hot Welsh, but is disciplined to control them, though not always. He is more serious of late, and has thoughts which surprise me, and show that his mind has grown. I used to think he was too abrupt with people, but he has a gift I have not—the power to capture the fine ways which these French gentlemen possess, so that nowadays he has quite lost the stiff ways in which we were brought up. But this art I have not, nor ever shall have.”
Now all this is more or less true, and as I have said whatever was ill of myself, I like to let another, if a too partial judge, say of me, for the flattery of our blood, what may one day pleasure my children to read.
On the night of the 12th of October our second parallel was opened by Baron Steuben’s division, in which was Jack’s command. It brought us within three hundred yards of the enemy’s works. Here our people, while at the labour of digging, were greatly annoyed by the flanking fire of two redoubts, one on each side, and lying nearly as far out to right and left as were now our advanced trenches.
On the 13th Colonel Tilghman came to ask me to write the needed orders for an assault on these two redoubts. He told me that Marquis Lafayette had asked that his own aide-de-camp, Captain Gimat, should lead the storming-party of Americans from the troops for duty on the 14th, but Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton had insisted on his own right to this honourable risk, he being, on the day set for the assault, in command in the trenches.