The Knickerbocker, Vol. 22, No. 5, November 1843

by Various

I was flat on my back, trying to count a small group of stars in the zenith of that part of heaven which overhangs St. Augustine, taking my observation by the camp-fire, from a pine board, with the 'stub-shot' for a pillow; the six feet of Bravo were disposed of in the same manner; and Boag and a few Spaniards were radiating in the zodiacal circle, of which the fire was the centre. The duties of our profession had not been so severe that day as to forbid our sitting up; but then it was much easier to lie down, at least so thought the Spaniards, who take every thing the easiest way possible; and Boag was deep in the invention of a new whirling contrivance for the making of egg-nogg, and chose to give himself up exclusively to the concentration of mind necessary for that purpose. Some one had thrown out, rather lazily, that it was 'very warm,' and he reckoned 'the alligators would stick their noses out to-night;' and another had remarked, with considerable effort, that 'alligators or not, it was just right and couldn't be better;' and this seemed so much the sense of the majority, that no one cared to heat himself with any argument upon the subject; and each one wandered off on his own private speculation.

It was that kind of night that seals up the lips like twilight. Warm, perhaps to a fault, and yet a change of two degrees would have drawn our cloaks over us, and we should have complained of the cold. The fire was a mere companion, that could talk to us without the effort of conversation; and in the absence of French perfumery, the smell of the pitch kindling was quite passable, and that of the orange-wood pretty much like any other. But the night was not like any other; common enough there, but not within the scope of any imagination that dates north of thirty-five degrees. The air was nowhere in particular, unless you might suppose, from the solemn tone of the pine woods, that the sea-breeze which went out in the morning was on its way back; but a feather thrown up would probably have wandered about for a while, and then balanced itself upon my nose, and I should merely have seen a strange star in the heavens; olden philosophers have done worse. But I didn't throw up a feather; too much trouble. Overhead, all was bright and still; no shooting-stars, nor any thing of a quarrelsome nature; and not a cloud to be seen, in a sky that has no clouds for mere shading purposes; and though a stranger, standing on the sea-wall, would have guessed a storm, from a flash seen occasionally in the haze lying on the eastern horizon, there was no storm to be; merely the playfulness of the Gulf Stream that is sometimes seen from that coast.

In the lower part of the city, a dog was howling out some unimaginable irritation, perhaps only to indicate that something should be said upon such an occasion; or perhaps the hoot of a porpoise disturbed him; or more likely, it was too still for him; he couldn't bear it. If I had fallen asleep, I should have dreamed of being outside some ruined city, and the cry of that dog sounding up through the narrow streets, like a man talking through a trumpet, would have been the howl of a hyena or jackal; and with fallen columns and moonlight, it would have sounded very well in a 'letter from our foreign correspondent.' But in Augustine, it was only a dog, and just like any other dog, that sometimes fancies itself very unhappy, and howls out its inspired misery in baying the moon. Beyond all doubt, dogs may be poetical. There are all varieties of dog; and it would be strange if in such a mixed breed there were not a poet-species, in a race that takes madness so easily. The dog excepted, one would have called it very still at first thought, but on listening, there was a great deal of varied music going on; one voice after another coming to the ear from the innumerable land and water fowl, making up a kind of opera, in which each one appeared to speak very much at random; and that, I take it, is the peculiar beauty of operas. Amid a great variety of short interjections, queries and answers, some were talking entirely to themselves, as it seemed, and others appeared to have a domestic, 'keep away' kind of expression in their remarks, arising probably from some member of the family's being too assiduous in his attentions; or perhaps they had dined badly, and so got up a quarrel to improve their digestion. No doubt there are unknown griefs, as well as unwritten poetry, in all animal life. Whatever the cause, there was an irritability and a nervous restlessness in the waters and salt-grass, that larger animals of two legs, who dine when they please and as they please, understand much better than I can tell.

Over all these inconsistences of a night so beautiful, swept like a minute-gun the sound of the third wave breaking on Anastasia Island; and on the other side, the forest, as aforesaid, which had hundreds of miles of even tree-tops on which to get up its 'voice of the night,' answered back in the same earnest and solemn manner. No fingering, or tugging at the bellows, in all this organ-izing, which was quite as good as could be made to order.

All this (and if any one wonders what it has to do with the incident to follow, he has read novels in vain,) all this had 'come and gone' through my mind, unconsciously, like a glass of congress-water elsewhere; and I turned to the stars as usual, before shutting up for the night. 'Very tolerable,' said I to myself, thinking of the night, 'and not to be sneezed at.' (No taking cold in that climate.) 'One, two, three; the sides of an equilateral triangle, and the square of the hypothenuse bisected in the middle,' and so forth. Q. e. d.; there we are, the fourteenth; that is, the very 'particular star.' We had agreed that she—that is, that we—would look at the same star, and not to blunder upon different stars, which would be very awkward, and, a thousand miles distant from each other, could not be connected without some waste of sentiment on the passage. We had selected one in a group which had to be theorized geometrically before the bright particular one could be identified. The idea of her looking miscellaneously at the north pole and I at the south, and each expecting the requisite titillation of sympathy! We were not to be duped into any such latitudinal delusion!

I had found my star, and was looking very hard at it through the tube of one hand, while the other was brushing off musquitoes, when a gun reported itself about two miles distant; and directly another, and another; after which the enemy appeared to be entirely used up, and the engagement over.

The guard were asleep, and coming gradually to my elbow, I intimated to Bravo that there was a disturbance at the North Post. He gave the alarm to his comrades, who, one by one, came very slowly to the consciousness of an Indian alarm. Then of a sudden muskets glittered in the moon-light, belts were strapped, primings looked to, and the sentries received orders to fire at any, the least whisper, that was not perfectly intelligible and satisfactory. Bravo started for the city; and now we began to hear the tramp of the horse as they clattered up to the point of alarm. There were five hundred Charleston volunteers in the city, ready for the first show of fight or frolic; and in half an hour every man in town who had a musket or rifle, was on his way to do battle against—nobody knew what. There was much tramping, and shouting of 'Where are the rascals?' 'Which way?' 'Clear the track for the big gun!' 'Down with the red devils!' etc.; all which passed over, after a little, and the people went back again, with a keen relish for hot suppers, and a highly exhilarating sense of their increased importance. It was not, however, so trifling a matter; and upon more than one occasion during the war, the feeble and aged repaired to the fort for security. Indians had been seen near the town only a few days previous; several bold murders had been committed on the Picolata road; and the tracks of parties almost daily seen by the escort sent out between the two places. But this, if I remember aright, was the first experience of the town in this new kind of excitement.

After an hour or two Bravo returned with the fact, as he alleged, that an Indian had been seen and fired at; and the sentry thought he saw several more, but they wouldn't wait for the people to come and shoot them. The people had gone to bed again, assured that no Indian would show himself there again; and as to the southern post, it was only necessary to reflect that Corporal Bravo had command there, and turn over to unwinking repose; 'for gentlemen,' said Bravo, 'I have not thought proper to alarm the town with my views upon this matter; though it is perfectly plain that an odd Indian was sent to that post to attract attention that way, while the main body of the enemy is undoubtedly in our neighborhood, and we shall receive the first attack. Every man will sleep with one eye open, and his hand on his musket.' As the Indians might be within hearing, the speech was received with silent applause; but there were quite a number of severe and very rapid gesticulatory engagements, showing what would probably be done in the course of the night. Boag and myself stood apart. We were out of favor. Our exploit as 'officer of the night' had something to do with it; and any one who likes the fag-ends of every thing will be glad to learn that we arrived safe at our quarters under the protection of the corporal, who had missed us from the camp. On retiring that night, that is, laying myself out on a board, I went down, step by step, into a very deep sleep; and although I was threatened with a 'lock-up' in the fort, and a court-martial trial, it was found impossible to make me understand that I was wanted 'on guard,' and another man was posted in my place. There was also an 'incident of travel' that had soured the 'complainants' exceedingly.

In marching down from the fort, a day or two previous, the corporal stopped at his house for a moment, and Boag and myself walked on, turned the next corner, and went direct to the camp. The corporal and guard, on resuming their march, missed us, and presuming that we had deserted, went half a mile out of their way to the house where they expected to find us. Some of my friends happened to be lounging on the balcony when the guard came up, and replied to their inquiry for us, that we were not there. Bravo insisted that we were, and he would find us, and made one step to that effect, when one of my friends, who has a very quiet and effective manner for such occasions, stepped before the door-way and remarked, in his ordinary tone, 'You can't come in, Sir.' The corporal stopped, with one foot up, lifted the pan of his musket, shook up the powder, looked up and down the street in a speculating way, and then stalked off with his men, having decided that the speculation was a bad one. They found us at the camp, target-shooting, but were too much chagrined to join us, and vented their spleen in a noisy discharge of Spanish and Minorcan, in which both seemed equally offensive.