CHAPTER XI
A MESSENGER OF DEFEAT
IN the excitement of those September days, when the two armies overran the Pennsylvania hills to the west and south of Philadelphia, Hadley came near forgetting his Uncle Ephraim and the promise he had made his mother regarding the old man. Miser Morris had so repelled his nephew’s kindly efforts to help him, that the boy felt he was no more able to do him any good while at the Three Oaks than he was miles away from the Morris farm in the lines of the Continental troops. And then, the glamour of the life—the drilling, the marching, the uncertainty, the danger—all fed his imagination and inspired him with actual delight. Prentice declared almost hourly that Hadley was “spoiling a good officer by hanging about a country inn.”
“I don’t feel that I could regularly enlist,” the boy said to him, “so I am not likely to be an officer yet awhile. I am here only as a volunteer, and my conscience troubles me, too, at that.”
But all things end in their own good time, and the long wait which ensued after the landing of the British finally was closed on the morning of September 11th. Captain Prentice’s command had not even tasted a skirmish until that day; but Hadley—nor the captain himself—could find no fault with the position they occupied during the fearful hours which followed the first gun of attack. Hadley was eager to see a real battle, to see the armies charge each other and try their strength upon a real battle-field, instead of individual men snapping their muskets at one another in little skirmishes. Before the end of that day he could not realize what awful motive had ever urged such foolish desire in his heart.
He saw men lying dead upon the browning hillsides; he heard wounded horses screaming in their death agony; the earth shook with the discharge of the heavy guns; the crackling of the musketry fire deafened him. The fife and drums, the uniformed officers, the marching soldiery made no appeal to Hadley Morris now. Wounds and death were all about him, and fear gripped his heart as though in a vice. Time and again as he heard the shriek of the bullets over his head he could have fainted, or run away in abject terror, had he dared! But the thought of being considered a coward frightened him even more, and he stayed.
Once, when there was a lull of heavy firing on both sides, a strange sound reached his ears. Captain Prentice’s command was somewhat above and to one side of the main line of battle, and this sound, growing louder and more ear-piercing as the strange silence continued, had such an eerie effect upon the listener that Hadley actually shook with a nervous chill, without knowing what caused it. The sound was little more than a murmur—yet a very insistent, penetrating murmur.
“What is it?” Hadley whispered to the man who stood next him in the broken line.
“The cries of the wounded,” was the stern reply, and the boy was glad when a renewal of the conflict drowned the awful sound.
No history fittingly tells the story of that day’s struggle—the high hopes with which the battle was begun by the Americans, the determined, dogged resistance they offered the British soldiery. Yet its salient points are familiar enough. We do not like, even now, to speak at length upon the defeats of our arms even in that unequal war. But without doubt, had not Sullivan blundered and lost to the American cause a good twelve hundred men, the Battle of the Brandywine would have been placed upon the list of American victories.
Hadley saw the patriot army driven back and as they retreated he observed many of the men weeping like women at the thought of flying before an enemy which they had practically held in check since early morning. Captain Prentice, who had been recklessly courageous during the engagement, was wounded, yet still kept on the firing line with his arm and shoulder swathed in bandages. As they broke into the final disorderly retreat, an aide galloped to the young captain and said a word to him.