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Page 6
Other rovings ensued; until at last, entering on board a Nantucket ship,
he hunted the leviathan off the Western Islands and on the coast of
Africa, for sixteen months; returning at length to Nantucket with a
brimming hold. From that island he sailed again on another whaling
voyage, extending, this time, into the great South Sea. There, promoted
to be harpooner, Israel, whose eye and arm had been so improved by
practice with his gun in the wilderness, now further intensified his
aim, by darting the whale-lance; still, unwittingly, preparing himself
for the Bunker Hill rifle.
In this last voyage, our adventurer experienced to the extreme all the
hardships and privations of the whaleman's life on a long voyage to
distant and barbarous waters--hardships and privations unknown at the
present day, when science has so greatly contributed, in manifold ways,
to lessen the sufferings, and add to the comforts of seafaring men.
Heartily sick of the ocean, and longing once more for the bush, Israel,
upon receiving his discharge at Nantucket at the end of the voyage, hied
straight back for his mountain home.
But if hopes of his sweetheart winged his returning flight, such hopes
were not destined to be crowned with fruition. The dear, false girl was
another's.
CHAPTER III.
ISRAEL GOES TO THE WARS; AND REACHING BUNKER HILL IN TIME TO BE OF
SERVICE THERE, SOON AFTER IS FORCED TO EXTEND HIS TRAVELS ACROSS THE SEA
INTO THE ENEMY'S LAND.
Left to idle lamentations, Israel might now have planted deep furrows in
his brow. But stifling his pain, he chose rather to plough, than be
ploughed. Farming weans man from his sorrows. That tranquil pursuit
tolerates nothing but tranquil meditations. There, too, in mother earth,
you may plant and reap; not, as in other things, plant and see the
planting torn up by the roots. But if wandering in the wilderness, and
wandering upon the waters, if felling trees, and hunting, and shipwreck,
and fighting with whales, and all his other strange adventures, had not
as yet cured poor Israel of his now hopeless passion, events were at
hand for ever to drown it.
It was the year 1774. The difficulties long pending between the colonies
and England were arriving at their crisis. Hostilities were certain. The
Americans were preparing themselves. Companies were formed in most of
the New England towns, whose members, receiving the name of minute-men,
stood ready to march anywhere at a minute's warning. Israel, for the
last eight months, sojourning as a laborer on a farm in Windsor,
enrolled himself in the regiment of Colonel John Patterson of Lenox,
afterwards General Patterson.
The battle of Lexington was fought on the 18th of April, 1775; news of
it arrived in the county of Berkshire on the 20th about noon. The next
morning at sunrise, Israel swung his knapsack, shouldered his musket,
and, with Patterson's regiment, was on the march, quickstep, towards
Boston.
Like Putnam, Israel received the stirring tidings at the plough. But
although not less willing than Putnam to fly to battle at an instant's
notice, yet--only half an acre of the field remaining to be finished--he
whipped up his team and finished it. Before hastening to one duty, he
would not leave a prior one undone; and ere helping to whip the British,
for a little practice' sake, he applied the gad to his oxen. From the
field of the farmer, he rushed to that of the soldier, mingling his
blood with his sweat. While we revel in broadcloth, let us not forget
what we owe to linsey-woolsey.
With other detachments from various quarters, Israel's regiment remained
encamped for several days in the vicinity of Charlestown. On the
seventeenth of June, one thousand Americans, including the regiment of
Patterson, were set about fortifying Bunker's Hill. Working all through
the night, by dawn of the following day, the redoubt was thrown up. But
every one knows all about the battle. Suffice it, that Israel was one
of those marksmen whom Putnam harangued as touching the enemy's eyes.
Forbearing as he was with his oppressive father and unfaithful love, and
mild as he was on the farm, Israel was not the same at Bunker Hill.
Putnam had enjoined the men to aim at the officers; so Israel aimed
between the golden epaulettes, as, in the wilderness, he had aimed
between the branching antlers. With dogged disdain of their foes, the
English grenadiers marched up the hill with sullen slowness; thus
furnishing still surer aims to the muskets which bristled on the
redoubt. Modest Israel was used to aver, that considering his practice
in the woods, he could hardly be regarded as an inexperienced marksman;
hinting, that every shot which the epauletted grenadiers received from
his rifle, would, upon a different occasion, have procured him a
deerskin. And like stricken deers the English, rashly brave as they
were, fled from the opening fire. But the marksman's ammunition was
expended; a hand-to-hand encounter ensued. Not one American musket in
twenty had a bayonet to it. So, wielding the stock right and left, the
terrible farmers, with hats and coats off, fought their way among the
furred grenadiers, knocking them right and left, as seal-hunters on the
beach knock down with their clubs the Shetland seal. In the dense crowd
and confusion, while Israel's musket got interlocked, he saw a blade
horizontally menacing his feet from the ground. Thinking some fallen
enemy sought to strike him at the last gasp, dropping his hold on his
musket, he wrenched at the steel, but found that though a brave hand
held it, that hand was powerless for ever. It was some British
officer's laced sword-arm, cut from the trunk in the act of fighting,
refusing to yield up its blade to the last. At that moment another sword
was aimed at Israel's head by a living officer. In an instant the blow
was parried by kindred steel, and the assailant fell by a brother's
weapon, wielded by alien hands. But Israel did not come off unscathed. A
cut on the right arm near the elbow, received in parrying the officer's
blow, a long slit across the chest, a musket ball buried in his hip, and
another mangling him near the ankle of the same leg, were the tokens of
intrepidity which our Sicinius Dentatus carried from this memorable
field. Nevertheless, with his comrades he succeeded in reaching Prospect
Hill, and from thence was conveyed to the hospital at Cambridge. The
bullet was extracted, his lesser wounds were dressed, and after much
suffering from the fracture of the bone near the ankle, several pieces
of which were extracted by the surgeon, ere long, thanks to the high
health and pure blood of the farmer, Israel rejoined his regiment when
they were throwing up intrenchments on Prospect Hill. Bunker Hill was
now in possession of the foe, who in turn had fortified it.
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