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Page 76
As he stepped upon the short crisp sward under its walls, he started at
a violent sound from within, as of the roar of some tormented lion. Soon
the sound became articulate, and he heard the following words bayed out
with an amazing vigor:
"Brag no more, Old England; consider you are but an island! Order back
your broken battalions! home, and repent in ashes! Long enough have your
hired tories across the sea forgotten the Lord their God, and bowed down
to Howe and Kniphausen--the Hessian!--Hands off, red-skinned jackal!
Wearing the king's plate,[A] as I do, I have treasures of wrath against
you British."
[Footnote A: Meaning, probably, certain manacles.]
Then came a clanking, as of a chain; many vengeful sounds, all
confusedly together; with strugglings. Then again the voice:
"Ye brought me out here, from my dungeon to this green--affronting yon
Sabbath sun--to see how a rebel looks. But I show ye how a true
gentleman and Christian can conduct in adversity. Back, dogs! Respect a
gentleman and a Christian, though he _be_ in rags and smell of
bilge-water."
Filled with astonishment at these words, which came from over a massive
wall, enclosing what seemed an open parade-space, Israel pressed
forward, and soon came to a black archway, leading far within,
underneath, to a grassy tract, through a tower. Like two boar's tusks,
two sentries stood on guard at either side of the open jaws of the arch.
Scrutinizing our adventurer a moment, they signed him permission to
enter.
Arrived at the end of the arched-way, where the sun shone, Israel stood
transfixed, at the scene.
Like some baited bull in the ring, crouched the Patagonian-looking
captive, handcuffed as before; the grass of the green trampled, and
gored up all about him, both by his own movements and those of the
people around. Except some soldiers and sailors, these seemed mostly
townspeople, collected here out of curiosity. The stranger was
outlandishly arrayed in the sorry remains of a half-Indian,
half-Canadian sort of a dress, consisting of a fawn-skin jacket--the fur
outside and hanging in ragged tufts--a half-rotten, bark-like belt of
wampum; aged breeches of sagathy; bedarned worsted stockings to the
knee; old moccasins riddled with holes, their metal tags yellow with
salt-water rust; a faded red woollen bonnet, not unlike a Russian
night-cap, or a portentous, ensanguined full-moon, all soiled, and stuck
about with bits of half-rotted straw. He seemed just broken from the
dead leases in David's outlawed Cave of Adullam. Unshaven, beard and
hair matted, and profuse as a corn-field beaten down by hailstorms, his
whole marred aspect was that of some wild beast; but of a royal sort,
and unsubdued by the cage.
"Aye, stare, stare! Though but last night dragged out of a ship's hold,
like a smutty tierce; and this morning out of your littered barracks
here, like a murderer; for all that, you may well stare at Ethan
Ticonderoga Allen, the unconquered soldier, by ----! You Turks never saw
a Christian before. Stare on! I am he, who, when your Lord Howe wanted
to bribe a patriot to fall down and worship him by an offer of a
major-generalship and five thousand acres of choice land in old
Vermont--(Ha! three-times-three for glorious old Vermont, and my
Green-Mountain boys! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!) I am he, I say, who
answered your Lord Howe, 'You, _you_ offer _our_ land? You are like the
devil in Scripture, offering all the kingdoms in the world, when the
d----d soul had not a corner-lot on earth! Stare on!'"
"Look you, rebel, you had best heed how you talk against General Lord
Howe," here said a thin, wasp-waisted, epauletted officer of the castle,
coming near and flourishing his sword like a schoolmaster's ferule.
"General Lord Howe? Heed how I talk of that toad-hearted king's
lick-spittle of a scarlet poltroon; the vilest wriggler in God's
worm-hole below? I tell you, that herds of red-haired devils are
impatiently snorting to ladle Lord Howe with all his gang (you included)
into the seethingest syrups of tophet's flames!"
At this blast, the wasp-waisted officer was blown backwards as from
before the suddenly burst head of a steam-boiler.
Staggering away, with a snapped spine, he muttered something about its
being beneath his dignity to bandy further words with a low-lived rebel.
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