Proceed, Sergeant Lamb Page 8

  These were good people, Loyalist by inclination and, I believe, tenants of the Colden family who were landed proprietors thereabouts. When I asked the woman her name, she replied after a little hesitation that she was Hannah Sniffen, wife to James Sniffen. The husband was not at home, but only the wife, a grown daughter, and two boys. They were astonished by our appearance but evidently pleased with our company, the names of Captain Webber and Old Joe carrying weight with them. They inquired after the health of these families. When I told of the sickness of Old Joe’s wife and what I had prescribed for her cure, Mrs. Sniffen, a bustling and red-cheeked woman, seemed interested and asked whether I were a tooth-drawer as well as surgeon and physician. She could, she said, not sleep of nights for a toothache, nor could she trust her husband with the pincers, lest he snap off the crown of the tooth, which was rotten, and thus make matters worse.

  I replied that, in exchange for a good meal, I would cleanly draw every tooth in her head and welcome; for it happened to be in the range of my powers, given a small pair of steel pincers. So the bargain was concluded.

  She gave us a cold roast of pork and boiled potatoes, together with a tart conserve of quince, and to each of us a great pewter tankard of spruce beer. Apart from the soupaun and apples at Mrs. Eder’s—for we had not gnawed at the pig’s tail there offered us—we had eaten nothing since our dinner at Nine Partners two days previously; this repast therefore, I need not add, proved highly acceptable to us. When it was done I felt sleep stealing across my eyes, so that I could scarcely keep them open. But I was bound first to conclude my bargain, by drawing her tooth, and had the good fortune to fetch it out whole, though its roots were very crooked, without injuring the gum. This feat excited admiration in the family and cries of ‘Well, I declare now!’ and ‘Wasn’t that a dandy pull?’ The two boys also offered to submit themselves to my professional skill. But I refused them, as being greatly fatigued by my journey, and said that I proposed, with Mrs. Sniffen’s permission, to lie down and take a nap on my blanket in the corner. My comrades were already preparing to do the same.

  This intention, however, she warmly opposed, though her daughter sighed: ‘They have earned a nap, the poor fellows, let ’em lie there, they won’t be in the way of our feet, surely.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Mary,’ cried the mother. ‘Don’t you know that our own soldiers often straggle here from White Plains? Some of them are as likely as not to come in upon us while these red-coats sleep. Then what will we not suffer for the crime of harbouring! I declare now I hear footsteps—run off, soldiers, run quick, I say, and hide in the garret!’ She bustled us out.

  It was only her husband, however, a little pale-faced, irresolute man. Looking at him, I could well understand his wife’s hesitation in entrusting the pincers and her tooth to his care. He seemed glad to see us. We revealed to him our intention of escaping into New York; but he repeated the words of our other directors, as to the number of American posts, particularly on the River. He added: ‘Boys, I swear now it will be an hundred chances to one, if you are not taken up.’

  We promised to reward him liberally if he would conduct us. After a while he said: ‘A young man lives several miles off from this spot, over to Pine’s Bridge: van Wart is his name. He’s a mighty smart boy and has friends both with the Cowboys and the Skinners. I reckon he will undertake the task. If he should, I have no objection to come too, for he knows the lie of the land. But I well know the dangers which we shall be exposed to, and will not go myself without a second guide.’

  I asked, who were these Cowboys and Skinners. Mrs. Sniffen told me that they were the plague of Westchester County, into the northern confines of which we had just entered. The principal landowners of the county, who had been very prosperous, favoured the British cause but were soon forced to take refuge in the City of New York. Their tenant farmers and other persons of substance had suffered enormous losses from the foragers of both armies; while such of the labourers and common people who remained had agreed to form robber bands as pretended auxiliaries of one army or the other. Those who belonged to the ‘upper party’, that is, to the Loyalists, called themselves ‘Cowboys’ from their habit of driving off the cattle of the revolutionaries; but cattle were not their only prey. Those who belonged to the ‘lower party’, the revolutionary, were known as ‘Skinners’, for they had harder hearts yet and would strip a victim of everything that he or she had in the world, down to the merest trifle, not scrupling to remove even stockings and under-linen. These Cowboys and Skinners ranged about in the neuter ground between the two lines of outposts, and while pretending to pillage only from opposing partisans were in reality perfectly indifferent whose throat or purse they cut. There was a close understanding, Mrs. Sniffen assured us, between these sworn foes who, after a mock-skirmish to satisfy the regular troops that they were in the way of their duty, would meet secretly as friends in some ruined farmhouse, there jocosely intermingling the strains of Yankee Doodle with the Grenadiers’ March and Hot Stuff. The object of these encounters was the bartering of cattle and goods stolen on the one hand by the Cowboys from their fellow-Loyalists, and on the other by the Skinners from their fellow-revolutionaries. These goods being dangerous to dispose of in home territory could be exchanged with the enemy, and what each side got was made to appear as rightful booty taken in a pretended fight. Each side always claimed to have inflicted crushing losses on its foes and to have left many of them lying dead. When the celebrated Aaron Burr commanded the American advanced lines in this neuter land, and became aware of the depredations and cruelties practised by the Skinners, he is said to have exclaimed in indignation: ‘I could gibbet half a dozen good Whigs with all the venom of an inveterate Tory!’ For a party of these wretches, seeking to screw from an aged Quaker more money than he possessed, had roasted him naked in hot ashes as one would a potato, until the skin rose in blisters on his flesh. Then they thrice hanged him up to a rafter for a spell, and as often cut him down; and in the end left him for dead upon the ground.

  Isaac van Wart was summoned, and arrived a few hours later, by which time we were refreshed by sleeping in the woods, where we had concealed ourselves in a drift of fallen leaves. He was, he avowed, a Cowboy in politics; but we could see at once that his courage was not equal to his profession. He was a wild-looking rogue and could neither read nor write. He boasted a great deal of his successes and stratagems in neuter ground, and how often the ‘balls had sung like bees about his head’; but we were convinced that Mr. Sniffen entertained too high an opinion of his smartness. He agreed at first to undertake any desperate work, but on one pretext or another continually postponed the hour of our departure; nor would Mr. Sniffen consent to go forward without him.

  It was two days before van Wart ‘allowed that he would come’, being constantly taunted by Miss Mary Sniffen with cowardice; and then only when we had presented him with five Spanish silver dollars on account and one of the two English blankets. Mr. Sniffen accepted the same fee and remarked on the unusual goodness of the dollars as coin; meaning that they had not been carved or clipped. An immense number of gold and silver pieces in Spanish, Portuguese and English currency had found its way into America since the war began; where they circulated in a variety of mutilated forms. The blame for the clipping of the coins was by the Americans uniformly fastened upon Lieutenant-General Archibald Robertson, a Scottish Engineer and Deputy-Quartermaster-General to our Army; so that the diminished coins were known as ‘Robertsons’. However, each individual, on either side, would cut up any coin into halves, quarters, or eighth parts, for the sake of small change, and naturally many an eighth was in reality a ninth or a tenth. These frauds, known as ‘sharp-skinned money’, were nevertheless highly preferred to paper.

  We set out at six o’clock in the evening on the fourth day of our adventure and travelled all night through deep swamp, thick woods and over difficult mountains, until three hours before dawn. Isaac van Wart then stopped suddenly and, said he: ‘This is a danger
ous, troublesome piece of work, I vow. I heartily wish I had never engaged myself in it; but your daughter, friend Sniffen, prevailed by her beauty over my prudent inclinations. Well, she is ten hours’ journey away from us now, and the force of her fascination over me has spent itself. We are now perhaps four miles from Tarry Town and an equal distance from White Plains. There is an American encampment of a thousand men within a mile of us. I was there a few days ago and know where all the sentries are posted. There is one at the corner of that coppice yonder. If I should be taken, I would lose my life, for they already have cause to suspect me as a driver of Whig cows.’

  He seemed to be under great terror and fear, which did not abate when Smutchy said roughly: ‘We are not afraid of one or two sentries. Only conduct us the best way you can. If we unavoidably fall in with any of them, you may leave the matter to us and fly for your life.’

  All that we could say had no effect upon him, and although we offered him on the spot twelve more dollars in hard money he would not advance one step further. To our surprise, Mr. James Sniffen, who had made no claims to courage and had insisted that he would not proceed without this van Wart, now changed colour. He undertook, of his own impulse, to carry us forward to our destination if van Wart only advised him how to avoid these sentries. This van Wart did.

  Mr. Sniffen said, when van Wart had hurried off: ‘It was but to reassure my wife that I showed such caution. I am greatly devoted to King George and if I prove the means of restoring three good soldiers to His Majesty’s service, I shall count myself a good subject. Be damned to the rebels! Now, forward with good courage!’

  It had been raining very hard during the whole night and was very dark, even when the moon rose, and therefore though we expected every moment to fall in with the line of sentries, we went through them unchallenged. Mr. Sniffen even led us in safety past a block-house which was full of sleeping troops, and remarked very coolly as we struck off into the woods to avoid it: ‘Gentlemen, these block-houses are of remarkable construction, being made for lack of nails with jointed timber throughout. I reckon that in your country it would be difficult to find a barrack composed wholly of wood without a pennyworth of iron in the whole building, barring only the pot-hook and chain that hangs in the chimney?’

  We agreed that America was a very remarkable country and the inhabitants ingenious beyond the ordinary; which seemed to please him very much.

  We then climbed up precipices and waded through swamps and not long before dawn arrived at the house of some friends of Mr. Sniffen’s, midway between Tarry Town and White Plains; and he rapped them up. We remained hidden outside until he gave us the signal that all was well and we might enter. We never learned the name of these people, who withheld it from us in case, being taken up, we might inform against them. They gave us refreshment of cold beef-steaks with lettuce, and cider, with hickory nuts as a side dish; but begged us not to remain in the house, which would be highly dangerous to us and them, as the American soldiery were scattered over almost the whole face of the country and were constant visitors.

  We held a consultation: what was to be done? Mr. Sniffen proposed that we should hide ourselves in the hay-stack which stood near the house, until he could explore the country and find out the safest way for our escape. He told us that we should be as snug there as fleas in a sheepskin. We agreed unanimously and, just as dawn was breaking through the heavy rain, we climbed up into the hay-stack, which was unthatched, and each buried himself up to the chin in the hay. The downpour continued all day. At about noon, during a lull, someone rode up on a horse which he hitched to a rail close by. Presently he brought out our host to view the stack. We heard him saying in the Connecticut accent: ‘Yes, Mister, that’s a right elegant bit of hay and it will come in handy for our beasts. They consume a terrible amount of fodder. I expect I’ll send a party along in about two hours’ time to fetch it off to the camp. You’ll be allowing us the use of your wagon, no doubt.’

  ‘I declare that you are very hard on us, Captain,’ expostulated the poor farmer. ‘I’m sure I don’t know how I’m to keep my beasts alive this winter if you now seize what remains of my fodder. They be’nt in too good a case already.’

  ‘Well, I expect what you can’t feed you must kill, and we’ll pay you a fair price for your beef, be sure. The men must eat, the same as the cattle, and a good sight of them have right busy guts.’

  ‘And my hen-roost regularly robbed by the soldiery and all my fences broke down! It is a hard life indeed for a family in the neighbourhood of a military camp,’ continued the farmer.

  ‘Ay, the boys will have their fun and cut their pranks,’ returned the other lightly. ‘But war is war, and you know, you can count yourself lucky that you an’t situated on the other side of King’s Bridge. The Commissaries there are pretty considerable harder than officers like myself.’

  ‘I an’t just capable to say as to that, Captain,’ replied our host, ‘but I hear at least that they pay in money that jingles and rings.’

  ‘Well, I reckon you may say that,’ commiserated the commissary. ‘But war is war, and I’ll trouble you to leave that stack where it stands till we come to fetch it off this afternoon.’

  We were greatly alarmed at the prospect of our hay-stack being removed from about us; but, the Commissary riding away, our host stayed to reassure us that more rain was due to fall, and no party would come for the fodder. If they did, he would descry them at some distance and would warn us in time to run off and hide elsewhere.

  Smutchy remarked: ‘A thousand blessings fall upon the prophet Daniel George and upon his seed for ever.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ I responded.

  We remained all that day in the wet hay-stack, snatching a little sleep in turns, one of us always acting as watchman. At six o’clock in the evening our host provided us with very good ham, for the curing of which this county was noted, and a glass apiece of cherry-rum. We emerged from the hay-stack and stretched our legs, but were still not permitted to enter the house. The rain coming down hard again, we returned to the stack and stayed there all night. Richard Harlowe spoke as few words as possible to me, though a sort of truce existed between us because of our common interest and danger. He now sullenly acknowledged my leadership and, if a dispute arose as to the course to be adopted, was always forced to yield to my way of thinking; for Smutchy regarded me as infallible and Harlowe lacked the resolution to part company with us. At this place Smutchy, who was helping Harlowe to descend the hay-stack, muttered: ‘Hallo, what’s here?’ and then to me: ‘Sergeant Gerry, come now, feel what I have discovered!’ He pulled my fingers towards him and I felt a row of coins sewn in the seam of Harlowe’s breeches.

  This ran against the articles upon which we had agreed before we set out: which was to share, and share alike, all the money and other property in our possession, with Smutchy acting as our treasurer. Harlowe had only admitted to three dollars, and here was a further store which he had not declared. We took five guineas from him. He tried to save his character by saying carelessly that he had forgotten that they were there. However, Smutchy searched him more thoroughly and found another guinea, a Portuguese half-joe, a coin worth thirty-five shillings in English currency, and three badly clipped Spanish moidores concealed under the arm of his jacket. Smutchy then said hotly: ‘I remember, Sergeant Gerry, a stroll that we three once took in company, when we were recruits together. When I laughed at this Gentleman Harlowe for his airs, you resented it on his behalf, did you not? What have you to say for his gentleman-like behaviour now, eh?’

  I reproved Smutchy. ‘This is no time for recrimination, for God’s sake. Harlowe says that he forgot to put the guineas into the common stock. We have them now, at all events, and so much the better for the whole party.’

  No more was said on the subject. We began to grow uneasy as this night advanced, lest James Sniffen also had forsaken us and left us to shift for ourselves; however, our kind host, when he visited us a little before dawn, bringing us
breakfast, assured us that James Sniffen was a thorough man and a man of his word. His long absence was a proof that he had been vigilant in picking up all the intelligence he could with regard to the disposition of the camps and posts through which we must pass. Richard Harlowe would not believe this, and was for continuing without a guide; but we dissuaded him. Fortunately for us, the storm continued all day, blowing from the South; and the hay-stack, with ourselves in it, was not fetched away. Smutchy again loudly blessed Daniel George of Newbury-Port on this second day, and swore he should be kidnapped and appointed Astronomer-General to our Forces. Time passed for us very slowly.

  At last, James Sniffen returned. He told us in a low voice from below that all was well; we must be prepared to follow him when darkness fell. We had twenty miles still to travel, but we might with determination reach King’s Bridge that same night.

  That evening at dark, when we had passed near thirty-six hours in the hay-stack, we said good-bye to those who had harboured us (and who would accept no recompense for all their kindness) and set off in high spirits on this final stage of our attempt. I could not say exactly what route we followed, but we crossed and recrossed the Bronx stream by fords and passed over several steep heights; the storm meanwhile not abating its violence and the darkness shrouding us so completely that it was difficult to believe that our guide knew his whereabouts. We had agreed not to ply him with any talk or questions, in order to give him no excuse for missing his direction. But never once did he seem at a loss. At last he told us with relief: ‘We stand now on the forward slopes of the Heights of Fordham, and must proceed with the greatest caution, for there are American advanced troops hereabouts of whose stations I am ignorant. We are but three miles distant from King’s Bridge. A mile further down this slope is Musholu Brook which leads directly to the bridge. I will come this last stage with you if you desire, but I think now that I can leave it to yourselves; for I am sure you would spare me the hazard of passing and repassing these outposts, being sensible of what risks I have already run in your service.’