12 Under the Apple-Trees

We lay gasping under the apple-trees. The hottest sun that ever I felt or saw was dissolving our muscles and pinning us to the earth, mere flaccid lumps. The heat quivered in the air, and the grass turned dry blades to the brown soil. I ran my finger along the bare edge of my sword, and the skin was scorched. My throat burned.

“What a day to fight!” said Marcel. “The red coats that the British over yonder wear blaze like fire, and I dare say are as hot. I wish I were a private and not an officer. Then I could strip myself.”

He looked longingly at a huge soldier who had taken off coat and shirt and was lying on the grass, naked to the waist, his rifle ready in his hands.

“Leave old Father Sun alone,” I said: “I believe he will settle the business for both armies. At least he seems to be bent upon doing it.”

I tried to look up at the sun, but His Majesty met me with so fierce a stare that I was glad to turn my eyes again, blinking, to the earth. When they had recovered from the dimness, I looked along the line of panting soldiers, and saw one who had dropped his rifle on the grass and flung his arms out at ease.

“Stir up that man, there,” I said: “he must keep his rifle in hand and ready.”

“If you please, sir,” said the bare-waisted soldier, “he won’t be stirred up.”

“Won’t be stirred up?” I said, with natural impatience: “why won’t he?”

“Because he can’t be,” said the soldier.

“Can’t be?” I said, not understanding such obstinacy. “What do you mean?”

“He can’t be stirred up,” replied the soldier, “because he’s dead, sir.”

I examined the man and found that it was true. We had marched long and hard in the stifling heat before we lay down in the orchard, and the man, overpowered by it, had died so gently that his death was not known to us. We let him lie there, the dead man in the ranks with the quick.

“Doesn’t the concussion of cannon and muskets cause rain sometimes?” asked Marcel.

“I have heard so,” I replied. “Why?”

“Because, if it does,” said Marcel, “I hope the battle will be brought on at once, and that it will be a most ferocious contention. Then it may cause a shower heavy enough to cool us off.”

“Whether it brings rain or not,” I said, “I think the battle will soon be upon us. You can hear it now across those fields.”

The rattle of musketry was quite fierce, but I had become too much of a veteran to pay much attention to it. I reserved all my energies for our own time of conflict

Up went the sun, redder and fiercer than ever. The heavens blazed with his light. The men panted like dogs, and their tongues hung out. The red coats of the British opposite us looked so bright that they dazzled my eyes. The leaves of the apple-trees cracked and twisted up.

“It would be funny,” said Marcel, “if the British were to charge upon us and find us all lying here in a placid row, dead, killed by the sun.”

“Yes,” said I, “it would be very funny.”

“But not impossible,” said the persistent Marcel.

We lay near the little town of Freehold in the Jersey fields. The British under Sir Henry Clinton had fled from Philadelphia for New York, and we had given chase, although we were far inferior in numbers and equipment. Nevertheless it was pleasant to us to pursue, and we fancied that the British liked flight but little. At last we had overtaken them, and the battle was a certainty.

I can say with truth that the men were eager for the fight. They had starved long at Valley Forge, and now with full stomachs they had come upon the heels of a flying enemy. Moreover, we had been raised up mightily by the French alliance. We did not know then how much the French were to disappoint us, and how little aid they were to give us until the final glorious campaign.

“Leftenant,” said the bare-waisted man, “ain’t it about time to let us have another drink? The inside of my throat’s so dry it’s scalin’ off.”

We had filled our canteens with water before this last march, but I had allowed my men to drink but sparingly, knowing how much they would need it later. Now I pitied them as well as myself, and I gave the word to turn up the canteens, but I ordered that the drink should be a very short one.

Up went the canteens as if they had been so many muskets raised to command. There was a deep grateful gurgle and cluck along the whole line as the water poured into the half-charred throats of the men. But Marcel and I had to draw our swords and threaten violence before they would take the canteens away from their lips.

“Leftenant,” said the bare-waisted man, reproachfully, “I was right in heaven then, and you pulled me out by the legs.”

“Then you may be sent back to heaven or the other place soon enough,” I said, “for here come the British. Ready, men!”

“Confound the British!” growled the big man. “I don’t mind them, but I hate to be baked afore my time.”

The British opposite the orchard were forming in line for an attack upon us. The trumpets were blowing gayly, and the throbbing of the drums betokened the coming conflict. Presently across the fields they came, a long line of flashing bayonets and red coats, with the cavalry on either wing galloping down upon us. General Wayne himself passed along our line, and, like Putnam at Bunker Hill, told our men to be steady and hold their fire until the enemy were so close that they could not miss.

The British fired a volley at us as they rushed across the fields, and then, with many an old score to settle, we rose and poured into them at short range a fire that swept away their front ranks and staggered the column. But they recovered, and charged us with the bayonets, and we met them with clubbed rifles, for few of us had bayonets.

In a moment we were in a fierce turmoil of cracking guns, flashing swords, and streaming blood and sweat. The grass was trampled into the earth; the dust arose and clogged our throats and blinded our eyes. Over us the sun, as if rejoicing in the strife and seeking to add to it, poured his fiercest rays upon us, and men fell dead without a wound upon them. A British sergeant rushed at me with drawn sword when I was engaged with another man. I thought the road to another world was opening before me, but when the Englishman raised his sword to strike, the weapon dropped from his limp fingers to the ground, and he fell over, slain by the sun.

Had the cavalry been lucky enough to get in among us with their sabres, they might have broken our lines and thrust us out of the orchard; but we had emptied many a saddle before they could come up, and the horses that galloped about without riders did as much harm to the enemy as to us. The British showed most obstinate courage, and their leader, a fine man, Colonel Monckton I afterwards learned his name to be, encouraged them with shouts and the waving of his sword, until a bullet killed him and he fell between the struggling lines.

“Come on!” I shouted, under the impulse of the moment, to the men near me. “We will take off his body!”

Then we rushed upon the British column. Some of our men seized the body of their fallen leader, and they made a fierce effort to regain it. But the British did not have raw militia to deal with this time, and, however stern they were in the charge, equally stern were we in resisting it. The colonel’s body became the prize for which both of us fought; and we retained our hold upon it.

The clamor increased, and the reek of blood and sweat thickened. The pitiless sun beat upon us, and rejoiced when we slew each other. But, however they strove against us, we held fast to the colonel’s body; nay, more, we gained ground. Twice the British charged us with all their strength, and each time we hurled them back. Then they gave up the struggle, as well they might, and with honor too, and fell back, leaving us our apple orchard and their colonel’s body. We had no intent but to give suitable burial to the fallen chief, and a guard was formed to escort his remains to the rear.

As the broken red line gave ground, some of their men turned and fired a few farewell shots at us. I felt a smart blow on my skull as if some one had suddenly tapped me there with a hammer. As I threw up my hands with involuntary motion to see what ailed me, black clouds passed of a sudden before my eyes, and the earth began to reel beneath me. Marcel, who was standing near, turned towards me with a look of alarm upon his face. Then the earth slid away from me, and I fell. Ere I touched the ground my senses were gone.

When I opened my eyes again, I thought that only a few minutes had passed since I fell; for above me waved the boughs of one of the very apple-trees beneath which we had fought. Moreover, there were soldiers about, and the signs of fierce contention with arms were still visible. But when I put one of my hands to my head, which felt heavy and dull, I found that it was swathed in many bandages.

“Lie still,” said a friendly voice; and the next moment the face of Marcel was bending over me. “You should thank your stars that your skull is so thick and hard, for that British bullet glanced off it and inflicted but a scalp-wound. As it is, you have nothing but good luck. The Commander-in-chief himself has been to see you, and has called you a most gallant youth. Also, you have the best nurse in America, who, moreover, takes a special interest in your case.”

“But the army! The battle!” I said.

“Disturb not your mighty mind about them,” said Marcel. “We won the battle, and the British army is retreating towards New York. I imitate it, and now retreat before your nurse.”

He went away, and then Mary Desmond stood beside me. But her face was no longer haughty and cold.

“You here!” I cried. “How did this happen?”

“When the American army followed the retreating British, we knew there would be a battle,” she said. “So I came with other women to nurse the wounded, and one of them I have watched over a whole night.”

She smiled most divinely.

“Then, Mary,” I cried, with an energy that no wound could lessen, “will you not marry an American?”

Her answer?

Everybody knows that my daughter is the greatest heiress in Philadelphia.

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