Chapter XX. The Battle of the Bayou

The Free Rangers

by Joseph A. Altsheler

The priest came directly to the boat, in which Henry Ware and
Adam Colfax were sitting - the remainder of the five were in the next
boat - and held up his hand as a sign of recognition and relief.

"Father Montigny!" said Henry.

"Yes, my son, it is I, and I give thanks to Heaven that I have
found you in time."

"What is it, father?" It seemed natural that at this moment
Henry should be the spokesman for the fleet.

"A great danger has closed upon you and all here."

"Alvarez?"

"Yes, he is the master spirit, but back of him are the allied
tribes of the south, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, even Osages from
the west, and others, and in addition there are two hundred desperate
white men drawn from all nations. Alvarez has promised to lead them
to great spoil and plunder.

"He is the buccaneer chief now and they will follow him. At
night-fall they surprised a French trading schooner tied to the shore
for safety, slaughtered all those on board, and have now drawn the
schooner across the mouth of the bayou to shut you in. The vessel
also carries four bronze nine pounders which they will use against
you. Outside in the Mississippi is a great fleet of Indian
war-canoes which has been above you in the stream."

Adam Colfax paled a little.

"It seems," he said, "that when we thought we were pulling to
safety we were merely entering a trap."

"It was a trap," said Henry with energy, "but we're strong
enough to break any trap into which we may fall."

"That's so," said Adam Colfax.

"You may ask me how I knew all this," continued the priest. "I
tell you not what I have heard, but what I have seen. I was with the
Choctaws, and I sought to dissuade them from this campaign upon which
they were marching. I told them that Alvarez was mad with ambition
and disappointment, that he had rebelled against lawful authority,
that he was an outlaw and buccaneer, and that he could not keep his
promises. My words availed nothing. I continued with them, hoping
still to dissuade them and the other bands that met them, but still I
failed.

"I was yet with the tribe when they met Alvarez and the wicked
renegade, the one Wyatt, and their men. Alvarez would have used
force, he would have driven me from the camp with heavy blows; even
this, the white man who has inherited Holy Church would have done,
but the red men, born savages, would not let him. Although they
would not listen to me they let me stay, unharmed. I witnessed, or
rather heard, their attack upon you last night, and their repulse has
made them only the more eager for your destruction. It has also
united them the more firmly."

"When do you think they will attack us, Father Montigny?" asked
Henry.

"That I cannot tell. I heard their plans, and I deemed it my
duty to warn you. A guard, one whom I have converted to our faith,
let me slip away and here I am."

"And our debt to you is still growing," said Henry. "As for
myself, I think the attack will come to-night, when they deem us
disorganized and beaten down by the storm."

"And so do I," said Adam Colfax. "We have no time to waste."

"May God preserve you," said the priest. "I have no desire to
witness scenes of slaughter but I trust, for the sake of yourselves,
for the sake of Bernardo Galvez, the good Governor General of
Louisiana, and for the welfare of this region, that you may beat them
off. But the contest will be fierce and bloody."

A young man, at the order of Adam Colfax, sounded a trumpet, a
low thrilling call that aroused the men from their brief sleep, and
the word was quickly passed that they were blockaded in the bayou,
and that the hordes were advancing to a new attack. They grumbled
less now than at the storm.

Here was a danger that they knew how to meet. Battle had been a
part of all their lives, and they did not fear it.

The moonlight increased, the forest was dripping, but there was
a noise now of bullet clinking against bullet, of the ramrod sent
home in the rifle barrel, and of men talking low.

Adam Colfax called a conference in his boat. His best
lieutenants and the five were present. Should they await the attack
or advance to meet it? In any event, the fleet must escape from the
bayou, and the nearer they were to the river when the battle occurred
the better it would be for them.

"Ef we know thar's a danger," said Tom Ross, "the best thing fur
us to do is to go to it, an' lay hold uv it."

The vote on Tom's suggestion was unanimous in its favor, and the
fleet once more began to move. A small force of riflemen marched on
either bank in order to uncover possible skirmishers.

The advance was very slow and in silence save for the dip of the
oars and the paddles. The moonlight grew stronger and stronger, and
they could now see a good distance on the deep, still bayou. The five
had remained in the leading boats and they watched closely for sight
or sound of the hostile force, but as yet eye and ear told nothing.
The trees now grew close to the water's edge and, looped heavily with
trailing vines, they presented a black wall on either side. But they
had no fear of shots from such a source, as they knew that the trusty
riflemen going in advance would clear out any skirmishers who might
have hidden themselves there.

Paul was beside Henry. Near him was Long Jim and in the boat
next to them was Shif'less Sol and Tom Ross. At this moment, which
they felt to be heavy with import, it was good to be together. Paul
in particular, Paul, the impressionable and imaginative, looked
around at the familiar figures in the clearing moonlight, and drew
strength and comfort from their near presence.

The dark fleet moved slowly on, cutting the deep still waters of
the bayou with almost noiseless keel. The men had ceased whispering.
Now and then an oar splashed or the water gave back the echo of a
paddle's dip, but little else was heard. All looked straight
ahead.

Suddenly they saw in the middle of the bayou, about a hundred
yards before them, a small, black shape, so low that it seemed to
blend with the water. It was an Indian canoe, the first outpost of
the savage force, and its occupant, promptly firing a rifle, raised a
long, warning shout. In an instant the woods on either side began to
crackle with rifle-fire. Skirmishers had met skirmishers, and the
battle of the bayou had begun.

"Press on! Press on! We must cut through somehow!" cried Adam
Colfax, and the American fleet moved steadily and unfalteringly on
toward its goal. They came now to the narrowest part of the bayou,
and stretched across it they saw a dark line of canoes, all crowded
with Indians and the desperadoes of Alvarez. Behind them heeved up
the dark bulk of the captured schooner.

The battle blazed in an instant into volume and fury. Two lines
of fire facing each other were formed across the bayou, one bent upon
pushing forward, the other bent upon holding it back. These lines,
moreover, stretched far into the woods on either bank, where
sharpshooters lay, and both sides shouted at intervals as the blood
in their veins grew hot.

The dark hulk of the schooner suddenly burst into spots of
flame, and the woods and waters echoed with heavy reports. The
captured five pounders were now helping to block the passage but the
brass twelve pounders on the supply fleet replied. Steadily the fire
of both sides grew in volume and the lines came closer and closer
together.

The moonlight faded again and little clouds of smoke began to
rise. These clouds gradually grew bigger, then united into one heavy
opaque mass that hung over the combatants. Strips of vapor were
detached from it and floated off into the forest. A sharp, pungent
odor, the smell of burnt gunpowder, filled the nostrils of the men
and added to the fire that burned in their veins.

This, the largest battle yet fought the southern woods, had a
somber and unreal aspect to Paul. All around them now was the
encircling darkness. Only the area in which the battle was fought
showed any light, but here the flashes of the firing were continuous
and intense. The crash of the rifles never ceased. Now and then it
rose to greater volume and then fell again, but rising or falling it
always went on, while over it boomed the big guns answering one
another in defiant notes of thunder.

The schooner was the most formidable obstacle to the passage.
It lay full length across the narrow bayou and, even if the boats of
the supply fleet should reach it, there was little room to pass on
either side. From its decks the nine pounders were fired fast and
often with precision, and the majority of the Spaniard's desperate
band found shelter there also, firing with rifles, muskets, and
pistols. Others sent bullets, also, from the comparative security,
of port holes. The possession of the schooner gave them a great
advantage and they did not neglect it. Now and then they sent up
fierce yells, the war-cries of the West Indian pirates, and their
Indian allies answered them with their own long-drawn, high pitched
whoop, so full of ferocity and menace. Both looked forward to
nothing less than complete triumph.

The space between the combatants was lighted up by the incessant
flash of the firing. Little jets of water where a missent bullet
struck were continually spouting up, and then would come a bigger one
when a cannon ball plunged into the depths of the bayou.

Paul suddenly heard a heavy impact, a crash, as of ripping wood,
and a cry. A canoe near them had been struck by a cannon ball, and
practically broken in half. It sank in an instant, and one of the
men in it, wounded in the arm, and crippled, was sinking a second
time, when Paul sprang into the water and helped him into their own
boat. But not all the wounded were so fortunate. Some sank to stay,
and the dark night battle, far more deadly than that of the night
before, reeled to and fro.

The combat at first had been more of a spectacle than anything
else to Paul. The extraordinary play of light and darkness, the
innumerable shadows and flashes on the surface of the bayou, the
black tracery of the forest on either bank, the red beads of flame
from the rifle fire appearing and re-appearing, made of it all a vast
panorama for him. There were the sounds, too, the piratical shout,
hoarse and menacing, the Indian whoop, shriller and with more of the
wild beast's whine in it, the fierce, sharp note of the rifle fire,
steady, insistent, and full of threat, and over it the heavy thudding
of the great guns.

It was Paul's eye and ear at first that received the deep
impression, but now the aspect of a panorama passed away and his soul
was stirred with a fierce desire to get on, to cut through the
hostile line, to crush down the opposition, and to reach the full
freedom of the wide river. He began to hate those men who opposed
them, the fire of passion that battle breeds was surely mounting to
his head. Unconsciously, Paul, the scholar and coming statesman, the
grave quiet youth, began to shout and to hurl invectives at those who
presumed to hold them back. The barrel of his rifle grew hot in his
hand with constant loading and firing, but 'he did not notice it. He
still, at imminent risk to himself, sent his bullets toward the dark
line of Indian canoes and the flashing hulk of the ship behind
them.

The supply fleet was beginning to suffer severely. A number of
boats and canoes had been sunk and nearly a score of men had been
killed. Many more were wounded and, despite all this loss, they had
made no progress. The fire from the bank, moreover, was beginning to
sting them and to stop it Adam Colfax landed more men. The increased
force of the Americans on the shore served the purpose but they were
still unable to force the mouth of the bayou. The schooner seemed to
be fixed there and she never ceased to send a storm of bullets and
cannon balls at them.

Adam Colfax had a slight wound in the arm, but his slow cold
blood was now at the boiling point.

"We've got to force that schooner!" he cried. "We've got to take
her, if it has to be done with boarders! We can never get by unless
we do it!"

But the loss of life even if the attempt were a success, would
be terrible. That was apparent to everybody and Henry made a
suggestion.

"Let's concentrate our whole fire upon the ship," he said. "Mass
the cannon and the rest of us will back them up with our rifles.
Maybe we can silence her, and if we do then's the time to take her by
storm."

The supply fleet drew back and its fire died. It seemed, in
truth, as if it were beaten and that, hemmed in by fire, as it were
in the narrow bayou, it must surrender. A tremendous shout of
triumph burst forth from the men on the schooner, and the Indians
took it up in a vast and shriller but more terrible chorus.

Then came one of those sudden and ominous silences that
sometimes occur in a battle. The fire of the Americans ceasing, that
of their enemies ceased for the moment also. But the pause was more
deadly and menacing in its stillness than all the thunder and
shouting of the combat had been. It seemed unnatural to hear again
the sighing of the wind through the forest and the quiet lap of water
against the shore. The bank of smoke, no longer increased from
below, lifted, thinned, broke up into patches, and began to float
away. The moon's rays shot through the mists and vapors once more,
and lighted up the watery battlefield of the night, the schooner, the
desperate men on it, the swarms of canoes, the coppery, high-cheeked
faces of the Indians, the supply fleet packed now in a rather close
mass, the tanned faces of the men on board it, animated by the high
spirit of daring and enterprise, the wounded lying silent in the
boats, and the wreckage floating on the bayou.

But the stillness endured for only a few moments. It was broken
by the American fleet, which seemed to draw itself together into
closer and more compact form. An order in a low tone, but sharp and
precise, was carried from boat to boat, and it seemed to strengthen
the men anew, heart and body. They straightened up, signs of
exhaustion passed from their faces, and every one made ready all the
arms that he had.

Paul, like the others, had felt the sudden silence, but perhaps
most acutely of all. His whole imaginative temperament was on fire.
He knew - he would have known, even had he not heard - that the
sudden cessation of the firing was merely preliminary, a fresh
drawing of the breath as it were for another and supreme effort. He
clasped his hands to his temples, where the pulses were beating
rapidly and heavily, and his face burned as if in a fever. But it
was a fever of the mind not of the body.

"It's a big battle, Paul," said Shif'less Sol, who had come with
Tom Ross into their boat, "but it's wuth it. The arms and other
things that we carry in these boats may be wuth millions an' millions
to the people who come after us."

"Do you think we'll ever break through, Sol?" asked Paul.

"Shorely," replied the shiftless one. "Henry's got the plan,
and we're goin' to cut through like a wedge druv through a log.
Something's got to give. Up, Paul, with your gun! Here she goes
ag'in!"

The battle suddenly burst forth afresh and with greater
violence. All the American twelve pounders were now in a row at the
head of the fleet, and one after another, from right to left and then
from left to right and over and over again, they began to fire with
tremendous rapidity and accuracy at the schooner. All the best
gunners were around the twelve pounders. If one fell, another took
his place. Many of them were stripped to the waist, and their own
fire lighted up their tan faces and their brown sinewy arms as they
handled rammer and cannon shot.

The fire of the cannon was supported by that of scores and
scores of rifles, and the enemy replied with furious energy. But the
supply fleet was animated now by a single purpose. The shiftless
one's simile of a wedge driven into a log was true. No attention was
paid to anybody in the hostile boats and canoes. They could fire
unheeded. Every American cannon and rifle sent its load straight at
the schooner. All the upper works of the vessel were shot away. The
men of Alvarez could not live upon its decks; they were even slain at
the port holes by the terrific rifle fire; cannon shot, grape shot,
and rifle bullets searched every nook and corner of the vessel, and
her desperate crew, one by one, began to leap into the water and make
for the shores.

A shout of exultation rose from the supply fleet, which was now
slowly moving forward. Flames suddenly burst from the schooner and
ran up the stumps of her masts and spars, reaching out long arms and
laying hold at new points. The cannon shots had also reached the
inside of the ship as fire began to spout from the port holes, and
there was steady stream of men leaping from the schooner into the
water of the bayou and making for the land.

The American shout of exultation was repeated, and the forest
gave back the echo. The Indians answered it with a fierce yell of
defiance, and the forest gave back that, too.

But Adam Colfax had been watching shrewdly.

In his daring life he had been in more than one naval battle,
and when he saw the schooner wrapped and re-wrapped in great coils
and ribbons of flame he knew what was due. Suddenly he shouted in a
voice that could be heard above the roar of the battle: "Back! Back,
all! Back for your lives!"

It reached the ears of everybody in the American fleet, and
whether he understood its words or not every man understood its tone.
There was an involuntary movement common to all. The fleet stopped
its slow advance, seemed to sway in another direction, and then to
sit still on the water. But all were looking at the schooner with an
intense, fascinated, yet horrified gaze.

Nobody was left on the deck of the vessel but the dead. The
huge, intertwining coil of fiery ribbons seemed suddenly to unite in
one great glowing mass, out of which flames shot high, sputtering and
crackling. Then came an awful moment of silence, the vessel
trembled, leaped from the water, turned into a volcano of fire and
with a tremendous crash blew up.

The report was so great that it came rolling back in echo after
echo, but for a few moments there was no other sound save the echo.
Then followed a rain of burning wood, many pieces falling in the
supply fleet, burning and scorching, while others fell hissing in the
forest on either shore. Darkness, too, came over land and water.
All the firing had ceased as if by preconcerted signal, though the
combatants on either side were awed by the fate of the vessel. The
smoke bank came back, too, thicker and heavier than before, and the
air was filled with the strong, pungent odor of burnt gunpowder.

But the schooner that had blocked the mouth of the bayou was
gone forever and the way lay open before them. Adam Colfax recovered
from the shock of the explosion.

"On, men! On!" he roared, and the whole fleet, animated by a
single impulse, sprang forward toward the mouth of bayou, the cannon
blazing anew the path, the gunners loading and firing, as fast as
they could. But the simile of the shiftless one had come true. The
wedge, driven by tremendous strokes, had cleft the log.

The Indian fleet, many of the boats containing white men, too,
closed in and sought to bar the way, but they were daunted somewhat
by their great disaster, and in an instant the American fleet was
upon them cutting a path through to the free river. Boat often
smashed into boat and the weaker, or the one with less impulse, went
down. Now and then white and red reached over and grasped each other
in deadly struggle, but, whatever happened, the supply, fleet moved
steadily on.

It was to Paul a confused combat, a wild and terrible struggle,
the climax of the night-battle. White and red faces mingled before
him in a blur, the water seemed to flow in narrow, black streams
between the boats and the pall of smoke was ever growing thicker. It
hung over them, black and charged now with gases. Paul coughed
violently, but he was not conscious of it. He fired his rifle until
it was too hot to hold. Then he laid it down, and seizing an oar
pulled with the energy of fever.

When the boats containing the cannon were through and into the
river, they faced about and began firing over the heads of the others
into the huddled mass of the enemy behind. But it was only for a
minute or two. Then the last of the supply fleet; that is, the last
afloat, came through, and the gap that they had made was closed up at
once by the enemy, who still hung on their rear and who were yet
shouting and firing.

The Americans gave a great cheer, deep and full throated, but
they did not pause in their great effort. Boats swung off toward
either bank of the, bayou's mouth. The skirmishers in the bushes who
had done such useful work must be taken on board. Theirs was now the
most dangerous position of all, pursued as they certainly would be by
the horde of Indians and outlaws, bent upon revenge.

The boat containing the five was among those that touched the
northern side of the bayou's mouth, and everyone of them, rifle in
hand, instantly sprang ashore.