streets of Dublin â and I have a long memory!
We are not hiding our faces, answered Billy Bowzar.
Then well you should, cried Wayne, for this is the dirtiest picture of a mutiny I have ever seen, and Iâll go down to my grave if them that fixed it donât swing for it!
We are not mutineers, spoke Bowzar firmly, but loyal and good soldiers, as you should know as well as the next man, General Wayne, and it is not for the sake of any mutiny that we stand here in the winter cold.
And what are you loyal to?
To the name of freedom and to the deep hopes of Pennsylvania folk.
Enough of this sanctimonious gibberish! cried Butler. Either disband or prepare to take the consequences!
We are well prepared, for this is not anything that we did lightly, and we are no strangers to your consequences â
What kind of damn fools are you? cried Wayne. How long will this rabble last when we bring the brigades up against them?
What brigades? said Billy Bowzar softly.
I tell you, cried Wayne, loud enough for the whole Line to hear him, that if you go back to your hutments now and lay away your arms, and go to sleep as honest men should, then no more will be made of this, except the punishment of the rascals who lead you! I tell you this now!
There was a mighty urge in me to turn my head and see how the men of the Line took this, but Bowzar and Maloney and Levy and Holt and Connell stood as still as though they had become a part of the frozen ground they occupied, and, for all the cold that seeped now from my skin into the marrow of my bones, I would not do otherwise. But when I heard not even the crunch of a lifted boot, I was filled with a heady pride, as if I had suddenly become drunk, and my earlier dreams of a great movement and rising returned. Now Butler sided his horse to Wayne, and moments went by while they whispered to each other. Then Wayne dismounted and walked over to us, so that he, in his elegant, booted, spurred, cloaked height, his thin, handsome, clean-shaven face thrust forward, stood almost up against the square and ragged rock of Billy Bowzar, yet a whole head higher â like some chief facing a bearded, work-hardened crofter. It was later that they came to call him âMad Anthony,â but even now there was a touch of madness about him, and fame and glory had touched him, so that he would never forget what it was to wed either. He was imperious, but without the humility that could have made him a great leader whom men would love as well as fear; and when years later I watched Junius Brutus Booth play out Shakespeareâs tale of Richard III, I thought immediately of this young, wild, arrogant general officer who crunched toward us through the snow so fearlessly; but again it was only years later that I could place myself inside him and understand that much of the courage came from hopeless desperation; and that, for all of his proud and violent talks, there that night his world crumbled about him, and all the vainglory of his belted boots, his fine doeskin trousers, his powder-blue coat and his deep blue cloak surrounded a crushed man. No better picture of the relationship of this officer gentry to us can be shown than through their surprise at our rising; not only did they not anticipate it, but, now it was here, their only means of treating it was as another cause for caning or whipping. But you do not cane or whip a line of the best and hardest troops in the New World, standing motionless to arms in the bitter cold of night.
Yet Wayne carried it through in the only way he knew, and he walked up to Billy Bowzar and faced him boldly and asked more quietly:
What do you intend to do?
We intend to march away to our own encampment.
Where is your encampment?
That is in our own orders, General Wayne, and not for the knowledge of you or any other officer.
Are you the leader of this mutiny?
This is no mutiny, and it doesnât profit you to call it that; but I am spokesman for the Committee
We are not hiding our faces, answered Billy Bowzar.
Then well you should, cried Wayne, for this is the dirtiest picture of a mutiny I have ever seen, and Iâll go down to my grave if them that fixed it donât swing for it!
We are not mutineers, spoke Bowzar firmly, but loyal and good soldiers, as you should know as well as the next man, General Wayne, and it is not for the sake of any mutiny that we stand here in the winter cold.
And what are you loyal to?
To the name of freedom and to the deep hopes of Pennsylvania folk.
Enough of this sanctimonious gibberish! cried Butler. Either disband or prepare to take the consequences!
We are well prepared, for this is not anything that we did lightly, and we are no strangers to your consequences â
What kind of damn fools are you? cried Wayne. How long will this rabble last when we bring the brigades up against them?
What brigades? said Billy Bowzar softly.
I tell you, cried Wayne, loud enough for the whole Line to hear him, that if you go back to your hutments now and lay away your arms, and go to sleep as honest men should, then no more will be made of this, except the punishment of the rascals who lead you! I tell you this now!
There was a mighty urge in me to turn my head and see how the men of the Line took this, but Bowzar and Maloney and Levy and Holt and Connell stood as still as though they had become a part of the frozen ground they occupied, and, for all the cold that seeped now from my skin into the marrow of my bones, I would not do otherwise. But when I heard not even the crunch of a lifted boot, I was filled with a heady pride, as if I had suddenly become drunk, and my earlier dreams of a great movement and rising returned. Now Butler sided his horse to Wayne, and moments went by while they whispered to each other. Then Wayne dismounted and walked over to us, so that he, in his elegant, booted, spurred, cloaked height, his thin, handsome, clean-shaven face thrust forward, stood almost up against the square and ragged rock of Billy Bowzar, yet a whole head higher â like some chief facing a bearded, work-hardened crofter. It was later that they came to call him âMad Anthony,â but even now there was a touch of madness about him, and fame and glory had touched him, so that he would never forget what it was to wed either. He was imperious, but without the humility that could have made him a great leader whom men would love as well as fear; and when years later I watched Junius Brutus Booth play out Shakespeareâs tale of Richard III, I thought immediately of this young, wild, arrogant general officer who crunched toward us through the snow so fearlessly; but again it was only years later that I could place myself inside him and understand that much of the courage came from hopeless desperation; and that, for all of his proud and violent talks, there that night his world crumbled about him, and all the vainglory of his belted boots, his fine doeskin trousers, his powder-blue coat and his deep blue cloak surrounded a crushed man. No better picture of the relationship of this officer gentry to us can be shown than through their surprise at our rising; not only did they not anticipate it, but, now it was here, their only means of treating it was as another cause for caning or whipping. But you do not cane or whip a line of the best and hardest troops in the New World, standing motionless to arms in the bitter cold of night.
Yet Wayne carried it through in the only way he knew, and he walked up to Billy Bowzar and faced him boldly and asked more quietly:
What do you intend to do?
We intend to march away to our own encampment.
Where is your encampment?
That is in our own orders, General Wayne, and not for the knowledge of you or any other officer.
Are you the leader of this mutiny?
This is no mutiny, and it doesnât profit you to call it that; but I am spokesman for the Committee
Similar Books
