The dark ravine was filled with a mass of fifteen hundred human beings, screaming and cursing, slipping in the mire, pushing and struggling, seizing each other's throats, stabbing, shooting, and dashing out brains. Bodies of neighbors were afterwards found lying in the bog, where they had gone down in a death grapple, their cold hands still grasping the knives plunged in each other's hearts. Early in the fight a musket ball slew Herkimer's horse, and shattered his own leg just below the knee, but the old hero, nothing daunted, and bating nothing of his coolness in the midst of the horrid struggle, had the saddle taken from the dead horse and placed at the foot of a great beech tree, where, taking his seat and lighting his pipe, he continued shouting his orders in a stentorian voice and directing the progress of the battle. Nature presently enhanced the lurid horror of the scene. August morning had been intolerable, and clouds, overhanging the deep ravine at the beginning of the action, had enveloped it in a darkness like that of night. The heat of the black thunder Now the rain came pouring in torrents, while gusts of wind howled through the tree tops, and sheets of lightning flashed in quick succession, and with a continuous roar of thunder that drowned the noise of the fray. The wet rifles could no longer be fired, but the hatchet, knife, and bayonet carried on the work of butchery, until, after more than five hundred men had been killed or wounded, the Indians gave way and fled in all directions, and the Tory soldiers, disconcerted, began to retreat up the western road, while Herkimer's little army, remaining in possession of the hard-won field, felt itself too weak to pursue them. A LITTLE MORE 66 ANONYMOUS “FIVE hundred pounds or more I've saved — A rather moderate store; No matter; I shall be content When I've a little more. 66 Well, I can count ten thousand now That's better than before; And I may well be satisfied When I've a little more. "Some fifty thousand pretty well But I have earned it sore; However, I shall not complain When I've a little more. "One hundred thousand- sick and old — Ah! life is half a bore; Yet I can be content to live He dies, and to his greedy heirs His wealth has purchased him a tomb WAITING FOR THE ARMADA CHARLES KINGSLEY Charles Kingsley was born at Dartmoor, England, in 1819. He took honors at Cambridge and was ordained, becoming first curate and then rector of Eversby. He was always ready to plead the cause of the oppressed and neglected, and none the less ready to attack abuses. He was intensely fond of nature; perhaps this taste made possible the "Water Babies," one of the few perfect fairy tales of the language. Kingsley's descriptive powers were very great; he is not excelled, perhaps, in this respect by any English writer. While he wrote some poetry, and some of merit, and that which has been popular, on the whole, he does not take high rank as a poet. His greatest novel is "Hypatia," but "Westward Ho," "Alton Locke," "Two Years Ago," "Yeast," and "Hereward the Wake" are all excellent. You are most likely to be pleased with "Westward Ho." Kingsley died in 1847. EE those five talking earnestly, in the center of a ring which longs to overhear, and yet is too respectful to approach close. RALEIGH Those soft, long eyes and pointed chin The you recognize already; they England; next to him is his son-in-law, Sir Robert Southwell, captain of the Elizabeth Jonas; but who is that short, sturdy, plainly dressed man, who stands with legs a little apart and hands behind his back, looking up with keen gray eyes into the face of each speaker? His cap is in his hands, so you can see the bullet head of crisp brown hair and the wrinkled forehead, as well as the high cheek bones, the short, square face, the broad temples, the thick lips, which are yet firm as granite. A coarse, plebeian stamp of man, yet the whole figure and attitude are that of boundless determination, self-possession, energy; and when at last he speaks a few blunt words, all eyes are turned respectfully upon him; for his name is Francis. Drake. A burly, grizzled elder, in greasy, sea-stained garments, contrasting oddly with the huge gold chain about his neck, waddles up, as if he had been born, and had lived ever since, in a gale of wind at sea. The upper half of his sharp, dogged visage seems of brick-red leather, the lower of badger's fur; and as he claps Drake on the back, and with broad Devon twang shouts, "Be you a-coming to drink your wine, Francis Drake, or be you not? — Saving your presence, my lord," the Lord High Admiral only laughs, and bids Drake go and drink his wine; for John Hawkins, Admiral of the Port, is the patriarch of Plymouth seamen, if Drake be their hero, and says and does pretty much what he likes in any company on earth, not to mention that to-day's prospect of an Armageddon 1 fight has shaken him altogether out of his usual crabbed reserve, and made him overflow with loquacious good humor, even to his rival Drake. 1 Armageddon: Place of a great battle to be fought out between the powers of good and evil. So they push through the crowd, wherein is many another man whom one would gladly have spoken with face to face on earth. Martin Frobisher and John Davis are sitting on that bench, smoking tobacco from long silver pipes; and by them are Fenton and Withrington, who have both tried to follow Drake's path round the world, and failed, though by no fault of their own. The man who pledges them better luck next time is George Fenner, known to "the seven Portugals," Leicester's pet, and captain of the galleon which Elizabeth bought of him. That short, prim man in the huge yellow ruff, with sharp chin, minute, imperial, and self-satisfied smile, is Richard Hawkins, the Complete Seaman, Admiral John's hereafter famous and hapless son. The elder who is talking with him is his good uncle William, whose monument still stands, or should stand, in Deptford Church; for Admiral John set it up there but one year after this time, and on it recorded how he was "A worshiper of the true religion, an especial benefactor of poor sailors, a most just arbiter in most difficult causes, and of a singular faith, piety, and prudence." That, and the fact that he got creditably through some sharp work at Porto Rico, is all I know of William Hawkins; but if you or I, reader, can have as much, or half as much, said of us when we have to follow him, we shall have no reason to complain. There is John Drake, Sir Francis's brother, ancestor of the present stock of Drakes; and there is George, his nephew, a man not overwise, who has been round the world with Amyas; and there is Amyas himself, talking to one who answers him with fierce, curt sentences, Captain Barker, of Bristol, brother of the hapless Andrew |