Owen saluted his commander and the two privates under his command took their places beside him.
Brown waved to the eighteen men standing around the wagon.
"Get on your arms, and to the Ferry!"
They had been ready for hours, eager for the Deed. Not one among them in his heart believed in the wisdom of this a.s.sault, yet so grim was the power of Brown"s mind over the wills of his followers, there was not a laggard among them.
Brown drove the wagon and led the procession down the pitch-black road toward the town. The men fell in line two abreast and slowly marched behind the team.
Cook and Tidd, raised to the rank of Captains, their commissions duly signed, led the tramping men. There were many captains in this remarkable army of twenty-one. There were more officers than privates.
The officers were commissioned to recruit their black companies when the first blow had been struck.
The enterprise on which these twenty-one veteran rangers had started in the chill night was by no means so foolhardy as appears on the surface.
The leader was leaving his base of supplies with a rear guard of but three men. Yet the army on the march consisted of but eighteen. He knew that the United States a.r.s.enal had but one guarded gate and that the old watchman had not fired a gun in twenty-five years. It would be the simplest thing to force this gate and the a.r.s.enal was in their hands.
The Rifle Works had but a single guard. They could be taken in five minutes. Once inside these enclosures, he had unlimited guns and ammunition at his command.
The town would be asleep at ten o"clock when he arrived at the Maryland end of the covered bridge across the Potomac. Eighteen armed men were an ample force to capture the unsuspecting town. Not a single policeman was on duty after ten. The people were not in the habit of locking their doors.
The one principle of military law which the leader was apparently violating was the failure to provide a plan of retreat. But retreat was the last thing he intended to face.
The one thing on which he had staked his life and the success of his daring undertaking was the swarming of the black bees. His theory was reasonable from the Abolitionist"s point of view. He believed that negro Chattel Slavery as practiced in the South was the sum of all villainies.
And the Southern slave holders were the arch criminals and oppressors of human history. In his Preamble of the new "Const.i.tution" to which his men had sworn allegiance, he had described this condition as one of "perpetual imprisonment, and hopeless servitude or absolute extermination." If the negroes of the South were held in the chains of such a system, if they were being beaten and exterminated, the black bees _would_ swarm at the first call of a master leader and deluge the soil in blood.
John Brown believed this as he believed in the G.o.d to whom he prayed before he loaded his pikes and torches on the wagon. These black legions would swarm to-night! He could hear their shouts of joy and revenge as they gripped their pikes and swung into line under his G.o.d imposed leadership.
The whole scheme was based on this faith. If Garrison"s words were true, if the Southern slave holder was a fiend, if Mrs. Stowe"s arraignment of Slavery on the grounds of its inhuman cruelty was a true indictment, his faith was well grounded.
His thousand pikes in the hands of a thousand determined blacks led by the trained Captains whom he had commissioned was a force adequate to hold the town of Harper"s Ferry and invade the Black Belt beyond the Peak.
The moment these black legions swarmed and weapons were placed in their hands the insurrection would spread with lightning rapidity. The weapons were in the a.r.s.enal. The ma.s.sacres would be sweeping through Virginia, North and South Carolina before an adequate force could reach this mountain pa.s.s. And when they reached it, he would be at the head of a black, savage army moving southward with resistless power.
The only question was the swarming of this dark army. Cook, who had spent nearly a year among the people and knew these slaves best, was the one man who held a doubt. For this reason he had begged Brown a second time to let him sound the strongest men among the slaves and try their spirit. Brown refused. He knew a negro. He was simply a white man in a black skin by an accident of climate. He knew exactly what he would do when put to the test. To discuss the subject was a waste of words. And so with faith serene in the success of the Deed, he paused but a moment at the entrance of the bridge.
He ordered Captains Kagi and Stevens to advance and take as prisoner William Williams, the watchman. The two rangers captured Williams without a struggle.
"A good joke, boys," he laughed.
"You"ll find it a good one before the night"s over," Stevens answered.
When he attempted to move, a revolver at his breast still failed to convince him.
"Go "way, you boys, with your foolishness. It"s a dark night, but I"m used to being scared!"
It was not until Kagi gave him a rap over the head with his rifle that he sat down in amazement and wiped the sweat from his brow. He forgot the chill of the night air. His brain was suddenly on fire.
Brown waited at the entrance of the bridge until the watchman had been captured and Cook and Tidd had cut the line on the Maryland side of the river.
He then advanced across the covered way to the gate of the a.r.s.enal hut a few yards beyond the Virginia entrance.
He captured Daniel Whelan, the watchman at the a.r.s.enal entrance.
Dumbfounded but stubborn, he refused to betray his trust by surrendering the keys.
"Open the gate!" Brown commanded.
"To h.e.l.l wid yez!"
A half dozen rifles were thrust at his head.
He folded his arms and stood his ground.
They pushed a lantern into his face and Brown studied him a moment. He didn"t wish a gun fired yet. The town was asleep and he wanted it to sleep.
"Get a crowbar," he ordered.
They got a crowbar from the wagon, jammed it into the chain which held the wagon gate and twisted the chain until it snapped. He drove the wagon inside, closed the gate and the United States a.r.s.enal was in his hands.
Brown placed the two watchmen in charge of his men, Jerry Anderson and Dauphin Thompson.
He spoke to the prisoners in sharp command.
"Behave yourselves, now. I"ve come here to free all the negroes in this State. If I"m interfered with I"ll burn the town and have blood."
Every man who pa.s.sed through the dark streets was accosted, made prisoner and placed under guard.
Hazlett and Edwin Coppoc were ordered to hold the Armory. Oliver Brown and William Thompson were sent to seize the Shenandoah bridge, the direct line of march into the slave-thronged lower valley.
Stevens was sent to capture the Rifle Works which was accomplished in two minutes.
The program had worked exactly as Brown had predicted. Not a shot had been fired and they were masters of the town, its two bridges, the United States a.r.s.enal, Armory and Rifle Works.
The men were now despatched through the town for the real work of the night--the arming of the black legion with pikes and torches.
It was one o"clock before the first accident happened. Patrick Higgins, the second night watchman, came to relieve Williams on the Maryland bridge.
Oliver Brown, on guard, cried:
"You"re my prisoner, sir."
The Irishman grinned.
"Yez don"t till me!"
Without another word he struck Oliver a blow. The crack of a rifle was the answer. In his rage young Brown was too quick with the shot. The bullet plowed a furrow in Higgins" skull but failed to pierce it.
He ran into the shadows.
Once inside the Wager House, he gave the alarm. The train from the West pulled into the station and was about to start across the bridge when Higgins, his face still streaked with blood, rushed up to the conductor and told him what had happened. He went forward to investigate, was fired on and backed his train out to the next station.