The True Account Read Online Free PDF Page B

catcalls.
    Astonished and enraged, my uncle whipped out his wooden sword. Turning to his cast, he shouted, “Beleaguered comrades, let us show these self-anointed cognoscenti of Boston what Green Mountain lads are made of!”
    I truly believe he would have charged the audience had not five or six uniformed bailiffs just then burst into the hall, shouting, “There he is. The runaway uncle.”
    At this point, though frightened half out of my wits, I seized the academical cap of my seatmate and clapped it on my head as if I were one of their rank, then sprang to my feet and cried, “Fellow Harvards, six on one is foul play.”
    Pointing at the bailiffs, I shouted, “Down with the treacherous Sioux. Let us rally to the cause of the noble Vermont explorer and see him through!”
    The laughing Harvardites and their confederates were more than willing to come to my uncle’s rescue. On the pretext of assisting the bailiffs, they began to trip them up and block their way. In the excitement, my uncle touched off his arquebus. Out of its huge belled mouth came an orange tongue of fire a good two feet long, at which the startled pony bounded over the foot-candles, landing with its four legs splayed out in the midst of the affray and scattering bailiffs and Harvards and urchins alike galley-west.
    â€œYou have quite put the Sioux to rout, sir,” I cried to my uncle. “My congratulations. President Jefferson awaits you in Washington with your commission. Shall we go?”
    In the confusion I managed to hurry him out the stage door and down the slippery hill into the early spring night. But now, supposing himself back at Fort Ticonderoga and me to be Colonel Allen, he called, “I must take care, my commander, not to slip and strike my head again.”
    â€œThere is no danger of that, private,” I said, hustling him along lest the bailiffs spot us. “Quick. Jingle your bell.”
    He did so. But sometimes one jingle was not enough, and he now seemed to mistake
himself
for Colonel Allen, exclaiming, “But where is Private True, subaltern? We can’t leave him in the hands of the British and their pitiless Iroquois allies.” And stopping in his tracks and digging in his feet like a mule in galoshes, he declared, “We must go back.”
    â€œPrivate,” I said, “your colonel
commands
you to ring your bell.”
    He did, then said, “Here comes True. I spy him. He’s coming again.”
    â€œHe is,” I said, looking out around him and up the hill. “Here he is now. Here you are, uncle.”
    â€œHere I am, Ti,” he said, taking my hand and dashing off again toward the harbor, “back in Boston. Did we put my detractors to rout or did we not?”
    â€œWe did. Ethan would have been very proud. He could not have done more himself. Boston will never forget your skit.”
    â€œWe acquitted ourselves as well as any good soldiers could,” my uncle said modestly, as we reached the wharves. Adding that he was astonished that the city fabled as the Athens of America should contribute so little to our project, and that he believed we would do better to seek assistance for our expedition from the good people and public-minded merchants of Manhattan and leave the blue-blooded patricians of Boston to their own devices. Despite all my protests, he immediately arranged for us to take passage on a packet just departing for Baltimore, with a stop on the way at New York.
    â€œWhat could the treacherous Sioux have meant by ‘runaway uncle,’ I wonder?” he mused half an hour later, as we glided out of the harbor with the ocean breeze in our faces.
    Even if I had been disposed to answer him, I could not have. By then I was at the packet rail, overcome by seasickness, and sick at heart, too, that I had so miserably failed in my mission to bring the private safely home to Vermont, whose green mountains and comfortable little farms