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Updated: June 11, 2025
All day the signals to the fleet were kept flying, but not a ship moved. All night, an anxious watch was kept, in hopes that, at the last moment, some returning feeling of shame might induce the recreants to send up the boats of the ships. But the night passed without a movement on the river, and in the morning the fleet were seen, still lying at anchor.
How all these absolute impossibilities, which made it perfectly out of the question that the three recreants should sit down at the table, would have melted into thin air if, by any chance, there had come into their minds a wish to be there! They would have found means to look after the field and the cattle and the home, and to be in their places notwithstanding, if they had wanted.
They prefer the white arm because 'guns miss fire, but swords are like the chicken's beak, that never fails to hit the grain. Some 250 of these desperadoes lately drove off 5,000 of the semi-civilised recreants and took about 560 prisoners, including the 'King' of the Vái. The name was probably Monserrate, given by the early Portuguese. It is entitled the Cradle of Liberia.
Instantly there fell a hush instantly the assault paused. Every one felt that there no faltering would make the hand tremble or the ball swerve. Whereever Jasper turned the foes recoiled. He laughed with audacious mockery as he surveyed the recreants. "Down with your arms, each of you down that knife, down that bludgeon. That's well. Down yours there; yours yours. What, all down!
Recreants who, failing for the Army, had gone into business or banks were received for old sake's sake, but in no way made too much of. But when the real subalterns, officers and gentlemen full-blown who had been to the ends of the earth and back again and so carried no side came on the scene strolling about with the Head, the school divided right and left in admiring silence.
Yet an English officer actually proposed to recruit a force of these recreants for field-service in Ashanti. He probably confounded them with the Wásawahili, the 'Seedy-boys' of the east coast, a race which some day will prove useful when the Sepoy mutiny shall repeat itself, or if the difficulties in Egypt be prolonged.
How is this minority, how are these men, regarded? They are enthralled and disfranchised by ordinances and acts of legislation; subjected to tests and oaths, incompatible, as they conscientiously think, with oaths already taken, and obligations already assumed; they are proscribed and denounced as recreants to duty and patriotism, and slaves to a foreign power.
Knocked two of those recreants down, and already was prepared to seize Esther in his arms, make a wild dash for the door, and run with her, whither only God knew, when Rateau, that awful consumptive reprobate, crept slyly up behind him and dealt him a swift and heavy blow on the skull with his weighted stick. Kennard staggered, and the bandits closed upon him.
Slightly wounded soldiers went limping to the rear, seeking surgical aid; while badly wounded men were eagerly caught up and borne off the field by their "comrades in battle" or by white-livered recreants, anxious to desert their braver companions and place themselves in safety.
Every page thinned my ranks more and more; and of the vast multitude that first set out, but a comparatively few made shift to survive, in exceedingly battered condition, through the five introductory chapters. What, then! would you have had me take such sunshine, faint-hearted recreants to my bosom at our first acquaintance?
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