Restive Souls: Ye Old Seeds of Flame Sample Chapter
An excerpt from an alternative history novel about the end of slavery in 1778
This is a sample chapter from the first part of Restive Souls, an alternative history novel about a North America that sees slavery ended in the late 1700s and experiences no further indigenous ethnic cleansing from that point as a powerful Black nation rises in the Carolina Low Country. There may be some grammatical miscues and other minor mishaps in this version not in the final version targeted for publication.
This chapter begins with the narrator, John Honeyman, who was a spy for Washington in our timeline, feigning capture by colonials at the behest of a grander plan on the part of Washington to get Honeyman inserted into Hessian forces in a loyalist county of New Jersey.
Bolo’s Notes are made by a fictional historian, Emmet Bolo, who annotates the story with historical facts, trivia, and notes.
Restive Souls
Part One, Ye Old Seeds of Flame, Chapter 5
General Washington’s plan went further afield. He was mindful to inform me that his espionage officers had secured the services of a “Rubenesque young lady” named Betsy Ross, who had developed a discreet, and, in the general’s words, “somewhat naughty” relationship with Rahl’s immediate superior, Carl von Donop.
Rahl, according to Washington, was a fair tactician, but von Donop was a dangerously skilled strategic thinker who had a much more intensely loyal command of local Hessian forces. How Washington was able to secure such detailed information on his enemy combatants was a mystery to me.
Washington wanted von Donop away from Trenton, and the young Miss Ross was, again in Washington’s words, to be a “lure servant” for the colonial forces, with the intent of sequestering von Donop in rolls of comforting blankets, pillows, and Miss Ross herself in Mount Holly, where von Donop was quartering while General Washington enacted his battle plans, the details of which he did not share.
“If von Donop has succumbed to Miss Ross’s charms,” he advised me, “there is a bridge along Pennington Road. There you must plant a British flag on the northwest side of the bridge to inform me of von Donop’s absence from Trenton, for that will alter our strategies. After you have done that, or not, you must secure your own safety and hasten to return to Griggstown and your fine family.”
The next day I was indeed confined to a brig, which was in truth a wine cellar barred by a door heavier than that of the whole of my home in Griggstown. The door was secured by a large iron latch across its exterior. The basement wall’s windows were too narrow through which any human could crawl, not even the nimblest child. Sadly, the wine had been removed to another space.
A tall wire of a man escorted me. His face, filled with the pockets of a long-ago pox, was finished by an extended pointed jaw that remonstrated throughout the escort, saying, in effect, that it was only by Washington’s direct orders that I was not being transported in several separate pieces. He shoved me into the cellar, slid the latch shut, and grumbled away.
There is not much to say about my short stay there, other than to mention the room’s dank air. On occasion, I heard the heavy latch smashed against the door by taunting, laughing guards. Nevertheless, I did not feel like a prisoner because I knew my stay was to be shortened by General Washington’s contrivance. The rebel guards overseeing me, despite their dark, sullen demeanors, could not reorient my mood, which was boiling with the possibility of some adventure.
When the fire struck that evening, it did not seem small. A full building, perhaps a small cottage associated with Summerseat, was ablaze. I was not chained in my room in any way. I could see the dark of night flickering through the small window, which meant that my stay here was about to end. Washington appeared in a timely fashion, appearing harried. He motioned me to make haste through the open door, telling me to head in the opposite direction of the fire. Pointing to a knoll a few hundred feet in front of what I would discover later to be a forested glen, he handed me a small, lit torch fueled by the soaking of whale oil. There, a horse would be waiting for me, hitched to a tree.
I nodded, took the torch, and ran off as instructed into a light, cold early December rain.
I was confident that General Washington would prevent pursuers, but there were always scouts on patrol, not to mention the danger of bandits and other miscreants. My escape to the horse was a rapid one. From there, I would need to find a “Beetie’s Ferry” or some such. It was difficult to discern Washington’s words, but I hoped it meant that there was a ferry with which I could cross the Delaware for my return to Trenton.
By great fortune, I found the horse almost precisely as my torch became extinguished by a strengthening rain. It was frightfully cold. I needed shelter, as my garb was not sufficient to protect me. Tied to the horse’s saddle, much to my surprise, was a duffel bag with a pole protruding from its side and another bag bound to the pole.
I quickly unbundled the package, surely a gift from Washington. The package contained a sack of coins that I had no time to count, so I stuffed them into a buttoned pocket of a large burgundy cape that appeared from the unraveling of the prize. The cape had a hood sewn hurriedly as if someone knew of the inclement weather I’d be facing. I swept the cape over my shoulders as I mounted the horse, which seemed cooperative enough. I eased myself slowly into the saddle and gently led the horse past the knoll along a stretch of trees I hoped represented a Delaware tributary or creek.
Bolo’s Notes
The cape, as we all now know, was the famous Cape of Trenton, which was sewn by that most famous Seamstress of Summerseat, Mary Beecher, as Honeyman lay injured.
I stopped for a moment to reach into the pocket I had used as my temporary coin repository and found a piece of thick parchment etched with a badly drawn map. I leaned it into the flickering light of the fire still consuming the shack beyond the knoll. The map pointed to “Beattie’s Ferry – one eight piece, Com -in Chief Geo Wash”.
I took that to mean that I was to locate a ferry serviced by a proprietor named Beattie and offer him one of the coins in my bag, from which I extracted a piece. The darkness of the air blocked formal identification, but it felt like a Spanish dollar. I slipped that and the note into one of the front pockets of my breeches and continued the slow ride, praying to the heavens that I was riding properly to the ferry in question.
My entire being resisted attempting to ride a horse at all in these conditions. One slip on a rock in this darkness would buckle the poor beast, but I had no choice, so we moved slowly. The horse seemed aware of the danger, too, as it gingerly paced each step.
Dawn was breaking before I found the ferry station. I must have looked quite a sight to the well-dressed man who answered the door I pounded upon with perhaps unnecessary authority. He wore a frock cape over a distinguished white undergarment adorned with the kind of neck and sleeve ruffles one would find on a man of greater wealth than a ferry should yield. He wore the hat of a ferryman, however, a round item with a square bill at its front. I was a rather tall man myself, two inches beyond six feet, but he stretched at least half a foot beyond the top of my head. He had seen many days.
“Tis early,” he said in a Cockney accent.
“Aye it is,” I said, too bedraggled for a quarrel of any kind.
“And where you be going?”
“Just across the river, to Trenton.”
“And you will be bringing the horse.”
I nodded, “Indeed,” somehow ably resisting my urge to query why I’d leave my horse behind.
“How do you propose to pay? You do not appear as a monied man.”
Surely on that note, he was making an astute observation. My face must have looked frightful, my clothes heavy with rain and the splatter of mud.
“I have an eight-piece and a note from the Commander.”
“General Washington?”
I nodded with a shiver.
“Good, God, man, come inside immediately, and out from that squalor.”
As I did so, the tall, aged man instructed me to remove my cape. I removed my bag from the cape before handing it to him. He placed it over a wood table shaped like a disc in front of a burning fireplace. “Shan’t take long to dry,” he said. “The general and I are old foes.”
“I see,” I said warily.
“The bloke has trounced me severely at whist. But at our last meeting, he sustained heavy losses, for which he still owes me several shillings.” The man was smiling widely, proud, I believe, that he had played cards with the commander of the Continental Army.
He continued, “I knew old George from his first visits to Morristown before even he settled in at Mount Vernon. Any bloke who is a friend of his has already paid his fare across that treacherous beast some call a river, I say.”
“Well, I greatly appreciate your generosity.” I pulled the Spanish dollar from my pocket and handed him the note along with it. “Let us consider the General’s whist debt paid, then.”
“Fair enough, my friend. The name is Beattie. George Beattie.” He extended his hand, which I took.
“I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Beattie. And so is my horse, I am certain.”
“You hail from the Eire, judging from your talk.”
“Aye, born of Eire, but a Scotsman by parentage. The general calls me Scott Irish, as opposed to my true name John Honeyman.”
“Well Mr. Honeyman, we shall see to it that both the Scotsman and the Irishman within your person have a safe journey across the water.”
I nodded in thanks, which was profound after a shivering evening of cold rain and uncertain steps.
Beattie provided a much-needed breakfast of warm salt pork, a bowl of hot oats, and a most desperately appreciated mug of strong coffee before we set out to the ferry.
The ferry was a flat bottom pontoon that could have held a coach as well as a couple of horses, I thought. It held steady against the flowing waters as we crossed. There were thin shards of long ice that occasioned against the boat, but the journey was quickly accomplished without incident.
I thanked Beattie, feeling a great outpouring of relief as he turned back to his lodge.
I needed to return to Griggstown to report to my wife and seek out Diderot, whom I was confident had escaped our earlier encounters with rebels. I wished for confirmation of that fact but found myself shaken and somewhat ill from the kind of ceaseless anxieties to which I normally felt great attachment.
Hoping for lodging, I spied an inn given the name Bread and Crosses. I could afford this one day of quiet solitude, along with its subsequent night of less fitful sleep. The inn looked much like a large wood frame farmhouse with a surprisingly large porch supported by three thick beams.
When I entered the inn, I observed two men drinking mugs of ale. I nodded to them and sat down at a table. The place smelled of the pine woods that seemed to underlie the structure, from the walls to the somewhat unsteady table at which I sat. The floor consisted of dirt pummeled by years of footfall that gave way to a wood floor nearest the counter where the proprietor most likely spent his time overseeing his establishment.
There was soon a round little bald man without a hat emerging from a doorway behind the counter. His breeches were as old as he was, a man beyond middle age but not yet bent with the aching bones of old age. If he was half as tall as I, it was barely so.
He wore a strange brown shirt with a square collar fastened by one button in front. It was not the clothing one might find on a modern man. It caused me to wonder about his origin. He approached me, holding a small hammer of some sort. “The work is never done in a place as this,” he said in a Welsh accent. “Would you like something to drink? To eat? ‘Tis a beef stew today, a fine one, prepared with lots of love and lots of butter by my sister Agnes.”
“Thank you, sir. I am seeking lodging for the evening. Have you anything here, or perhaps an awareness of some house that does?”
“Ah, a Scotsman from Ireland. Dylan Shale is my name. And how soon from now did you arrive here across the Atlantic?” He smiled while chewing something.
“Honeyman. John Honeyman. Quite some time ago, Mr. Shale. Very astute observation regarding my accent.”
“I am fond of travelers. One must be to maintain a proprietorship such as this, of course. I happen to have one room. You will be glad of it I am sure.” I was sure he noticed the condition of my cape, which had dried well within Beattie’s confines but looked the part of a well-traveled overcoat.
“Yes, of course,” I replied. “Quite.”
It was at that moment that Diderot, in an appearance of mathematical implausibility, appeared inside the Bread and Crosses in a run, hastily approaching the counter in an apparent search for someone. I jumped out of my chair, which alerted the proprietor. “Diderot!” I exclaimed.
When he saw me, he glanced at the proprietor and gleefully smiled. “Monsieur Honeyman, Monsieur Shale! I am so glad to see both of you!”
I looked at the proprietor, who returned my gaze. He approached Diderot. “Is something wrong, Guillaume? You look rather harried."
“Alors, they have found me Monsieur Shale.”
“They? Who are they?” asked Shale.
“Slave hunters.” Diderot’s head was quite nearly bouncing around on his neck as if on a spring while he looked this way and that. “They have claimed me, and they give chase.”
“Where are these men?” I asked.
“They will be here presently,” said Diderot. “I am certain they saw me enter the premises. I have been running a Greek marathon in my attempt to escape their clutches but I’m afraid I have been unable to fully succeed.”
“Have you a weapon?” I asked the proprietor.
“Indeed, two. But my friend, you will not quickly enough discover how to use such a weapon if these men are near.”
“I am a former infantryman. I am prepared. Lock your doors, and please show me these weapons. I assure you I will not attempt anything untoward.” I knew I was requesting an unlikely measure of trust from a stranger, but I sensed in him a fondness for Diderot.
Shale nodded and motioned for the two ale drinkers to leave. “Now! Please,” he admonished. The two men grumbled and left their mugs on the table. Diderot quickly approached the abandoned table and downed the remaining ale from both mugs in one extended gulp each.
Shale quickly bolted the door. “Come with me.” Diderot and I followed him to a room behind the counter that looked to be a small bookkeeping area. He pushed open a small door in the far wall at the floor. The door was not tall enough for a child to crawl through. It was a heavy wooden door, several inches thick, unlocked, but with a long wood bar across with a latch where a lock could have been fastened.
Shale quickly pulled out two strange looking muskets. He handed one to Diderot and one to me. “I am too wee for this kind of fight.”
Diderot looked at the weapon handed to him, as I looked at the one handed to me. “But what is it? I have never seen such a thing,” said Diderot.
The thing was light. I moved my hand along the rifle as I looked at Shale.
“Tis a breech-loading flintlock. And yes, ‘tis lighter, Mr. Honeyman.” There must have been some unspoken words in the way I lifted it. “Three pounds lighter at the very least, I say. Experimental in nature. ‘Use at your own risk,’ said the man who sold me these weapons. He claimed he received them from a fellow named Ferguson all the way from Scotland. Perhaps from your own county, Mr. Honeyman.”
I shook my head. “An unfamiliar name.”
Bolo’s Notes
Interestingly, the inventor, Ferguson, had attempted to stock the British military with the guns during the early portions of the European War that was now being fought on North American soil. Although he failed, a few early editions slipped out of the British Isles, and now, famously, two of them into the hands of one Dylan Shale.
He pulled several carbine balls out of the small doorway and handed some to us. He then quickly demonstrated how to load the peculiar weapon, which bore a device under the trigger that Shale pulled down and rotated. Shale called the device a breech plug. As best I could see, it appeared to be an elongated piece of rounded, threaded metal governed by a handle under the rifle’s trigger that guided the plug from the bottom of the rifle.
I heard a loud pounding on the door of Shale’s proprietorship, but he ignored it as he calmly turned the metal once to align it with the barrel, pushed a marble of lead into the top of the rifle through a newly revealed hole at the top, then poured a spot of gunpowder on top of the ball. He then re-aligned the metal device to its original position. “You are now ready to deposit some lead into a slave hunter’s posterior region, or anywhere else you see fit to aim,” he smiled.
“Be sure to prime the weapon like so,” he said, pressing a small piece of metal near the trigger. “The shot itself is a standard issue six one five carbine. So I should have no problem acquiring suitable ammunition in the future.” He presented a ball to my eyes more closely. It indeed looked to be just over a half-inch size musket ball, like any standard musket shot.
It was a remarkable display, but I had no confidence such a contraption would work. I had only fired muskets that loaded through the front of a barrel.
Shale motioned to Diderot as the pounding continued.
Diderot caught on quickly, easily loading his weapon. “Good God in the mighty heavens above, I could take several slave traders nearly at once with this beautiful piece,” he said.
The pounding became more pronounced, quickening in its pace.
“Take cover at the counter. It shall hold a musket volley,” said Shale. “Let them break the door down to the floor if must be, then finish them. How many have they?”
“I couldn’t say,” said Diderot. “Not less than two.”
“If it be three,” said Shale, “I shall throw a distraction away from your fire. If it be more, may God have mercy on our souls.”
As the three of us took cover behind the counter, I suspected there would be no more than two opponents. I was aware that some towns had set up militias for the single purpose of rounding up escaped slaves, but such would not be the case on the periphery of Trenton, Province of New Jersey. Diderot was facing a bounty hunt, nothing more, although I was not about to trivialize his predicament.
My heart sank as I realized that Diderot was being sought on behalf of an illegitimate hunt. He had been a free man during his travels north from Florida, and there could be no possibility of his Haitian overlords sending pursuit across such distances. The genesis of the bounty was nothing more than the color of his skin.
The pounding on the door abated. If the hunters were not local citizens, they would have no awareness of the loyalties among the inn’s patrons. If achieving their objective required substantial collateral damage upon such an important public institution as a drinking and rest establishment, there could be extracted a woeful price from nearby residents.
“The windows,” I whispered. The inn, like most buildings of this nature, had windows large enough for a man to crawl through if he could break them cleanly.
Shale shook his head. “I think not. They cannot know of my rifle’s disposition.” Colonists were required to possess a weapon for militia duty, so the bounty hunters had to assume the owner of this inn would be in possession of one. Most owned a front-loading Brown Bess or similar flintlock. They were not as easily loaded as the weapons currently in our possession, but could nevertheless stifle any heart within 100 feet, perhaps further away if the gunner had a sufficient aim.
“Diderot, we need to put a halt to the activity of these men. Who are they?”
He looked at me pleadingly. “They represent gens de couleur, mon frère, attempting to ensnare me for what must be an impressive mint of coin.”
“If they have come this far for this purpose, indeed,” I said, withholding my doubts about his theory.
“Ah, they are not Caribe. These men live among us here in the province. I believe they are Tuscarora. Probably paid by wampum. The Tuscarora prefer the shell over the shilling.”
“What if I simply offer them a higher price for your head?” I smiled.
Diderot touched his head with both hands. “It is a good head. Worth every shilling and every shell you can muster.”
“General Washington provided me with a bounty of my own for some work he’d like me to perform. I believe I can spare a few eight pieces.”
“They are likely to take it, then hunt you down later for the rest of what you possess as spoils. The forest speaks of frustrations with the crown among some within the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, especially the Oneida and Tuscarora. You will not be able to impersonate a Tory and simultaneously negotiate with rebel sympathizers.”
I looked at him. “There is a split within the confederacy?”
“Not yet. Leaves are shaking, and branches rattling, and some snapping enough to fall to the earth, but the forest does not yet burn.”
“But you can’t know the loyalties of these men.”
“Aye,” he said, mimicking my linguistics, “I can. Their loyalty is to money, and their bounty, I am certain.”
“If their loyalties are leaning toward the colony’s rebel cause, then my note from Washington should prevail upon them to collect their newly improved bounty from my person.”
“You are quite insistent on this, Monsieur Honeyman. This is I see, but you cannot play both sides at once,” responded Diderot.
“I have fought. I know the trials of war. But I am not a killer. If lives can be spared, including those of your pursuers, I prefer that to death.”
Diderot nodded at that. “A good soul you are, Mr. Honeyman. How do you propose to deliver your proposal to our bloodthirsty friends?”
“I shall walk out the door. My arm will be outstretched, my hand carrying this fine shooting instrument safely angled with my fingers far from the trigger.”
“They may covet the weapon,” said Shale. “It’s a rare item, an experiment of sorts.”
“Do you suggest you are not certain it works?” I asked, alarmed.
“It shall work as advertised and as I first reported to you, which is, we shan’t know until it is tried. She has never been fired, sir. But it comes of a place of high regard.” The weapon had the sheen and smell of a product fresh from a factory floor.
I sighed. “I shall step out without the weapon. Mr. Shale, you will have to help Monsieur Diderot keep cover of me with this weapon in case of trouble.”
“Aye,” sighed Shale, taking my rifle. He exaggerated the effect of receiving a heavy weight, but to this day I believe he did so for the sake of drama. Shale was not a man of violence, I would later learn.
Bolo’s Notes
Dylan Shale, as history reminds us, went on to become Tribune of the Congregation of the Cliffs after becoming a member of the Ohkay Owingeh Tewa Nation in the Western Autonomous Regions of the Carolina Union.
I stood from behind the counter and dusted myself off.
“Mr. Honeyman,” said Diderot, “I cannot ask you to take such a chance for my sake.”
I turned to face him. “If I thought you could step out that door without being shot immediately, I would prefer that course of action. But damn the slavers, Diderot, damn them to hell. I have a sore temptation to hasten their trip to Hades. And if they were in truth slavers, I think I would do precisely that. But these are bounty men. I shall let God judge the whole of their works and offer them now a chance to avoid that descent to Hell’s gate.”
I began for the door.
“Merci, Monsieur Honeyman. Be careful,” Diderot said as I unlatched the door.
I stepped outside.
I held a few Spanish dollars in my hands and made an announcement, perhaps, I thought at the time, to the nearby trees. “I have your slave,” I yelled into the wind. “I wish to purchase his services.”
The winter sun was reaching its noontime peak. I heard wind whistling through pinecones, the conversations of songbirds, a lone hawk above. I waited several moments before adding in as loud a voice as I could muster, “What say you?”
I heard a loud report from a musket just one second before a sound of shattering, splintering wood behind me. I cursed loudly, then made haste for the interior of the building. Shale threw the breech loader to me.
As I caught it with one hand, I turned to see a man racing toward me with a musket pointing my way. I knew he couldn’t shoot whilst running so I bent to one knee and fired, catching him badly in his gut, spinning him to his left as one of his hands seemingly tried to prevent searing flesh from absorbing the lead. I prayed I remembered how to load the contraption as I pulled a lead ball from my breeches pocket. My hand felt for the strange mechanism at the bottom of the gun. I pulled it down, then around as Shale had demonstrated.
The finely made machine made a beautiful sound of connection that told me the threading of the breech was complete, at which point I loaded the ball into the top of the cylinder with my thumb, added gunpowder from my pocket, and quickly returned the mechanism to its prior position. I was unable to study the mechanism, but I had a strong sense that I was holding the future of warfare in my hands. The act of threading the cylinder holding the lead ball was instantaneous, nothing more than the turn of the strange metal device at the gun’s bottom. With a front-loading musket, I would just now be perhaps beginning to stuff the end of the barrel with musket shot, and, if I was fortunate, reaching the breech with the ramrod, but now, I was priming the gun for another shot.
The wounded man was in no condition to pick up his weapon, which he had dropped, much less fire it. I stepped backward toward the door of the inn, crouching, my weapon aimed forward. I felt a surge of triumph as if I had found a method for flying. There was no further gunfire. I thought that perhaps the other man, who I was now certain existed, was observing.
I eyed the edge of the forest, looking for any kind of movement, maintaining awareness of bird flight in case predatory fowl had taken interest in our case. But there was only silence and stillness, other than the bleeding, groaning man thirty feet away. By now, he was on the ground, but reaching for his musket. I fired toward his hand, not to rip it to shreds, but to announce my displeasure. The lead ball splattered the dirt next to his gun. I reloaded, amazed at how quickly I was able to accomplish the feat on the second try.
The injured man was likewise amazed. He watched me as I completed the rearming process. I pointed the weapon at him. “That was an intentional miss. I aim now for your head, bounty hunter. Take your weapon and throw it in my direction.”
“I can barely move,” he said in well-spoken, youthful English. His hair was redder than blood, tied in a ponytail. His small derby hat was off to the side as if part of the ground was trying it as a garment. There was one feather in the hat. He wore what looked like a black dress, which was covered by a layer of black fur. Under the dress was a pair of brown fur trousers.
Upon looking at the man’s face, I could see he was barely a man at all. More of a boy, I thought, not a whisker to be shaved in this year or next. I cursed at such a sight.
A moving target is a difficult one, so I ran to the boy, grabbed his gun, and ran back to the inn’s doorway. I was grateful for the silence, but it only strengthened my desire to determine the whereabouts of the second hunter. But now, I felt strongly that I was presented with another problem. I needed to save the boy.
“Monsieur Diderot,” I called out. “I need your assistance.”
Diderot approached the doorway.
“The gun, it worked, non?”
“Aye it did, my friend, but that is a boy lying on the ground. I shot a boy.” As I said that, my throat was caught by my emotions, and I nearly broke into a sob. With difficulty, I said, “Can you cover me while I attempt to drag him forth?”
“To the inn?” Diderot questioned, not happily.
“To the inn.”
Diderot replied starkly in words or language I did not understand. He shook his head, then said, “Go. I shall shoot anything that moves.”
I ran to the boy, who was building a widening pool of blood from the wound in his gut. “I’m sorry, this is going to hurt,” I said, as I pulled the lad by his hands and dragged him screaming wretchedly to the doorway. There were three steps to the porch. Those would hurt the most, but I ignored his pleas and pulled him up into the inn without further incident.
Shale ran to him and looked at his wound. “He suffers gravely, Mr. Honeyman. I have bandages and alcohol that perhaps may help ease his transition to heaven’s gate.”
I nodded. Shale ran to his gun room and returned quickly.
Meanwhile, the mystery of the second gunman remained.
Thanks for reading!
Notes
As mentioned, Honeyman is based on a real character, John Honeyman.
Betsy Ross is rumored by some historical notes to have been used as a “distraction” by Colonial forces to keep Carl Von Donop “occupied” after leading Hessians to victory in prior engagements that exacted a serious toll on Colonial morale. This left the command of the Hessians in Trenton in the less capable hands of Colonel Johann Rahl.
The battle of Trenton, as we learn in the novel, was a desperate gambit by Washington after his troops were routed from New York. The revolution was on the precipice of failure. Washington desperately needed the Trenton victory to improve morale and help recruit more troops to his decimated and demoralized command.
In our timeline, Washington won that battle and provided a badly needed morale boost. But historians know that even the smallest alteration to events can change the flow of history to the point where a courageous river crossing becomes but a footnote.
