CHAPTER XIX
THE ATTACK
It has already been mentioned that Indians, arriving singly or in
squads, to report at Hamilton's headquarters, were in the habit
of firing their guns before entering the town or the fort, not only
as a signal of their approach, but in order to rid their weapons
of their charges preliminary to cleaning them before setting out
upon another scalp-hunting expedition. A shot, therefore, or even
a volley, heard on the outskirts of the village, was not a noticeable
incident in the daily and nightly experience of the garrison. Still,
for some reason, Governor Hamilton started violently when, just
after nightfall, five or six rifles cracked sharply a short distance
from the stockade.
He and Helm with two other officers were in the midst of a game
of cards, while a kettle, swinging on a crane in the ample fire-
place, sang a shrill promise of hot apple-jack toddy.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Farnsworth, who, although not in
the game, was amusing himself with looking on; "you jump like
a fine lady! I almost fancied I heard a bullet hit you."
"You may all jump while you can," remarked Helm. "That's
Clark, and your time's short--He'll have this fort tumbling on your
heads before daylight of to-morrow morning comes."
As he spoke he arose from his seat at the card table and went to
look after the toddy, which, as an expert, he had under supervision.
Hamilton frowned. The mention of Clark was disturbing. Ever since
the strange disappearance of Lieutenant Barlow he had nursed the
fear that possibly Clark's scouts had captured him and that the
American forces might be much nearer than Kaskaskia. Besides, his
nerves were unruly, as they had been ever since the encounter with
Father Beret; and his vision persisted in turning back upon the
accusing cold face of Alice, lying in the moonlight. One little
detail of that scene almost maddened him at times; it was a sheeny,
crinkled wisp of warm looking hair looped across the cheek in which
he had often seen a saucy dimple dance when Alice spoke or smiled.
He was bad enough, but not wholly bad, and the thought of having
darkened those merry eyes and stilled those sweet dimples tore through
him with a cold, rasping pang.
"Just as soon as this toddy is properly mixed and tempered,"
said Helm, with a magnetic jocosity beaming from his genial face,
"I'm going to propose a toast to the banner of Alice Roussillon,
which a whole garrison of British braves has been unable to take!"
"If you do I'll blow a hole through you as big as the south
door of hell," said Hamilton, in a voice fairly shaken to a
husky quaver with rage. "You may do a great many insulting
things; but not that."
Helm was in a half stooping attitude with a ladle in one hand, a
cup in the other. He had met Hamilton's glowering look with a peculiarly
innocent smile, as if to say: "What in the world is the matter
now? I never felt in a better humor in all my life. Can't you take
a joke, I wonder?" He did not speak, however, for a rattling
volley of musket and rifle shots hit the top of the clay- daubed
chimney, sending down into the toddy a shower of soot and dirt.
In a wink every man was on his feet and staring.
"Gentlemen," said Helm, with an impressive oath, "that
is Clark's soldiers, and they will take your fort; but they ought
not to have spoiled this apple toddy!" "Oh, the devil!"
said Hamilton, forcibly resuming a calm countenance, "it is
only a squad of drunken Indians coming in. We'll forego excitement;
there's no battle on hand, gentlemen."
"I'm glad you think so, Governor Hamilton," Helm responded,
"but I should imagine that I ought to know the crack of a Kentucky
rifle. I've heard one occasionally in my life. Besides, I got a
whiff of freedom just now."
"Captain Helm is right," observed Farnsworth. "That
is an attack."
Another volley, this time nearer and more concentrated, convinced
Hamilton that he was, indeed, at the opening of a fight. Even while
he was giving some hurried orders to his officers, a man was wounded
at one of the port-holes. Then came a series of yells, answered
by a ripple of sympathetic French shouting that ran throughout the
town. The patrol guards came straggling in, breathless with excitement.
They swore to having seen a thousand men marching across the water-covered
meadows. Hamilton was brave. The approach of danger stirred him
like a trumpet-strain. His fighting blood rose to full tide, and
he gave his orders with the steadiness and commanding force of a
born soldier. The officers hastened to their respective positions.
On all sides sounds indicative of rapid preparations for the fight
mingled into a confused strain of military energy. Men marched to
their places; cannon were wheeled into position, and soon enough
the firing began in good earnest.
Late in the afternoon a rumor of Clark's approach had gone abroad
through the village; but not a French lip breathed it to a friend
of the British. The creoles were loyal to the cause of freedom;
moreover, they cordially hated Hamilton, and their hearts beat high
at the prospect of a change in masters at the fort. Every cabin
had its hidden gun and supply of ammunition, despite the order to
disarm issued by Hamilton. There was a hustling to bring these forth,
which was accompanied with a guarded yet irrepressible chattering,
delightfully French and infinitely volatile.
"Tiens! je vais frotter mon fusil. J'ai vu un singe!"
said Jaques Bourcier to his daughter, the pretty Adrienne, who was
coming out of the room in which Alice lay.
"I saw a monkey just now; I must rub up my gun!" He could
not be solemn; not he. The thought of an opportunity to get even
with Hamilton was like wine in his blood.
If you had seen those hardy and sinewy Frenchmen gliding in the
dusk of evening from cottage to cottage, passing the word that the
Americans had arrived, saying airy things and pinching one another
as they met and hurried on, you would have thought something very
amusing and wholly jocund was in preparation for the people of Vincennes.
There was a current belief in the town that Gaspard Roussillon never
missed a good thing and always somehow got the lion's share. He
went out with the ebb to return on the flood. Nobody was surprised,
therefore, when he suddenly appeared in the midst of his friends,
armed to the teeth and emotionally warlike to suit the occasion.
Of course he took charge of everybody and everything. You could
have heard him whisper a bowshot away.
"Taisons!" he hissed, whenever he met an acquaintance.
"We will surprise the fort and scalp the whole garrison. Aux
armes! les Americains viennent d'arriver!"
At his own house he knocked and called in vain. He shook the door
violently; for he was thinking of the stores under the floor, of
the grimy bottles, of the fragrant Bordeaux--ah, his throat, how
it throbbed! But where was Madame Roussillon? Where was Alice? "Jean!
Jean!" he cried, forgetting all precaution, "come here,
you scamp, and let me in this minute!"
A profoundly impressive silence gave him to understand that his
home was deserted.
"Chiff! frightened and gone to stay with Madame Godere, I suppose--
and I so thirsty! Bah! hum, hum, apres le vin la bataille, ziff!"
He kicked in the door and groped his way to the liquors. While he
hastily swigged and smacked he heard the firing begin with a crackling,
desultory volley. He laughed jovially, there in the dark, between
draughts and deep sighs of enjoyment.
"Et moi aussi," he murmured, like the vast murmur of the
sea, "I want to be in that dance! Pardonnez, messieurs. Moi,
je veux danser, s'il vous plait."
And when he had filled himself he plunged out and rushed away, wrought
up to the extreme fighting pitch of temper. Diable! if he could
but come across that Lieutenant Barlow, how he would smash him and
mangle him! In magnifying his prowess with the lens of imagination
he swelled and puffed as he lumbered along.
The firing sounded as if it were between the fort and the river;
but presently when one of Hamilton's cannon spoke, M. Roussillon
saw the yellow spike of flame from its muzzle leap directly toward
the church, and he thought it best to make a wide detour to avoid
going between the firing lines. Once or twice he heard the whine
of a stray bullet high overhead. Before he had gone very far he
met a man hurrying toward the fort. It was Captain Francis Maisonville,
one of Hamilton's chief scouts, who had been out on a reconnoissance
and, cut off from his party by some of Clark's forces, was trying
to make his way to the main gate of the stockade.
M. Roussillon knew Maisonville as a somewhat desperate character,
a leader of Indian forays and a trader in human scalps. Surely the
fellow was legitimate prey.
"Ziff! diable de gredin!" he snarled, and leaping upon
him choked him to the ground, "Je vais vous scalper immediatement!"
Clark's plan of approach showed masterly strategy. Lieutenant Bailey,
with fourteen regulars, made a show of attack on the east, while
Major Bowman led a company through the town, on a line near where
Main street in Vincennes is now located, to a point north of the
stockade. Charleville, a brave creole, who was at the head of some
daring fellows, by a brilliant dash got position under cover of
a natural terrace at the edge of the prairie, opposite the fort's
southwestern angle. Lieutenant Beverley, in whom the commander placed
highest confidence, was sent to look for a supply of ammunition,
and to gather up all the Frenchmen in the town who wished to join
in the attack. Oncle Jazon and ten other available men went with
him.
They all made a great noise when they felt that the place was completely
invested. Nor can we deny, much as we would like to, the strong
desire for vengeance which raised those shouting voices and nerved
those steady hearts to do or die in an undertaking which certainly
had a desperate look. Patriotism of the purest strain those men
had, and that alone would have borne them up; but the recollection
of smouldering cabin homes in Kentucky, of women and children murdered
and scalped, of men brave and true burned at the stake, and of all
the indescribable outrages of Indian warfare incited and rewarded
by the commander of the fort yonder, added to patriotism the terrible
urge of that dark passion which clamors for blood to quench the
fire of wrath. Not a few of those wet, half-frozen, emaciated soldiers
of freedom had experienced the soul rending shock of returning from
a day's hunting in the forest to find home in ashes and loved ones
brutally murdered and scalped, or dragged away to unspeakable outrage
under circumstances too harrowing for description, the bare thought
of which turns our blood cold, even at this distance. Now the opportunity
had arrived for a stroke of retaliation. The thought was tremendously
stimulating.
Beverley, with the aid of Oncle Jazon, was able to lead his little
company as far as the church before the enemy saw him. Here a volley
from the nearest angle of the stockade had to be answered, and pretty
soon a cannon began to play upon the position.
"We kin do better some'rs else," was Oncle Jazon's laconic
remark flung back over his shoulder, as he moved briskly away from
the spot just swept by a six-pounder. "Come this yer way, Lieutenant.
I hyer some o' the fellers a talkin' loud jes' beyant Legrace's
place. They ain't no sort o' sense a tryin' to hit anything a shootin'
in the dark nohow."
When they reached the thick of the town there was a strange stir
in the dusky streets. Men were slipping from house to house, arming
themselves and joining their neighbors. Clark had sent an order
earlier in the evening forbidding any street demonstration by the
inhabitants; but he might as well have ordered the wind not to blow
or the river to stand still. Oncle Jazon knew every man whose outlines
he could see or whose voice he heard. He called each one by name:
"Here, Roger, fall in!--Come Louis, Alphonse, Victor, Octave--
venez ici, here's the American army, come with me!" His rapid
French phrases leaped forth as if shot from a pistol, and his shrill
voice, familiar to every ear in Vincennes, drew the creole militiamen
to him, and soon Beverley's company had doubled its numbers, while
at the same time its enthusiasm and ability to make a noise had
increased in a far greater proportion. In accordance with an order
from Clark they now took position near the northeast corner of the
stockade and began firing, although in the darkness there was but
little opportunity for marksmanship.
Oncle Jazon had found citizens Legrace and Bosseron, and through
them Clark's men were supplied with ammunition, of which they stood
greatly in need, their powder having got wet during their long,
watery march. By nine o'clock the fort was completely surrounded,
and from every direction the riflemen and musketeers were pouring
in volley after volley. Beverley with his men took the cover of
a fence and some houses sixty yards from the stockade. Here to their
surprise they found themselves below the line of Hamilton's cannon,
which, being planted on the second floor of the fort, could not
be sufficiently depressed to bear upon them. A well directed musket
fire, however, fell from the loopholes of the blockhouses, the bullets
rattling merrily against the cover behind which the attacking forces
lay.
Beverley was thinking of Alice during every moment of all this stir
and tumult He feared that she might still be a prisoner in the fort
exposed to the very bullets that his men were discharging at every
crack and cranny of those loosely constructed buildings. Should
he ever see her again? Would she care for him? What would be the
end of all this terrible suspense? Those remote forebodings of evils,
formless, shadowy, ineffable, which have harried the lover's heart
since time began, crowded all pleasant anticipations out of his
mind.
Clark, in passing hurriedly from company to company around the line,
stopped for a little while when he found Beverley.
"Have you plenty of ammunition?" was his first inquiry.
"A mighty sight more'n we kin see to shoot with," spoke
up Oncle Jazon. "It's a right smart o' dad burn foolishness
to be wastin' it on nothin'; seems like to me 'at we'd better set
the dasted fort afire an' smoke the skunks out!"
"Speak when you are spoken to, my man," said the Colonel
a trifle hotly, and trying by a sharp scrutiny to make him out in
the gloom where he crouched.
"Ventrebleu! I'm not askin' YOU, Colonel Clark, nor no other
man, when I shill speak. I talks whenever I gits ready, an' I shoots
jes' the same way. So ye'd better go on 'bout yer business like
a white man! Close up yer own whopper jawed mouth, ef ye want anything
shet up!"
"Oho! is that you, Jazon? You're so little I didn't know you!
Certainly, talk your whole damned under jaw off, for all I care,"
Clark replied, assuming a jocose tone. Then turning again to Beverley:
"Keep up the firing and the noise; the fort will be ours in
the morning."
"What's the use of waiting till morning?" Beverley demanded
with impatience. "We can tear that stockade to pieces with
our hands in half an hour."
"I don't think so, Lieutenant. It is better to play for the
sure thing. Keep up the racket, and be ready for 'em if they rush
out. We must not fail to capture the hair-buyer General."
He passed on, with something cheerful to say whenever he found a
squad of his devoted men. He knew how to humor and manage those
independent and undisciplined yet heroically brave fellows. What
to see and hear, what to turn aside as a joke, what to insist upon
with inflexible mastery, he knew by the fine instantaneous sense
of genius. There were many men of Oncle Jazon's cast, true as steel,
but refractory as flint, who could not be dominated by any person,
no matter of what stamp or office. To them an order was an insult;
but a suggestion pleased and captured them. Strange as it may seem,
theirs was the conquering spirit of America--the spirit which has
survived every turn of progress and built up the great body of our
independence.
Beverley submitted to Clark's plan with what patience he could,
and all night long fired shot for shot with the best riflemen in
his squad. It was a fatiguing performance, with apparently little
result beyond forcing the garrison now and again to close the embrasures.
thus periodically silencing the cannon. Toward the close of the
night a relaxation showed itself in the shouting and firing all
round the line. Beverley's men, especially the creoles, held out
bravely in the matter of noise; but even they flagged at length,
their volatility simmering down to desultory bubbling and half sleepy
chattering and chaffing.
Beverley leaned upon a rude fence, and for a time neglected to reload
his hot rifle. Of course he was thinking of Alice,--he really could
not think in any other direction; but it gave him a shock and a
start when he presently heard her name mentioned by a little Frenchman
near him on the left.
"There'll never be another such a girl in Post Vincennes as
Alice Roussillon," the fellow said in the soft creole patois,
"and to think of her being shot like a dog!"
"And by a man who calls himself a Governor, too!" said
another. "Ah, as for myself, I'm in favor of burning him alive
when we capture him. That's me!"
"Et moi aussi," chimed in a third voice. "That poor
girl must be avenged. The man who shot her must die. Holy Virgin,
but if Gaspard Roussillon were only here!"
"But he is here; I saw him just after dark. He was in great
fighting temper, that terrible man. Ouf! but I should not like to
be Colonel Hamilton and fall in the way of that Gaspard Roussillon!"
"Morbleu! I should say not. You may leave me out of a chance
like that! I shouldn't mind seeing Gaspard handle the Governor,
though. Ah, that would be too good! He'd pay him up for shooting
Mademoiselle Alice."
Beverley could scarcely hold himself erect by the fence; the smoky,
foggy landscape swam round him heavy and strange. He uttered a groan,
which brought Oncle Jazon to his side in a hurry.
"Qu' avez-vous? What's the matter?" the old man demanded
with quick sympathy. "Hev they hit ye? Lieutenant, air ye hurt
much?"
Beverley did not hear the old man's words, did not feel his kindly
touch.
"Alice! Alice!" he murmured, "dead, dead!"
"Ya-as," drawled Oncle Jazon, "I hearn about it soon
as I got inter town. It's a sorry thing, a mighty sorry thing. But
mebby I won't do a little somepin' to that--"
Beverley straightened himself and lifted his gun, forgetting that
he had not reloaded it since firing last. He leveled it at the fort
and touched the trigger. Simultaneously with his movement an embrasure
opened and a cannon flashed, its roar flanked on either side by
a crackling of British muskets. Some bullets struck the fence and
flung splinters into Oncle Jazon's face. A cannon ball knocked a
ridge pole from the roof of a house hard by, and sent it whirling
through the air.
"Ventrebleu!--et apres? What the devil next? Better knock a
feller's eyes out!" the old man cried. "I ain't a doin'
nothin' to ye!"
He capered around rubbing his leathery face after the manner of
a scalded monkey. Beverley was struck in the breast by a flattened
and spent ball that glanced from a fence-picket. The shock caused
him to stagger and drop his gun; but he quickly picked it up and
turned to his companion.
"Are you hurt, Oncle Jazon?" he inquired. "Are you
hurt?"
"Not a bit--jes' skeert mos' into a duck fit. Thought a cannon
ball had knocked my whole dang face down my throat! Nothin' but
a handful o' splinters in my poorty count'nance, makin' my head
feel like a porc'-pine. But I sort o' thought I heard somepin' give
you a diff."
"Something did hit me," said Beverley, laying a hand on
his breast, "but I don't think it was a bullet. They seem to
be getting our range at last. Tell the men to keep well under cover.
They must not expose themselves until we are ready to charge."
The shock had brought him back to his duty as a leader of his little
company, and with the funeral bell of all his life's happiness tolling
in his agonized heart he turned afresh to directing the fire upon
the block-house.
About this time a runner came from Clark with an order to cease
firing and let a returning party of British scouts under Captain
Lamothe re-enter the fort unharmed. A strange order it seemed to
both officers and men; but it was implicitly obeyed. Clark's genius
here made another fine strategic flash. He knew that unless he let
the scouts go back into the stockade they would escape by running
away, and might possibly organize an army of Indians with which
to succor Hamilton. But if they were permitted to go inside they
could be captured with the rest of the garrison; hence his order.
A few minutes passed in dead silence; then Captain Lamothe and his
party marched close by where Beverley's squad was lying concealed.
It was a difficult task to restrain the creoles, for some of them
hated Lamothe. Oncle Jazon squirmed like a snake while they filed
past all unaware that an enemy lurked so near. When they reached
the fort, ladders were put down for them and they began to clamber
over the wall, crowding and pushing one another in wild haste. Oncle
Jazon could hold in no longer.
"Ya! ya! ya I" he yelled. "Look out! the ladder is
a fallin' wi' ye!"
Then all the lurking crowd shouted as one man, and, sure enough,
down came a ladder--men and all in a crashing heap.
"Silence! silence!" Beverley commanded; but he could not
check the wild jeering and laughing, while the bruised and frightened
scouts hastily erected their ladder again, fairly tumbling over
one another in their haste to ascend, and so cleared the wall, falling
into the stockade to join the garrison.
"Ventrebleu!" shrieked Oncle Jazon. "They've gone
to bed; but we'll wake 'em up at the crack o' day an' give 'em a
breakfas' o' hot lead!"
Now the fighting was resumed with redoubled spirit and noise, and
when morning came, affording sufficient light to bring out the "bead
sights" on the Kentucky rifles, the matchless marksmen in Clark's
band forced the British to close the embrasures and entirely cease
trying to use their cannon; but the fight with small arms went merrily
on until the middle of the forenoon.
Meantime Gaspard Roussillon had tied Francis Maisonville's hands
fast and hard with the strap of his bullet-pouch.
"Now, I'll scalp you," he said in a rumbling tone, terrible
to hear. And with his words out came his hunting knife from its
sheath.
"O have mercy, my dear Monsieur Roussillon!" cried the
panting captive; "have mercy!"
"Mercy! yes, like your Colonel's, that's what you'll get. You
stand by that forban, that scelerat, that bandit, and help him.
Oh, yes, you'll get mercy! Yes, the same mercy that he showed to
my poor little Alice! Your scalp, Monsieur, if you please! A small
matter; it won't hurt much!"
"But, for the sake of old friendship, Gaspard, for the sake--"
"Ziff! poor little Alice!"
"But I swear to you that I--"
"Tout de meme, Monsieur, je vais vous scalper maintenant."
In fact he had taken off a part of Maisonville's scalp, when a party
of soldiers, among whom was Maisonville's brother, a brave fellow
and loyal to the American cause, were attracted by his cries and
came to his rescue.
M. Roussillon struggled savagely, insisting upon completing his
cruel performance; but he was at last overpowered, partly by brute
force and partly by the pleading of Maisonville's brother, and made
to desist. The big man wept with rage when he saw the bleeding prisoner
protected. "Eh bien! I'll keep what I've got," he roared,
"and I'll take the rest of it next time."
He shook the tuft of hair at Maisonville and glared like a mad bull.
Two or three other members of Lamothe's band were captured about
the same time by some of the French militiamen; and Clark, when
on his round cheering and directing his forces, discovered that
these prisoners were being used as shields. Some young creoles,
gay with drink and the stimulating effect of fight, had bound the
poor fellows and were firing from behind them! Of course the commander
promptly put an end to this cruelty; but they considered it exquisite
fun while it lasted. It was in broad daylight, and they knew that
the English in the fort could see what they were doing.
"It's shameful to treat prisoners in this way," said Clark.
"I will not permit it. Shoot the next man that offers to do
such a thing!"
One of the creole youths, a handsome, swarthy Adonis in buckskin,
tossed his shapely head with a debonair smile and said:
"To be sure, mon Colonel! but what have they been doing to
us? We have amused them all winter; it's but fair that they should
give us a little fun now."
Clark shrugged his broad shoulders and passed on. He understood
perfectly what the people of Vincennes had suffered under Hamilton's
brutal administration.
At nine o'clock an order was passed to cease firing, and a flag
of truce was seen going from Clark's headquarters to the fort. It
was a peremptory demand for unconditional surrender. Hamilton refused,
and fighting was fiercely resumed from behind rude breastworks meantime
erected. Every loop-hole and opening of whatever sort was the focus
into which the unerring backwoods rifles sent their deadly bullets.
Men began to fall in the fort, and every moment Hamilton expected
an assault in force on all sides of the stockade. This, if successful,
would mean inevitable massacre. Clark had warned him of the terrible
consequences of holding out until the worst should come. "For,"
said he in his note to the Governor, "if I am obliged to storm,
you may depend upon such treatment as is justly due to a murderer."
Historians have wondered why Hamilton became so excited and acted
so strangely after receiving the note. The phrase, "justly
due to a murderer," is the key to the mystery. When he read
it his heart sank and a terrible fear seized him. "Justly due
to a murderer!" ah, that calm, white, beautiful girlish face,
dead in the moonlight, with the wisp of shining hair across it!
"Such treatment as is justly due to a murderer!" Cold
drops of sweat broke out on his forehead and a shiver went through
his body.
During the truce Clark's weary yet still enthusiastic besiegers
enjoyed a good breakfast prepared for them by the loyal dames of
Vincennes. Little Adrienne Bourcier was one of the handmaidens of
the occasion. She brought to Beverley's squad a basket, almost as
large as herself, heaped high with roasted duck and warm wheaten
bread, while another girl bore two huge jugs of coffee, fragrant
and steaming hot. The men cheered them lustily and complimented
them without reserve, so that before their service was over their
faces were glowing with delight
And yet Adrienne's heart was uneasy, and full of longing to hear
something of Rene de Ronville. Surely some one of her friends must
know something about him. Ah, there was Oncle Jazon! Doubtless he
could tell her all that she wanted to know. She lingered, after
the food was distributed, and shyly inquired.
"Hain't seed the scamp," said Oncle Jazon, only he used
the patois most familiar to the girl's ear. "Killed an' scelped
long ago, I reckon."
His mouth was so full that he spoke mumblingly and with utmost difficulty.
Nor did he glance at Adrienne, whose face took on as great pallor
as her brown complexion could show.
Beverley ate but little of the food. He sat apart on a piece of
timber that projected from the rough breastwork and gave himself
over to infinite misery of spirit, which was trebled when he took
Alice's locket from his bosom, only to discover that the bullet
which struck him had almost entirely destroyed the face of the miniature.
He gripped the dinted and twisted case and gazed at it with the
stare of a blind man. His heart almost ceased to beat and his breath
had the rustling sound we hear when a strong man dies of a sudden
wound. Somehow the defacement of the portrait was taken by his soul
as the final touch of fate, signifying that Alice was forever and
completely obliterated from his life. He felt a blur pass over his
mind. He tried in vain to recall the face and form so dear to him;
he tried to imagine her voice; but the whole universe was a vast
hollow silence. For a long while he was cold, staring, rigid; then
the inevitable collapse came, and he wept as only a strong man can
who is hurt to death, yet cannot die.
Adrienne approached him, thinking to speak to him about Rene; but
he did not notice her, and she went her way, leaving beside him
a liberal supply of food.