K. G. C.—A Tale of Fort Alcatraz, Chapters I - VI [pp. 238-248]

K. G. C.- A Tale of Fort AlIcatraz.
K. G. C.-A TALE OF FORT ALCATRAZ.
As the report of the sunrise gun at Alcatraz echoes and reverberates among the hills
bordering the bay, or crosses the water and
strikes upon the ear of the busy citizen of
San Francisco, few there are who stop to
think of the miniature world within itself
from whence that sound originates. Habit
has perhaps with most of these made the
sound no longer even noticed. And yet this
small community of men and women continues, neither in nor of the city, but so near
it that the noisy hum of its streets, the clanging bells and screeching steam whistles, are
audible there, though so softened that the
drowsy effect is no longer one of discord; a
place where the drama of life is enacted,
and the panorama moves steadily forward.
Strange happenings have combined with the
quiet routine of daily life on this island to
make its history. An evidence of one of
these still remains, though the facts relating
to it are rapidly fading into tradition. This
is the story.
I.
HENRY DILLON was proud of the stock
from which he had sprung, though like many
of his class he would have been unable to
tell exactly why. He knew that his grandfather had owned the plantation upon which
he had himself first seen the light; and that
he had also owned a great many negroes, some
of whom had come down in the family to his
own time; he also knew that his father, a
gentleman of the old school, had succeeded
to the estate when he was born. More than
this he did not know, and had never taken
the trouble to inquire; it was quite sufficient
to know that the Dillons had an undisputed
recognition among the first families. Like
every true Virginian, he believed - as some
English writer has in substance expressed it
-that the traditional cavalier and British
nobleman flourished in a hazy and pictur
esque fashion somewhere at the root of the
family tree. Though he was but the fourth
generation of his race that could be identified in his native State, there might still be
depended upon in the far away background
of the Southern fancy, a gentleman mounted
on a prancing charger, with ruffled lace and
streaming feather, who had founded the
American branch of the family in the early
days of the Old Dominion.
While Henry was yet a boy he knew that
fortune had ceased to smile on the family;
the ancestral acres did not yield as formerly;
some of the negroes had sickened and died;
others had been spirited away by the Abolitionists, through the underground railroad,
at that time secretly but actively at work, its
headquarters on the Western Reserve of Ohio.
The pressure on the available resources had
already become apparent in a way that was
humiliating, and the hereditary pride of the
Dillons was sorely tried.
On arriving at his majority he found himself but indifferently prepared for an independent struggle in life, though he had been
educated at an institution of considerable
note; but at which a defense of the divine
right of slavery had been apparently one of
the most important objects in view. It was
also true he had attained a knowledge of the
law, by a desultory course of study in the
office of a friend and neighbor, the circuit
judge, by whom he had also been a little
later admitted to the bar. All this had however been accomplished during those intervals of time which were spared from the more
congenial occupation of riding about the
country on his black mare, and visiting the
adjacent towns and plantations. The law
course had been more with the idea of being
fitted to enter political life and become a gentleman who might creditably represent the
family name than for the practical purpose of
entering upon the profession seriously, as a
means of livelihood.
238
[Mar.