Part 63 (1/2)
”That's a pretty name.”
”Yes, and she's pretty, too--” He half closed his eyes and smiled blissfully, then rose from the laurels. ”Well, I must be trotting along, away from Cold Harbour. Funniest names! What does it mean?”
”It was an inn, long ago, where you got only cold fare. Shouldn't wonder if history isn't going to repeat itself--” He rose, also, tall and blonde. ”Well, I must be travelling, too--”
”Rations getting pretty low, aren't they? How about coffee?”
”Oh, one day,” said Allan, ”we're going to drink a lot of it! No, I don't know that they are especially low.”
The blue scout dipped a hand into his pocket. ”Well, I've got a packet of it, and there's plenty more where that came from.--Catch, Reb!”
Allan caught it. ”You're very good, Yank. Thank you.”
”Have you got any quinine?”
”No.”
The blue scout tossed across a small box. ”There's for you! No, I don't want it. We've got plenty.--Well, good-bye.”
”I hope you'll get back safe,” said Allan, ”and have a beautiful wedding.”
The blue vanished in the underbrush, the grey went on his way through the heavy forest. He was moving now toward sound, heavy, increasing, presaging a realm of jarred air and ringing ear-drums. Ahead, he saw a column of swiftly moving troops. Half running, he overtook the rear file. ”Scout?”--”Yes--Stonewall Brigade--” ”All right! all right! This is A. P. Hill's division.--Going into battle. Come on, if you want to.”
Through the thinning woods showed a great open plain, with knolls where batteries were planted. The regiment to which Allan had attached himself lay down on the edge of the wood, near one of the cannon-crowned eminences. Allan stretched himself beneath a black gum at the side of the road. Everywhere was a rolling smoke, everywhere terrific sound. A battery thundered by at a gallop, six horses to each gun, straining, red-nostrilled, fiery-eyed. It struck across a corner of the plain. Over it burst the sh.e.l.ls, twelve-pounders--twenty-pounders. A horse went down--the drivers cut the traces. A caisson was struck, exploded with frightful glare and sound. About it, when the smoke cleared, writhed men and horses, but the gun was dragged off. Through the rain of sh.e.l.ls the battery gained a lift of ground, toiled up it, placed the guns, unlimbered and began to fire. A South Carolina brigade started with a yell from the woods to the right, tore in a dust cloud across the old fields, furrowed with gullies, and was swallowed in the forest about the creek which laved the base of the Federal position. This rose from the level like a Gibraltar, and about it now beat a wild shouting and rattle of musketry. Allan rose to his knees, then to his feet, then, drawn as by a magnet, crept through a finger of sumach and sa.s.safras, outstretched from the wood, to a better vantage point just in rear of the battery.
Behind him, through the woods, came a clatter of horses' hoofs. It was met and followed by cheering. Turning his head, he saw a general and his staff, and though he had never seen Lee he knew that this was Lee, and himself began to cheer. The commander-in-chief lifted his grey hat, came down the dim, overarched, aisle-like road, between the cheering troops.
With his staff he left the wood for the open, riding beneath the shelter by the finger of sumach and sa.s.safras, toward the battery. He saw Allan, and reined up iron-grey Traveller. ”You do not belong to this regiment.--A scout? General Jackson's?--Ah, well, I expect General Jackson to strike those people on the right any moment now!” He rode up to the battery. The sh.e.l.ls were raining, bursting above, around. In the shelter of the hill the battery horses had at first, veteran, undisturbed, cropped the parched gra.s.s, but now one was wounded and now another. An arm was torn from a gunner. A second, stooping over a limber chest, was struck between the shoulders, crushed, flesh and bone, into pulp. The artillery captain came up to the general-in-chief. ”General Lee, won't you go away? Gentlemen, won't you tell him that there's danger?”
The staff reinforced the statement, but without avail. General Lee shook his head, and with his field-gla.s.ses continued to gaze toward the left, whence should arise the dust, the smoke, the sound of Jackson's flanking movement. There was no sign on the left, but here, in the centre, the noise from the woods beyond the creek was growing infernal. He lowered the gla.s.s. ”Captain Chamberlayne, will you go tell General Longstreet--”
Out of the thunder-filled woods, back from creek and swamp and briar and slas.h.i.+ng, from abattis of bough and log, from the shadow of that bluff head with its earthworks one above the other, from the scorching flame of twenty batteries and the wild singing of the minies, rushed the South Carolina troops. The brigadier--Maxey Gregg--the regimental, the company officers, with shouts, with appeals, with waved swords, strove to stop the rout. The command rallied, then broke again. h.e.l.l was in the wood, and the men's faces were grey and drawn. ”We must rally those troops!”
said Lee, and galloped forward. He came into the midst of the disordered throng. ”Men, men! Remember your State--Do your duty!” They recognized him, rallied, formed on the colours, swept past him with a cheer and reentered the deep and fatal wood.
The battery in front of Allan began to suffer dreadfully. The horses grew infected with the terror of the plain. They jerked their heads back; they neighed mournfully; some left the gra.s.s and began to gallop aimlessly across the field. The sh.e.l.ls came in a stream, great, hurtling missiles. Where they struck flesh or ploughed into the earth, it was with a deadened sound; when they burst in air, it was like crackling thunder. The blue sky was gone. A battle pall wrapped the thousands and thousands of men, the guns, the horses, forest, swamp, creeks, old fields; the great strength of the Federal position, the grey brigades das.h.i.+ng against it, hurled back like Atlantic combers. It should be about three o'clock, Allan thought, but he did not know. Every nerve was tingling, the blood pounding in his veins. Time and s.p.a.ce behaved like waves charged with strange driftwood. He felt a mad excitement, was sure that if he stood upright or tried to walk he would stagger. An order ran down the line of the brigade he had adopted. _Attention!_
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BATTLE]
He found himself on his feet and in line, steady, clear of head as though he trod the path by Thunder Run. _Forward! March!_ The brigade cleared the wood, and in line of battle pa.s.sed the exhausted battery.
Allan noted a soldier beneath a horse, a contorted, purple, frozen face held between the brute's fore-legs. The air was filled with whistling sh.e.l.ls; the broom sedge was on fire. _Right shoulder. s.h.i.+ft Arms!
Charge!_
Somewhere, about halfway over the plain, he became convinced that his right leg from the hip down was gone to sleep. He had an idea that he was not keeping up. A line pa.s.sed him--another; he mustn't let the others get ahead! and for a minute he ran quite rapidly. There was a yellow, rain-washed gulley before him; the charge swept down one side and up the other. This crack in the earth was two thirds of the way across the open; beyond were the wood, the creek, the abattis, the climbing lines of breastworks, the thirty-five thousand in blue, and the tremendous guns. The grey charge was yelling high and clear, preparing to deliver its first fire; the air a roar of sound and a glaring light.
Allan went down one side of the gulley with some ease, but it was another thing to climb the other. However, up he got, almost to the top--and then pitched forward, clutching at the growth of sedge along the crest. It held him steady, and he settled into a rut of yellow earth and tried to think it over. Endeavouring to draw himself a little higher, a minie ball went through his shoulder. The grey charge pa.s.sed him, roaring on to the shadowy wood.
He helped himself as best he could, staunched some blood, drew his own conclusions as to his wounds. He was not suffering much; not over much.
By nature he matched increasing danger with increasing coolness. All that he especially wanted was for that charge to succeed--for the grey to succeed. His position here, on the rim of the gully, was an admirable one for witnessing all that the s.h.i.+fting smoke might allow to be witnessed. It was true that a keening minie or one of the monstrous sh.e.l.ls might in an instant shear his thread of life, probably would do so; all the probabilities lay that way. But he was cool and courageous, and had kept himself ready to go. An absorbing interest in the field of Gaines's Mill, a pa.s.sionate desire that Victory should wear grey, dominated all other feeling. Half in the seam of the gully, half in the sedge at the top, he made himself as easy as he could and rested a spectator.
The battle smoke, now heavily settling, now drifting like clouds before a wind, now torn asunder and lifting from the scene, made the great field to come and go in flashes, or like visions of the night. He saw that A. P. Hill was sending in his brigades, brigade after brigade. He looked to the left whence should come Jackson, but over there, just seen through the smoke, the forest stood sultry and still. Behind him, however, in the wood at the base of the armed hill, there rose a clamour and deep thunder as of Armageddon. Like a grey wave broken against an iron sh.o.r.e, the troops with whom he had charged streamed back disordered, out of the shadowy wood into the open, where in the gold sedge lay many a dead man and many a wounded. Allan saw the crimson flag with the blue cross shaken, held on high, heard the officers crying, ”Back, men, back! Virginians, do your duty!” The wave formed again. He tried to rise so that he might go with it, but could not. It returned into the wood. Before him, racing toward the gully, came another wave--Branch's brigade, yelling as it charged. He saw it a moment like a grey wall, with the colours tossing, then it poured down into the gully and up and past him. He put up his arms to s.h.i.+eld his face, but the men swerved a little and did not trample him. The worn shoes, digging into the loose earth covered him with dust. The moving grey cloth, the smell of sweat-drenched bodies, of powder, of leather, of hot metal, the panting breath, the creak and swing, the sudden darkening, heat and pressure--the pa.s.sage of that wave took his own breath from him, left him white and sick. Branch went on. He looked across the gully and saw another wave coming--Pender, this time. Pender came without yelling, grim and grey and close-mouthed. Pender had suffered before Beaver Dam Creek; to-day there was not much more than half a brigade. It, too, pa.s.sed, a determined wave. Allan saw Field in the distance coming up. He was tormented with thirst. Three yards from the gully lay stretched the trunk of a man, the legs blown away. He was almost sure he caught the glint of a canteen. He lay flat in the sedge and dragged himself to the corpse. There was the canteen, indeed; marked with a great U. S., spoil taken perhaps at Williamsburg or at Seven Pines. It was empty, drained dry as a bone. There was another man near. Allan dragged himself on. He thought this one dead, too, but when he reached him he opened large blue eyes and breathed, ”Water!” Allan sorrowfully shook his head. The blue eyes did not wink nor close, they glazed and stayed open. The scout dropped beside the body, exhausted. Field's charge pa.s.sed over him. When he opened his eyes, this portion of the plain was like a sea between cross winds. All the broken waves were wildly tossing. Here they recoiled, fled, even across the gully; here they seethed, inchoate; there, regathering form and might, they readvanced to the echoing hill, with its three breastworks and its eighty cannon. Death gorged himself in the tangled slas.h.i.+ng, on the treacherous banks of the slow-moving creek. A. P. Hill was a superb fighter. He sent in his brigades. They returned, broken; he sent them in again. They went. The 16th and 22d North Carolina pa.s.sed the three lines of blazing rifles, got to the head of the cliff, found themselves among the guns. In vain. Morrell's artillerymen, Morrell's infantry, pushed them back and down, down the hillside, back into the slas.h.i.+ng. The 35th Georgia launched itself like a thunderbolt and pierced the lines, but it, too, was hurled down.
Gregg's South Carolinians and Sykes Regulars locked and swayed. Archer and Pender, Field and Branch, charged and were repelled, to charge again. Save in marksmans.h.i.+p, the Confederate batteries could not match the Federal; strength was with the great, blue rifled guns, and yet the grey cannoneers wrought havoc on the plateau and amid the breastworks.