Part 93 (1/2)

”You can go forward, sir.”

High over the darkening Wilderness rang a bugle-call. The sound soared, hung a moment poised, then, far and near, thronged the grey echoes, bugles, bugles, calling, calling! The sound pa.s.sed away; there followed a rush of bodies through the Wilderness; in a moment was heard the crackling fire of the skirmishers. From ahead came a wild beating of Federal drums--the long roll, the long roll! _Boom!_ Into action came the grey guns. Rodes's Alabamian's pa.s.sed the abattis, touched the breastworks. Colston two hundred yards behind, A. P. Hill the third line. _Yaaai! Yaaaiiih! Yaaaaaiiihh!_ rang the Wilderness.

Several miles to the eastward the large old house of Chancellorsville, set upon rising ground, reflected the sun from its westerly windows. All about it rolled the Wilderness, shadowy beneath the vivid skies. It lay like a sea, touching all the horizon. On the deep porch of the house, tasting the evening coolness, sat Fighting Joe Hooker and several of his officers. Eastward there was firing, as there had been all day, but it, too, was decreased in volume, broken in continuity. The main rebel body, thought the Federal general, must be about ready to draw off, follow the rebel advance in its desperate attempt to get out of the Wilderness, to get off southward to Gordonsville. The 12th Corps was facing the ”main body”. The interchange of musketry, eastward there, had a desultory, waiting sound. From the south, several miles into the depth of the Wilderness, came a slow, uninterrupted booming of cannon. Pleasanton and Sickles were down there, somewhere beyond Catherine Furnace. Pleasanton and Sickles were giving chase to the rebel detachment,--whatever it was; Stonewall Jackson and a division probably--that was trying to get out of the Wilderness. At any rate, the rebel force was divided. When morning dawned it should be pounded small, piece by piece, by the blue impact!

”We've got the men, and we've got the guns. We've got the finest army on the planet!”

The sun dropped. The Wilderness rolled like a sea, hiding many things.

The s.h.a.ggy pile of the forest turned from green to violet. It swept to the pale northern skies, to the eastern, reflecting light from the opposite quarter, to the southern, to the splendid west. Wave after wave, purple-hued, velvet-soft, it pa.s.sed into mist beneath the skies.

There was a perception of a vastness not comprehended. One of the men upon the Chancellor's porch cleared his throat. ”There's an awful feeling about this place! It's poetic, I suppose. Anyhow, it makes you feel that anything might happen--the stranger it was, the likelier to happen--”

”I don't feel that way. It's just a great big rolling plain with woods upon it--no mountains or water--”

”Well, I always thought that if I were a great big thing going to happen I wouldn't choose a chopped up, picturesque place to happen in! I'd choose something like this. I--”

”What's that?”

_Boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom!_

Hooker, at the opposite end of the porch, sprang up and came across.

”Due west!--Howard's guns?--What does that mean--”

_Boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom!_

Fighting Joe Hooker ran down the steps. ”Bring my horse, quick! Colonel, go down to the road and see--”

”My G.o.d! Here they come!”

Down the Plank road, through the woods, back to Chancellorsville, rushed the routed 21st Corps. Soldiers and ambulances, wagons and cattle, gunners lacking their guns, companies out of regiments, squads out of companies, panic-struck and flying units, shouting officers brandis.h.i.+ng swords, hors.e.m.e.n, colour-bearers without colours, others with colours desperately saved, musicians, sutlers, camp followers, ordnance wagons with tearing, maddened horses, soldiers and soldiers and soldiers--down, back to the centre at Chancellorsville, roared the blue wave, torn, churned to foam, lashed and shattered, broken against a stone wall--back on the centre roared and fell the flanked right! Down the Plank road, out of the dark woods of the Wilderness, out of the rolling musketry, behind it the cannon thunder, burst a sound, a sound, a known sound!

_Yaaaai! Yaaaaaiih! Yaaiii! Yaaaaiiihhhhh!_ It echoed, it echoed from the east of Chancellorsville! _Yaaih! Yaaaaiih! Yaaaaaaaiihh!_ yelled the troops of McLaws and Anderson. ”Open fire!” said Lee to his artillery; and to McLaws, ”Move up the turnpike and attack.”

The Wilderness of Spottsylvania laid aside her mantle of calm. She became a maenad, intoxicated, furious, shrieking, a giantess in action, a wild handmaid drinking blood, a servant of Ares, a t.i.tanic hostess spreading with lavish hands large ground for armies and battles, a Valkyrie gathering the dead, laying them in the woodland hollows amid bloodroot and violets! She chanted, she swayed, she cried aloud to the stars, and she shook her own madness upon the troops, very impartially, on grey and on blue.

Down the Plank road, in the gathering night, the very fulness of the grey victory brought its difficulties. Brigades were far ahead, separated from their division commanders; regiments astray from their brigadiers, companies struggling in the dusk through the thickets, seeking the thread from which in the onset and uproar the beads had slipped. They lost themselves in the wild place; there came perforce a pause, a quest for organization and alignment, a drawing together, a compressing of the particles of the thunderbolt; then, then would it be hurled again, full against Chancellorsville!

The moon was coming up. She silvered the Wilderness about Dowdall's Tavern. She made a pallor around the group of staff and field officers gathered beside the road. Her light glinted on Stonewall Jackson's sabre, and on the worn braid of the old forage cap. A body of cavalry pa.s.sed on its way to Ely's Ford. Jeb Stuart rode at the head. He was singing. ”_Old Joe Hooker, won't you come out of the Wilderness?_” he sang. An officer of Rodes came up. ”General Rodes reports, sir, that he has taken a line of their entrenchments. He's less than a mile from Chancellorsville.”

”Good! Tell him A. P. Hill will support. As you go, tell the troops that I wish them to get into line and preserve their order.”

The officer went. An aide of Colston's appeared, breathless from a struggle through the thickets. ”From General Colston, sir. He's immediately behind General Rodes. There was a wide abattis. The troops are reforming beyond it. We see no Federals between us and Chancellorsville.”

”Good! Tell General Colston to use expedition and get his men into line.

Those guns are opening without orders!”

Three grey cannon, planted within bowshot of the Chancellor House, opened, indeed, and with vigour,--opened against twenty-two guns in epaulements on the Chancellorsville ridge. The twenty-two answered in a roar of sound, overtowering the cannonade to the east of McLaws and Anderson. The Wilderness resounded; smoke began to rise like the smoke of strange sacrifices; the mood of the place changed to frenzy. She swung herself, she chanted.

”Grey or blue, I care not, I!

Blue and grey Are here to die!

This human brood Is stained with blood.

The armed man dies, See where he lies In my arms asleep!