Part 11 (1/2)
The orderly proceeded to the position occupied by the field and staff officers of the regiment; and, a few moments later, came an order for Lieutenant Somers, with twenty of his men, selected for special duty, to report at the division headquarters.
”You are in luck, Somers; you will have a glorious opportunity to distinguish yourself,” said Captain de Banyan, whose second lieutenant was ordered to the command of Somers's company.
”I don't know what it means,” replied our lieutenant.
”Don't you, indeed?” added the captain with a smile. ”Don't you know what special duty means? On the night before the battle of Solferino----”
”Excuse me, Captain de Banyan; but I am ordered to report forthwith,”
interrupted Somers, who had no desire to hear another ”whopper.”
The young lieutenant marched off, with his little force, to report as he had been directed. He knew his men well enough to enable him to make a good selection; and he was confident that they would stand by him to the last.
”Do you know Senator Guilford?” demanded the general, after Somers had pa.s.sed through all the forms of reporting.
”I do, general,” replied the lieutenant, with a fearful blush, and with a wish in his heart that the distinguished Senator had minded his own business.
”He speaks well of you, Lieutenant Somers,” added the general.
”I am very much obliged to him for his kindness; but I never saw him but once in my life.”
”He asks a favor for you.”
”I am very much obliged to him; but I don't ask any for myself, and I hope you will not grant it. If any favors are bestowed upon me, I prefer to earn them myself.”
”Good!” exclaimed the general. ”But I a.s.sure you and Senator Guilford that no man in this division of the army will get a position he does not deserve. I a.s.sure you, Lieutenant Somers, I should have thrown the Senator's letter among the waste paper, if I had not known you before. I remember you at Williamsburg; and you did a pretty thing in the wheat-field yesterday. You are just the man I want.”
”Thank you, sir; I should be very glad to prove that your good opinion is well founded.”
Apart from others, and in a low tone, the general gave his orders to Lieutenant Somers to undertake a very difficult and dangerous scouting expedition.
”Before sundown you will be a prisoner in Richmond, or a first lieutenant,” added the general as Somers withdrew.
CHAPTER IX
LIEUTENANT SOMERS CHANGES HIS NAME AND CHARACTER
Like the major-generals in the army, Lieutenant Somers had strong aspirations in the direction of an independent command. Like those distinguished worthies, no doubt, he felt competent to perform bigger things than he had yet been called to achieve in the ordinary routine of duty. He had the blood of heroes in his veins; and, in spite of all he could do to keep his thoughts within the limits of modesty, he found them soaring to the regions of the improbable and fanciful. His imagination led him a wild race, and pictured him in the act of performing marvelous deeds of valor and skill.
Fancy is a blind and reckless leader; and it gave our hero oftentimes a command which his reason would not have permitted him to accept. What boys, and even what men, think, when stimulated by ambition, would be too ridiculous to put upon paper. If their thoughts could be disclosed to the impertinent eye of the world, the proprietors would blus.h.i.+ngly disown and disclaim them.
Still, almost every live man and boy gives the reins to his fancy; and in the Army of the Potomac, we will venture to say, there were a hundred thousand privates and officers who permitted themselves to dream that they were brigadiers and major-generals; that they did big things, and received the grateful homage of the world. At any rate, Lieutenant Somers did, modest as he was, even while he felt that he was utterly incompetent to perform the duties inc.u.mbent on the two stars or the one star.
Experience had given him some confidence in his own powers; and there was something delightful in the idea of having an independent command. It was a partial, a very partial, realization of the wanderings of his vivid fancy. He felt able to do something which Lilian Ashford would take pleasure in reading in the newspapers; perhaps something which would prove his fitness for a brigadier's star at some remote period. Now, we have made all this explanation to show how Somers had prepared himself to accomplish some great thing. The mission with which he had been intrusted was an important one; and the safety of the whole left wing of the army might depend upon its faithful performance.
He was wrought up to the highest pitch of patriotic inspiration by the charge which had been laid upon him; and he was determined to bring back the information required of him, even if he had to fly through the air to obtain it. It was of no use to suggest impossibilities to a young man in such a frame of mind; he did not know the meaning of the word. To impress him with the importance of the duty intrusted to him, the general of division had given him a faint outline of the intended movements of the army. If the enemy ma.s.sed his forces in this direction, it was of vital necessity that the general should know it.
Thus prepared and thus inspired, Lieutenant Somers marched his little force to the point from which he proposed to operate. On his right hand there was a dense wood, on the border of which extended one of the numerous cross-roads that checker the country. On his left was another piece of woods, terminating in a point about a quarter of a mile from the road and in the center of a valley.