The Long Roll Part 93

"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!

On my breast asleep!

The babe of Time, A nestling fallen.

The nest a ruin, The tree storm-snapped.

Lullaby, lullaby! sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep!"

The smoke drifted toward the moon, the red gun-flashes showed the aisles of pine and oak. Jackson beckoned imperiously to an aide. "Go tell A. P.

Hill to press forward."

The thunder of the guns ceased suddenly. There was heard a trample of feet, A. P. Hill's brigades on the turnpike. "Who leads?" asked a voice.

"Lane's North Carolinians," answered another. General Lane came by, young, an old V. M. I. cadet. He drew rein a moment, saluted. "Push right ahead, Lane! right ahead!" said Jackson.

A. P. Hill, in his battle s.h.i.+rt, appeared, his staff behind him. "Your final order, general?"

"Press them, Hill! Cut them off from the fords. Press them!"

A. P. Hill went. From the east, the guns upon his own front now having quieted, rolled the thunder of those with Lee. The clamour about Chancellorsville where, in hot haste, Hooker made dispositions, streamed east and west, meeting and blending with, westward, a like distraction of forming commands, of battle lines made in the darkness, among thickets. The moon was high, but not observed; the Wilderness fiercely chanting. Behind him was Captain Wilbourne of the Signal Corps, two aides and several couriers, Jackson rode along the Plank road.

There was a regiment drawn across this way through the Wilderness, on the road and in the woods on either hand. In places in the Wilderness, the scrub that fearfully burned the next day and the next was even now afire, and gave, though uncertainly and dimly, a certain illumination.

By it the regiment was perceived. It seemed composed of tall and shadowy men. "What troops are these?" asked the general.

"Lane's North Carolinians, sir,--the 18th."

As he pa.s.sed, the regiment started to cheer. He shook his head. "Don't, men, we want quiet now!"

A very few hundred yards from Chancellorsville he checked Little Sorrel.

The horse stood, fore feet planted. Horse and rider, they stood and listened. Hooker's reserves were up. About the Chancellor House, on the Chancellorsville ridge, they were throwing up entrenchments. They were digging the earth with bayonets, they were heaping it up with their hands. There was a ringing of axes. They were cutting down the young spring growth; they were making an abattis. Tones of command could be heard. "Hurry, hurry--hurry! They mean to rush us. Hurry--hurry!" A dead creeper mantling a dead tree, caught by some flying spark, suddenly flared throughout its length, stood a pillar of fire, and showed redly the enemy's guns. Stonewall Jackson sat his horse and looked. "Cut them off from the ford," he said. "Never let them get out of Virginia." He jerked his hand into the air.

Turning Little Sorrel, he rode back along the Plank road toward his own lines. The light of the burning brush had sunken. The cannon smoke floating in the air, the very thick woods, made all things obscure.

"There are troops across the road in front," said an aide.

"Yes. Lane's North Carolinians awaiting their signal."

A little to the east and south broke out in the Wilderness a sudden rattling fire, sinking, rising, sinking again, the blue and grey skirmishers now in touch. All through the vast, dark, tangled beating heart of the place, sprang into being a tension. The grey lines listened for the word _Advance_! The musket rested on the shoulder, the foot quivered, eyes front tried to pierce the darkness. Sound was unceasing; and yet the mind found a stillness, a lake of calm. It was the moment before the moment.

Stonewall Jackson came toward the Carolinians. He rode quickly, past the dark sh.e.l.l of a house sunken among pines. There were with him seven or eight persons. The horses' hoofs made a trampling on the Plank road. The woods were deep, the obscurity great. Suddenly out of the brush rang a shot, an accidentally discharged rifle. Some grey soldier among Lane's tensely waiting ranks, dressed in the woods to the right of the road, spoke from the core of a fearful dream: "Yankee cavalry!"

"_Fire!_" called an officer of the 18th North Carolina.

The volley, striking diagonally across the road, emptied several saddles. Stonewall Jackson, the aides and Wilbourne, wheeled to the left, dug spur, and would have plunged into the wood. "_Fire!_" said the Carolinians, dressed to the left of the road, and fired.

Little Sorrel, maddened, dashed into the wood. An oak bough struck his rider, almost bearing him from the saddle. With his right hand from which the blood was streaming, in which a bullet was imbedded, he caught the bridle, managed to turn the agonized brute into the road again. There seemed a wild sound, a confusion of voices. Some one had stopped the firing. "My G.o.d, men! You are firing into _us_!" In the road were the aides. They caught the rein, stopped the horse. Wilbourne put up his arms.

"General, general! you are not hurt?--Hold there!--Morrison--Leigh!--"

They laid him on the ground beneath the pines and they fired the brushwood for a light. One rode off for Dr. McGuire, and another with a penknife cut away the sleeve from the left arm through which had gone two bullets. A mounted man came at a gallop and threw himself from his horse. It was A. P. Hill. "General, general! you are not much hurt?"

"Yes, I think I am," said Stonewall Jackson. "And my wounds are from my own men."

Hill drew off the gauntlets that were all blood soaked, and with his handkerchief tried to bind up the arm, shattered and with the main artery cut. A courier came up. "Sir, sir! a body of the enemy is close at hand--"