An Unoficial Patriot Part 17

It was the night of the fifth of April. Roy had planned to appear very splendid to his brother on the morrow. He had shaved freshly and brushed his uniform, and rubbed up his new shoulder straps. His sword was burnished, and the boy had smiled to himself many times as he worked over these details, to think how vain he was, and how anxious that Beverly should look pleased and proud when he should see him at his best. He seemed to have slept only a little while when there straggled into his consciousness the sound of a shot, then another and another; then a sudden indescribable noise and confusion roused him wholly. He sprang to his feet.

The gray of the dawning day was here. Bugles were sounding. Confusion, noise, action was on all sides. The camp had been surprised! The enemy was upon them! Grape, canister and Enfield b.a.l.l.s tore through the tents.

Sh.e.l.ls burst; the first vision that met his eyes as he rushed forth, was a horse of one of their own batteries, struggling, moaning, whinnying pitifully with both fore-legs torn away, and the cannon half overturned.

An onrus.h.i.+ng force of Confederates shouting in triumph. As his own regiment tried to form in line, three terrified horses tore past dragging their fellow, and what was left of the dismantled cannon. They were wounding each other cruelly in their mad frenzy of pain and fright.

They fell in one ma.s.s of struggling, suffering, panic-stricken flesh into the river and drowned, with their harness binding them together, and to the wreck of their dismantled burden. Everything was confusion.

Each regiment was doing its best to form and repulse the terrible onslaught. The surprise had been complete. The scouts had been surrounded and captured, and the pickets killed or driven in at the first charge which had awakened the sleeping camp. The horrors, the disasters and the triumphs of s.h.i.+loh had begun!

There was no time to think. Action, alone, was possible--the intuitive action of the soldier. The men formed as best they could, and fought as they fell back, or as they advanced a step, with dogged determination to retrieve lost ground. Some were driven into the river, and when wounded, fell beneath its waves to rise no more. The intrepid Confederates followed up their first dash with persistent determination, in spite of the forced march which had preceded the surprise, and in spite of hunger and uncertainty when their supplies might come. They aimed at nothing short of capture. Then supplies would be theirs without delay. But every foot of ground was being stubbornly contested. Now a gain was made, now a loss. Both sides were fighting with that desperation which makes certain only one thing as the issue of the battle--the certainty of an awful carnage. At Such a time it does not seem possible, and yet it is true, that a sense of reckless humor finds place and material to feed its fancy. A good-natured badinage held possession of many of the men.

Roy's regiment had been driven back by the first sudden onrush. It had formed and fought as it went, but it had undoubtedly been forced from its position of advantage on the rise of the hill. They were struggling desperately to regain it. Every man seemed determined to stand again where he had stood an hour before or die in the attempt. A large piece of paper pinned to a tree with a bayonet, attracted Roy's attention as the smoke was lifted for a moment, while they pushed forward inch by inch. The boys had seen its like before. They understood and it acted like a stimulant upon them. Some of the boys laughed outright. The smoke hid the paper. The next volley had driven the Confederates a step farther back. The ground was strewn with their men, lying side by side with those who had fallen from the Northern ranks at the first dash of the enemy. The tree with the paper was a trifle nearer.

"Charge for that challenge, boys! Charge!" shouted Roy, and they responded with a yell and a murderous volley as they ran. It was almost within reach now, but the men who had posted it fought like tigers to hold their ground.

"We'll get it, boys! We'll get it!" rang out with the roar of the battle. At last the tree was only a few feet away. A private dashed out of the line, and grasped the bayonet that held the coveted paper and swung it aloft. The challenge was captured! Even the boys who lay on the ground joined in the triumphal shout and one of them volunteered to reply. He had a good arm left! He took a pencil from his breast pocket, and turned his body painfully, slowly, so that he could write. The stock of his gun was desk enough. He read the captured paper and laughed. "The ------ La. presents its compliments to the ------ Ind., and intends to thrash it out of its boots--as usual."

The wounded man turned the paper over and wrote: "The ------ Ind.

returns its compliments to the ------ La. and expresses a desire to see it accomplish the job." He was so near to the tree that he thought he could drag himself to it and post up the reply on the far side, but his legs were numb and helpless, and the pain of dragging himself on hands and hips conquered him. He looked all about him. The ambulance workers had come, not far away, to carry off the wounded. One came near and offered to help him.

"Pin that paper to the far side of that tree, first," he said, with a grim smile. "I'll wait."

The man refused, but the wounded fellow essaying to drag himself toward it again, he yielded, and the return challenge was posted.

Two hours later its work, was done. The ------

La. held the hill again! A laughing shout went up. It might have been a warmly contested game of football, so free from malice was it.

All over the great battle-field the work of the day was back and forth over the same b.l.o.o.d.y and trampled ground. The mud of the morning took on another tinge of red, and the mingled blood of the gallant fellows who gave their lives for the side they had espoused made hideous mortar of the ghastly sacrifice. The river ran on its way to the sea, floating the costliest driftwood ever cast by man as an offering to his own pa.s.sions, mistakes, and ambitions; a driftwood pale and ghastly, clad in gray or in blue, and scattering from Maine to Texas, from ocean to ocean, the sorrow that travels in the wake of war, the anguish of those who silently wait by the fireside, for the step that will never come, for the voice that is silent forever! Ah, the ghastliness of war! Ah, the costliness of war! It is those who do not fight who pay the heaviest debt and find its glory ashes!

On the hill was the rivalry of the challenge. It gave grim humor to the contest. Three challenges were taken, and three replaced, before the sunset brought that suspension of effort which left the hill, the tree, and the final glory of the day in the hands of the Confederates. The drawn battle was over for the night, but the trend of the victory was southward, and the heavens once more deluged the dead and dying with the pitiless downpour of chilling rain all the night long. In the northern camp the tired men slept in spite of rain and mud and distant cannonading. With the slain beside them, the groans of the dying about them, the echo of the conflict in their ears, the promise of the struggle of the morrow, still the tired men slept! In the Confederate camp sleep was impossible. The Federal relief boats had come! To-morrow fresh men would fill the Northern ranks. Meantime the thunder of the great gunboats continued the unequal contest. Shot and sh.e.l.l fell with the rain into the Confederate camp. All night the bombardment went on.

The river was tinged with red, the heavens kept up the old refrain and wept for the sins, the mistakes, the cruelties of men, and still the tired soldiers slept and waited for the morrow--and what? There would be no more surprises at least. Both understood now that it was a stubborn fight. Both knew that the reinforcements were here for the Federal troops. Pickets and scouts were wide awake now; no danger of another surprise. All night the relief corps worked. All night the distant echoes from the gunboats brought hope to the one and desperation to the other army. All night the surgeons labored. All night stragglers came in dragging wounded limbs. All night suffering horses neighed and whinnied and struggled and at last died from loss of blood--and still men slept!

Ah, the blessed oblivion and relief of sleep! If to-morrow's action must come, then to-night nature must restore the wasted energy, and repair the deathly exhaustion,--and men slept! Soaked through with rain, begrimed with smoke and with mud, a.s.sailed with groans and with that insidious foe of rest, uncertainty, still men slept, soundly, profoundly, dreamlessly!

The first gray streak of dawn brought a bugle call: another, another.

The clouds were clearing away. Nature was preparing to witness another and more desperate struggle. The dreamless sleep, that had refused to yield to hunger, pain, uproar or anxiety, yielded at the first note of the reveille. Every man was awake, alert, active. The rain and action-stiffened limbs were ready for duty again. The seventh of April had dawned. Reinforcements would soon land; but the battle was on before they could disembark. The Confederates, flushed with the advantage of the day before, were determined to overwhelm even the new force. The battle was on. Roy, the spruce, trim, and some young lieutenant of the day before, waiting for his brother with proud, brotherly anxiety, was a sorry sight to-day, but that did not trouble him. His new shoulder-straps were tarnished, his sword was marked with an ugly red stain, his freshly brushed uniform was bespattered and wrinkled and wet, mud-covered and torn; but he was unhurt save for the track of a Minie ball under the skin of his left arm. To that he gave no heed. A plaster of the pottery clay, self-applied, had taken the soreness almost away, and as Roy stood at the head of his company to-day and took the place of the captain, who would respond to roll-call no more, he was wondering if Beverly would be with the troops that would land, and if they would help save the day. He hoped that Beverly would be there, and yet--after the sights and experiences of yesterday--_did_ he hope that Beverly would be there? Beverly might be killed! He had not thought of that the day before, nor had it troubled him for himself; but as he looked about him now or bent to see if an old comrade were really dead, or only unconscious, he somehow felt glad that Beverly had not been there the day before. Ah, these hearts of ours!--these hearts of ours! What tricks they play us! What cowards they make of us! What selfishness they breed in us! For ourselves we can be brave, defiant, even jocose, in the midst of danger or of sorrow; but for those we love! Ah, for those we love, our philosophy is scant comfort, our courage is undermined before it is tested, and we are helpless in the face of Love. We can walk bravely enough into the mouth of a cannon, but Love disarms us, and we cry for mercy where we did not shrink from death!

Roy wondered how much Beverly knew of the battle, and if his heart was anxious, also. He knew Beverly's division was expected, but he thought as he fought, "I reckon I'd just as lieve Beverly shouldn't be with them. If he were on sick leave or--or--something." He felt a little sense of shame for the thought, and fought the more determinedly because of it. The gallant Confederates were flushed by their gain of the day before. No one would have dreamed that they were exhausted by a long march before the surprise. No one would have dreamed that they were hungry, and that their supply-wagons had not come up until long after the struggle. No one would have dreamed that they had been kept up all night by the bombardment from the distant gunboats. No one would have dreamed that out of that intrepid ------ Louisiana, with its challenge again on the tree there, would never muster again over three hundred and twenty-seven of the six hundred merry fellows who flung themselves up that hill only twelve short hours ago!

"Our side bet is up, boys, by the jumping jingo!" said one of the relieved pickets the first thing in the morning. "It is written on a slab this time. I don't know when they got it up. I laid for it all night, and was going to pick the fellow off who came out to that tree, but it was darker than a pile of c.o.ke last night, and, if h.e.l.l ever saw such a rain before, the fires must all be out--soaked through. Don't believe there is a dry spot in the devil's domain to-day. Whew! Look at my boots! I had to stop and sc.r.a.pe the mud off every four steps all night long. My feet were as big as a horse's head--and it's mighty good Bible mud, too--sticketh closer than a brother."

The boys had laughed and agreed that they would get the new challenge somehow. The news that it was up again, and on a substantial slab, which seemed to aggravate the offense in some inexplicable way, spread and aroused the young fellows anew. They would have that slab or die in the attempt. The side bet, as they called it, must be won. They were making straight for it, and the Confederates were holding their position with grim and dogged determination. A sudden onrush of fresh, eager, rested, enthusiastic men, yelling as they came from the gunboats, dashed from the steamboat landing and flung themselves against the lines. The relief had come! Regiment after regiment dashed past. Every new one was felt like a blast of cold wind in the face of a belated traveler. The Confederate lines wavered, broke, rallied, retreated, reformed.

More fresh troops came and swept past like fire in a field of grain.

Discouraged men felt the bracing influence and stimulant on the one side. On the other, it seemed that at last the billows of the ocean had broken upon them, and they must yield or be forever overwhelmed. As each new regiment came up, with its shout and wild, eager dash in the face of the enemy, the ground was being gathered in like thread on a great spool as it revolves. Inch by inch the line yielded. The river was left behind, with its horrible secret, to keep its b.l.o.o.d.y tryst with the sea; to carry its drift of gallant men, who would, alas, be gallant no more, on the infinite wanderings of its waves, as they ran and struggled in vain to leave behind the memory and the burden of the pitiless struggle and carnage--the relics of man's power and courage and savagery, to do and to die by and for his fellow-man, that he may adjust differences he himself has raised from the infinite depths of his own ignorance--from the blindness of his benighted past! And still the river ran on in its hopeless effort, for the human drift kept pace, and the awful battle was lost and won. s.h.i.+loh had pa.s.sed into history, and Grant was famous! The country took stock of its loss and its gain. One more milestone in the devious road was past. One more reef was taken in the irrepressible conflict. The North rejoiced. The South sorrowed, and mothers, wives, sisters, and sweethearts stared at the wall and wept and moaned for the treasure that was lost, for the price that was paid, and took up anew their stunned and silent part, and waited and hoped and prayed.

One of the first regiments to dash past into the h.e.l.l of shot and sh.e.l.l was Beverly's. He had noticed, as people will notice trivial things in the midst of great crises, a board nailed to a tree. When the battle was over he had searched for his brother's regiment. At last he had found it, but Roy was not there. Some one said he had fallen, others said he had been captured just before the relief came--"Right up there by the challenge--by the tree." Beverly rode back toward the hill, sick and faint at heart. He wondered, with a thrill of superst.i.tious fear, if that board was to be a sort of grave-mark for his brother, and if that was the reason he had noticed the ridiculous challenge at such a time.

He would go back to the mark and search for his brother. He got down from his horse and tied him to the tree. The challenge was still there.

He had no heart to read it, but started on his sickening search.

Face after face that he knew--boys from the old college--looked up at him--some, alas, with stark, unseeing eyes, and others who begged for help. Boys he had in the old days cared for with youthful fervor, and yet they seemed as nothing to him now; he must not lose time--he must find his brother. Again and again he turned a b.l.o.o.d.y face upward only to exclaim, "Thank G.o.d!" when he did not know the features. Oh, the infinite selfishness of Love! The toy it makes of our human sympathies!

The contraction it pats upon our generosity of soul! The limitations it sets upon our helpfulness! When twilight came Beverly was still searching for his brother, and thanking G.o.d, in the face of every mangled form, that it was the face of some other man's brother--some other mother's son! He returned to the camp for a light. He could not wait until morning to be sure that Roy was captured. He hoped and prayed that it might be so, but he must know. No report had come to the regiment. Roy had not been found or recognized. Beverly went hastily through the hospital tents. Roy had not been brought in. The search on the field began again--the search for his brother. The relief corps were working heroically. Men with stretchers pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed him, and still Beverly looked in vain. He turned his dark lantern on the stretchers as they approached him, and sighed with relief as each pa.s.sed on. He came to the spot where the little church had stood, now dismantled and wrecked by sh.e.l.l.

One after another he turned the faces of prostrate men upward. The night was wearing on. He was desperate, discouraged, and yet he had begun to settle into a solid hope that Roy had been captured and taken back into the Confederate ranks before the relief had come. He was making his way back to the tree and his impatient horse, when he heard a gurgling groan in a muddy ravine through which the retreating cannon had gone. He turned aside and searched with his lantern again. Deep in the stiff mud lay a young officer. His legs were deeply imbedded. Evidently the wheel of a cannon-carriage, or some other heavy wheel, had pa.s.sed over him and crushed his legs into the soft earth. He had lain directly in the path of the retreating ordnance. The deep tracks told where the wheels had been. Beverly turned sick. He stooped to lift the face that lay half in the mud and water.

"Oh, Roy! Roy! my brother!" he gasped and fell upon his knees. His hand trembled so that the canteen fell from his grasp. He groped for it as the lantern lay beside him, and one hand till held the face above the earth. "Roy! Roy! can you hear me? Can you hear me? It is your brother!

It is Beverly!" he cried out, but for reply there was only that gurgling groan, followed by another and another--and then silence.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" cried Beverly, "What can I do? It will kill him to try to lift those poor crushed legs and------"

The light fell on the breast, and there, for the first time, Beverly saw that it was not mud alone that lay there, but that a piece of spent sh.e.l.l was half crushed into Roy's side. It was plain now. Roy had fallen with that, and the retreating battery had driven over his helpless form.

Beverly wiped the mud and powder from his brother's face and bent down and kissed the parted lips.

"Oh, my brother! my brother! I came too late at last! I thought all the way on the river, and then, as we dashed up that hill, I thought we had come in time to save you, and I was so glad! Roy, I prayed not to be too late! Somehow I thought you were up there. And you were here--here, with this ghastly wound--and they drove over you! O, Roy, Roy, my brother how can I ever tell mother? How can I?"

The long, gurgling moan came again. Beverly sprang to his feet and shouted for help. Shout after shout rang out. At last a reply came, and then men with a stretcher.

"I have found my brother," was all Beverly could say. His own voice seemed strange and distant to him. The men get about lifting the body from its bed of clay--the body of this spruce young officer who had been so eager that his brother should feel proud to see him in his new uniform with the first-lieutenant's straps! No one could tell what the uniform was now, and the jaunty cap and polished sword were gone! The strong young legs and the erect figure could boast of its extra inch no longer. Beverly breathed hard as the men worked. "I'm afraid he's too far gone to help now, captain. It------"

"Oh, let _me_ lift his head! I can't pull on those poor crushed legs!

Be so careful! Oh, G.o.d! oh, G.o.d! how cruel! Be so careful!--oh, Roy!

Roy!--We are trying to be so careful, Roy! We try not to hurt you so! My G.o.d, how cruel! I cannot bear it, brother!"

The body was on the stretcher at last, and Beverly was wiping great beads of anguish from his own face. One poor leg was crushed near the hip, and had been hard to manage. The groans had become more distinct and frequent. Then,"Dr--dr," came from the lips.

"Here, here, give me a canteen! I lost mine down there. Quick, he wants a drink, I think. Here, brother Roy." Beverly put a hand under his head.

"Here, Roy, dear, can you swallow? Oh, it hurts him so! Here, brother, _my_ brother! Oh, Roy, I wish it were I! Can you hear me? Can you hear me, Roy?"

The men with the stretcher turned their faces away and drew their sleeves across their eyes. Even they who had worked all night with and for the dead and dying were moved anew by the young officer's sorrow.

Beverly looked up hopefully.

"I think he swallowed just a little. Let us get him to a surgeon, quick.

Perhaps, perhaps--" Beverly looked from one to the other and could not finish his sentence. The little group moved wearily toward the hospital tents, and Beverly ran for the surgeon of his own company.

"My G.o.d, doctor, he has been driven over, and he is wounded in the breast besides! Do you think there is any hope? Oh, how I wish it were I! Oh, doctor, can't you save him? It is my brother--my brother Roy!"

The surgeon was listening as he worked.

"The best thing that could have happened to him is that he was so deep in that mud. It has kept the fever down. It has saved his leg. It isn't badly swollen. I can set this bone. I don't think the other one is----"

He was examining and talking slowly. He changed to the wound in the breast. "This is the most--this is the worst, but I don't think the lung is badly--this plaster of mud on his breast----"

"I took it nearly all off, doctor. It was very thick when I found him, and this----" Beverly took a large jagged piece of sh.e.l.l from his pocket. "This was down in it. I think it must have struck and stunned him, and while he was helpless those cruel wheels went over him. His body was as if he had fallen on his back, but the legs were twisted as if he had been on his side. The mud was nearly two feet deep. It was an awful place, awful! And to think that they should have driven over Roy!

Do you think----?"

"That was the best place he could have been. That mud has acted like----"

The doctor was taking professional pride in the case. The wounded man groaned.

"Oh, how it seems to hurt him, doctor! Can't you--can't I---couldn't we give him something to deaden--? He was never so strong as I. He----"

"You'd better go away, captain. You're brave enough for yourself, but you'd better go away. I'll do my level best for him. I don't think this wound is fatal--and the mud poultice was the very best thing that could have happened to him, really. The wheel that threw that did him a greater service than it did injury to his leg. I--you had better go and lie down for a while, captain. I'll do everything possible, and--well, I hope his lung is not very seriously implicated. I hope we can pull him through. I feel sure of the leg and--go and lie down. You can't do any good here, and you mustn't lose your nerve that way. If he--if I--if he regains consciousness I'll call you, Try to get a little rest for to-morrow. Try. You may be needed then. You must have your nerve then, too, if he should open his eyes and----"

"_If_ he should open his eyes!" Beverly turned away and sat with his face in his hands. "How can I write it to mother," he moaned--"how can I? How can I? And father may not be there to help her bear it! Oh, Roy, Roy, my brother!"