Army Life in a Black Regiment Part 7

There was thus a region ten or twelve miles square of which I had exclusive military command. It was level, but otherwise broken and bewildering to the last degree. No road traversed it, properly speaking, but the Sh.e.l.l Road. All the rest was a wild medley of cypress swamp, pine barren, muddy creek, and cultivated plantation, intersected by interminable lanes and bridle-paths, through which we must ride day and night, and which our horses soon knew better than ourselves. The regiment was distributed at different stations, the main force being under my immediate command, at a plantation close by the Sh.e.l.l Road, two miles from the ferry, and seven miles from Beaufort. Our first picket duty was just at the time of the first attack on Charleston, under Dupont and Hunter; and it was generally supposed that the Confederates would make an effort to recapture the Sea Islands. My orders were to watch the enemy closely, keep informed as to his position and movements, attempt no advance, and, in case any were attempted from the other side, to delay it as long as possible, sending instant notice to head-quarters. As to the delay, that could be easily guaranteed. There were causeways on the Sh.e.l.l Road which a single battery could hold against a large force; and the plantations were everywhere so intersected by hedges and dikes that they seemed expressly planned for defence. Although creeks wound in and out everywhere, yet these were only navigable at high tide, and at all other times were impa.s.sable marshes. There were but few posts where the enemy were within rifle range, and their occasional attacks at those points were soon stopped by our enforcement of a pithy order from General Hunter, "Give them as good as they send." So that, with every opportunity for being kept on the alert, there was small prospect of serious danger; and all promised an easy life, with only enough of care to make it pleasant. The picket station was therefore always a coveted post among the regiments, combining some undeniable importance with a kind of relaxation; and as we were there three months on our first tour of duty, and returned there several times afterwards, we got well acquainted with it. The whole region always reminded me of the descriptions of La Vende'e, and I always expected to meet Henri Larochejaquelein riding in the woods.

How can I ever describe the charm and picturesqueness of that summer life? Our house possessed four s.p.a.cious rooms and a piazza; around it were grouped sheds and tents; the camp was a little way off on one side, the negro-quarters of the plantation on the other; and all was immersed in a dense ma.s.s of waving and murmuring locust-blossoms. The spring days were always lovely, while the evenings were always conveniently damp; so that we never shut the windows by day, nor omitted our cheerful fire by night. Indoors, the main head-quarters seemed like the camp of some party of young engineers in time of peace, only with a little female society added, and a good many martial a.s.sociations thrown in. A large, low, dilapidated room, with an immense fireplace, and with window-panes chiefly broken, so that the sashes were still open even when closed,-such was our home. The walls were scrawled with capital charcoal sketches by R. of the Fourth New Hampshire, and with a good map of the island and its wood-paths by C. of the First Ma.s.sachusetts Cavalry. The room had the picturesqueness which comes everywhere from the natural grouping of articles of daily use,-swords, belts, pistols, rifles, field-gla.s.ses, spurs, canteens, gauntlets,-while wreaths of gray moss above the windows, and a pelican's wing three feet long over the high mantel-piece, indicated more deliberate decoration. This, and the whole atmosphere of the place, spoke of the refining presence of agreeable women; and it was pleasant when they held their little court in the evening, and pleasant all day, with the different visitors who were always streaming in and out,-officers and soldiers on various business; turbaned women from the plantations, coming with complaints or questionings; fugitives from the main-land to be interrogated; visitors riding up on horseback, their hands full of jasmine and wild roses; and the sweet sunny air all perfumed with magnolias and the Southern pine. From the neighboring camp there was a perpetual low hum. Louder voices and laughter re-echoed, amid the sharp sounds of the axe, from the pine woods; and sometimes, when the relieved pickets were discharging their pieces, there came the hollow sound of dropping rifle-shots, as in skirmishing,-perhaps the most unmistakable and fascinating a.s.sociation that war bequeaths to the memory of the ear.

Our domestic arrangements were of the oddest description. From the time when we began housekeeping by taking down the front-door to complete therewith a little office for the surgeon on the piazza, everything seemed upside down. I slept on a shelf in the corner of the parlor, bequeathed me by Major F., my jovial predecessor, and, if I waked at any time, could put my head through the broken window, arouse my orderly, and ride off to see if I could catch a picket asleep. We used to spell the word picquet, because that was understood to be the correct thing, in that Department at least; and they used to say at post head-quarters that as soon as the officer in command of the outposts grew negligent, and was guilty of a k, he was ordered in immediately. Then the arrangements for ablution were peculiar. We fitted up a bathing-place in a brook, which somehow got appropriated at once by the company laundresses; but I had my revenge, for I took to bathing in the family washtub. After all, however, the kitchen department had the advantage, for they used my solitary napkin to wipe the mess-table. As for food, we found it impossible to get chickens, save in the immature shape of eggs; fresh pork was prohibited by the surgeon, and other fresh meat came rarely. We could, indeed, hunt for wild turkeys, and even deer, but such hunting was found only to increase the appet.i.te, without corresponding supply. Still we had our luxuries,-large, delicious drum-fish, and alligator steaks,-like a more substantial fried halibut,-which might have afforded the theme for Charles Lamb's dissertation on Roast Pig, and by whose aid "for the first time in our lives we tested crackling" The post bakery yielded admirable bread; and for vegetables and fruit we had very poor sweet potatoes, and (in their season) an unlimited supply of the largest blackberries. For beverage, we had the vapid milk of that region, in which, if you let it stand, the water sinks instead of the cream's rising; and the delicious sugar-cane syrup, which we had brought from Florida, and which we drank at all hours. Old Floridians say that no one is justified in drinking whiskey, while he can get cane-juice; it is sweet and spirited, without cloying, foams like ale, and there were little spots on the ceiling of the dining-room where our lively beverage had popped out its cork. We kept it in a whiskey-bottle; and as whiskey itself was absolutely prohibited among us, it was amusing to see the surprise of our military visitors when this innocent subst.i.tute was brought in. They usually liked it in the end, but, like the old Frenchwoman over her gla.s.s of water, wished that it were a sin to give it a relish. As the foaming beakers of mola.s.ses and water were handed round, the guests would make with them the courteous little gestures of polite imbiding, and would then quaff the beverage, some with gusto, others with a slight afterlook of dismay. But it was a delicious and cooling drink while it lasted; and at all events was the best and the worst we had.

We used to have reveille at six, and breakfast about seven; then the mounted couriers began to arrive from half a dozen different directions, with written reports of what had happened during the night,-a boat seen, a picket fired upon, a battery erecting. These must be consolidated and forwarded to head-quarters, with the daily report of the command,-so many sick, so many on detached service, and all the rest. This was our morning newspaper, our Herald and Tribune; I never got tired of it. Then the couriers must be furnished with countersign and instructions, and sent off again. Then we scattered to our various rides, all disguised as duty; one to inspect pickets, one to visit a sick soldier, one to build a bridge or clear a road, and still another to head-quarters for ammunition or commissary stores. Galloping through green lanes, miles of triumphal arches of wild roses,-roses pale and large and fragrant, mingled with great boughs of the white cornel, fantastic ma.s.ses, snowy surprises,-such were our rides, ranging from eight to fifteen and even twenty miles. Back to a late dinner with our various experiences, and perhaps specimens to match,-a thunder-snake, eight feet long; a live opossum, with a young clinging to the natural pouch; an armful of great white, scentless pond-lilies. After dinner, to the tangled garden for rosebuds or early magnolias, whose cloying fragrance will always bring back to me the full zest of those summer days; then dress-parade and a little drill as the day grew cool. In the evening, tea; and then the piazza or the fireside, as the case might be,-chess, cards,-perhaps a little music by aid of the a.s.sistant surgeon's melodeon, a few pages of Jean Paul's "t.i.tan," almost my only book, and carefully husbanded,-perhaps a mail, with its infinite felicities. Such was our day.

Night brought its own fascinations, more solitary and profound. The darker they were, the more clearly it was our duty to visit the pickets. The paths that had grown so familiar by day seemed a wholly new labyrinth by night; and every added shade of darkness seemed to shift and complicate them all anew, till at last man's skill grew utterly baffled, and the clew must be left to the instinct of the horse. Riding beneath the solemn starlight, or soft, gray mist, or densest blackness, the frogs croaking, the strange "chuckwuts-widow" droning his ominous note above my head, the mocking-bird dreaming in music, the great Southern fireflies rising to the tree-tops, or hovering close to the ground like glowworms, till the horse raised his hoofs to avoid them; through pine woods and cypress swamps, or past sullen brooks, or white tents, or the dimly seen huts of sleeping negroes; down to the glimmering sh.o.r.e, where black statues leaned against trees or stood alert in the pathways;-never, in all the days of my life, shall I forget the magic of those haunted nights.

We had nocturnal boat service, too, for it was a part of our instructions to obtain all possible information about the enemy's position; and we accordingly, as usual in such cases, incurred a great many risks that harmed n.o.body, and picked up much information which did n.o.body any good. The centre of these nightly reconnoissances, for a long time, was the wreck of the George Washington, the story of whose disaster is perhaps worth telling.

Till about the time when we went on picket, it had been the occasional habit of the smaller gunboats to make the circuit of Port Royal Island,-a practice which was deemed very essential to the safety of our position, but which the Rebels effectually stopped, a few days after our arrival, by destroying the army gunboat George Washington with a single shot from a light battery. I was roused soon after daybreak by the firing, and a courier soon came dashing in with the particulars. Forwarding these hastily to Beaufort (for we had then no telegraph), I was soon at the scene of action, five miles away. Approaching, I met on the picket paths man after man who had escaped from the wreck across a half-mile of almost impa.s.sable marsh. Never did I see such objects,-some stripped to their shirts, some fully clothed, but all having every garment literally pasted to them-bodies with mud. Across the river, the Rebels were retiring, having done their work, but were still sh.e.l.ling, from greater and greater distances, the wood through which I rode. Arrived at the spot nearest the wreck (a point opposite to what we called the Brickyard Station), I saw the burning vessel aground beyond a long stretch of marsh, out of which the forlorn creatures were still floundering. Here and there in the mud and reeds we could see the laboring heads, slowly advancing, and could hear excruciating cries from wounded men in the more distant depths. It was the strangest mixture of war and Dante and Robinson Crusoe. Our energetic chaplain coming up, I sent him with four men, under a flag of truce, to the place whence the worst cries proceeded, while I went to another part of the marsh. During that morning we got them all out, our last achievement being the rescue of the pilot, an immense negro with a wooden leg,-an article so particularly unavailable for mud travelling, that it would have almost seemed better, as one of the men suggested, to cut the traces, and leave it behind.

A naval gunboat, too, which had originally accompanied this vessel, and should never have left it, now came back and took off the survivors, though there had been several deaths from scalding and sh.e.l.l. It proved that the wreck was not aground after all, but at anchor, having foolishly lingered till after daybreak, and having thus given time for the enemy to bring down then: guns. The first shot had struck the boiler, and set the vessel on fire; after which the officer in command had raised a white flag, and then escaped with his men to our sh.o.r.e; and it was for this flight in the wrong direction that they were sh.e.l.led in the marshes by the Rebels. The case furnished in this respect some parallel to that of the Kearsage and Alabama, and it was afterwards cited, I believe, officially or unofficially, to show that the Rebels had claimed the right to punish, in this case, the course of action which they approved in Semmes. I know that they always a.s.serted thenceforward that the detachment on board the George Washington had become rightful prisoners of war, and were justly fired upon when they tried to escape.

This was at the tune of the first attack on Charleston, and the noise of this cannonading spread rapidly thither, and brought four regiments to reinforce Beaufort in a hurry, under the impression that the town was already taken, and that they must save what remnants they could. General Saxton, too, had made such capital plans for defending the post that he could not bear not to have it attacked; so, while the Rebels brought down a force to keep us from taking the guns off the wreck, I was also supplied with a section or two of regular artillery, and some additional infantry, with which to keep them from it; and we tried to "make believe very hard," and rival the Charleston expedition on our own island. Indeed, our affair came to about as much,-nearly nothing,-and lasted decidedly longer; for both sides nibbled away at the guns, by night, for weeks afterward, though I believe the mud finally got them,-at least, we did not. We tried in vain to get the use of a steamboat or floating derrick of any kind; for it needed more mechanical ingenuity than we possessed to transfer anything so heavy to our small boats by night, while by day we did not go near the wreck in anything larger than a "dug-out."

One of these nocturnal visits to the wreck I recall with peculiar gusto, because it brought back that contest with catarrh and coughing among my own warriors which had so ludicrously beset me in Florida. It was always fascinating to be on those forbidden waters by night, stealing out with m.u.f.fled oars through the creeks and reeds, our eyes always strained for other voyagers, our ears listening breathlessly to all the marsh sounds,-blackflsh splashing, and little wakened reed-birds that fled wailing away over the dim river, equally safe on either side. But it always appeared to the watchful senses that we were making noise enough to be heard at Fort Sumter; and somehow the victims of catarrh seemed always the most eager for any enterprise requiring peculiar caution. In this case I thought I had sifted them before-hand; but as soon as we were afloat, one poor boy near me began to wheeze, and I turned upon him in exasperation. He saw his danger, and meekly said, "I won't cough, Gunnel!" and he kept his word. For two mortal hours he sat grasping his gun, with never a chirrup. But two unfortunates in the bow of the boat developed symptoms which I could not suppress; so, putting in at a picket station, with some risk I dumped them in mud knee-deep, and embarked a subst.i.tute, who after the first five minutes absolutely coughed louder than both the others united. Handkerchiefs, blankets, over-coats, suffocation in its direst forms, were tried in vain, but apparently the Rebel pickets slept through it all, and we exploded the wreck in safety. I think they were asleep, for certainly across the level marshes there came a nasal sound, as of the "Con-thieveracy" in its slumbers. It may have been a bull-frog, but it sounded like a human snore.

Picket life was of course the place to feel the charm of natural beauty on the Sea Islands. We had a world of profuse and tangled vegetation around us, such as would have been a dream of delight to me, but for the constant sense of responsibility and care which came between. Amid this preoccupation, Nature seemed but a mirage, and not the close and intimate a.s.sociate I had before known. I pressed no flowers, collected no insects or birds' eggs, made no notes on natural objects, reversing in these respects all previous habits. Yet now, in the retrospect, there seems to have been infused into me through every pore the voluptuous charm of the season and the place; and the slightest corresponding sound or odor now calls back the memory of those delicious days. Being afterwards on picket at almost every season, I tasted the sensations of all; and though I hardly then thought of such a result, the a.s.sociations of beauty will remain forever.

In February, for instance,-though this was during a later period of picket service,-the woods were usually draped with that "net of shining haze" which marks our Northern May; and the house was embowered in wild-plum-blossoms, small, white, profuse, and tenanted by murmuring bees. There were peach-blossoms, too, and the yellow jasmine was opening its mult.i.tudinous buds, climbing over tall trees, and waving from bough to bough. There were fresh young ferns and white bloodroot in the edges of woods, matched by snowdrops in the garden, beneath budded myrtle and Petisporum. In this wilderness the birds were busy; the two main songsters being the mocking-bird and the cardinal-grosbeak, which monopolized all the parts of our more varied Northern orchestra save the tender and liquid notes, which in South Carolina seemed unattempted except by some stray blue-bird. Jays were as loud and busy as at the North in autumn; there were sparrows and wrens; and sometimes I noticed the shy and whimsical chewink.

From this early spring-time onward, there seemed no great difference in atmospheric sensations, and only a succession of bloom. After two months one's notions of the season grew bewildered, just as very early rising bewilders the day. In the army one is perhaps roused after a bivouac, marches before daybreak, halts, fights, somebody is killed, a long day's life has been lived, and after all it is not seven o'clock, and breakfast is not ready. So when we had lived in summer so long as hardly to remember winter, it suddenly occurred to us that it was not yet June. One escapes at the South that mixture of hunger and avarice which is felt in the Northern summer, counting each hour's joy with the sad consciousness that an hour is gone. The compensating loss is in missing those soft, sweet, liquid sensations of the Northern spring, that burst of life and joy, those days of heaven that even April brings; and this absence of childhood in the year creates a feeling of hardness in the season, like that I have suggested in the melody of the Southern birds. It seemed to me also that the woods had not those pure, clean, innocent odors which so abound in the New England forest in early spring; but there was something luscious, voluptuous, almost oppressively fragrant about the magnolias, as if they belonged not to Hebe, but to Magdalen.

Such immense and l.u.s.trous b.u.t.terflies I had never seen but in dreams; and not even dreams had prepared me for sand-flies. Almost too small to be seen, they inflicted a bite which appeared larger than themselves,-a positive wound, more torturing than that of a mosquito, and leaving more annoyance behind. These tormentors elevated dress-parade into the dignity of a military engagement. I had to stand motionless, with my head a mere nebula of winged atoms, while tears rolled profusely down my face, from mere muscular irritation. Had I stirred a finger, the whole battalion would have been slapping its cheeks. Such enemies were, however, a valuable aid to discipline, on the whole, as they abounded in the guard-house, and made that inst.i.tution an object of unusual abhorrence among the men.

The presence of ladies and the homelike air of everything, made the picket station a very popular resort while we were there. It was the one agreeable ride from Beaufort, and we often had a dozen people unexpectedly to dinner. On such occasions there was sometimes mounting in hot haste, and an eager search among the outlying plantations for additional chickens and eggs, or through the company kitchens for some of those villanous tin cans which everywhere marked the progress of our army. In those cans, so far as my observation went, all fruits relapsed into a common acidulation, and all meats into a similarity of tastelessness; while the "condensed milk" was best described by the men, who often unconsciously stumbled on a better joke than they knew, and always spoke of it as condemned milk.

We had our own excursions too,-to the Barnwell plantations, with their beautiful avenues and great live-oaks, the perfection of Southern beauty,-to Hall's Island, debatable ground, close under the enemy's fire, where half-wild cattle were to be shot, under military precautions, like Scottish moss-trooping,-or to the ferry, where it was fascinating to the female mind to scan the Rebel pickets through a field-gla.s.s. Our horses liked the by-ways far better than the level hardness of the Sh.e.l.l Road, especially those we had brought from Florida, which enjoyed the wilderness as if they had belonged to Marion's men. They delighted to feel the long sedge brush their flanks, or to gallop down the narrow wood-paths, leaping the fallen trees, and scaring the bright little lizards which shot across our track like live rays broken from the sunbeams. We had an abundance of horses, mostly captured and left in our hands by some convenient delay of the post quartermaster. We had also two side-saddles, which, not being munitions of war, could not properly (as we explained) be transferred like other captured articles to the general stock; otherwise the P. Q. M. (a married man) would have showed no unnecessary delay in their case. For miscellaneous accommodation was there not an ambulance,-that most inestimable of army conveniences, equally ready to carry the merry to a feast or the wounded from a fray. "Ambulance" was one of those words, rather numerous, which Ethiopian lips were not framed by Nature to articulate. Only the highest stages of colored culture could compa.s.s it; on the tongue of the many it was transformed mystically as "amulet," or ambitiously as "epaulet," or in culinary fashion as "omelet." But it was our experience that an ambulance under any name jolted equally hard.

Besides these divertis.e.m.e.nts, we had more laborious vocations,-a good deal of fatigue, and genuine though small alarms. The men went on duty every third day at furthest, and the officers nearly as often,-most of the tours of duty lasting twenty-four hours, though the stream was considered to watch itself tolerably well by daylight. This kind of responsibility suited the men; and we had already found, as the whole army afterwards acknowledged, that the const.i.tutional watchfulness and distrustfulness of the colored race made them admirable sentinels. Soon after we went on picket, the commanding general sent an aid, with a cavalry escort, to visit all the stations, without my knowledge. They spent the whole night, and the officer reported that he could not get within thirty yards of any post without a challenge. This was a pleasant a.s.surance for me; since our position seemed so secure, compared with Jacksonville, that I had feared some relaxation of vigilance, while yet the safety of all depended on our thorough discharge of duty.

Jacksonville had also seasoned the men so well that they were no longer nervous, and did not waste much powder on false alarms. The Rebels made no formal attacks, and rarely attempted to capture pickets. Sometimes they came stealing through the creeks in "dugouts," as we did on their side of the water, and occasionally an officer of ours was fired upon while making his rounds by night. Often some boat or scow would go adrift, and sometimes a mere dark ma.s.s of river-weed would be floated by the tide past the successive stations, eliciting a challenge and perhaps a shot from each. I remember the vivid way in which one of the men stated to his officer the manner in which a faithful picket should do his duty, after challenging, in case a boat came in sight. "Fus' ting I shoot, and den I shoot, and den I shoot again. Den I creep-creep up near de boat, and see who dey in 'em; and s'pose anybody pop up he head, den I shoot again. S'pose I fire my forty rounds. I tink he hear at de camp and send more mans,"-which seemed a reasonable presumption. This soldier's name was Paul Jones, a daring fellow, quite worthy of his namesake.

In time, however, they learned quieter methods, and would wade far out in the water, there standing motionless at last, hoping to surround and capture these floating boats, though, to their great disappointment, the prize usually proved empty. On one occasion they tried a still profounder strategy; for an officer visiting the pickets after midnight, and hearing in the stillness a portentous snore from the end of the causeway (our most important station), straightway hurried to the point of danger, with wrath in his soul. But the sergeant of the squad came out to meet him, imploring silence, and explaining that they had seen or suspected a boat hovering near, and were feigning sleep in order to lure and capture those who would entrap them.

The one military performance at the picket station of which my men were utterly intolerant was an occasional flag of truce, for which this was the appointed locality. These farces, for which it was our duty to furnish the stock actors, always struck them as being utterly despicable, and unworthy the serious business of war. They felt, I suppose, what Mr. Pickwick felt, when he heard his counsel remark to the counsel for the plaintiff, that it was a very fine morning. It goaded their souls to see the young officers from the two opposing armies salute each other courteously, and interchange cigars. They despised the object of such negotiations, which was usually to send over to the enemy some family of Rebel women who had made themselves quite intolerable on our side, but were not above collecting a subscription among the Union officers, before departure, to replenish their wardrobes. The men never showed disrespect to these women by word or deed, but they hated them from the bottom of their souls. Besides, there was a grievance behind all this.

The Rebel order remained unrevoked which consigned the new colored troops and their officers to a felon's death, if captured; and we all felt that we fought with ropes round our necks. "Dere's no flags ob truce for us," the men would contemptuously say. "When de Secesh fight de Fus' Souf" (First South Carolina), "he fight in earnest." Indeed, I myself took it as rather a compliment when the commander on the other side-though an old acquaintance of mine in Ma.s.sachusetts and in Kansas-at first refused to negotiate through me or my officers,-a refusal which was kept up, greatly to the enemy's inconvenience, until our men finally captured some of the opposing pickets, and their friends had to waive all scruples in order to send them supplies. After this there was no trouble, and I think that the first Rebel officer in South Carolina who officially met any officer of colored troops under a flag of truce was Captain John C. Calhoun. In Florida we had been so recognized long before; but that was when they wished to frighten us out of Jacksonville.

Such was our life on picket at Port Royal,-a thing whose memory is now fast melting into such stuff as dreams are made of. We stayed there more than two months at that tune; the first attack on Charleston exploded with one puff, and had its end; General Hunter was ordered North, and the busy Gilmore reigned in his stead; and in June, when the blackberries were all eaten, we were summoned, nothing loath, to other scenes and encampments new.

Chapter 6. A Night in the Water

Yes, that was a pleasant life on picket, in the delicious early summer of the South, and among the endless flowery forests of that blossoming isle. In the retrospect I seem to see myself adrift upon a horse's back amid a sea of roses. The various outposts were within a six-mile radius, and it was one long, delightful gallop, day and night. I have a faint impression that the moon shone steadily every night for two months; and yet I remember certain periods of such dense darkness that in riding through the wood-paths it was really unsafe to go beyond a walk, for fear of branches above and roots below; and one of my officers was once shot at by a Rebel scout who stood unperceived at his horse's bridle.

To those doing outpost-duty on an island, however large, the main-land has all the fascination of forbidden fruit, and on a scale bounded only by the horizon. Emerson says that every house looks ideal until we enter it,-and it is certainly so, if it be just the other side of the hostile lines. Every grove in that blue distance appears enchanted ground, and yonder loitering gray-back leading his horse to water in the farthest distance, makes one thrill with a desire to hail him, to shoot at him, to capture him, to do anything to bridge this inexorable dumb s.p.a.ce that lies between. A boyish feeling, no doubt, and one that time diminishes, without effacing; yet it is a feeling which lies at the bottom of many rash actions in war, and of some brilliant ones. For one, I could never quite outgrow it, though restricted by duty from doing many foolish things in consequence, and also restrained by reverence for certain confidential advisers whom I had always at hand, and who considered it their mission to keep me always on short rations of personal adventure. Indeed, most of that sort of entertainment in the army devolves upon scouts detailed for the purpose, volunteer aides-de-camp and newspaper-reporters,-other officers being expected to be about business more prosaic.

All the excitements of war are quadrupled by darkness; and as I rode along our outer lines at night, and watched the glimmering flames which at regular intervals starred the opposite river-sh.o.r.e, the longing was irresistible to cross the barrier of dusk, and see whether it were men or ghosts who hovered round those dying embers. I had yielded to these impulses in boat-adventures by night,-for it was a part of my instructions to obtain all possible information about the Rebel outposts,-and fascinating indeed it was to glide along, noiselessly paddling, with a dusky guide, through the endless intricacies of those Southern marshes, scaring the reed-birds, which wailed and fled away into the darkness, and penetrating several miles into the ulterior, between hostile fires, where discovery might be death. Yet there were drawbacks as to these enterprises, since it is not easy for a boat to cross still water, even on the darkest night, without being seen by watchful eyes; and, moreover, the extremes of high and low tide transform so completely the whole condition of those rivers that it needs very nice calculation to do one's work at precisely the right tune. To vary the experiment, I had often thought of trying a personal reconnoissance by swimming, at a certain point, whenever circ.u.mstances should make it an object.

The opportunity at last arrived, and I shall never forget the glee with which, after several postponements, I finally rode forth, a little before midnight, on a night which seemed made for the purpose. I had, of course, kept my own secret, and was entirely alone. The great Southern fireflies were out, not haunting the low ground merely, like ours, but rising to the loftiest tree-tops with weird illumination, and anon hovering so low that my horse often stepped the higher to avoid them. The dewy Cherokee roses brushed my face, the solemn "Chuckwill's-widow" croaked her incantation, and the rabbits raced phantom-like across the shadowy road. Slowly in the darkness I followed the well-known path to the spot where our most advanced outposts were stationed, holding a causeway which thrust itself far out across the separating river,-thus fronting a similar causeway on the other side, while a channel of perhaps three hundred yards, once traversed by a ferry-boat, rolled between. At low tide this channel was the whole river, with broad, oozy marshes on each side; at high tide the marshes were submerged, and the stream was a mile wide. This was the point which I had selected. To ascertain the numbers and position of the picket on the opposite causeway was my first object, as it was a matter on which no two of our officers agreed.

To this point, therefore, I rode, and dismounting, after being duly challenged by the sentinel at the causeway-head, walked down the long and lonely path. The tide was well up, though still on the flood, as I desired; and each visible tuft of marsh-gra.s.s might, but for its motionlessness, have been a prowling boat. Dark as the night had appeared, the water was pale, smooth, and phosph.o.r.escent, and I remember that the phrase "wan water," so familiar in the Scottish ballards, struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate, though its real meaning is quite different. A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless Southern night. There was no sound but the faint swash of the coming tide, the noises of the reed-birds in the marshes, and the occasional leap of a fish; and it seemed to my overstrained ear as if every footstep of my own must be heard for miles. However, I could have no more postponements, and the thing must be tried now or never.

Reaching the farther end of the causeway, I found my men couched, like black statues, behind the slight earthwork there constructed. I expected that my proposed immersion would rather bewilder them, but knew that they would say nothing, as usual. As for the lieutenant on that post, he was a steady, matter-of-fact, perfectly disciplined Englishman, who wore a Crimean medal, and never asked a superfluous question in his life. If I had casually remarked to him, "Mr. Hooper, the General has ordered me on a brief personal reconnoissance to the Planet Jupiter, and I wish you to take care of my watch, lest it should be damaged by the Precession of the Equinoxes," he would have responded with a brief "All right, Sir," and a quick military gesture, and have put the thing in his pocket. As it was, I simply gave him the watch, and remarked that I was going to take a swim.

I do not remember ever to have experienced a greater sense of exhilaration than when I slipped noiselessly into the placid water, and struck out into the smooth, eddying current for the opposite sh.o.r.e. The night was so still and lovely, my black statues looked so dream-like at their posts behind the low earthwork, the opposite arm of the causeway stretched so invitingly from the Rebel main, the horizon glimmered so low around me,-for it always appears lower to a swimmer than even to an oarsman,-that I seemed floating in some concave globe, some magic crystal, of which I was the enchanted centre. With each little ripple of my steady progress all things hovered and changed; the stars danced and nodded above; where the stars ended the great Southern fireflies began; and closer than the fireflies, there clung round me a halo of phosph.o.r.escent sparkles from the soft salt water.

Had I told any one of my purpose, I should have had warnings and remonstrances enough. The few negroes who did not believe in alligators believed in sharks; the sceptics as to sharks were orthodox in respect to alligators; while those who rejected both had private prejudices as to snapping-turtles. The surgeon would have threatened intermittent fever, the first a.s.sistant rheumatism, and the second a.s.sistant congestive chills; non-swimmers would have predicted exhaustion, and swimmers cramp; and all this before coming within bullet-range of any hospitalities on the other sh.o.r.e. But I knew the folly of most alarms about reptiles and fishes; man's imagination peoples the water with many things which do not belong there, or prefer to keep out of his way, if they do; fevers and congestions were the surgeon's business, and I always kept people to their own department; cramp and exhaustion were dangers I could measure, as I had often done; bullets were a more substantial danger, and I must take the chance,-if a loon could dive at the flash, why not I? If I were once ash.o.r.e, I should have to cope with the Rebels on their own ground, which they knew better than I; but the water was my ground, where I, too, had been at home from boyhood.

I swam as swiftly and softly as I could, although it seemed as if water never had been so still before. It appeared impossible that anything uncanny should hide beneath that lovely mirror; and yet when some floating wisp of reeds suddenly coiled itself around my neck, or some unknown thing, drifting deeper, coldly touched my foot, it caused that undefinable shudder which every swimmer knows, and which especially comes over one by night. Sometimes a slight sip of brackish water would enter my lips,-for I naturally tried to swim as low as possible,-and then would follow a slight gasping and contest against chocking, that seemed to me a perfect convulsion; for I suppose the tendency to choke and sneeze is always enhanced by the circ.u.mstance that one's life may depend on keeping still, just as yawning becomes irresistible where to yawn would be social ruin, and just as one is sure to sleep in church, if one sits in a conspicuous pew. At other times, some unguarded motion would create a splashing which seemed, in the tension of my senses, to be loud enough to be heard at Richmond, although it really mattered not, since there are fishes in those rivers which make as much noise on special occasions as if they were misguided young whales.

As I drew near the opposite sh.o.r.e, the dark causeway projected more and more distinctly, to my fancy at least, and I swam more softly still, utterly uncertain as to how far, in the stillness of air and water, my phosph.o.r.escent course could be traced by eye or ear. A slight ripple would have saved me from observation, I was more than ever sure, and I would have whistled for a fair wind as eagerly as any sailor, but that my breath was worth to me more than anything it was likely to bring. The water became smoother and smoother, and nothing broke the dim surface except a few clumps of rushes and my unfortunate head. The outside of this member gradually a.s.sumed to its inside a gigantic magnitude; it had always annoyed me at the hatter's from a merely animal bigness, with no commensurate contents to show for it, and now I detested it more than ever. A physical feeling of turgescence and congestion in that region, such as swimmers often feel, probably increased the impression. I thought with envy of the Aztec children, of the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow, of Saint Somebody with his head tucked under his arm. Plotinus was less ashamed of his whole body than I of this inconsiderate and stupid appendage. To be sure, I might swim for a certain distance under water. But that accomplishment I had reserved for a retreat, for I knew that the longer I stayed down the more surely I should have to snort like a walrus when I came up again, and to approach an enemy with such a demonstration was not to be thought of.

Suddenly a dog barked. We had certain information that a pack of hounds was kept at a Rebel station a few miles off, on purpose to hunt runaways, and I had heard from the negroes almost fabulous accounts of the instinct of these animals. I knew that, although water baffled their scent, they yet could recognize in some manner the approach of any person across water as readily as by land; and of the vigilance of all dogs by night every traveller among Southern plantations has ample demonstration. I was now so near that I could dimly see the figures of men moving to and fro upon the end of the causeway, and could hear the dull knock, when one struck his foot against a piece of limber.

As my first object was to ascertain whether there were sentinels at that time at that precise point, I saw that I was approaching the end of my experiment Could I have once reached the causeway unnoticed, I could have lurked in the water beneath its projecting timbers, and perhaps made my way along the main sh.o.r.e, as I had known fugitive slaves to do, while coming from that side. Or had there been any ripple on the water, to confuse the aroused and watchful eyes, I could have made a circuit and approached the causeway at another point, though I had already satisfied myself that there was only a narrow channel on each side of it, even at high tide, and not, as on our side, a broad expanse of water. Indeed, this knowledge alone was worth all the trouble I had taken, and to attempt much more than this, in the face of a curiosity already roused, would have been a waste of future opportunities. I could try again, with the benefit of this new knowledge, on a point where the statements of the negroes had always been contradictory.

Resolving, however, to continue the observation a very little longer, since the water felt much warmer than I had expected, and there was no sense of chill or fatigue, I grasped at some wisps of straw or rushes that floated near, gathering them round my face a little, and then drifting nearer the wharf in what seemed a sort of eddy was able, without creating further alarm, to make some additional observations on points which it is not best now to particularize. Then, turning my back upon the mysterious sh.o.r.e which had thus far lured me, I sank softly below the surface, and swam as far as I could under water.

During this unseen retreat, I heard, of course, all manner of gurglings and hollow reverberations, and could fancy as many rifle-shots as I pleased. But on rising to the surface all seemed quiet, and even I did not create as much noise as I should have expected. I was now at a safe distance, since the enemy were always chary of showing their boats, and always tried to convince us they had none. What with absorbed attention first, and this submersion afterwards, I had lost all my bearings but the stars, having been long out of sight of my original point of departure. However, the difficulties of the return were nothing; making a slight allowance for the floodtide, which could not yet have turned, I should soon regain the place I had left. So I struck out freshly against the smooth water, feeling just a little stiffened by the exertion, and with an occasional chill running up the back of the neck, but with no nips from sharks, no nudges from alligators, and not a symptom of fever-and-ague.

Time I could not, of course, measure,-one never can in a novel position; but, after a reasonable amount of swimming, I began to look, with a natural interest, for the pier which I had quitted. I noticed, with some solicitude, that the woods along the friendly sh.o.r.e made one continuous shadow, and that the line of low bushes on the long causeway could scarcely be relieved against them, yet I knew where they ought to be, and the more doubtful I felt about it, the more I put down my doubts, as if they were unreasonable children. One can scarcely conceive of the alteration made in familiar objects by bringing the eye as low as the horizon, especially by night; to distinguish foreshortening is impossible, and every low near object is equivalent to one higher and more remote. Still I had the stars; and soon my eye, more practised, was enabled to select one precise line of bushes as that which marked the causeway, and for which I must direct my course.

As I swam steadily, but with some sense of fatigue, towards this phantom-line, I found it difficult to keep my faith steady and my progress true; everything appeared to shift and waver, in the uncertain light. The distant trees seemed not trees, but bushes, and the bushes seemed not exactly bushes, but might, after all, be distant trees. Could I be so confident that, out of all that low stretch of sh.o.r.e, I could select the one precise point where the friendly causeway stretched its long arm to receive me from the water? How easily (some tempter whispered at my ear) might one swerve a little, on either side, and be compelled to flounder over half a mile of oozy marsh on an ebbing tide, before reaching our own sh.o.r.e and that hospitable volley of bullets with which it would probably greet me! Had I not already (thus the tempter continued) been swimming rather unaccountably far, supposing me on a straight track for that inviting spot where my sentinels and my drapery were awaiting my return?

Suddenly I felt a sensation as of fine ribbons drawn softly across my person, and I found myself among some rushes. But what business had rushes there, or I among them? I knew that there was not a solitary spot of shoal in the deep channel where I supposed myself swimming, and it was plain in an instant that I had somehow missed my course, and must be getting among the marshes. I felt confident, to be sure, that I could not have widely erred, but was guiding my course for the proper side of tie river. But whether I had drifted above or below the causeway I had not the slightest clew to tell.

I pushed steadily forward, with some increasing sense of la.s.situde, pa.s.sing one marshy islet after another, all seeming strangely out of place, and sometimes just reaching with my foot a soft tremulous shoal which gave scarce the shadow of a support, though even that shadow rested my feet. At one of these moments of stillness it suddenly occurred to my perception (what nothing but this slight contact could have a.s.sured me, in the darkness) that I was in a powerful current, and that this current set the wrong way. Instantly a flood of new intelligence came. Either I had unconsciously turned and was rapidly nearing the Rebel sh.o.r.e,-a suspicion which a glance at the stars corrected,-or else it was the tide itself which had turned, and which was sweeping me down the river with all its force, and was also sucking away at every moment the narrowing water from that treacherous expanse of mud out of whose horrible miry embrace I had lately helped to rescue a shipwrecked crew.

Either alternative was rather formidable. I can distinctly remember that for about one half-minute the whole vast universe appeared to swim in the same watery uncertainty in which I floated. I began to doubt everything, to distrust the stars, the line of low bushes for which I was wearily striving, the very land on which they grew, if such visionary things could be rooted anywhere. Doubts trembled in my mind like the weltering water, and that awful sensation of having one's feet unsupported, which benumbs the spent swimmer's heart, seemed to clutch at mine, though not yet to enter it. I was more absorbed in that singular sensation of nightmare, such as one may feel equally when lost by land or by water, as if one's own position were all right, but the place looked for had somehow been preternaturally abolished out of the universe. At best, might not a man in the water lose all his power of direction, and so move in an endless circle until he sank exhausted? It required a deliberate and conscious effort to keep my brain quite cool. I have not the reputation of being of an excitable temperament, but the contrary; yet I could at that moment see my way to a condition in which one might become insane in an instant. It was as if a fissure opened somewhere, and I saw my way into a mad-house; then it closed, and everything went on as before. Once in my life I had obtained a slight glimpse of the same sensation, and then, too, strangely enough, while swimming,-in the mightiest ocean-surge into which I had ever dared plunge my mortal body. Keats hints at the same sudden emotion, in a wild poem written among the Scottish mountains. It was not the distinctive sensation which drowning men are said to have, that spasmodic pa.s.sing in review of one's whole personal history. I had no well-defined anxiety, felt no fear, was moved to no prayer, did not give a thought to home or friends; only it swept over me, as with a sudden tempest, that, if I meant to get back to my own camp, I must keep my wits about me. I must not dwell on any other alternative, any more than a boy who climbs a precipice must look down. Imagination had no business here. That way madness lay. There was a sh.o.r.e somewhere before me, and I must get to it, by the ordinary means, before the ebb laid bare the flats, or swept me below the lower bends of the stream. That was all.

Suddenly a light gleamed for an instant before me, as if from a house in a grove of great trees upon a bank; and I knew that it came from the window of a ruined plantation-building, where our most advanced outposts had their headquarters. The flash revealed to me every point of the situation. I saw at once where I was, and how I got there: that the tide had turned while I was swimming, and with a much briefer interval of slack-water than I had been led to suppose,-that I had been swept a good way down stream, and was far beyond all possibility of regaining the point I had left.

Could I, however, retain my strength to swim one or two hundred yards farther, of which I had no doubt,-and if the water did not ebb too rapidly, of which I had more fear,-then I was quite safe. Every stroke took me more and more out of the power of the current, and there might even be an eddy to aid me. I could not afford to be carried down much farther, for there the channel made a sweep toward the wrong side of the river; but there was now no reason why I should not reach land. I could dismiss all fear, indeed, except that of being fired upon by our own sentinels, many of whom were then new recruits, and with the usual disposition to shoot first and investigate afterwards.

I found myself swimming in shallow and shallower water, and the flats seemed almost bare when I neared the sh.o.r.e, where the great gnarled branches of the liveoaks hung far over the muddy bank. Floating on my back for noiselessness, I paddled rapidly in with my hands, expecting momentarily to hear the challenge of the picket, and the ominous click so likely to follow. I knew that some one should be pacing to and fro, along that beat, but could not tell at what point he might be at that precise moment. Besides, there was a faint possibility that some chatty corporal might have carried the news of my bath thus far along the line, and they might be partially prepared for this unexpected visitor. Suddenly, like another flash, came the quick, quaint challenge,-

"Halt! Who's go dar?"

"F-f-friend with the c-c-countersign," retorted I, with chilly, but conciliatory energy, rising at full length out of the shallow water, to show myself a man and a brother.

"Ac-vance, friend, and give de countersign," responded the literal soldier, who at such a tune would have accosted: a spirit of light or goblin d.a.m.ned with no other formula.