Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty Part 31

"The entire brigade that I command is engaged," replied the Colonel.

"Don't you see them on the right of your position?"

"Is there no other force about here?" asked Colburne, sitting down as he felt the dizziness coming over him again.

"None that I know of. This is such an infernal country for movements that we are all dislocated. n.o.body knows where anything is.--But you had better go to the rear, Captain. You look used up."

Colburne was so tired, so weak with the loss of blood, so worn out by the heat of the sun, and the excitement of fighting that he could not help feeling discouraged at the thought of struggling back to the position of his company. He stretched himself under a tree to rest, and in ten minutes was fast asleep. When he awoke--he never knew how long afterwards--he could not at first tell what he remembered from what he had dreamed, and only satisfied himself that he had been hit by looking at his b.l.o.o.d.y and bandaged arm. An artilleryman brought him to his full consciousness by shouting excitedly, "There, by G.o.d! they are trying a charge. The infantry are trying a charge."

Colburne rose up, saw a regiment struggling across the valley, and heard its long-drawn charging yell.

"I must go back," he exclaimed. "My men ought to go in and support those fellows." Turning to the soldier who attended him he added, "Run! Tell Van Zandt to forward."

The soldier ran, and Colburne after him. But he had not gone twenty paces before he fell straight forward on his face, without a word, and lay perfectly still.

CHAPTER XXI.

CAPTAIN COLBURNE HAS OCCASION TO SEE LIFE IN A HOSPITAL.

When Colburne came to himself he was lying on the ground in rear of the pieces. Beside him, in the shadow of the same tuft of withering bushes, lay a wounded lieutenant of the battery and four wounded artillerists. A dozen steps away, rapidly blackening in the scorching sun and sweltering air, were two more artillerists, stark dead, one with his brains bulging from a bullet-hole in his forehead, while a dark claret-colored streak crossed his face, the other's light-blue trousers soaked with a dirty carnation stain of life-blood drawn from the femoral artery. None of the wounded men writhed, or groaned, or pleaded for succor, although a sweat of suffering stood in great drops on their faces. Each had cried out when he was. .h.i.t, uttering either an oath, or the simple exclamation "Oh!" in a tone of dolorous surprise; one had shrieked spasmodically, physically crazed by the shock administered to some important nervous centre; but all, sooner or later, had settled into the calm, sublime patience of the wounded of the battle-field.

The bra.s.s Napoleons were still spanging sonorously, and there was a ceaseless spitting of irregular musketry in the distance.

"Didn't the a.s.sault succeed?" asked Colburne as soon as he had got his wits about him.

"No sir--it was beat off," said one of the wounded artillerists.

"You've had a faint, sir," he added with a smile. "That was a smart tumble you got. We saw you go over, and brought you back here."

"I am very much obliged," replied Colburne. His arm pained him now, his head ached frightfully, his whole frame was feverish, and he thought of New England brooks of cool water. In a few minutes Lieutenant Van Zandt appeared, his dark face a little paler than usual, and the right shoulder of his blouse pierced with a ragged and b.l.o.o.d.y bullet-hole.

"Well, Captain," said he, "we have got, by Jove! our allowance of to-day's rations. Hadn't we better look up a doctor's shop? I feel, by the everlasting Jove!--excuse me--that I stand in need of a sup of whiskey. Lieutenant--I beg your pardon--I see you are wounded--I hope you're not much hurt, sir--but have you a drop of the article about the battery? No! By Jupiter! You go into action mighty short of ammunition.

I beg your pardon for troubling you. This is, by Jove! the dryest fighting that I ever saw. I wish I was in Mexico, and had a gourd of aguardiente."

By the way, I wish the reader to understand that, when I introduce a "By Jove!" into Van Zandt's conversation, it is to be understood that that very remarkably profane officer and gentleman used the great Name of the True Divinity.

"Where is the company, Lieutenant?" asked Colburne.

"Relieved, sir. Both companies were relieved and ordered back to the regiment fifteen or twenty minutes ago. I got this welt in the shoulder just as I was coming out of that d.a.m.ned hollow. We may as well go along, sir. Our day's fight is over."

"So the attack failed," said Colburne, as they took up their slow march to the rear in search of a field hospital.

"Broken up by the ground, sir; beaten off by the musketry. Couldn't put more than a man or two on the ramparts. Played out before it got any where, just like a wave coming up a sandy beach. It was only a regiment.

It ought to have been a brigade. But a regiment might have done it, if it had been shoved in earlier. That was the time, sir, when you went off for reinforcements. If we had had the bully old Tenth there then, we could have taken Port Hudson alone. Just after you left, the Rebs raised the white flag, and a whole battalion of them came out on our right and stacked arms. Some of our men spoke to them, and asked what they were after. They said--by Jove! it's so, sir!--they said they had surrendered. Then down came some Rebel General or other, in a tearing rage, and marched them back behind the works. The charge came too late.

They beat it off easy. They took the starch out of that Twelfth Maine, sir. I have seen to-day, by Jove! the value of minutes."

Before they had got out of range of the Rebel musketry they came upon a surgeon attending some wounded men in a little sheltered hollow. He offered to examine their hurts, and proposed to give them chloroform.

"No, thank you," said Colburne. "You have your hands full, and we can walk farther."

"Doctor, I don't mind taking a little stimulant," observed Van Zandt, picking up a small flask and draining it nearly to the bottom. "Your good health, sir; my best respects."

A quarter of a mile further on they found a second surgeon similarly occupied, from whom Van Zandt obtained another deep draught of his favorite medicament, rejecting chloroform with profane politeness.

Colburne refused both, and asked for water, but could obtain none. Deep in the profound and solemn woods, a full mile and a half from the fighting line, they came to the field hospital of the division. It was simply an immense collection of wounded men in every imaginable condition of mutilation, every one stained more or less with his own blood, every one of a ghastly yellowish pallor, all lying in the open air on the bare ground, or on their own blankets, with no shelter except the friendly foliage of the oaks and beeches. In the centre of this ma.s.s of suffering stood several operating tables, each burdened by a grievously wounded man and surrounded by surgeons and their a.s.sistants.

Underneath were great pools of clotted blood, amidst which lay amputated fingers, hands, arms, feet and legs, only a little more ghastly in color than the faces of those who waited their turn on the table. The surgeons, who never ceased their awful labor, were daubed with blood to the elbows; and a smell of blood drenched the stifling air, overpowering even the pungent odor of chloroform. The place resounded with groans, notwithstanding that most of the injured men who retained their senses exhibited the heroic endurance so common on the battle-field. One man, whose leg was amputated close to his body, uttered an inarticulate jabber of broken screams, and rolled, or rather bounced from side to side of a pile of loose cotton, with such violence that two hospital attendants were fully occupied in holding him. Another, shot through the body, lay speechless and dying, but quivering from head to foot with a prolonged though probably unconscious agony. He continued to shudder thus for half an hour, when he gave one superhuman throe, and then lay quiet for ever. An Irishman, a gunner of a regular battery, showed astonishing vitality, and a fort.i.tude bordering on callousness. His right leg had been knocked off above the knee by a round shot, the stump being so deadened and seared by the shock that the mere bleeding was too slight to be mortal. He lay on his left side, and was trying to get his left hand into his trousers-pocket. With great difficulty and grinning with pain, he brought forth a short clay pipe, blackened by previous smoking, and a pinch of chopped plug tobacco. Having filled the pipe carefully and deliberately, he beckoned a negro to bring him a coal of fire, lighted, and commenced puffing with an air of tranquillity which resembled comfort. Yet he was probably mortally wounded; human nature could hardly survive such a hurt in such a season; nearly all the leg amputations at Port Hudson proved fatal. The men whose business it is to pick up the wounded--the musicians and quartermaster's people--were constantly bringing in fresh sufferers, laying them on the ground, putting a blanket-roll or havresack under their heads, and then hurrying away for other burdens of misery. They, as well as the surgeons and hospital attendants, already looked worn out with the fatigue of their terrible industry.

"Come up and see them butcher, Captain," said the iron-nerved Van Zandt, striding over prostrate and shrinking forms to the side of one of the tables, and glaring at the process of an amputation with an eager smile of interest much like the grin of a bull-dog who watches the cutting up of a piece of beef. Presently he espied the a.s.sistant surgeon of the Tenth, and made an immediate rush at him for whiskey. Bringing the flask which he obtained to Colburne, he gave him a sip, and then swallowed the rest himself. By this time he began to show signs of intoxication; he laughed, told stories, and bellowed humorous comments on the horrid scene. Colburne left him, moved out of the circle of anguish, seated himself on the ground with his back against a tree, filled his pipe, and tried to while away the time in smoking. He was weak with want of food as well as loss of blood, but he could not eat a bit of cracker which a wounded soldier gave him. Once he tried to soothe the agony of his Lieutenant-Colonel, whom he discovered lying on a pile of loose cotton, with a bullet-wound in his thigh which the surgeon whispered was mortal, the missile having glanced up into his body.

"It's a lie!" exclaimed the sufferer. "It's all nonsense, Doctor. You don't know your business. I won't die. I sha'n't die. It's all nonsense to say that a little hole in the leg like that can kill a great strong man like me. I tell you I sha'n't and won't die."

Under the influence of the shock or of chloroform his mind soon began to wander.

"I have fought well," he muttered. "I am not a coward. I am not a Gazaway. I have never disgraced myself. I call all my regiment to witness that I have fought like a man. Summon the Tenth here, officers and men; summon them here to say what they like. I will leave it to any officer--any soldier--in my regiment."

In an hour more he was a corpse, and before night he was black with putrefaction, so rapid was that shocking change under the heat of a Louisiana May.

Amid these horrible scenes Van Zandt grew momentarily more intoxicated.

The surgeons could hardly keep him quiet long enough to dress his wound, so anxious was he to stroll about and search for more whiskey. He talked, laughed and swore without intermission, every now and then bellowing like a bull for strong liquors. From table to table, from sufferer to sufferer he followed the surgeon of the Tenth, slapping him on the back violently and shouting, "Doctor, give me some whiskey. I'll give you a rise, Doctor. I'll give you a rise higher than a balloon.

Hand over your whiskey, d.a.m.n you!"

If he had not been so horrible he would have been ludicrous. His Herculean form was in incessant stumbling motion, and his dark face was beaded with perspiration. A perpetual silly leer played about his wide mouth, and his eyes stood out so with eagerness that the white showed a clear circle around the black iris. He offered his a.s.sistance to the surgeons; boasted of his education as a graduate of Columbia College; declared that he was a better Doctor than any other infernal fool present; made himself a torment to the helplessly wounded. Upon a Major of a Louisiana regiment who had been disabled by a severe contusion he poured contempt and imprecations.

"What are you lying whimpering there for?" he shouted. "It's nothing but a little bruise. A child, by Jove! wouldn't stop playing for it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Get up and join your regiment."

The Major simply laughed, being a hard drinker himself, and having a brotherly patience with drunkards.

"That's the style of Majors," pursued Van Zandt. "_We_ are blessed, by Jove! with a Major. He is, by Jove! a dam incur--dam--able darn coward."

(When Van Zandt was informed the next day of this feat of profanity he seemed quite gratified, and remarked, "That, by Jove! is giving a word a full battery,--bow-chaser, stern-chaser and long-tom amidships.") "Where's Gazaway? (in a roar). Where's the heroic Major of the Tenth? I am going, by Jove! to look him up. I am going, by Jove! to find the safest place in the whole country. Where Gazaway is, there is peace!"

Colburne refused one or two offers to dress his wound, saying that others needed more instant care than himself. When at last he submitted to an examination, it was found that the ball had pa.s.sed between the bones of the fore-arm, not breaking them indeed, but scaling off some exterior splinters and making an ugly rent in the muscles.

"I don't think you'll lose your arm," said the Surgeon. "But you'll have a nasty sore for a month or two. I'll dress it now that I'm about it.

You'd better take the chloroform; it will make it easier for both of us."

Under the combined influence of weakness, whiskey and chloroform, Colburne fell asleep after the operation. About sundown he awoke, his throat so parched that he could hardly speak, his skin fiery with fever, and his whole body sore. Nevertheless he joined a procession of slightly wounded men, and marched a mile to a general hospital which had been set up in and around a planter's house in rear of the forest.

The proprietor and his son were in the garrison of Port Hudson. But the wife and two grown-up daughters were there, full of scorn and hatred; so unwomanly, so unimaginably savage in conversation and soul that no novelist would dare to invent such characters; nothing but real life could justify him in painting them. They seemed to be actually intoxicated with the malignant strength of a malice, pa.s.sionate enough to dethrone the reason of any being not aboriginally brutal. They laughed like demons to see the wounds and hear the groans of the sufferers. They jeered them because the a.s.sault had failed. The Yankees never could take Port Hudson; they were the meanest, the most dastardly people on earth. Joe Johnson would soon kill the rest of them, and have Banks a prisoner, and shut him up in a cage.

"I hope to see you all dead," laughed one of these female hyenas. "I will dance with joy on your graves. My brother makes beautiful rings out of Yankee bones."

No harm was done to them, nor any stress of silence laid upon them. When their own food gave out they were fed from the public stores; and at the end of the siege they were left unmolested, to gloat in their jackal fashion over patriot graves.

There was a lack of hospital accommodation near Port Hudson, so bare is the land of dwellings; there was a lack of surgeons, nurses, stores, and especially of ice, that absolute necessity of surgery in our southern climate; and therefore the wounded were sent as rapidly as possible to New Orleans. Ambulances were few at that time in the Department of the Gulf, and Colburne found the heavy, springless army-wagon which conveyed him to Springfield Landing a chariot of torture. His arm was swollen to twice its natural size from the knuckles to the elbow. Nature had set to work with her tormenting remedies of inflammation and suppuration to extract the sharp slivers of bone which still hid in the wound notwithstanding the searching finger and probe of the Surgeon. During the night previous to this journey neither whiskey nor opium could enable him to sleep, and he could only escape from his painful self-consciousness by drenching himself with chloroform. But this morning he almost forgot his own sensations in pity and awe of the mult.i.tudinous agony which bore him company. So nearly supernatural in its horror was the burden of anguish which filled that long train of jolting wagons that it seemed at times to his fevered imagination as if he were out of the world, and journeying in the realms of eternal torment. The sluggish current of suffering groaned and wailed its way on board the steam transport, spreading out there into a great surface of torture which could be taken in by a single sweep of the eye. Wounded men and dying men filled the state-rooms and covered the cabin floor and even the open deck. There was a perpetual murmur of moans, athwart which pa.s.sed frequent shrieks from sufferers racked to madness, like lightnings darting across a gloomy sky. More than one poor fellow drew his last breath in the wagons and on board the transport. All these men, thought Colburne, are dying and agonizing for their country and for human freedom. He prayed, and, without arguing the matter, he wearily yet calmly trusted, that G.o.d would grant them His infinite mercy in this world and the other.

It was a tiresome voyage from Springfield Landing to New Orleans.

Colburne had no place to lie down, and if he had had one he could not have slept. During most of the trip he sat on a pile of baggage, holding in his right hand a tin quart cup filled with ice and punctured with a small hole, through which the chilled water, dripped upon his wounded arm. Great was the excitement in the city when the ghastly travellers landed. It was already known there that an a.s.sault had been delivered, and that Port Hudson had not been taken; but no particulars had been published which might indicate that the Union army had suffered a severe repulse. Now, when several steamboats discharged a gigantic freight of mutilated men, the facts of defeat and slaughter were sanguinarily apparent. Secessionists of both s.e.xes and all ages swarmed in the streets, and filled them with a buzz of inhuman delight.