Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty Part 37

The Doctor was quite astonished to find that there were a number of wounded; for having escaped unhurt himself, he concluded that every one else had been equally lucky, excepting, of course, the man who lay dead in the gulley. As he laid down his gun he heard a groaning in one corner, and went softly towards it, expecting to find one of the victims of the conflict. Lifting up one end of a blanket, and lighting a match to dispel the dimness, he beheld the prostrate Gazaway, his face beaded with the perspiration of heat and terror.

"Oh!" said the Doctor, with perhaps the merest tw.a.n.g of contempt in the exclamation.

"My G.o.d, Doctor!" groaned the Major. "I tell you I'm a sick man. I've got the most awful bilious colic that ever a feller had. If you can give me something, do, for G.o.d's sake!"

"Presently," answered Ravenel, and paid no more attention to him.

"If I could have discharged my gun," he afterwards said, in relating the circ.u.mstance, "I should have been tempted to rid him of his bilious colic by a surgical operation."

The floor of the little building was soon c.u.mbered with half a dozen injured men, and dampened with their blood. The Doctor had no instruments, but he could probe with his finger and dress with wet bandages. Lillie aided him, pale at the sight of blood and suffering, but resolute to do what she could. When Colburne looked in for a moment, she nodded to him with a sweet smile, which was meant to thank him for having defended her.

"I am glad to see you at this work," he said. "There will be more of it."

"What! More fighting!" exclaimed the Doctor, looking up from a shattered finger.

"Oh yes. We mustn't hope that they will be satisfied with one a.s.sault.

There is a supporting column, of course; and it will come on soon. But do you stay here, whatever happens. You will be of most use here."

He had scarcely disappeared when the whole air became horribly vocal, as, with a long-drawn, screaming battle-yell, the second brigade of Texans moved to the a.s.sault, and the "thunders of fort and fleet"

replied. Taking the same direction as before, but pushing forward with superior solidity and energy, the living wave swept up to the fortifications, howled along the course of the ditch, and surged clamorously against the palisade. Colburne was there with half the other officers and half the strength of the garrison, silent for the most part, but fighting desperately. Suddenly there was a shout of, "Back!

back! They are coming round the palisade."

There was a stumbling rush for the cover of the fortification proper; and there the last possible line of defence was established instinctively and in a moment. Officers and men dropped on their knees behind the low bank of earth, and continued an irregular, deliberate fire, each discharging his piece as fast as he could load and aim. The garrison was not sufficient to form a continuous rank along even this single front, and on such portions of the works as were protected by the ditch, the soldiers were scattered almost as spa.r.s.ely as sentinels.

Nothing saved the place from being carried by a.s.sault except the fact that the a.s.sailants were unprovided with scaling ladders. The adventurous fellows who had flanked the palisade, rushed to the gate, and gave entrance to a torrent of tall, lank men in b.u.t.ternut or dirty grey clothing, their bronzed faces flushed with the excitement of supposed victory, and their yells of exultation drowning for a minute the sharp outcries of the wounded, and the rattle of the musketry. But the human billow was met by such a fatal discharge that it could not come over the rampart. The foremost dead fell across it, and the ma.s.s reeled backward. Unfortunately for the attack, the exterior slope was full of small knolls and gullies, beside being c.u.mbered with rude shanties, of four or five feet in height made of bits of board, and shelter tents, which had served as the quarters of the garrison. Behind these covers scores if not hundreds sought refuge, and could not be induced to leave them for a second charge. They commenced with musketry, and from that moment the great peril was over. The men behind the rampart had only to lie quiet, to shoot every one who approached or rose at full length, and to wait till daylight should enable the gunboats to open with grape. In vain the rebel officers, foreseeing this danger, strove with voice and example to raise a yell and a rush. The impetuosity of the attack had died out, and could not be brought to life.

"They don't like the way it works," laughed the Louisiana lieutenant in high glee. "They ain't on it so much as they was."

For an hour the exchange of close musketry continued, the strength of the a.s.sailants steadily decreasing, as some fell wounded or dead, and others stole out of the fatal enclosure. Daylight showed more than a hundred fallen and nearly two hundred unharmed men; all lying or crouching among the irregularities of that b.l.o.o.d.y and bullet-torn glacis. Several voices cried out, "Stop firing. We surrender."

An officer in a lieutenant-colonel's uniform repeated these words, waving a white handkerchief. Then rising from his refuge he walked up to the rampart, leaped upon it, and stared in amazement at the thin line of defenders, soldiers and negroes intermingled.

"By ----! I won't surrender to such a handful," he exclaimed. "Come on, boys!"

A sergeant immediately shot him through the breast, and his body fell inside of the works. Not a man of those whom he had appealed to followed him; and only a few rose from their covers, to crouch again as soon as they witnessed his fate. The fire of the garrison reopened with violence, and soon there were new cries of, "We surrender," with a waving of hats and handkerchiefs.

"What shall we do?" asked the Louisiana lieutenant. "They are three to our one. If we let the d--n scoundrels in, they will knock us down and take our guns away from us."

Colburne rose and called out, "Do you surrender?"

"Yes, yes," from many voices, and a frantic agitation of broadbrims.

"Then throw your arms into the river."

First one, then another, then several together obeyed this order, until there was a general rush to the bank, and a prodigious splashing of double-barreled guns and bowie-knives in the yellow water.

"Now sit down and keep quiet," was Colburne's next command.

They obeyed with the utmost composure. Some filled their pipes and fell to smoking; others produced corn-cake from their havresacks and breakfasted; others busied themselves with propping the wounded and bringing them water. Quite a number crawled into the deserted shanties and went to sleep, apparently worn out with the night's work and watching. A low murmur of conversation, chiefly concerning the events of the a.s.sault, and not specially gloomy in its tenor, gradually mingled with the groans of the wounded. When the gate of the palisade was closed upon them and refastened, they laughed a little at the idea of being shut up in a pen like so many chickens.

"Trapped, by Jiminy!" said one. "You must excuse me if I don't know how to behave myself. I never was cotched before. I'm a wild man of the prairies, I am."

On all sides the attack had failed, with heavy loss to the a.s.sailants.

The heroic little garrison, scarcely one hundred and fifty strong, including officers, camp-followers and negroes (all of whom had fought), had captured more than its own numbers, and killed and wounded twice its own numbers. The fragments of the repulsed brigades had fallen back beyond the range of fire, and even the semicircle of pickets had almost disappeared in the woods. The prisoners and wounded were taken on board the gunboats, and forwarded to New Orleans by the first transport down the river. As the last of the unfortunates left the sh.o.r.e Colburne remarked, "I wonder if those poor fellows will ever get tired of fighting for an inst.i.tution which only prolongs their own inferiority."

"I am afraid not--I am afraid not," said the Doctor. "Not, at least, until they are whipped into reason. They have been educated under an awful tyranny of prejudice, conceit, and ignorance. They are more incapable of perceiving their own true interests than so many brutes. I have had the honor to be acquainted with dogs who were their superiors in that respect. In Tennessee, on one of my excursions, I stopped over night in the log-cabin of a farmer. It was rather chilly, and I wanted to poke the fire. There was no poker. 'Ah,' said the farmer, 'Bose has run off with the poker again.' He went out for a moment, and came in with the article. I asked him if his dog had a fancy for pokers. 'No,'

said he; 'but one of my boys once burnt the critter's nose with a hot poker; and ever since then he hides it every time that he comes across it. We know whar to find it. He allays puts it under the house and kivers it up with leaves. It's curious,' said he, 'to watch him go at it, snuffing to see if it is hot, and picking it up and sidling off as sly as a horse-thief. He has an awful bad conscience about it. Perhaps you noticed that when you asked for the poker, Bose he got up and travelled.'--Now, you see, the dog knew what had burned him. But these poor besotted creatures don't know that it is slavery which has scorched their stupid noses. They have no idea of getting rid of their hot poker.

They are fighting to keep it."

When it had become certain that the fighting was quite over, Major Gazaway reappeared in public, complaining much of internal pains, but able to dictate and sign a pompous official report of his victory, in which he forgot to mention the colic or the name of Captain Colburne.

During the following night the flare of widespread fires against the sky showed that the enemy were still in the neighborhood; and negroes who stole in from the swamps reported that the country was "cram full o'

rebs, way up beyon' Mars Ravenel's plantashum."

"You won't be able to reoccupy your house for a long time, I fear," said Colburne.

"No," sighed the Doctor. "My experiment is over. I must get back to New Orleans."

"And I must go to Port Hudson. I shall be forgiven, I presume, for not reporting back to the hospital."

Such was the defence of Fort Winthrop, one of the most gallant feats of the war. Those days are gone by, and there will be no more like them forever, at least, not in our forever. Not very long ago, not more than two hours before this ink dried upon the paper, the author of the present history was sitting on the edge of a basaltic cliff which, overlooked a wide expanse of fertile earth, flourishing villages, the spires of a city, and, beyond, a shining sea flecked with the full-blown sails of peace and prosperity. From the face of another basaltic cliff two miles distant, he saw a white globule of smoke dart a little way upward, and a minute afterwards heard a dull, deep _pum!_ of exploding gunpowder. Quarrymen there were blasting out rocks from which to build hives of industry and happy family homes. But the sound reminded him of the roar of artillery; of the thunder of those signal guns which used to presage battle; of the alarums which only a few months previous were a command to him to mount and ride into the combat. Then he thought, almost with a feeling of sadness, so strange is the human heart, that he had probably heard those clamors, uttered in mortal earnest, for the last time. Never again, perhaps, even should he live to the age of threescore and ten, would the shriek of grapeshot, and the crash of sh.e.l.l, and the mult.i.tudinous whiz of musketry be a part of his life.

Nevermore would he hearken to that charging yell which once had stirred his blood more fiercely than the sound of trumpets: the Southern battle-yell, full of howls and yelpings as of brute beasts rushing hilariously to the fray: the long-sustained Northern yell, all human, but none the less relentless and stern; nevermore the one nor the other.

No more charges of cavalry, rushing through the dust of the distance; no more answering smoke of musketry, veiling unshaken lines and squares; no more columns of smoke, piling high above deafening batteries. No more groans of wounded, nor shouts of victors over positions carried and banners captured, nor reports of triumphs which saved a nation from disappearing off the face of the earth. After thinking of these things for an hour together, almost sadly, as I have said, he walked back to his home; and read with interest a paper which prattled of town elections, and advertised corner-lots for sale; and decided to make a kid-gloved call in the evening, and to go to church on the morrow.

CHAPTER XXV.

DOMESTIC HAPPINESS, IN SPITE OF ADVERSE CIRc.u.mSTANCES.

When Colburne reached Port Hudson, it had capitulated; the stars and stripes were flying in place of the stars and bars. With a smile of triumph he climbed the steep path which zig-zagged up the almost precipitous breast--earth changing into stone--of the gigantic bluff which formed the river front of the fortress. At the summit was a plateau of nearly three-quarters of a mile in diameter, verdant with turf and groves, and pleasantly rolling in surface. He had never been here before; he and twelve thousand others had tried to come here on the 27th of May, but had failed; and he paused to take a long look at the spot and its surroundings. Not a sign of fortification was visible, except five or six small semi-lunes of earth at different points along the edge of the bluff, behind which were mounted as many monstrous guns, some smooth-bore, some rifled. Solid shot from these giants had sunk the Mississippi, and crippled all of Farragut's fleet but two in his audacious rush up the river. Sh.e.l.ls from them had flown clean over the bluff, and sought out the farthest camps of Banks's army, bursting with a sonorous, hollow thunder which seemed to shake earth and atmosphere.

On the land side the long lines of earthworks which had so steadily and bloodily repulsed our columns were all below the line of sight, hidden by the undulations of the ground, or by the forest. The turf was torn and pitted by the bombardments; two-hundred-pound sh.e.l.ls, thrown by the long rifles of the fleet, lay here and there, some in fragments, some unexploded; the church, the store, and half a dozen houses, which const.i.tuted the village, were more or less shattered. The bullets of the Union sharpshooters had reached as far as here, and had even gone quite over and fallen into the Mississippi. A gaunt, dirty woman told Colburne that on the spot where he stood a soldier of the garrison had been killed by a chance rifle-ball while drinking a gla.s.s of beer. Leaving his cicerone, he joined a party of officers who were lounging in the shade of a tree, and inquired for the residence of Colonel Carter.

"Here you are," answered a lieutenant, pointing to the nearest house.

"Can I do any thing for you, Captain? I am his aid. I wouldn't advise you to call on him unless you have something very particular to say.

Every body has been celebrating the surrender, and the Colonel isn't exactly in a state for business."

Colburne hesitated; but he had letters from Carter's wife and father-in-law, and of course he must see him, drunk or sober. At that moment he heard a voice that he recognized; a voice that had demanded and obtained what he had not dared to ask for--a voice that, as he well knew, _she_ longed for as the sweetest of earth's music.

"Hi! hi!" said the Colonel, making his appearance upon the unpainted, warped, paralytic verandah of his dwelling. Through the low-cut window from which he issued could be seen a sloppy table, with bottles and gla.s.ses, and the laughing faces of two bold-browed, slatternly girls, the one seventeen, the other twenty. He had on an old dressing-gown, fastened around his waist with a sword-belt, and his trousers hung loose about the heels of a pair of dirty slippers. His face was flushed and his eyes bloodshot; he was winking, leering, and slightly unsteady.

Colburne slunk behind a tree, humiliated for his sake, and ready to rave or weep as he thought of the young wife to whom this man's mere name was a comfort.

"Hi! hi!" repeated Carter. "Where are all these fellows?"

The aid advanced and saluted. "Do you want any one, Colonel?"

"No, no. Don't want any one. What for? Celebrate it alone. Man enough for it."

Presently catching the eye of another officer, he again chuckled, "Hi!