The Long Roll Part 71

Father and son were presently holding converse beneath a dusty roadside cedar. "I am thankful to see you!" said Edward. "We heard of the great charge you made. Please take better care of yourself, father!"

"The past week has been like a dream," answered the other; "one of those dreams in which, over and over, some undertaking, vital to you and tremendous, is about to march. Then, over and over, comes some pettiest obstacle, and the whole vast matter is turned awry."

"Yesterday should have been ours."

"Yes. General Lee had planned as he always plans. We should have crushed McClellan. Instead, we fought alone--and we lost four thousand men; and though we made the enemy lose as many, he has again drawn himself out of our grasp and is before us. I think that to-day we will have a fearful fight."

"Jackson is over at last."

"Yes, close behind us. Whiting is leading; I saw him a moment. There's a report that one of the Stonewall regiments crossed and was cut in pieces late yesterday afternoon--"

"I hope it wasn't Richard's!"

"I hope not. I have a curious, boding feeling about it.--There beat your drums! Good-bye, again--"

He leaned from his saddle and kissed his son, then backed his horse across the road to the generals by the pillared church. The regiment marched away, and as it pa.s.sed it cheered General Lee. He lifted his hat. "Thank you, men. Do your best to-day--do your best."

"We'll mind you, Ma.r.s.e Robert, we'll mind you!" cried the troops, and went by shouting.

Somewhere down the Quaker Road the word "Malvern Hill" seemed to drop from the skies. "Malvern Hill. Malvern Hill. They're all ma.s.sed on Malvern Hill. Three hundred and forty guns. And on the James the gunboats. Malvern Hill. Malvern Hill. Malvern Hill."

A man in line with Edward described the place. "My last year at William and Mary I spent Christmas at Westover. We hunted over all Malvern Hill.

It rises one hundred and fifty feet, and the top's a mile across. About the base there are thick forests and swamps, and Turkey Creek goes winding, winding to the James. You see the James--the wide, old, yellow river, with the birds going screaming overhead. There were no gunboats on it that day, no Monitors, or Galenas, or Maritanzas, and if you'd told us up there on Malvern Hill that the next time we climbed it--! At Westover, after supper, they told Indian stories and stories of Tarleton's troopers, and in the night we listened for the tap of Evelyn Byrd's slipper on the stair. We said we heard it--anyhow, we didn't hear gunboats and three hundred thirty-two pounders!"

"'When only Beauty's eyes did rake us fore and aft, When only Beaux used powder, and Cupid's was the shaft--'"

sang Edward,

"'Most fatal was the war and pleasant to be slain--'"

_Malvern Hill_, beat out the marching feet. _Malvern Hill. Malvern Hill.

Malvern Hill._

There was a deep wood, out from which ran like spurs shallow ravines, clad with briar and bush and young trees; there was a stretch of rail fence; and there was a wheat field, where the grain stood in shocks.

Because of the smoke, however, nothing could be seen plainly; and because of the most awful sound, few orders were distinctly heard.

Evidently officers were shouting; in the rents of the veil one saw waved arms, open mouths, gesticulations with swords. But the loud-mouthed guns spoke by the score, and the blast bore the human voice away. The regiment in which was Edward Cary divined an order and ceased firing, lying flat in sedge and sa.s.safras, while a brigade from the rear roared by. Edward looked at his fingers. "Barrel burn them?" asked a neighbour.

"Reckon they use red-hot muskets in h.e.l.l? Wish you could see your lips, Edward! Round black O. Biting cartridges for a living--and it used to be when you read Plutarch that you were all for the peaceful heroes! You haven't a lady-love that would look at you now!

"'Take, oh, take those lips away That so blackly are enshrined--'

Here comes a lamp-post--a lamp-post--a lamp-post!"

The gunboats on the river threw the "lamp-posts." The long and horrible sh.e.l.ls arrived with a noise that was indescribable. A thousand shrieking rockets, perhaps, with at the end an explosion and a rain of fragments like rocks from Vesuvius. They had a peculiar faculty for getting on the nerves. The men watched their coming with something like shrinking, with raised arms and narrowed eyes. "Look out for the lamp-post--look out for the lamp-post--look out--Aaahhhh!"

Before long the regiment was moved a hundred yards nearer the wheat-field. Here it became entangled in the ebb of a charge--the brigade which had rushed by coming back, piecemeal, broken and driven by an iron flail. It would reform and charge again, but now there was confusion. All the field was confused, dismal and dreadful, beneath the orange-tinted smoke. The smoke rolled and billowed, a curtain of strange texture, now parting, now closing, and when it parted disclosing immemorial Death and Wounds with some attendant martial pageantry. The commands were split as by wedges, the uneven ground driving them asunder, and the belching guns. They went up to h.e.l.l mouth, brigade by brigade, even regiment by regiment, and in the breaking and reforming and twilight of the smoke, through the falling of officers and the surging to and fro, the troops became interwoven, warp of one division, woof of another. The sound was shocking; when, now and then there fell a briefest interval it was as though the world had stopped, had fallen into a gulf of silence.

Edward Cary found beside him a man from another regiment, a small, slight fellow, young and simple. A shock of wheat gave both a moment's protection. "Hot work!" said Edward, with his fine camaraderie. "You made a beautiful charge. We almost thought you would take them."

The other looked at him vacantly. "I added up figures in the old warehouse," he said, in a high, thin voice. "I added up figures in the old warehouse, and when I went home at night I used to read plays. I added up figures in the old warehouse--Don't you remember Hotspur? I always liked him, and that part--

'To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon; Or dive into the bottom of the deep--'"

He stood up. Edward rose to his knees and put out a hand to draw him down. "It's enough to make you crazy, I'll confess--but you mustn't stand up like that!"

The downward drawing hand was too late. There were blue sharpshooters in a wood in front. A ball entered the clerk's breast and he sank down behind the wheat. "I added up figures in the old warehouse," he again told Cary, "and when I went home at night I read plays--"

The figure stiffened in Edward's grasp. He laid it down, and from behind the wheat shock watched a grey battery in process of being knocked to pieces. It had arrived in this quarter of the field in a wild gallop, and with a happy insouciance had unlimbered and run up the guns back of a little crest topped with sumach, taking pains meanwhile to a.s.sure the infantry that now it was safe. The infantry had grinned. "Like you first-rate, artillery! Willing to bet on the gunners, but the guns are a _leetle_ small and few. Don't know that we feel so _awful_ safe!"

The grey began. Four sh.e.l.ls flew up the long slope and burst among the iron rows that made a great triple crown for Malvern Hill. The grey gunners cheered, and the appreciative infantry cheered, and the first began to reload while the second, flat in scrub and behind the wheat, condescended to praise. "Artillery does just about as well as can be expected! Awful old-fashioned arm--but well-meaning.... Look out--look... Eeehhh!"

The iron crown that had been blazing toward other points of the compa.s.s now blazed toward this. Adversity came to the insouciant grey battery, adversity quickening to disaster. The first thunder blast thickened to a howling storm of shrapnel, grape, and canister.

At the first gun gunner No. 1, ramming home a charge, was blown into fragments; at the second the arm holding the sponge staff was severed from gunner No. 3's shoulder. A great sh.e.l.l, bursting directly over the third, killed two men and horribly mangled others; the carriage of the fourth was crushed and set on fire. This in the beginning of the storm; as it swelled, total destruction threatened from the murk. The captain went up and down. "Try it a little longer, men. Try it a little longer, men. We've got to make up in quality, you know. We've got to make up in quality, you know. Ma.r.s.e Robert's looking--I see him over there! Try it a little longer--try it a little longer."

An aide arrived. "For G.o.d's sake, take what you've got left away! Yes, it's an order. Your being ma.s.sacred won't help. Look out--Look--"

No one in battle ever took account of time or saw any especial reason for being, now here, and now in quite a different place, or ever knew exactly how the places had been exchanged. Edward was practically certain that he had taken part in a charge, that his brigade had driven a body of blue infantry from a piece of woods. At any rate they were no longer in the wheat field, but in a shady wood, where severed twigs and branches floated pleasantly down. Lying flat, chin on hand, he watched a regiment storm and take a thick abattis--felled trees filled with sharpshooters--masking a hastily thrown up earthwork. The regiment was reserving its fire and losing heavily. An elderly man led it, riding a large old steady horse. "That's Ex-Governor Smith," said the regiment in the wood. "That's Extra Billy! He's a corker! Next time he runs he's going to get all the votes--"

The regiment tried twice to pa.s.s the abattis, but each time fell back.

The brigadier had ordered it not to fire until it was past the trees; it obeyed, but sulkily enough. Men were dropping; the colour-bearer went down. There was an outcry. "Colonel! we can't stand this! We'll all get killed before we fire a shot! The general don't know how we're fixed--"

Extra Billy agreed with them. He rose in his stirrups, turned and nodded vigorous a.s.sent. "Of course you can't stand it, boys! You oughtn't to be expected to. It's all this infernal tactics and West P'int tomfoolery!

d.a.m.n it, fire! and flush the game!"

Edward laughed. From the fuss it was apparent that the abattis and earthwork had succ.u.mbed. At any rate, the old governor and his regiment were gone. He was of the colour-guard, and all the colour-guard were laughing. "Didn't you ever see him go into battle with his old blue umbrella up! Trotting along same as to a caucus--whole const.i.tuency following! Fine old political Roman! Look out, Yedward! Whole pine tree coming down."

The scene changed again, and it was the side of a ravine, with a fine view of the river and with Morell and Couch blazing somewhere above. The sh.e.l.ls went overhead, bellowing monsters charging a grey battery on a hillock and a distant line of troops. "That's Pegram--that battery,"

said some one. "He does well." "Has any one any idea of the time?" asked another. "Sun's so hidden there's no guessing. Don't believe we'll ever see his blessed light again."

A fisherman from the Eastern Sh.o.r.e stated that it was nearly five o'clock. "Fogs can't fool me. Day's drawing down, and tide's going out--"

The lieutenant-colonel appeared. "Somebody with an order has been shot, coming through the cornfield toward us. Three volunteers to bring him in!"

Edward and the Eastern Sh.o.r.e man and a lean and dry and middle-aged lawyer from King and Queen bent their heads beneath their shoulders and plunged into the corn. All the field was like a miniature abattis, stalk and blade shot down and crossed and recrossed in the wildest tangle. To make way over it was difficult enough, and before the three had gone ten feet the minies took a hand. The wounded courier lay beneath his horse, and the horse screamed twice, the sound rising above the roar of the guns. A ball pierced Edward's cap, another drew blood from the lawyer's hand. The fisherman was a tall and wiry man; as he ran he swayed like a mast in storm. The three reached the courier, dragged him from beneath the horse, and found both legs crushed. He looked at them with l.u.s.treless eyes. "You can't do anything for me, boys. The general says please try to take those three guns up there. He's going to charge the line beyond, and they are in the way."

"All right, we will," said the lawyer. "Now you put one arm round Cary's neck and one round mine--"

But the courier shook his head. "You leave me here. I'm awful tired. You go take the guns instead. Ain't no use, I tell you. I'd like to see the children, but--"

In the act of speaking, as they lifted him, a ball went through his throat. The three laid the body down, and, heads bent between shoulders, ran over and through the corn toward the ravine. Two thirds of the way across, the fisherman was shot. He came to his knees and, in falling, clutched Edward. "Mast's overboard," he cried, in a rattling voice. "Cut her loose, d.a.m.n you!--I'll take the helm--" He, too, died. Cary and the lawyer got back to the gully and gave the order.

The taking of those guns was no simple matter. It resembled child's play only in the single-mindedness and close attention which went to its accomplishment. The regiment that reached them at last and took them, and took what was left of the blue gunners, was not much more than half a regiment. The murk up here on this semi-height was thick to choking; the odour and taste of the battle poisoned bra.s.s on the tongue, the colour that of a sand storm, the heat like that of a battleship in action, and all the place shook from the thunder and recoil of the tiers of great guns beyond, untaken, not to be taken. A regiment rushed out of the rolling smoke, by the half regiment. "Mississippi! Mississippi!--Well, even Mississippi isn't going to do the impossible!" As the line went by, tall and swinging and yelling itself hoa.r.s.e, the colonel was wounded and fell. The charge went on while the officer--he was an old man, very stately looking--dragged himself aside, and sitting in the sedge tied a large bright handkerchief above a wound in his leg. The charge dashed itself against the hillside, and the tier of guns flamed a death's sickle and mowed it down. Breathless, broken, the regiment fell back. When it reached the old man with the bright handkerchief, it would have lifted him and carried him with it to the rear.

He would not go. He said, "Tell the 21st they can't get me till they take those guns!"

The 21st mended its gaps and charged again. The old man set his hat on his sword, waved it in the air, and cheered his men as they pa.s.sed. They pa.s.sed him but to return. To go up against those lines of bellowing guns was mere heroic madness. Bleeding, exhausted, the men put out their hands for the old man. He drew his revolver. "I'll shoot anybody who touches me! Tell the 21st they can't get their colonel till they take those guns!"

The 21st charged a third time, in vain. It came back--a part of it came back. The old man had fainted, and his men lifted and bore him away.

From the platform where he lay in the shadow of the three guns Edward Cary looked out over Malvern Hill, the encompa.s.sing lowland, marsh and forest and fields, the winding Turkey Creek and Western Creek, and to the south the James. A wind had sprung up and was blowing the battle smoke hither and yon. Here it hung heavily, and here a long lane was opened. The sun was low and red behind a filmy veil, dark and ragged like torn c.r.a.pe. He saw four gunboats on the river; they were throwing the long, howling sh.e.l.ls. The Monitor was there, an old foe--the cheese box on a shingle. Edward shut his eyes and saw again Hampton Roads, and how the Monitor had looked, darting from behind the Minnesota. The old turtle, the old Merrimac ... and now she lay, a charred hull, far, far beneath the James, by Craney Island.