The Long Roll Part 79

"General Hill, it is time for the counterstroke. Forward, and drive them!"

The signaller wigwagged to the Warrenton turnpike:--

_General Lee. I am driving them. Jackson._

The signaller on the turnpike signalled back:--

_General Jackson. General Longstreet is advancing. Look out for and protect his left flank. Lee._

Lee's great battle was over and won. Every division, brigade, regiment, battery, fifty thousand infantry and cavalry brought by the great leader into simultaneous action, the Army of Northern Virginia moved as in a vast parade over plain and hill. Four miles in length, swept the first wave with, in the centre, seven grey waves behind it. It was late. The grey sea moved in the red and purple of a great sunset. From Stony Ridge the forty guns thundered like grey breakers, while the guns of Longstreet galloped toward the front. Horses and men and guns were at the martial height of pa.s.sion. To the right Jeb Stuart appeared, magnificent. On swept the resistless sea. A master mind sent it over those Mana.s.sas hills and plains, here diverting a portion of its waves, here curbing a too rapid onslaught, here harking the great ma.s.s forward, surmounting barriers, overwhelming a stubborn opposition, crumbling and breaking to pieces. Wave on wave, rapid, continuous, unremitting, thundered the a.s.sault, in the red sunset of the thirtieth of August.

Pope's Army fought bravely, but in the dusk it melted away.

CHAPTER XL

A GUNNER OF PELHAM'S

Major John Pelham looked at the clouds boiling up above Bull Run Mountains.

"Rain, rain go away, Come again another day!--"

he said. "What's the house they've burned over there?"

"Chantilly, sir."

Ruined wall and chimney, fallen roof-tree, gaping holes where windows had been, the old mansion stood against the turmoil of the sky. It looked a desolation, a poignant gloom, an unrelieved sorrow. A courier appeared. "The enemy's rearguard is near Ox Hill, sir. They've driven in some of our patrols. The main body is moving steady toward Fairfax Court House. General Jackson has sent the Light Division forward. General Stuart's going, too. He says, 'Come on.'"

The clouds mounted high and dark, thunder began to mutter; by the time a part of the Light Division and a brigade of Ewell's came into touch with Reno and Kearney, the afternoon, already advanced, was of the hue of twilight. Presently there set in a violent storm of thunder and lightning, wind and rain. The trees writhed like wounded soldiers, the rain came level against the face, stinging and blinding, the artillery of the skies out-thundered man's inventions. It grew darker and darker, save for the superb, far-showing lightning flashes. Beneath these the blue and the grey plunged into an engagement at short range.

What with the howling of the storm, the wind that took voices and whirled them high and away, the thunder above and the volleying musketry below, to hear an order was about the most difficult feat imaginable.

Stafford gathered, however, that Lawton, commanding since Ewell's wound, was sending him to Jackson with a statement as to affairs on this wing.

He went, riding hard against the slanting rain, and found Jackson standing in the middle of the road, a piece of bronze played round by lightning. One of the brigadiers was speaking to him. "The cartridges are soaking wet, sir. I do not know that I can hold my position."

Jackson's voice came deep and curt. "Yes, sir, you can. If your muskets won't go off, neither will the enemy's. You are to hold it, whether you can or not. Go and do it."

The brigadier went. Stafford gave his information, and received an order. "Go back along the road until you find the horse artillery. Tell Major Pelham to bring his guns to the knoll yonder with the blasted tree."

Stafford turned his horse and started. The rain and wind were now at his back--a hundred paces, and the road, lonely save for stragglers, the grey troops, the battle in front, was all sheeted and shrouded in the darkly drifting storm. The fitful bursts of musketry were lost beneath the artillery of the clouds. He travelled a mile, found Pelham and gave his order, then stood aside under the tossing pines while the horse artillery went by. It went by in the dusk of the storm, in the long howl of the wind and the dash of the rain, like the iron chariots of Pluto, the horses galloping, the gunners clinging wherever they might place hand or foot, the officers and mounted men spurring alongside. Stafford let them all turn a bend in the road, then followed.

All this stretch of road and field and wood had been skirmished over, Stuart and the blue cavalry having been in touch through the earlier part of the day. The road was level, with the mournful boggy fields, with the wild bending woods. In the fields and in the woods there were dark objects, which might be mounds of turf or huge twisted roots, or which might be dead men and horses. Stafford, riding through wind and rain, had no sooner thought this than he saw, indeed, what seemed a mere hummock beneath a clump of cedars undoubtedly move. He looked as closely as he might for the war of water, air, and fire, and made out a horse outstretched and stark, and a man pinned beneath. The man spoke. "h.e.l.lo, upon the road there! Come and do a Christian turn!"

Stafford left his horse and, stepping through a quagmire of watery turf, came into the ring of cedars. The man who had called upon him, a tall, long-moustached person in blue, one arm and booted leg painfully caught beneath the dead steed, spoke in a voice curt with suffering. "Grey, aren't you? Don't care. Can't help it. Get this infernal weight off me, won't you?"

The other bent to the task, and at last managed to free the blue soldier. "There! That position must have been no joke! How long--"

The blue cavalryman proceeded to feel bone and flesh, slowly and cautiously to move the imprisoned limbs. He drew a breath of relief.

"Nothing broken!--How long? Well, to reckon by one's feeling I should say about a week. Say, however, since about noon. We drove against a party under Stuart. He got the best of us, and poor Caliph got a bullet.

I could see the road. Everything grey--grey as the sea."

"Why didn't you call before? Any one would have helped you."

The other continued to rub his arm and leg. "You haven't got a drop of brandy--eh?"

"Yes, I have. I should have thought of that before." He gave the other a small flask. The cavalryman drank. "Ah! in '55, when I was with Walker in Nicaragua, I got pinned like that beneath a falling cottonwood." He gave the flask back. "You are the kind of Samaritan I like to meet. I feel a new man. Thanks awfully."

"It was foolish of you to lie there for hours--"

The other leaned his back against a cedar. "Well, I thought I might hold out, perhaps, until we beat you and I was again in the house of my friends. I don't, however, object to acknowledging that you're hard to beat. Couldn't manage it. Growing cold and faint--head ringing. Waited as long as I could, then called. They say your prisons are very bad."

"They are no worse than yours."

"That may be. Any of them are bad."

"We are a ravaged and blockaded country. It is with some difficulty that we feed and clothe our armies in the field. As for medicines with which to fight disease, you will not let them pa.s.s, not for our women and children and sick at home, and not for your own men in prison. And, for all our representations, you will not exchange prisoners. If there is undue suffering, I think you must share the blame."

"Yes, yes, it is all h.e.l.lish enough!--Well, on one side of the dice, prisoner of war; on the other, death here under poor Caliph. Might escape from prison, no escape from death. By Jove, what a thunderclap!

It's Stonewall Jackson pursuing us, eh?"

"Yes. I hear Pelham's guns--You are an Englishman?"

"Yes. Francis Marchmont, at your service; colonel of the Marchmont"--he laughed--"Invincibles."

"I am Maury Stafford, serving on General Ewell's staff.--Yes, that's Pelham."

He straightened himself. "I must be getting back to the front. It is hard to hear for the wind and rain and thunder, but I think the musketry is recommencing." He looked about him. "We came through these woods this morning. Stuart has patrols everywhere, but I think that dip between the hills may be clear. You are pretty pale yet. You had better keep the brandy flask. Are you sure that you can walk?"

"Walk beside you into your lines, you mean?"

"No. I mean try a way out between the hills."

"I am not your prisoner?"

"No."

Marchmont pulled at his moustaches. "Yes. I think I can walk. I won't deprive you of your flask--but if I might have another mouthful--Thank you." He rose stiffly. "If at any time I can serve you, I trust that you will remember my name--Francis Marchmont, colonel Marchmont Invincibles.

Send me a slip of paper, a word, anything. _Ox Hill_ will do--and you will find me at your service. Yes, the firing is beginning again--"

Stafford, once more upon the road, travelled northward in an unabated storm. Tree and bush, weed, flower and gra.s.s, writhed and shrank beneath the anger of the air; the rain hissed and beat, the lightning glared, the thunder crashed. Between the flashes all was dusk. Before him the rattle of musketry, the booming of the guns grew louder. He saw to the right, on a bare rise of ground, Pelham's guns.

There came an attempted flanking movement of the blue--a dash of cavalry met by Stuart and followed by a movement of two of Hill's brigades. The action barred the road and fields before Stafford. He watched it a moment, then turned aside and mounted the rise of ground to Pelham's guns. A great lightning-flash lit them, ranged above him. All their wet metal gleamed; about them moved the gunners; a man with a lifted sponge staff looked an unearthly figure against the fantastic castles and battlements, the peaks and abysses of the boiling clouds. The light vanished; Stafford came level with the guns in the dusk.

Pelham welcomed him. "'Trust in G.o.d and keep your powder dry,' eh, major? It's the kind of storm you read about--h.e.l.lo! they've brought up another battery--"

Stafford dismounted. One of the guns had the vent so burned and enlarged that it was useless. It rested cold and silent beside its bellowing fellows. Stafford seated himself on the limber, and watched the double storm. It raged above the little hill, with its chain lightnings, with wind, with reverberations of thunder; and it raged below, between some thousands of grey and blue figures, small, small, in the dusk, shadowy manikins sending from metal tubes glow-worm flashes! He sat, with his chin in his hand, pondering the scene.