True To His Colors Part 21

Of course this thrilling news, and the fiery editorials commenting upon it, had an effect upon the students at Barrington academy. The Union boys were sadly depressed; Dixon and Graham shook their heads every time their eyes met; while Billings, Cole, and the rest of the rebels were fierce for another fight, and immediately became as noisy and aggressive as they had ever been in Rodney Gray's time.

"'The proud flag of the Stars and Stripes has been lowered in humility before the Palmetto and Confederate flags,'" shouted Billings, reading an extract from the speech of Governor Pickens. "Cole, where is the flag those Taylor girls gave you? Now is the time to unfurl it to the breeze, and let the good people of Barrington see that they are not the only ones who can rejoice over this glorious news. When it is once hoisted on the tower, we will keep it there in defiance of the world in arms."

This was another quotation from the Governor's speech, and when Billings roared it out so that it could be heard by all the boys in the corridor, he looked at Marcy as much as to say: "Help yourself if you can."

It did not take Cole many minutes to produce the flag, which he had kept hidden in his trunk for just such an emergency as this; but when he and his backers got to the top of the tower with it, they were rather surprised to find Marcy, Graham, Dixon, and a good many other st.u.r.dy fellows there before them. They were walking around with their hands in their pockets, and Marcy's flag was still floating from the masthead.

"Do you mean-are you going to fight about it?" faltered Cole, who began to fear that his chances for receiving a standing invitation to visit those Taylor girls were as slim as they ever had been. "You have heard the news from Charleston, and ought to see for yourself that this flag can't stay up any longer."

"We may be of a different opinion, so far as this academy is concerned, but still we have given up the contest," replied Marcy. "Hold on, there; don't touch those halliards, please. This flag belongs to me, and when it comes down for good, I must be the one to pull it down. Major Anderson was allowed to salute his flag when he lowered it, and I claim the same privilege."

"I don't know that we have anything to say against that," replied Billings, looking around upon his friends to see what they thought about it. "Holler as much as you please. That's the only way you can salute it, for the colonel would go crazy if you asked him to lend you the battery."

"That's the only way," said Marcy as he unfastened the color-halliards from the cleat. "I shall not ask for the guns, for I shall have my trouble for my pains. Attention! Three cheers for the Star Spangled Banner; and may the traitors who caused it to be lowered in Charleston harbor for the time being be glad to turn to it for protection."

"That flag will wave over Sumter again, and don't you forget what I tell you," shouted Dixon.

It was not a very noisy salute that greeted the flag as it fluttered down from aloft, but it was a heart-felt one, and there was not a rebel on the tower who dared utter a derisive word, however much he might have felt inclined to do so. But when the Stars and Bars were bent on to the halliards and run up to the masthead, the yells of its supporters were almost deafening and their antics quite indescribable. There was an abundance of enthusiasm about that time. There wasn't quite so much one short year later, when some of those same boys learned, to their great disgust and rage, that the Confederate Congress had pa.s.sed a sweeping conscription law, and that their one year's enlistment had been arbitrarily lengthened to three. Then they began to see what despotism meant.

All hope of conciliation or peace at any price was gone now. There was nothing to hold them together any longer, and the following morning saw another and larger exodus of students from the academy who were homeward bound. Among them were Cole, Graham, Billings, Dixon, and Marcy Gray. It was not quite so solemn a parting as the first one was, for the drooping spirits of the rebels had been raised to blood-heat by that glorious news from Charleston.

"Shoot high, Marcy, when you meet the Stars and Bars on the battlefield," said Billings. "There may be a Barrington boy thereabouts. But you can't deny that we've whipped you once in a fair fight, can you?"

"I don't know what you call a fair fight," replied Marcy. "Of course five thousand men, well supplied with grub and ammunition, ought to whip fifty-one soldiers and a few hired mechanics. But they held out against you as long as they had anything to eat or powder to shoot with. I wouldn't crow over it, if I were in your place."

"Well, we have given you a taste of what is in store for you, at all events."

"And you have learned something that I have tried to get through your thick heads ever since these troubles began," chimed in Dixon. "I told you the North would fight. But let's jump in if we are going home. You know the trains meet here, and we haven't much more than time to get to the depot."

The boys once more shook hands with their teachers, cheered l.u.s.tily for the Barrington Military Academy and everybody connected with it, shouted themselves hoa.r.s.e for their respective flags, and then sprang into the carriages and were driven away.

"We're done playing soldier," said d.i.c.k Graham. "The next time we shoulder muskets or draw sabers, there will be more reality in it than some of us will care to face. Let's keep track of one another as long as we can, and bear always in mind that we are not enemies, if we do march under different flags."

Marcy Gray was glad when his train came along and bore him away from Barrington. He wanted to settle back in his seat and think; but that was something he was not permitted to do. The pa.s.sengers, with now and then a notable exception, acted as though they were fit candidates for a lunatic asylum. They were walking about the car, flourishing their hats or fists in the air, talking loudly and shaking hands as often as they met in the aisle. "Glorious news," "Southern rights," "Yankee mudsills," "Fort Sumter," were the words that fell upon Marcy's ear when he opened the door and walked into the car. In an instant his uniform attracted general attention.

CHAPTER XIV.

MARCY CHANGES HIS CLOTHES.

Marcy Gray was blessed with as much courage as most boys, but he would have been glad if he could have backed out of that car without being seen, and gone into another. Perhaps the conviction that he was "an odd sheep in the flock," and that he held, and had often published, opinions that differed widely from those that animated the excited, gesticulating men before him, had something to do with his nervousness and timidity; and it may be that the revolvers he saw brandished by two or three of the half-tipsy pa.s.sengers had more effect upon him. But he could not retreat. They saw his uniform as soon as he opened the door, and some of the noisiest among them stumbled to greet him.

"Here's one of our brave fellows now," shouted one, firing his revolver out of the window with one hand while he extended the other to Marcy. "Got his soldier clothes on and going to the front before our guns in Charleston harbor have got through smoking. Young man, you're my style. I'm a member of the Baltimore Grays, and I'm on my way home to join 'em in defense of our young republic. What regiment?"

"Company A, Barrington Cadets," replied Marcy, rightly supposing that the Baltimore man was too far gone to remember, if indeed he had ever heard, that there was a military school in the town they had just left. "I'm going home on a leave of absence."

"Course you are," replied the man. "Services not needed at present and mebbe never will be. The Yankees are all mechanics and small trades-people, and there's no fight in such. We're gentlemen, and there's fight in us, I bet you. But you show your good will in putting on those soldier clothes, and that's what every man's got to do, or go up to the United States. Those who are not for us are against us, and we'll make short work with 'em. Say, we licked 'em, didn't we?"

"Of course," answered Marcy. "Fifty-one soldiers without food or powder don't stand much chance against five thousand well-equipped men."

"It would have been all the same if there had been fifty-one thousand of 'em," declared the Baltimore man. "Aint got any business there. Fort belongs to So' Car'lina. Why didn't they get out when Beau'gard told 'em to, if they didn't want to get licked? Three cheers for Southern Confed'sy!"

Much disgusted, Marcy Gray finally succeeded in releasing his hand from the man's detaining grasp and forced his way 'to a seat; but he was often stopped to hear his patriotism applauded, and President Lincoln denounced for bringing on a useless war by trying to throw provisions into Fort Sumter.

"I don't see what else he could have done," soliloquized the North Carolina boy, as he squeezed himself into as small a compa.s.s as possible in a seat next to a window. "The fort belonged to the United States, and it was the President's business to hold fast to it if he could. South Carolina wanted a pretext for firing on the flag, and she got it. She'll be sorry for it when she sees gra.s.s growing in the streets of her princ.i.p.al city. So I am taken for a rebel, am I? What would that Baltimore fellow do to me if he knew that I have two Union flags in my trunk, and that I mean to hoist them some day? My life wouldn't be worth a minute's purchase if these pa.s.sengers knew how I feel toward them and their miserable Confederacy."

All the way to Raleigh, which was nearly three hundred and sixty miles from Barrington, Marcy Gray lived in a fever of suspense. Although he did not know a soul on board the train, he might have had companions enough if he had been a little more sociable; but he did not care to make any new acquaintances, especially among people who were so nearly beside themselves. They all took him for just what he wasn't-a rebel soldier; and being ignorant of the fact that he was going toward home as fast as steam could take him, they supposed that the reason he was so silent and thoughtful was because he was lonely, and felt sorrowful over parting from his friends; and so it came about that now and then some one would sit down beside him and try to give him a comforting and cheering word. All the ladies who spoke to him were eager for war and disunion. They were worse than the men; Marcy found that out before he had gone fifty miles on his journey.

Marcy mentally denounced these sympathetic and well-meaning rebels as so many nuisances, for they drew upon him attentions that he would have been glad to escape. They asked him all sorts of questions, and the boy adroitly managed to truthfully answer every one of them, and without exciting suspicion. Matters were even worse when the train stopped. The flags that were fluttering from the locomotive and the car windows attracted the notice of the station loafers, who whooped and yelled and crowded up to shake hands with the pa.s.sengers. At such times Marcy always took off his cap; but that did no good, for some one was sure to see his gray overcoat, and propose cheers for him. Marcy trembled when he thought of what they would do to him if they learned that he was the strongest Union boy in the school he had left. But there was little danger of that. His secret was safe.

Raleigh was reached at last, and Marcy Gray, feeling like a stranger in a strange land, changed cars for Boydtown, which was a hundred and twenty miles further on. But before doing that he stepped into a telegraph office and sent the following dispatch to his mother:

"Will take a late breakfast with you to-morrow if you will send Morris to meet me at the depot. Three cheers for the right."

"How much?" he asked the operator, after the latter had read it over.

"Not a cent to a soldier," he replied, reaching out his hand, and taking it for granted that the boy was fresh from the seat of war. "Warm times in Charleston the other day, I suppose?"

"I shouldn't wonder if it was hot in the fort," answered Marcy, with a smile.

"But you happened to be on the outside."

"You're right, I did. It was no place for me in there."

"No; nor for any other man who believes in the right. Tell us all about it. Were you frightened when you heard the sh.e.l.ls bursting over your head, and did the Yankees-"

"I must ask you to excuse me," said Marcy, hastily, "my train is ready to go, and I have barely time to catch it."

"Well, good luck to you."

Marcy hastened from the telegraph office before any one else could speak to him, and thanked his lucky stars that before another night came he would be at home where he could appear in his true character; but he was satisfied, from what his mother had said in her letters, that he would find few friends among the neighbors. They were nearly all secessionists, Mrs. Gray wrote, and those who were not were compelled to pretend that they were, in order to avoid being driven from the country. It was a bad state of affairs altogether, but Marcy knew he would have to get used to it. He slept but little that night, and it was a great relief to him when the train stopped at Boydtown, which was located on a navigable arm of Pamlico Sound, and was as far as the railroad went. As Marcy lived near Albemarle Sound, there was still a ride of thirty-five miles before him, but that would be taken in his mother's carriage, provided any of the negroes had been over to Nashville and got the dispatch he sent from Raleigh the day before. All doubts on this point were removed when the train drew up at the station, for the first person he saw on the platform was Morris, the coachman, who greeted him heartily as he stepped from the car. This faithful old slave was Marcy's friend and mentor, and Sailor Jack's as well; and the boy Julius, who had come with the spring wagon to bring home the trunk, was their playmate. Julius was just about Marcy's age. They had hunted and fished together, sailed their boats in the same mudhole, and had many a fight over their marbles, in which, we are sorry to say, Marcy did not always come out first best.

"There's my check, Julius," said Marcy, handing it over, and slipping a piece of money into the black boy's palm at the same time. "Shut the carriage door, Morris. I am going to ride on the box so that I can talk to you. I want you to tell me everything that's happened since I have been away. You are a good rebel, of course."

"Now, Ma.r.s.e Marcy, you know a heap better'n that," replied Morris, who plumed himself on being the "properest talking colored gentleman on the plantation." "Git up, heah," he shouted to his horses. "Don't you know that the long-lost prodigal son has come back? You don't want to say too much around heah. Everything in town got ears. Wait till we git in the country and then you can talk. Yes, sar, your mother is well; quite well. But she's powerful sorry."

"I know she is. Do you hear anything from Jack?"

"Not the first word. He's on the ship Sabine, which done sailed for some place, but I dunno where."

"I wish he was safe at home," said Marcy. "Somehow I feel uneasy about him."

He would have felt more than simply uneasy if he could have looked far enough into the future to see that Jack's ship was destined to be one of the first of a large number of defenseless vessels to fall into the hands of Captain Semmes, who, as commander of the Sumter, unfurled the Confederate flag on the high seas, June 30, 1861. But, as we shall presently see, the Sabine did not "stay captured." She escaped, and brought the prize crew that Semmes had thrown aboard of her into a Northern port as prisoners.

"There aint no secesh out on the watah, is there, Ma.r.s.e Marcy?" exclaimed Morris.

"I'm afraid there will be some there before long. We're going to have war, Morris. I saw by a paper I bought on the train to-day that President Lincoln has called out seventy-five thousand men."