CHAPTER XXXII
GAINES'S MILL
Dawn broke cold and pure, the melancholy ashen seas slowly, slowlyturning to chill ethereal meads of violets, the violet more slowly yetgiving place to Adonis gardens of rose and daffodil. The forests stooddew-drenched and shadowy, solemn enough, deep and tangled woodlands thatthey were, under the mysterious light, in the realm of the hour whosefinger is at her lips. The dawn made them seem still, and yet they werenot still. They and the old fields and the marshes and the wild andtangled banks of sluggish water-courses, and the narrow, hidden roads,and the low pine-covered hilltops, and all the vast, overgrown, andsombre lowland were filled with the breathing of two armies. In the coldglory of the dawn there faced each other one hundred and eighty thousandmen bent on mutual destruction.
A body of grey troops, marching toward Cold Harbour, was brought to ahalt within a taller, deeper belt than usual. Oak and sycamore, pine andelm, beech, ash, birch and walnut, all towered toward the violet meads.A light mist garlanded their tops, and a graceful, close-set underbrushpressed against their immemorial trunks. It was dank and still, dim andsolemn within such a forest cavern. Minutes passed. The men sat down onthe wet, black earth. The officers questioned knew only that Fitz JohnPorter was falling back from Beaver Dam Creek, presumably on his nextline of intrenchments, and that, presumably, we were following. "HasJackson joined?" "Can't tell you that. If he hasn't, well, we'll beatthem anyhow!"
This body of troops had done hard fighting the evening before and wastired enough to rest. Some of the men lay down, pillowing their heads ontheir arms, dozing, dozing in the underbrush, in the misty light,beneath the tall treetops where the birds were cheeping. In the meantimea Federal balloon, mounting into the amethyst air, discovered thatthis stretch of woodland was thronged with grey soldiers, and signalledas much to Fitz John Porter, falling back with steadiness to his secondline at Gaines's Mill. He posted several batteries, and ordered them toshell the wood.
In the purple light the guns began. The men in grey had to take thestorm; they were in the wood and orders had not come to leave it. Theytook it in various ways, some sullenly, some contemptuously, some withnervous twitchings of head and body, many with dry humour and aquizzical front. The Confederate soldier was fast developing acharacteristic which stayed with him to the end. He joked with death andgave a careless hand to suffering. A few of the more imaginative andaesthetically minded lost themselves in open-mouthed contemplation of thebestormed forest and its behaviour.
The cannonade was furious, and though not many of the grey soldierssuffered, the grey trees did. Great and small branches were lopped off.In the dim light they came tumbling down. They were borne sideways,tearing through the groves and coverts, or, caught by an exploding shelland torn twig from twig, they fell in a shower of slivers, or, choppedclean from the trunk, down they crashed from leafy level to level tillthey reached the forest floor. Beneath them rose shouts of warning, camea scattering of grey mortals. Younger trees were cut short off. Theirwoodland race was run; down they rushed with their festoons of vines,crushing the undergrowth of laurel and hazel. Other shells struck thered brown resinous bodies of pines, set loose dangerous mists of barkand splinter. As by a whirlwind the air was filled with torn and flyinggrowth, with the dull crash and leafy fall of the forest non-combatants.The light was no longer pure; it was murky here as elsewhere. The violetfields and the vermeil gardens were blotted out, and in the shrieking ofthe shells the birds could not have been heard to sing even were theythere. They were not there; they were all flown far away. It was dark inthe wood, dark and full of sound and of moving bodies charged withdanger. The whirlwind swept it, the treetops snapped off. "_Attention!_"The grey soldiers were glad to hear the word. "_Forward! March!_" Theywere blithe to hear the order and to leave the wood.
They moved out into old fields, grown with sedge and sassafras, here andthere dwarf pines. Apparently the cannon had lost them; at any rate fora time the firing ceased. The east was now pink, the air here very pureand cool and still, each feather of broom sedge holding its row ofdiamond dewdrops. The earth was much cut up. "Batteries been alonghere," said the men. "Ours, too. Know the wheel marks. Hello! What yougot, Carter?"
"Somebody's dropped his photograph album."
The man in front and the man behind and the man on the other side alllooked. "One of those folding things! Pretty children! one, two, three,four, and their mother.--Keep it for him, Henry. Think the Crenshawbattery, or Braxton's, or the King William, or the Dixie was over thisway."
Beyond the poisoned field were more woods, dipping to one of theinnumerable sluggish creeks of the region. There was a bridge--weak andshaken, but still a bridge. This crossed at last, the troops climbed aslippery bank, beneath a wild tangle of shrub and vine, and camesuddenly into view of a line of breastworks, three hundred yards away.There was a halt; skirmishers were thrown forward. These returnedwithout a trigger having been pulled. "Deserted, sir. They've fallenback, guns and all. But there's a meadow between us and the earthworks,sir, that--that--that--"
The column began to move across the meadow--not a wide meadow, a littlegreen, boggy place commanded by the breastworks. Apparently grey troopshad made a charge here, the evening before. The trees that fringed thesmall, irregular oval, and the great birds that sat in the trees, andthe column whose coming had made the birds to rise, looked upon a meadowset as thick with dead men as it should have been with daisies. They laythick, thick, two hundred and fifty of them, perhaps, heart pierced,temple pierced by minie balls, or all the body shockingly torn by grapeand canister. The wounded had been taken away. Only the dead were here,watched by the great birds, the treetops and the dawn. They layfantastically, some rounded into a ball, some spread eagle, some withtheir arms over their eyes, some in the posture of easy sleep. At oneside was a swampy place, and on the edge of this a man, sunk to thethigh, kept upright. The living men thought him living, too. More thanone started out of line toward him, but then they saw that half his headwas blown away.
They left the meadow and took a road that skirted another great piece offorest. The sun came up, drank off the vagrant wreaths of mist and driedthe dew from the sedge. There was promise of a hot, fierce, dazzlingday. Another halt. "What's the matter this time?" asked the men. "God! Iwant to march on--into something happening!" Rumour came back. "Woods infront of us full of something. Don't know yet whether it's buzzards orYankees. Get ready to open fire, anyway." All ready, the men waiteduntil she came again. "It's men, anyhow. Woods just full of bayonetsgleaming. Better throw your muskets forward."
The column moved on, but cautiously, with a strong feeling that it, inits turn, was being watched--with muskets thrown forward. Then suddenlycame recognition. "Grey--grey!--See the flag! They're ours! See--"Rumour broke into jubilant shouting. "It's the head of Jackson's column!It's the Valley men! Hurrah! Hurrah! Stonewall! Stonewall Jackson!Yaaaih! Yaaaaaihhhh!--'Hello, boys! You've been doing pretty well upthere in the blessed old Valley!' 'Hello, boys! If you don't look outyou'll be getting your names in the papers!' 'Hello, boys! come to helpus kill mosquitoes? Haven't got any quinine handy, have you?' 'Hello,boys! Hello Kernstown, McDowell, Front Royal, Winchester, Harper'sFerry, Cross Keys, Port Republic! Yaaaih! Yaaaaaihh!' 'Hello, you damnedCohees! Are you the foot cavalry?'--65th Virginia, Stonewall Brigade?Glad to see you, 65th! Welcome to these here parts. What made you late?We surely did hone for you yesterday evening. Oh, shucks! the bestgun'll miss fire once in a lifetime. Who's your colonel? Richard Cleave?Oh, yes, I remember! read his name in the reports. We've got a good one,too,--real proud of him. Well, we surely are glad to see you fellows inthe flesh!--Oh, we're going to halt. You halted, too?--Regular lovefeast, by jiminy! Got any tobacco?"
A particularly ragged private, having gained permission from hisofficer, came up to the sycamore beneath which his own colonel and thecolonel of the 65th were exchanging courtesies. The former glanced hisway. "Oh, Cary! Oh, yes, you two are kin--I remember. Well, colonel, I'mwaiting for o
rders, as you are. Morally sure we're in for an awfulscrap. Got a real respect for Fitz John Porter. McClellan's got thisarmy trained, too, till it isn't any more like the rabble at Manassasthan a grub's like a butterfly! Mighty fine fighting machine now. FitzJohn's got our old friend Sykes and the Regulars. That doesn't mean whatit did at Manassas--eh? We're all Regulars now, ourselves.--Yes, ColdHarbour, I reckon, or maybe a little this way--Gaines's Mill. That'stheir second line. Wonderful breastworks. Mac's a master engineer!--NowI'll clear out and let you and Cary talk."
The two cousins sat down on the grass beneath the sycamore. For a littlethey eyed each other in silence. Edward Cary was more beautiful thanever, and apparently happy, though one of his shoes was nothing morethan a sandal, and he was innocent of a collar, and his sleeve demandeda patch. He was thin, bright-eyed, and bronzed, and he handled his riflewith lazy expertness, and he looked at his cousin with a genuine respectand liking. "Richard, I heard about Will. I know you were like a fatherto the boy. I am very sorry."
"I know that you are, Edward. I would rather not talk about it, please.When the country bleeds, one must put away private grief."
He sat in the shade of the tree, thin and bronzed and bright-eyed likehis cousin, though not ragged. Dundee grazed at hand, and scattered uponthe edge of the wood, beneath the little dogwood trees, lay like acornshis men, fraternizing with the "Tuckahoe" regiment. "Your father andFauquier--?"
"Both somewhere in this No-man's Land. What a wilderness of creeks andwoods it is! I slept last night in a swamp, and at reveille a beautifulmoccasin lay on a log and looked at me. I don't think either father orFauquier were engaged last evening. Pender and Ripley bore the brunt ofit. Judith is in Richmond."
"Yes. I had a letter from her before we left the Valley."
"I am glad, Richard, it is you. We were all strangely at sea,somehow--She is a noble woman. When I look at her I always feelreassured as to the meaning and goal of humanity."
"I know--I love her dearly, dearly. If I outlive this battle I will tryto get to see her--"
Off somewhere, on the left, a solitary cannon boomed. The grey soldiersturned their heads. "A signal somewhere! We're spread over all creation.Crossing here and crossing there, and every half-hour losing your way!It's like the maze we used to read about--this bottomless, mountainless,creeky, swampy, feverish, damned lowland--"
The two beneath the sycamore smiled. "'Back to our mountains,' eh?" saidEdward. Cleave regarded the forest somewhat frowningly. "We are not," hesaid, "in a very good humour this morning. Yesterday was a day in whichthings went wrong."
"It was a sickening disappointment," acknowledged Edward. "We listenedand listened. He's got a tremendous reputation, you know--Jackson.Foreordained and predestined to be at the crucial point at the criticalmoment! Backed alike by Calvin and God! So we looked for a comet tostrike Fitz John Porter, and instead we were treated to an eclipse. Itwas a frightful slaughter. I saw General Lee afterwards--magnanimous,calm, and grand! What was really the reason?"
Cleave moved restlessly. "I cannot say. Perhaps I might hazard a guess,but it's no use talking of guesswork. To-day I hope for a change."
"You consider him a great general?"
"A very great one. But he's sprung from earth--ascended like the rest ofus. For him, as for you and me, there's the heel undipped and theunlucky day."
The officers of the first grey regiment began to bestir themselves._Fall in--Fall in--Fall in!_ Edward rose. "Well, we shall see what weshall see. Good-bye, Richard!" The two shook hands warmly; Cary ran tohis place in the line; the "Tuckahoe" regiment, cheered by the 65th,swung from the forest road into a track leading across an expanse ofbroom sedge. It went rapidly. The dew was dried, the mist lifted, thesun blazing with all his might. During the night the withdrawingFederals had also travelled this road. It was cut by gun-wheels, it wasstrewn with abandoned wagons, ambulances, accoutrements of all kinds.There were a number of dead horses. They lay across the road, or toeither hand in the melancholy fields of sedge. From some dead trees thebuzzards watched. One horse, far out in the yellow sedge, lifted hishead and piteously neighed.
The troops came into the neighbourhood of Gaines's Mill. Through grilleafter grille of woven twig and bamboo vine they descended to anothercreek, sleeping and shadowed, crossed it somehow, and came up intoforest again. Before them, through the trees, was visible a great openspace, hundreds of acres. Here and there it rose into knolls, and onthese were planted grey batteries. Beyond the open there showed ahorseshoe of a creek, fringed with swamp growth, a wild and tangledwoodland; beyond this again a precipitous slope, almost a cliff,mounting to a wide plateau. All the side of the ascent was occupied byadmirable breastworks, triple lines, one above the other, while at thebase between hill and creek, within the enshadowing forest, was planteda great abattis of logs and felled trees. Behind the breastwork and onthe plateau rested Fitz John Porter, reinforced during the night bySlocum, and now commanding thirty-five thousand disciplined andcourageous troops. Twenty-two batteries frowned upon the plain below.The Federal drums were beating--beating--beating. The grey soldiers laydown in the woods and awaited orders. They felt, rather than saw, thatother troops were all about them,--A. P. Hill--Longstreet--couched inthe wide woods, strung in the brush that bordered creek and swamp,massed in the shelter of the few low knolls.
They waited long. The sun blazed high and higher. Then a grey battery,just in front of this strip of woods, opened with a howitzer. The shellwent singing on its errand, exploded before one of the triple tiers. Theplateau answered with a hundred-pounder. The missile came toward thebattery, overpassed it, and exploded above the wood. It looked as largeas a beehive; it came with an awful sound, and when it burst theatmosphere seemed to rock. The men lying on the earth beneath jerkedback their heads, threw an arm over their eyes, made a dry, clickingsound with their tongue against their teeth. The howitzer and this shellopened the battle--again A. P. Hill's battle.
Over in the forest on the left, near Cold Harbour, where StonewallJackson had his four divisions, his own, D. H. Hill's, Ewell's, andWhiting's, there was long, long waiting. The men had all the rest theywanted, and more besides. They fretted, they grew querulous. "Oh, goodGod, why don't we move? There's firing--heavy firing--on the right. Arewe going to lie here in these swamps and fight mosquitoes all day?Thought we were brought here to fight Yankees! The general walking inthe forest and saying his prayers?--Oh, go to hell!"
A battery, far over on the edge of a swamp, broke loose, tearing thesultry air with shell after shell tossed against a Federal breastwork onthe other side of the marsh. The Stonewall Brigade grew vividlyinterested. "That's D. H. Hill over there! D. H. Hill is a fighter fromway back! O Lord, why don't we fight too? Holy Moses, what a racket!"The blazing noon filled with crash and roar. Ten of Fitz John Porter'sguns opened, full-mouthed, on the adventurous battery.
It had nerve, _elan_, sheer grit enough for a dozen, but it wasout-metalled. One by one its guns were silenced,--most of the horsesdown, most of the cannoneers. Hill recalled it. A little later hereceived an order from Jackson. "General Hill will withdraw his troopsto the left of the road, in rear of his present position, where he willawait further orders." Hill went, with shut lips. One o'clock--twoo'clock--half-past two. "O God, have mercy! _Is_ this the Army of theValley?"
Allan Gold, detached at dawn on scout duty, found himself about thistime nearer to the Confederate centre than to his own base of operationsat the left. He had been marking the windings of creeks, observing wherethere were bridges and where there were none, the depth of channels andthe infirmness of marshes. He had noted the Federal positions and theamount of stores abandoned, set on fire, good rice and meat, good shoes,blankets, harness, tents, smouldering and smoking in glade and thicket.He had come upon dead men and horses and upon wounded men and horses. Hehad given the wounded drink. He had killed with the butt of his rifle ahissing and coiled snake. He had turned his eyes away from the black andwinged covering of a dead horse and rider. Kneeling at l
ast to drink ata narrow, hidden creek, slumbering between vine-laden trees, he hadraised his eyes, and on the other side marked a blue scout looking,startled, out of a hazel bush. There was a click from two muskets; thenAllan said, "Don't fire! I won't. Why should we? Drink and forget." Theblue scout signified acquiescence. "All right, Reb. I'm tired fighting,anyway! Was brought up a Quaker, and wouldn't mind if I had stayed one!Got anything to mix with the water?"
"No."
"Well, let's take it just dry so." Both drank, then settled back ontheir heels for a moment's conversation. "Awful weather," said the bluescout. "Didn't know there could be such withering heat! Andmalaria--lying out of nights in swamps, with owls hooting andjack-o'-lanterns round your bed! Ain't you folks most beat yet?"
"No," said the grey scout. "Don't you think you've about worn yourwelcome out and had better go home?--Look out there! Your gun's slippinginto the water."
The blue recovered it. "It's give out this morning that StonewallJackson's arrived on the scene."
"Yes, he has."
"Well, he's a one-er! Good many of you we wish would desert.--No; weain't going home till we go through Richmond."
"Well," said Allan politely, "first and last, a good many folk havesettled hereabouts since Captain John Smith traded on the Chickahominywith the Indians. There's family graveyards all through these woods. Ihope you'll like the country."
The other drank again of the brown water. "It wasn't so bad in thespring time. We thought it was awful lovely at first, all spangled withflowers and birds.--Are you married?"
"No."
"Neither am I. But I'm going to be, when I get back to where I belong.Her name's Flora."
"That's a pretty name."
"Yes, and she's pretty, too--" He half closed his eyes and smiledblissfully, then rose from the laurels. "Well, I must be trotting along,away from Cold Harbour. Funniest names! What does it mean?"
"It was an inn, long ago, where you got only cold fare. Shouldn't wonderif history isn't going to repeat itself--" He rose, also, tall andblonde. "Well, I must be travelling, too--"
"Rations getting pretty low, aren't they? How about coffee?"
"Oh, one day," said Allan, "we're going to drink a lot of it! No, Idon't know that they are especially low."
The blue scout dipped a hand into his pocket. "Well, I've got a packetof it, and there's plenty more where that came from.--Catch, Reb!"
Allan caught it. "You're very good, Yank. Thank you."
"Have you got any quinine?"
"No."
The blue scout tossed across a small box. "There's for you! No, I don'twant it. We've got plenty.--Well, good-bye."
"I hope you'll get back safe," said Allan, "and have a beautifulwedding."
The blue vanished in the underbrush, the grey went on his way throughthe heavy forest. He was moving now toward sound, heavy, increasing,presaging a realm of jarred air and ringing ear-drums. Ahead, he saw acolumn of swiftly moving troops. Half running, he overtook the rearfile. "Scout?"--"Yes--Stonewall Brigade--" "All right! all right! Thisis A. P. Hill's division.--Going into battle. Come on, if you want to."
Through the thinning woods showed a great open plain, with knolls wherebatteries were planted. The regiment to which Allan had attached himselflay down on the edge of the wood, near one of the cannon-crownedeminences. Allan stretched himself beneath a black gum at the side ofthe road. Everywhere was a rolling smoke, everywhere terrific sound. Abattery thundered by at a gallop, six horses to each gun, straining,red-nostrilled, fiery-eyed. It struck across a corner of the plain. Overit burst the shells, twelve-pounders--twenty-pounders. A horse wentdown--the drivers cut the traces. A caisson was struck, exploded withfrightful glare and sound. About it, when the smoke cleared, writhed menand horses, but the gun was dragged off. Through the rain of shells thebattery gained a lift of ground, toiled up it, placed the guns,unlimbered and began to fire. A South Carolina brigade started with ayell from the woods to the right, tore in a dust cloud across the oldfields, furrowed with gullies, and was swallowed in the forest about thecreek which laved the base of the Federal position. This rose from thelevel like a Gibraltar, and about it now beat a wild shouting and rattleof musketry. Allan rose to his knees, then to his feet, then, drawn asby a magnet, crept through a finger of sumach and sassafras,outstretched from the wood, to a better vantage point just in rear ofthe battery.
Behind him, through the woods, came a clatter of horses' hoofs. It wasmet and followed by cheering. Turning his head, he saw a general and hisstaff, and though he had never seen Lee he knew that this was Lee, andhimself began to cheer. The commander-in-chief lifted his grey hat, camedown the dim, overarched, aisle-like road, between the cheering troops.With his staff he left the wood for the open, riding beneath the shelterby the finger of sumach and sassafras, toward the battery. He saw Allan,and reined up iron-grey Traveller. "You do not belong to thisregiment.--A scout? General Jackson's?--Ah, well, I expect GeneralJackson to strike those people on the right any moment now!" He rode upto the battery. The shells were raining, bursting above, around. In theshelter of the hill the battery horses had at first, veteran,undisturbed, cropped the parched grass, but now one was wounded and nowanother. An arm was torn from a gunner. A second, stooping over a limberchest, was struck between the shoulders, crushed, flesh and bone, intopulp. The artillery captain came up to the general-in-chief. "GeneralLee, won't you go away? Gentlemen, won't you tell him that there'sdanger?"
The staff reinforced the statement, but without avail. General Lee shookhis head, and with his field-glasses continued to gaze toward the left,whence should arise the dust, the smoke, the sound of Jackson's flankingmovement. There was no sign on the left, but here, in the centre, thenoise from the woods beyond the creek was growing infernal. He loweredthe glass. "Captain Chamberlayne, will you go tell General Longstreet--"
Out of the thunder-filled woods, back from creek and swamp and briar andslashing, from abattis of bough and log, from the shadow of that bluffhead with its earthworks one above the other, from the scorching flameof twenty batteries and the wild singing of the minies, rushed the SouthCarolina troops. The brigadier--Maxey Gregg--the regimental, the companyofficers, with shouts, with appeals, with waved swords, strove to stopthe rout. The command rallied, then broke again. Hell was in the wood,and the men's faces were grey and drawn. "We must rally those troops!"said Lee, and galloped forward. He came into the midst of the disorderedthrong. "Men, men! Remember your State--Do your duty!" They recognizedhim, rallied, formed on the colours, swept past him with a cheer andreentered the deep and fatal wood.
The battery in front of Allan began to suffer dreadfully. The horsesgrew infected with the terror of the plain. They jerked their headsback; they neighed mournfully; some left the grass and began to gallopaimlessly across the field. The shells came in a stream, great, hurtlingmissiles. Where they struck flesh or ploughed into the earth, it waswith a deadened sound; when they burst in air, it was like cracklingthunder. The blue sky was gone. A battle pall wrapped the thousands andthousands of men, the guns, the horses, forest, swamp, creeks, oldfields; the great strength of the Federal position, the grey brigadesdashing against it, hurled back like Atlantic combers. It should beabout three o'clock, Allan thought, but he did not know. Every nerve wastingling, the blood pounding in his veins. Time and space behaved likewaves charged with strange driftwood. He felt a mad excitement, was surethat if he stood upright or tried to walk he would stagger. An order randown the line of the brigade he had adopted. _Attention!_
THE BATTLE]
He found himself on his feet and in line, steady, clear of head asthough he trod the path by Thunder Run. _Forward! March!_ The brigadecleared the wood, and in line of battle passed the exhausted battery.Allan noted a soldier beneath a horse, a contorted, purple, frozen faceheld between the brute's fore-legs. The air was filled with whistlingshells; the broom sedge was on fire. _Right shoulder. Shift Arms!Charge!_
Somewhere, about halfway over the plain, he became convince
d that hisright leg from the hip down was gone to sleep. He had an idea that hewas not keeping up. A line passed him--another; he mustn't let theothers get ahead! and for a minute he ran quite rapidly. There was ayellow, rain-washed gulley before him; the charge swept down one sideand up the other. This crack in the earth was two thirds of the wayacross the open; beyond were the wood, the creek, the abattis, theclimbing lines of breastworks, the thirty-five thousand in blue, and thetremendous guns. The grey charge was yelling high and clear, preparingto deliver its first fire; the air a roar of sound and a glaring light.Allan went down one side of the gulley with some ease, but it wasanother thing to climb the other. However, up he got, almost to thetop--and then pitched forward, clutching at the growth of sedge alongthe crest. It held him steady, and he settled into a rut of yellow earthand tried to think it over. Endeavouring to draw himself a littlehigher, a minie ball went through his shoulder. The grey charge passedhim, roaring on to the shadowy wood.
He helped himself as best he could, staunched some blood, drew his ownconclusions as to his wounds. He was not suffering much; not over much.By nature he matched increasing danger with increasing coolness. Allthat he especially wanted was for that charge to succeed--for the greyto succeed. His position here, on the rim of the gully, was an admirableone for witnessing all that the shifting smoke might allow to bewitnessed. It was true that a keening minie or one of the monstrousshells might in an instant shear his thread of life, probably would doso; all the probabilities lay that way. But he was cool and courageous,and had kept himself ready to go. An absorbing interest in the field ofGaines's Mill, a passionate desire that Victory should wear grey,dominated all other feeling. Half in the seam of the gully, half in thesedge at the top, he made himself as easy as he could and rested aspectator.
The battle smoke, now heavily settling, now drifting like clouds beforea wind, now torn asunder and lifting from the scene, made the greatfield to come and go in flashes, or like visions of the night. He sawthat A. P. Hill was sending in his brigades, brigade after brigade. Helooked to the left whence should come Jackson, but over there, just seenthrough the smoke, the forest stood sultry and still. Behind him,however, in the wood at the base of the armed hill, there rose a clamourand deep thunder as of Armageddon. Like a grey wave broken against aniron shore, the troops with whom he had charged streamed backdisordered, out of the shadowy wood into the open, where in the goldsedge lay many a dead man and many a wounded. Allan saw the crimson flagwith the blue cross shaken, held on high, heard the officers crying,"Back, men, back! Virginians, do your duty!" The wave formed again. Hetried to rise so that he might go with it, but could not. It returnedinto the wood. Before him, racing toward the gully, came anotherwave--Branch's brigade, yelling as it charged. He saw it a moment like agrey wall, with the colours tossing, then it poured down into the gullyand up and past him. He put up his arms to shield his face, but the menswerved a little and did not trample him. The worn shoes, digging intothe loose earth covered him with dust. The moving grey cloth, the smellof sweat-drenched bodies, of powder, of leather, of hot metal, thepanting breath, the creak and swing, the sudden darkening, heat andpressure--the passage of that wave took his own breath from him, lefthim white and sick. Branch went on. He looked across the gully and sawanother wave coming--Pender, this time. Pender came without yelling,grim and grey and close-mouthed. Pender had suffered before Beaver DamCreek; to-day there was not much more than half a brigade. It, too,passed, a determined wave. Allan saw Field in the distance coming up. Hewas tormented with thirst. Three yards from the gully lay stretched thetrunk of a man, the legs blown away. He was almost sure he caught theglint of a canteen. He lay flat in the sedge and dragged himself to thecorpse. There was the canteen, indeed; marked with a great U. S., spoiltaken perhaps at Williamsburg or at Seven Pines. It was empty, draineddry as a bone. There was another man near. Allan dragged himself on. Hethought this one dead, too, but when he reached him he opened large blueeyes and breathed, "Water!" Allan sorrowfully shook his head. The blueeyes did not wink nor close, they glazed and stayed open. The scoutdropped beside the body, exhausted. Field's charge passed over him. Whenhe opened his eyes, this portion of the plain was like a sea betweencross winds. All the broken waves were wildly tossing. Here theyrecoiled, fled, even across the gully; here they seethed, inchoate;there, regathering form and might, they readvanced to the echoing hill,with its three breastworks and its eighty cannon. Death gorged himselfin the tangled slashing, on the treacherous banks of the slow-movingcreek. A. P. Hill was a superb fighter. He sent in his brigades. Theyreturned, broken; he sent them in again. They went. The 16th and 22dNorth Carolina passed the three lines of blazing rifles, got to the headof the cliff, found themselves among the guns. In vain. Morrell'sartillerymen, Morrell's infantry, pushed them back and down, down thehillside, back into the slashing. The 35th Georgia launched itself likea thunderbolt and pierced the lines, but it, too, was hurled down.Gregg's South Carolinians and Sykes Regulars locked and swayed. Archerand Pender, Field and Branch, charged and were repelled, to chargeagain. Save in marksmanship, the Confederate batteries could not matchthe Federal; strength was with the great, blue rifled guns, and yet thegrey cannoneers wrought havoc on the plateau and amid the breastworks.The sound was enormous, a complex tumult that crashed and echoed in thehead. The whole of the field existed in the throbbing, expandedbrain--all battlefields, all life, all the world and other worlds, allproblems solved and insoluble. The wide-flung grey battlefront was nowsickle-shaped, convex to the foe. The rolling dense smoke flushedmomently with a lurid glare. In places the forest was afire, in othersthe stubble of the field. From horn to horn of the sickle galloped theriderless horses. Now and again a wounded one among them screamedfearfully.
Allan dragged himself back to the gully. It was safer there, because thecharging lines must lessen speed, break ranks a little; they would notbe so resistlessly borne on and over him. He was not light-headed, or hethought he was not. He lay on the rim of the gully that was now trampledinto a mere trough of dust, and he looked at the red light on therolling vapour. Where it lifted he saw, as in a pageant, war inmid-career. Sound, too, had organized. He could have beaten time to thegigantic rhythm. It rose and sank; it was made up of groaning, shouting,breathing of men, gasping, and the sounds that horses make, with louderand louder the thunder of the inanimate, the congregated sound of theallies man had devised,--the saltpetre he had digged, the powder he hadmade, the rifles he had manufactured, the cannon he had moulded, thesolid shot, grape, canister, shrapnel, minie balls. The shells werefearful, Allan was fain to acknowledge. They passed like whistlingwinds. They filled the air like great rocks from a blasting. Thestaunchest troops blanched a little, jerked the head sidewise as theshells burst and showered ruin. There came into Allan's mind a picturein the old geography,--rocks thrown up by Vesuvius. He thought he wasspeaking to the geography class. "I'll show you how they look. I waslying, you see, at the edge of the crater, and they were all overhead."The picture passed away, and he began to think that the minies'unearthly shriek was much like the winter wind round Thunder RunMountain--Sairy and Tom--Was Sairy baking gingerbread?--Of course not;they didn't have gingerbread now. Besides, you didn't want gingerbreadwhen you were thirsty.... _Oh, water, water, water, water!..._ Tom mightbe taking the toll--if there was anybody to pay it, and if they kept theroads up. Roses in bloom, and the bees in them and over the pansies....The wrens sang, and Christianna came down the road. Roses and pansies,with their funny little faces, and Sairy's blue gingham apron and theblue sky. The water-bucket on the porch, with the gourd. He began tomutter a little. "Time to take in, children--didn't you hear the bell? Irang it loudly. I am ringing it now. Listen! Loud, loud--like churchbells--and cannons. The old lesson.... Curtius and the gulf."
In the next onrush a man stumbled and came to his knees beside him. Notbadly hurt, he was about to rise. Allan caught his arm. "For God'ssake--if you've got any water--" The man, a tall Alabamian, looked down,nodded, jerked loose another U. S. cante
en, and dropped it into theother's hand. "All right, all right--not at all--not at all--" He ranon, joining the hoar and shouting wave. Allan, the flask set to hislips, found not water, but a little cold and weak coffee. It wasnectar--it was happiness--it was life--though he could have drunk tentimes the amount!
The cool draught and the strength that was in it revived him, drew hiswandering mind back from Thunder Run to Gaines's Mill. Again he wishedto know where was the Army of the Valley. It might be over there, in thesmoke pall, turning Fitz John Porter's right ... but he did not believeit. Brigade after brigade had swept past him, had been broken, hadreformed, had again swept by into the wood that was so thick with thedead. A. P. Hill continued to hurl them in, standing, magnificentfighter! his eyes on the dark and bristling stronghold. On the hill,behind the climbing breastworks and the iron giants atop, Fitz JohnPorter, good and skilful soldier, withdrew from the triple lines hisdecimated regiments, put others in their places, scoured with the hailof his twenty-two batteries the plain of the Confederate centre. All theattack was here--all the attack was here--and the grey brigades werethinning like mist wreaths. The dead and wounded choked field and gullyand wood and swamp. Allan struck his hands together. What hadhappened--what was the matter? How long had he lain here? Two hours, atthe least--and always it was A. P. Hill's battle, and always the greybrigades with a master courage dashed themselves against the slope offire, and always the guns repelled them. It was growing late. The suncould not be seen. Plain and woods were darkening, darkening and filledwith groaning. It was about him like a melancholy wind, the groaning. Heraised himself on his hands and saw how many indeed were scattered inthe sedge, or in the bottom of the yellow gully, or slanted along itssides. He had not before so loudly heard the complaining that they made,and for a moment the brain wondered why. Then he was aware that the airwas less filled with missiles, that the long musketry rattle and thebaying of the war dogs was a little hushed. Even as he marked this thelull grew more and more perceptible. He heard the moaning of thewounded, because now the ear could take cognizance.
The shadow deepened. A horse, with a blood-stained saddle, unhurthimself, approached him, stood nickering for a moment, then panic-struckagain, lashed out with his heels and fled. All the plain, the sedgebelow, the rolling canopy above, was tinged with reddish umber. Thesighing wind continued, but the noise of firing died and died. For allthe moaning of the wounded, there seemed to fall a ghastly silence.
Over Allan came a feeling as of a pendulum forever stopped, as of Timebut a wreck on the shore of Space, and Space a deserted coast, anexperiment of some Power who found it ineffective and tossed it away.The Now and Here, petrified forever, desolate forever, an obscure bubblein the sea of being, a faint tracing on the eternal Mind to be overlaidand forgotten--here it rested, and would rest. The field would stay andthe actors would stay, both forever as they were, standing, lying, inmotion or at rest, suffering, thirsting, tasting the sulphur and feelingthe heat, held here forever in a vise, grey shadows suffering likesubstance, knowing the lost battle.... A deadly weakness and horror cameover him. "O God!--Let us die--"
From the rear, to A. P. Hill's right, where was Longstreet, broke a faintyelling. It grew clearer, came nearer. From another direction--from theleft--burst a like sound, increasing likewise, high, wild, and clear. Likea breath over the field went the conviction--_Jackson--Jackson at last!_Allan dropped in the broom sedge, his arm beneath his head. The grey sleevewas wet with tears. The pendulum was swinging; he was home in the dear anddread world.
The sound increased; the earth began to shake with the tread of men; thetremendous guns began again their bellowing. Longstreet swung intoaction, with the brigades of Kemper, Anderson, Pickett, Willcox, Pryor,and Featherstone. On the left, with his own division, with Ewell's, withD. H. Hill's, Jackson struck at last like Jackson. Whiting, with twobrigades, should have been with Jackson, but, missing his way in thewood, came instead to Longstreet, and with him entered the battle. Theday was descending. All the plain was smoky or luridly lit; a vastShield of Mars, with War in action. With Longstreet and with Jackson upat last, Lee put forth his full strength. Fifty thousand men in grey,thirty-five thousand men in blue, were at once engaged--in three hundredyears there had been in the Western Hemisphere no battle so heavy asthis one. The artillery jarred even the distant atmosphere, and the highmounting clouds were tinged with red. Six miles away, Richmond listenedaghast.
Allan forgot his wounds, forgot his thirst, forgot the terror, sick andcold, of the minute past. He no longer heard the groaning. The storm ofsound swept it away. He was a fighter with the grey; all his soul was inthe prayer. "Let them come! Let them conquer!" He thought, _Let the warbleed and the mighty die_. He saw a charge approaching. Willingly wouldhe have been stamped into the earth would it further the feet on theirway. The grey line hung an instant, poised on the further rim of thegully, then swept across and onward. Until the men were by him, it wasthick night, thick and stifling. They passed. He heard the yelling asthey charged the slope, the prolonged tremendous rattle of musketry, theshouts, the foiled assault, and the breaking of the wave. Another came,a wall of darkness in the closing day. Over it hung a long cloud,red-stained. Allan prayed aloud. "O God of Battles--O God of Battles--"
The wave came on. It resolved itself into a moving frieze, a wide battleline of tall men, led by a tall, gaunt general, with blue eyes andflowing, tawny hair. In front was the battle-flag, red ground and bluecross. Beside it dipped and rose a blue flag with a single star. Thesmoke rolled above, about the line. Bursting overhead, a great shell litall with a fiery glare. The frieze began to sing.
"The race is not to them that's got The longest legs to run, Nor the battle to that people That shoots the biggest gun--"
Allan propped himself upon his hands. "Fourth Texas! FourthTexas!--Fourth--"
The frieze rushed down the slope of the gully, up again, and on. A footcame hard on Allan's hand. He did not care. He had a vision of keen,bronze faces, hands on gun-locks. The long, grey legs went by him with amighty stride. Gun-barrel and bayonet gleamed like moon on water. Thebattle-flag with the cross, the flag with the single star, spread redand blue wings. Past him they sped, gigantic, great ensigns of desperatevalour, war goddesses, valkyries, ... rather the great South herself,the eleven States, Rio Grande to Chesapeake, Potomac to the Gulf! Allthe shells were bursting, all the drums were thundering--
The Texans passed, he sank prone on the earth. Other waves he knew werefollowing--all the waves! Jackson with Ewell, Longstreet, the two Hills.He thought he saw his own brigade--saw the Stonewall. But it was inanother quarter of the field, and he could not call to it. All the earthwas rocking like a cradle, blindly swinging in some concussion andconflagration as of world systems.
As dusk descended, the Federal lines were pierced and broken. The Texansmade the breach, but behind them stormed the other waves,--D. H. Hill,Ewell, the Stonewall Brigade, troops of Longstreet. They blotted out thetriple breastworks; from north, west, and south they mounted in thunderupon the plateau. They gathered to themselves here twenty-two guns, tenthousand small arms, twenty-eight hundred prisoners. They took theplateau. Stubbornly fighting, Fitz John Porter drew off his exhaustedbrigades, plunged downward through the forest, toward the Chickahominy.Across that river, all day long McClellan, with sixty-five thousand men,had rested behind earthworks, bewildered by Magruder, demonstrating infront of Richmond with twenty-eight thousand. Now, at the twelfth hour,he sent two brigades, French and Meagher.
Night fell, black as pitch. The forest sprang dense, from miry soil. Theregion was one where Nature set traps. In the darkness it was not easyto tell friend from foe. Grey fired on grey, blue on blue. The bluestill pressed, here in disorder, here with a steady front, toward thegrapevine bridge across the Chickahominy. French and Meagher arrived toform a strong rearguard. Behind, on the plateau, the grey advancepaused, uncertain in the darkness and in its mortal fatigue. Here,
andabout the marshy creek and on the vast dim field beyond, beneath thestill hanging battle cloud, lay, of the grey and the blue, fourteenthousand dead and wounded. The sound of their suffering rose like amonotonous wind of the night.