CHAPTER XL. A NIGHT ATTACK BY PIGS--BATTLE BETWEEN FORTS ANDGUN-BOATS--DISASTER TO THE MOUND CITY.
|On the night of the ninth, Harry and Jack had an adventure of a newsort, which happily turned out to be bloodless.
The greater part of the baggage-wagons failed to come up until late inthe evening, and it became necessary for the soldiers to bivouac withoutshelter, as the little town was not equal to their accommodation. Ouryoung friends picketed their horses, having first cut a quantity ofgreen oats from a field near by, with which they fed the faithfulanimals.
Then they took two or three bundles of the oats to lie upon andflattered themselves that they would make a comfortable bed, or onewhich would certainly be an improvement upon the bare ground. With athin layer on the ground and a good-sized bundle for their pillows, theywent to sleep in very short order.
They were sleeping soundly, and possibly dreaming of home and friends,when they were suddenly and rudely awakened. The night was dark andtheir first thought was that they had been surprised by the enemy.
There was a long and very dark form standing over Harry and another overJack, and each of the assailants seemed to be looking for the throat ofhis victim.
Harry gave his disturber a heavy blow with his fist, which sent himreeling over upon the soldier who was lying close by and snoring loudly.The snoring stopped at once, as the fall of the heavy body waked thesoldier, who sprang to his feet and reached for his gun. He had theimpulse to shoot, but did not know in what direction to fire.
Jack grappled with his enemy, and there was a struggle which may be saidto have resulted in victory for both. Jack did not succeed in holdingdown his assailant, as the latter slipped through his grasp and madehis escape. But the youth saved his life and was not, in fact, injuredfurther than a few slight contusions and abrasions.
Another soldier who had been awakened drew his bayonet, and as one ofthe attacking force rushed past him the man gave a well-directed prodwith the weapon, which stretched the intruder on the ground. It alsoroused a deafening squeal, that indicated the character of the creatorsof the disturbance.
It seems that a drove of half-wild pigs had come out of the forest, onthe lookout for something to eat. In the southern states pigs generallyrun at large, being called up occasionally by means of a horn, to befed and selected for slaughter or other purposes. As they are alwaysfed when summoned by the horn, they soon learn to come to its call; butsometimes, when the summonses are infrequent, they grow so wild thatthey do not heed the sound. Then they have to be chased up, and the workof driving them in is no small affair.
Very often they remain in the woods during the day and come aroundat night to the neighborhood of the dwellings in search of food. Thesouthern pigs are like those of any other part of the country, or of theworld, for that matter, as they are gifted with free appetites and arenot over particular about their food as long as it is something edible.
In their nocturnal ramble this drove under consideration had come uponthe sleeping-place of our young friends. Having scented the oats whichthe boys had taken to sleep upon, the animals rushed in without ceremonyand proceeded to devour the succulent grain without asking permission ofthose who were then in possession. The assault of two of the pigsupon the bundles which formed the pillows of Harry and Jack gave theimpression that the marauders were seeking to reach the throats of theirvictims, and their forms in the darkness were not unlike those of menstooping forward to attack the slumberers. Two of the pigs paid for theassault with their lives, and formed a material addition to the bill offare of the men whose slumbers they had broken. There was little sleepin the group for the rest of the night, their hearty laughter over theincident, and speculations as to whether the rest of the pigs would comeback, having effectually driven sleep from their eyelids.
The presence of the pigs having been discovered, a horn was blown thenext morning and turned to good advantage. Pigs to the number of ahundred or more came trooping out of the forest, and were enticed intoa yard which had been hastily constructed by some of the soldiers. Whenthey ceased coming the yard was closed, and the soldiers said afterwardsthat pork roasted over a campfire formed an excellent substitute forother articles of food when the others could n’t be had.
The rumor of the granting of free-papers to the negroes who had beenworking on the fortifications or helped to fell timber to obstruct themarch of the army was rapidly spread about Clarendon, and in a few hoursthe colored population for miles around seemed to have gathered there.All declared they had been doing the forbidden work, and all, as faras it was possible to grant them in the limited time, received theirpapers.
“If we had only known it,” said Harry to Jack, when they learned thestate of affairs, “you and I would have tried to get through to bringnews to the fleet, and we would have got through somehow. We might havetaken a skiff and paddled down in the night, and we would have riggedit up like a log, so that it would have required very sharp eyes todiscover that it was anything else than an ordinary log drifting withthe current. But there’s no use crying over spilt milk, as the oldsaw has it, and so we need n’t waste the time over planning for pastperformances. But I’d have given a good deal to have known of this intime.”
Jack agreed with him, and after a very brief talk on the subject theyturned their attention to other matters.
There was no alternative for the army but to make the best of its way toHelena, on the Mississippi, sixty or sixty-five miles away. The tenth ofJuly was spent at Clarendon, and at four o’clock on the morning of theeleventh General Washburne, with two thousand five hundred cavalry andsix mountain howitzers, started on a forced march for the banks of thegreat river. They followed the old military road between Little Rock andHelena. It proved to be a very good road, though there were several badplaces at the crossings of small streams. With a few exceptions, andthose doing no harm, not a shot was fired at them along the whole of theroute, all the forces of the enemy having been withdrawn to the defenseof the White river or to points further back in the interior of thestate.
Harry and Jack were allowed to accompany General Washburne’s advance, asit was thought they might be useful in case there was any scouting to bedone or any foraging for provisions, but as the march was a forced onethere was no time for anything of the sort, and they had nothing to dobut stick to the column and keep their horses in the road.
About nine o’clock in the forenoon of the twelfth the foremost ofthe soldiers rose in their stirrups and gave a loud cheer, which wasspeedily carried along the whole line. Cheer upon cheer followed, no onebeing told the cause, but everybody realizing that the end of the longmarch was near. The spires of the churches of Helena were soon afterwardin full view, and beyond them gleamed the waters of the Mississippi,reflecting the rays of the summer sun.
Harry and Jack were among the loudest of the cheerers, as they realizedthat, for the present, at any rate, their wanderings in the wilds ofArkansas were at an end. They were weary with the almost unbroken rideof twenty-eight hours, covered with the dust that rose in clouds fromthe dry road, and suffering the pangs of hunger and thirst, but no worsein that respect than all those about them. But with all their wearinessand hunger, and through all the dust that covered them, their heartsswelled with joy, and they shouted themselves hoarse over the sight ofthe great river of the West.
But now came a new difficulty. Helena had not been occupied by uniontroops, and there was no one there to welcome them. The gun-boat fleethad called there and agreed with the local authorities that the townshould not be harmed as long as no outrages were perpetrated on passingsteamboats. The agreement had been kept, and though several bandsof bushwhackers had dropped in to see their friends, they had beenrestrained from making any attacks or otherwise disturbing the peace.The inhabitants were not particularly loyal toward the government, butthey had heard the fate of several places where boats had been firedupon, and had sufficient influence to keep their bushwhacking friendsquiet.
As the advance of General Washb
urne’s cavalry entered the town, severalmen, who had been loitering in front of one of the stores, made haste tomount their horses and get away. A few shots were fired at them, but noharm was done, and no attempt was made to pursue them. In a littlewhile the whole force of cavalry had reached the river bank, and theMississippi was scanned up and down to discover a steamboat.
General Washburne hoped there would be a gun-boat with which he couldcommunicate, but no gun-boat was in sight. Soon the smoke of a steamboatwas seen below the town, around a bend of the river, and in due time shecame in sight, slowly stemming the powerful current. It was an ordinarytransport, quite incapable of defense, and the general quickly made uphis mind to stop her by friendly means if he could, or by force if hemust.
As the steamer came in front of Helena flags were waved again and again,but the boat paid no attention to them. Then a shot was fired across herbows to warn her to stop, but this had no effect; another shot followed,and then another, aimed like the first, so as not to harm the boat, butto make those on board believe that something serious would happen soonunless she came to a halt. Seeing there was no escape from the supposedrebels, the pilot headed the boat for the bank and ran in. A dozen ormore soldiers were on her deck with their guns ready for business, butthey soon perceived that resistance to such a force would be useless.They prepared to surrender and make the best of their misfortune. Butbefore the gangplank had been run out one of the shrewdest of themobserved that the formidable force was habited in the union uniform,though it was so sadly covered with dust that it could easily bemistaken for the confederate gray.
An officer who was among the passengers brought a field-glass to bearon the party on the bank. He was an old friend of Captain Winslow, thequartermaster of General Curtis’s army, and was not long in making himout, in spite of the dust that covered him and his generally bedraggledappearance after his long ride. Holding aside his glass, he shouted:
“Is Captain Winslow there?”
“Here I am,” was the reply, “and here are the rest of us.”
“All right, pilot,” said the officer; “you’re safe enough now. You’recaptured by our friends.”
In a few minutes the boat had been made fast to the shore, and GeneralWashburne came on board accompanied by Captain Winslow, Captain Noble,of General Curtis’s staff, and several other officers. There wasa recognition of old friends and introductions all around. The newarrivals were treated to the best the steamer afforded, and the officerwho had charge of the boat asked what they could do for the weary anddusty crowd.
“Give us whatever provisions you can spare,” said General Washburne,“and then hurry up to Memphis as fast as you can with Captains Winslowand Noble. They ‘ll get supplies for us and have them shipped down hereto meet the army by the time it arrives.”
The boat was not well provided with stores, as she had no occasion foranything beyond sufficient to feed her company to Memphis, butwhatever she had was quickly rolled on the bank and handed over to thequartermaster of the division. When this had been done she immediatelysteamed away for Memphis, ninety miles up the river. She was obliged tolie at anchor during the night, owing to a dense fog, and did not reachMemphis until the following forenoon.
Supplies were immediately shipped to Helena, and by the morning of thefourteenth they were piled on the bank--a welcome sight to the soldiers,that marched in as closely behind the cavalry as it was possible forinfantry to follow. The march from Clarendon was accomplished in littlemore than two days, and not a wagon was lost or left behind. By theevening of the thirteenth all the divisions had arrived, and anxiouslywaited the provisions which came to them on the following morning.Hundreds of hands were ready to assist in the landing, and rarely has asteamboat discharged her cargo with greater celerity.
The column was followed by a great number of negroes, who feared thetreatment they would receive from their masters after the departure ofthe union forces from Clarendon. At one time it was remarked that therewere more negroes than white men in Helena, and the support ofthe colored population became a matter of serious consequence. Thedifficulty was partially solved a few months later, when it was decidedto enlist negroes as soldiers, and several regiments of them were formedfor infantry and cavalry service. Thousands of able-bodied citizens ofAfrican descent were enrolled in the army, and though they had theirdefects they did credit to themselves, besides exasperating the rebelsto an unwonted degree. Many of the rebel officers subsequently declaredthat their greatest mistake was that they did not arm their negroesearly in the war, and promise to give them their freedom at the end.
331]