The Long Roll
in your way! Let's see how far you can throw it. There's plenty more
saplings in the woods!"
"Let him alone, Gold," said the lieutenant sharply. "Do as I order you,
Billy Maydew!"
Billy rose, eighteen years old, and six feet tall. "If it's jest the
same to you, lieutenant," he said politely, "I'll break it into bits
first. Thar are time when I jest hone to feel my hands on somethin'
brittle!" He put the thick sapling across his knee like a sword, broke
it in twain, broke in their turn the two halves, and tossed the four
pieces over the fence. "Thar, now! It's did." Moving back to Allan's
side, he threw himself down upon the grass. "When's this hell-fired
fightin' goin' to begin? I don't ask anything better, jest at this
minute, than to encounter a rattler!"
The sound ahead swelled suddenly into loud and continuous firing.
Apparently Evans had met the turning column. _Fall in, men, fall in!_
The First Brigade rose to its feet, left the friendly fence, and found
itself upon a stretch of road, in a dust cloud that neatly capped all
previous ills. At some distance rose the low hill, covered, upon this
side, by a second growth of pines. "That's the Henry Hill," said the
guide with the 65th. "The house just this side is the Lewis
house--'Portici,' they call it. The top of the hill is a kind of
plateau, with deep gulleys across it. Nearly in the middle is the Widow
Henry's house, and beyond it the house of the free negro Robinson.
Chinn's house is on the other side, near Chinn's Branch. It's called the
Henry Hill, and Mrs. Henry is old and bedridden. I don't know what
she'll do, anyway! The hill's most level on top, as I said, but beyond
the Henry House it falls right down, quite steep, to the Warrenton
turnpike. Across that there's marshy ground, and Young's Branch, with
the Stone House upon it, and beyond the branch there's Mathews Hill,
just around the branch. Yes, sir, this back side's wooded, but you see
the cleared ground when you get on top."
A bowshot from the wood, the head of the column was met by a second
courier, a boy from the Alabama River, riding like Jehu, pale with
excitement. "When you get to the top of the hill you'll see! They're
thicker than bees from a sweet gum--they're thicker than bolls in a
cotton-field! They've got three thousand Regulars, and fifteen thousand
of the other kind, and they're cutting Evans to pieces!" He pulled
himself together and saluted. "General Bee's compliments to General
Jackson, and he is going into action."
"General Jackson's compliments, and I will support him."
The 65th entered the wood. The trees were small--bundles of hard, bright
green needles aloft on slender trunks, out of which, in the strong
sunshine, resin was oozing. They were set well apart, the grass beneath
dry and slippery, strewn with cones. The sky was intensely blue, the air
hot and without moisture, the scent of the pines strong in the nostril.
Another step and the 65th came upon the wounded of Evans's brigade. An
invisible line joined with suddenness the early morning picture, the
torn and dying mule, the headless driver, to this. Breathless, heated,
excited, the 65th swept on, yet it felt the cold air from the cavern. It
had, of course, seen accidents, men injured in various ways, but never
had it viewed so many, nor so much blood, and never before had it rushed
past the helpless and the agonizing. There were surgeons and
ambulances--there seemed to be a table of planks on which the worst
cases were laid--the sufferers had help, of course, a little help. A
Creole from Bayou Teche lay writhing, shot through the stomach, beneath
a pine. He was raving. "Melanie, Melanie, donnez-moi de l'eau! Melanie,
Melanie! donnez-moi de l'eau!"
Stragglers were coming over the hilltop--froth and spume thrown from a
great wave somewhere beyond that cover--men limping, men supported by
their comrades, men gasping and covered with sweat, men livid with
nausea, men without arms, men carrying it off with bluster, and men too
honestly frightened for any pretence. A number were legitimately there,
wounded, ill, exhausted, useless on the field of battle; others were
malingerers, and some were cowards--cowards for all time, or cowards for
this time only. A minority was voluble. "You all think yo' going to a
Sunday-school picnic, don't you? Well, you ain't. Just _you_ all wait
until you get to the top of the hill! What are you going to see? You're
going to see hell's mouth, and the devil wearing blue! We've been
there--we've been in hell since daybreak--damned if we haven't! Evans
all cut to pieces! Bee and Bartow have gone in now. They'll find it
hell, jest like we did. Twenty thousand of them dressed in blue." A man
began to weep. "All cut to pieces. Major Wheat's lying there in a little
piney wood. He was bleeding and bleeding--I saw him--but I reckon the
blood has stopped. And we were all so hungry. I didn't get no breakfast.
There's a plateau and the Henry House, and then there's a dip and
Young's Branch, and then there's a hill called the Mathews Hill. We were
there--on the Mathews Hill--we ain't on it now." Two officers appeared,
one on foot, the other mounted, both pale with rage. "You'll be on it
again, if you have to be dragged by the heels! Get back there, you
damned, roustabout cowards!" The mounted man laid about him with his
sabre; the lieutenant, afoot, wrenched from a strapping fellow his
Belgian musket and applied the stock to the recreant's shoulders. The
65th left the clamour, swept onward between the pines, and presently, in
the narrow road, met a braver sort, men falling back, but without panic.
"Hot as hell, sir, on the other side of the hill! No, we're not running.
I'll get the men back. It's just that Sykes was in front of us with his
damned Regulars. Beg your pardon, general--? General Jackson. I'll get
the men back--damned--blessed--if I don't, sir! Form right here, men!
The present's the best time, and here's the best place."
At the crest of the hill the 65th came upon Imboden's battery--the
Staunton Artillery--four smoothbore, brass six-pounders, guns, and
caissons drawn by half the proper number of horses--the rest being
killed--and conducted by wounded, exhausted, powder-grimed and swearing
artillerymen. Imboden, in front, was setting the pitch.
"---- ----! ---- ----! ---- ---- ----!" Jackson checked Little Sorrel and
withered the battery and its captain. "What are you doing here, sir,
blaspheming and retreating? Outfacing your God with your back to the
enemy! What--"
Imboden, an entirely gallant man, hastened to explain. "Beg pardon,
general! Bad habit, I acknowledge, but the occasion excuses--My battery
has spent the morning, sir, on the Henry Hill, and damn me, if it hasn't
been as lonely there as the Ancient Mariner! No support--not a damned
infantryman in sight for the last half hour! Alone down there by the
Robinson House, and Ricketts and Griffin--Regulars by the Lord!--and the
devil knows how many batteries beside playing on us with Parrotts and
twelve-pounder howitzers like all the fountains at Versailles! The
ground looks as though it had been rooted by hogs! No support, and no
orders, and on the turnpike a bank of blue massing to rush my guns! And
my ammunition out, and half my horses down--and if General Bee sent me
orders to move I never got them!" He stamped upon the ground, wiping the
blood from a wound in his head. "_I_ couldn't hold the Henry Hill! _I_
couldn't fight McDowell with one battery--no, by God, not even if 't was
the Staunton Artillery! We had to move out."
Jackson eyed him, unmollified. "I have never seen the occasion, Captain
Imboden, that justified profanity. As for support--I will support your
battery. Unlimber right here."
Imboden unlimbered, placing his guns below the pine wood upon the
summit. The First Brigade wheeled into line to the left. Here it was met
by an aide. "General Jackson, hold your troops in reserve until Bee and
Bartow need support--then give it to them!" The First Brigade deployed
in the wood. About the men was still the pine thicket, blazed upon by
the sun, shrilled in by winged legions; before them was the field of
Bull Run. A tableland, cut by gullies, furred with knots of pine and
oak, held in the middle a flower garden, a few locust trees, and a small
house--the Henry House--in which, too old and ill to be borne away to
safety, lay a withered woman, awaiting death. Beyond the house the
ground fell sharply. At the foot of the hill ran the road, and beyond
the road were the marshy banks of a little stream, and on the other side
of the stream rose the Mathews Hill. Ranged upon this height Ricketts
and Griffin and Arnold and many another Federal battery were sending
shrieking shells against the Henry Hill. North and east and west of the
batteries ran long radii of blue, pointed with bright banners, and out
of the hollow between the hills came a smoke and noise as of the
nethermost pit. There, beneath that sulphurous cloud, the North and the
South were locked in an embrace that was not of love.
CHAPTER VIII
A CHRISTENING
Imboden had been joined by the Rockbridge Artillery and the Alexandria
and Loudoun batteries. A little later there came up two of the New
Orleans guns. All unlimbered in front of the pine wood where was couched
the First Brigade, trained the sixteen guns upon the Mathews Hill and
began firing. Griffin and Ricketts and Arnold answered with Parrotts and
howitzers, throwing elongated, cylindrical shell that came with the
screech of a banshee. But the Federal range was too long, and the fuses
of many shells were uncut. Two of Rockbridge's horses were killed, a
caisson of Stanard's exploded, scorching the gunners, a lieutenant was
wounded in the thigh, but the batteries suffered less than did the
infantry in the background. Here, more than one exploding horror wrought
destruction. Immediately in rear of the guns were posted the 4th, the
27th, and the 65th. To the right hand was the 5th, to the left the 2d
and the 33d. In all the men lay down in ranks, just sheltered by the
final fringe of pines. The younger officers stood up, or, stepping into
the clearing, seated themselves not without ostentation upon pine
stumps, to the laudable end that the enemy should know where to find
them. Jackson rode back and forth behind the guns.
The thundering voices grew louder, shaking the hills. The First Brigade
could not see the infantry, swept now from the Mathews Hill and engaged
about the turnpike and the stream. By stretching necks it saw a roof of
smoke, dun-coloured, hiding pandemonium. Beneath that deeper thunder of
the guns, the crackling, unintermittent sound of musketry affected the
ear like the stridulation of giant insects. The men awaiting their turn
beneath the pines, breathing quick, watching the shells, moved their
heads slightly to and fro. In front, outdrawn upon a little ridge, stood
the guns and boomed defiance. Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alexandria,
and New Orleans did well this day. The guns themselves were something
ancient, growing obsolete; but those striplings about them, beardless,
powder-grimed, bare of arm and chest, silent and swift and steady of eye
and hand, sponging, ramming, priming, aiming, firing, showed in the van
of Time a brood of Mars, a band of whom foe-quelling Hector might say
"They will do well."
General T. J. Jackson on Little Sorrel went up and down between the
speaking guns and the waiting infantry. The men, from their couch upon
the needles, watched him. Before their eyes war was transfiguring him,
and his soldiers called him "Old Jack" and made no reservation. The
awkward figure took on a stalwart grace, the old uniform, the boots, the
cap, grew classically right. The inner came outward, the atmosphere