The Long Roll
began firing. She gave to the cheese-box, or to the armoured turret, one
after the other, three broadsides. The turret blazed and answered, and
the balls rebounded from each armoured champion." He laughed. "By
Heaven! it was like our old favourites, Ivanhoe and De Bois
Guilbert--the ugliest squat gnomes of an Ivanhoe and of a Brian de Bois
Guilbert that ever came out of a nightmare! We thundered in the lists,
and then we passed each other, turned, and again encountered. Sometimes
we were a long way apart, and sometimes there was not ten feet of water
between those sunken decks from which arose the iron shell of the
Merrimac and the iron turret of the Monitor. She fired every seven
minutes; we as rapidly as we could load. Now it was the bow gun, now the
after pivot, now a full broadside. Once or twice we thought her done
for, but always her turret revolved, and her 11-inch guns opened again.
In her lighter draught she had a great advantage; she could turn and
wind where we could not. The Minnesota took a hand, and an iron battery
from the shore. We were striving to ram the Ericsson, but we could not
get close to her; our iron beak, too, was sticking in the side of the
sunken Cumberland--we could only ram with the blunt prow. The Minnesota,
as we passed, gave us all her broadside guns--a tremendous fusillade at
point-blank range, which would have sunk any ship of the swan breed. The
turtle shook off shot and shell, grape and canister, and answered with
her bow gun. The shell which it threw entered the side of the frigate,
and, bursting amidship, exploded a store of powder and set the ship on
fire. Leaving disaster aboard the Minnesota, we turned and sunk the
tugboat Dragon. Then came manoeuvre and manoeuvre to gain position
where we could ram the Monitor....
"We got it at last. The engines made an effort like the leap of the
spirit before expiring. 'Go ahead! Full speed!' We went; we bore down
upon the Monitor, now in deeper water. But at the moment that we saw
victory she turned. Our bow, lacking the iron beak, gave but a glancing
stroke. It was heavy as it was; the Monitor shook like a man with the
ague, but she did not share the fate of the Cumberland. There was no
ragged hole in her side; her armour was good, and held. She backed,
gathered herself together, then rushed forward, striving to ram us in
her turn. But our armour, too, was good, and held. Then she came upon
the Merrimac's quarter, laid her bow against the shell, and fired her
11-inch guns twice in succession. We were so close, each to the other,
that it was as though two duelists were standing upon the same cloak.
Frightful enough was the concussion of those guns.
"That charge drove in the Merrimac's iron side three inches or more. The
shots struck above the ports of the after guns, and every man at those
guns was knocked down by the impact and bled at the nose and ears. The
Monitor dropped astern, and again we turned and tried to ram her. But
her far lighter draught put her where we could not go; our bow, too, was
now twisted and splintered. Our powder was getting low. We did not spare
it, we could not; we sent shot and shell continuously against the
Monitor, and she answered in kind. Monitor and Merrimac, we went now
this way, now that, the Ericsson much the lighter and quickest, the
Merrimac fettered by her poor old engines, and her great length, and her
twenty-three feet draught. It was two o'clock in the afternoon.... The
duelists stepped from off the cloak, tried operations at a distance,
hung for a moment in the wind of indecision, then put down the match
from the gunners' hands. The Monitor darted from us, her head toward the
shoal water known as the Middle Ground. She reached it and rested
triumphant, out of all danger from our ram, and yet where she could
still protect the Minnesota.... A curious silence fell upon the Roads;
sullen like the hush before a thunderstorm, and yet not like that, for
we had had the thunderstorm. It was the stillness, perhaps, of
exhaustion. It was late afternoon, the fighting had been heavy. The air
was filled with smoke; in the water were floating spars and wreckage of
the ships we had destroyed. The weather was sultry and still. The dogged
booming of a gun from a shore battery sounded lonely and remote as a
bell buoy. The tide was falling; there were sand-bars enough between us
and Sewell's Point. We waited an hour. The Monitor was rightly content
with the Middle Ground, and would not come back for all our charming. We
fired at intervals, upon her and upon the Minnesota, but at last our
powder grew so low that we ceased. The tide continued to fall, and the
pilot had much to say.... The red sun sank in the west; the engineers
fed the ancient mariners with Montgomery coal; black smoke gushed forth
and pilots felt their way into the South Channel, and slowly, slowly
back toward Sewell's Point. The day closed in a murky evening with a
taste of smoke in the air. In the night-time the Monitor went down the
Roads to Fortress Monroe, and in the morning we took the Merrimac into
dry dock at Norfolk. Her armour was dented all over, though not pierced.
Her bow was bent and twisted, the iron beak lost in the side of the
Cumberland. Her boats were gone, and her smokestack as full of holes as
any colander, and the engines at the last gasp. Several of the guns were
injured, and coal and powder and ammunition all lacked. We put her
there--the dear and ugly warship, the first of the iron-clads--we put
her there in dry dock, and there she's apt to stay for some weeks to
come. Lieutenant Wood was sent to Richmond with the report for the
president and the secretary of the navy. He carried, too, the flag of
the Congress, and I was one of the men detailed for its charge.... And
now I have told you of the Merrimac and the Monitor."
Rising, he went to the piano, sat down and played "Malbrook s'en va-t-en
guerre." Miss Lucy took up her knitting, and knitted very rapidly, her
eyes now upon her nephew, now upon her father's portrait. Judith, rising
from the old cross-stitch tabouret where she had been sitting, laid a
fresh log on the fire, then went and stood beside the long window,
looking out upon the rainy night.
"What," asked Edward between two chords, "what do you hear from the
Valley?"
Unity answered: "General Banks has crossed the Potomac and entered
Winchester--poor, poor Winchester! General Jackson hasn't quite five
thousand men. He has withdrawn toward Woodstock. In spite of that
dreadful Romney march, General Johnston and the soldiers seem to have
confidence in him--"
Molly came in with her soft little voice. "Major Stafford has been
transferred. He is with General Ewell on the Rappahannock. He writes to
Judith every week. They are beautiful letters--they make you see
everything that is done."
"What do you hear from Richard Cleave?"
"He never writes."
Judith came back from the window. "It is raining, raining! The petals
are falling from the pyrus japonica, and all the trees are bending!
Edward, war is terrible, but it lifts you up...." She locked her hands
behind her head. "It lifts you up, out in the storm or listening to what
the ships have done, or to the stories that are told! And then you look
at the unploughed land, and you wait for the bulletins, and you go to
the hospital down there, ... and you say, 'Never--oh, nevermore let us
have war!'"
CHAPTER XV
KERNSTOWN
The brigade was halted before a stretch of forest white with dogwood.
Ahead began a slow cannonade. Puffs of smoke rose above the hill that
hid the iron combatants. "Ashby's Horse Artillery," said the men.
"That's the Blakeley now! Boys, I reckon we're in for it!"
An aide passed at a gallop. "Shields and nine thousand men. Ashby was
misinformed--more than we thought--Shields and nine thousand men."
Along the line the soldiers slightly moved their feet, moistened their
lips. The 65th occupied a fairy dell where Quaker ladies, blue as the
heavens, bloomed by every stone. A Federal battery opened from a hill to
the right. A screaming shell entered the wood, dug into earth, and
exploded, showering all around with mould. There came a great burst of
music--the Northern bands playing as the regiments deployed. "That's
'Yankee Doodle!'" said the men. "Everybody's cartridge-box full? Johnny
Lemon, don't you forgit to take your ramrod out before you fire!"
The colonel came along the line. "Boys, there is going to be a
considerable deer drive!--Now, I am going to tell you about this quarry.
Its name is Banks, and it wants to get across country to the Shenandoah,
and so out of the Valley to join McClellan. Now General Johnston's
moving from the Rapidan toward Richmond, and he doesn't want Banks
bothering him. He says, 'Delay the enemy as long as you can.' Now
General Jackson's undertaken to do it. We've got thirty-five hundred
men, and that ought to be enough.--_Right face! Forward march!_"
As the troops crossed the Valley pike the men hailed it. "Howdy, old
Road! Pleased to meet you again. Lord! jest as fresh as a daisy--jest as
though we hadn't tramped them thirty-six miles from New Market since
yesterday daybreak! My Lord! wish I had your staying qualities--_Au
re-vo-ree!_"
Stone fences bordered the pike. The infantry, moving in double column,
climbed them and entered another strip of springtime woods. The
artillery--McLaughlin's, Carpenter's, and Waters's batteries--found a
cross-roads and thundered by, straining to the front. Ashby, together
with Chew's battery of horse artillery, kept the pike the other side of
Kernstown. In front of the infantry stretched a great open marshy
meadow, utterly without cover. Beyond this to the north, rose low hills,
and they were crowned with Federal batteries, while along the slopes and
in the vales between showed masses of blue infantry, clearly visible, in
imposing strength and with bright battle-flags. It was high noon,
beneath a brilliant sky. There were persistent musicians on the northern
side; all the blue regiments came into battle to the sound of first-rate
military bands. The grey listened. "They sure are fond of 'Yankee
Doodle!' There are three bands playing it at once.... There's the 'Star
Spangled Banner'--
Oh, say can you see,
Through the blue shades of evening--
I used to love it!... Good Lord, how long ago!"
Hairston Breckinridge spoke, walking in front of his company. "We're
waiting for the artillery to get ahead. We're going to turn the enemy's
right--Shields's division, Kimball commanding. You see that wooded ridge
away across there? That's our objective. That's Pritchard's Hill, where
all the flags are--How many men have they got? Oh, about nine
thousand.--There goes the artillery now--there goes Rockbridge!--Yes,
sir!--_Attention! Fall in!_"
In double column almost the entire fighting force of the Army of the
Valley crossed the endless open meadow beneath Kimball's batteries. That
the latter's range was poor was a piece of golden fortune. The shells
crossed to the wood or exploded high in blue air. Harmless they might
be, but undeniably they were trying. Involuntarily the men stared,
fascinated, at each round white cloud above them; involuntarily jerked
their heads at each rending explosion. From a furrowed ridge below the
guns, musketry took a hand. The Army of the Valley here first met with
minie balls. The sound with which they came curdled the blood. "What's
that? What's that?... That's something new. _The infernal things!_"
Billy Maydew, walking with his eyes on the minies, stumbled over a
fairy's ring and came to his knees. Lieutenant Coffin swore at him.
"---- ----! Gawking and gaping as though 'twere Christmas and Roman
candles going off! Getup!" Billy arose and marched on. "I air a-going to