The Long Roll
heard the tap of drum and the bugles blowing. The moving soldiers were
going toward the cloud.
Miriam and Christianna sank down beneath a little tree. They were on a
facet of the hill not quite so advantageous as others. The crowded
slopes were beyond. However, one could see the smoke cloud and hear the
cannon, and that was all that could be done anyhow. There were men and
women about them, children, boys. The women were the most silent,--pale
and silent; the men uttered low exclamations or soliloquies, or talked
together. The boys were all but gleeful--save when they looked at the
grown people, and then they tried for solemnity. Some of the children
went to sleep. A mother nursed her babe. Near the foot of this hill,
through a hollow, there ran a branch,--Bacon Quarter Branch. Here, in
the seventeenth century, had occurred an Indian massacre. The heavy,
primeval woods had rung to the whoop of the savage, the groan of the
settler, the scream of English woman and child. To-day the woods had
been long cut, and the red man was gone. War remained--he had only
changed his war paint and cry and weapons.
Miriam clasped her thin brown hands about her knee, rested her chin on
them, and fastened her great brown eyes on the distant battle cloud.
Christianna, her sunbonnet pushed back, looked too, with limpid,
awe-struck gaze. Were Pap and Dave and Billy fighting in that cloud? It
was thicker than the morning mist in the hollow below Thunder Run
Mountain, and it was not fleecy, pure, and white. It was yellowish,
fierce, and ugly, and the sound that came from it made her heart beat
thick and hard. Was he there--Was Allan Gold there in the cloud? She
felt that she could not sit still; she wished to walk toward it. That
being impossible, she began to make a little moaning sound. A woman in
black, sitting on the grass near her, looked across. "Don't!" she said.
"If you do that, all of us will do it. We've got to keep calm. If we let
go, it would be like Rachel weeping. Try to be quiet."
Christianna, who had moaned as she crooned, hardly knowing it, at once
fell silent. Another woman spoke to her. "Would you mind holding my
baby? My head aches so. I must lie down here on the grass, just a
minute." Christianna took the baby. She handled it skilfully, and it was
presently cooing against her breast. Were Pap and Dave over there,
shooting and cutting? And Billy--Billy with a gun now instead of the
spear the blacksmith had made him? And Allan Gold was not teaching in
the schoolhouse on Thunder Run....
The woman took the baby back. The sun blazed down, there came a louder
burst of sound. A man with a field-glass, standing near, uttered a
"Tchk!" of despair. "Impenetrable curtain! The ancients managed things
better--they did not fight in a fog!"
He seemed a person having authority, and the people immediately about
him appealed for information. He looked through the glass and gave it,
and was good, too, about lending the glass. "It's A. P. Hill, I'm
sure--with Longstreet to support him. It's A. P. Hill's brigades that
are moving into the smoke. Most of that firing is from our batteries
along the Chickahominy. We are going undoubtedly to cross to the north
bank--Yes. McClellan's right wing--Fitz John Porter--A good soldier--Oh,
he'll have about twenty-five thousand men."
A boy, breathing excitement from top to toe, sent up a shrill voice.
"Isn't Jackson coming, sir? Aren't they looking for Jackson?"
The soldier who had drunk the milk was discovered by Miriam and
Christianna, near their tree. He gave his voice. "Surely! He'll have
come down from Ashland and A. P. Hill is crossing here. That's an army
north, and a big lot of troops south, and Fitz John Porter is between
like a nut in a nut cracker. The cracker has only to work all right, and
crush goes the filbert!" He raised himself and peered under puckered
brows at the smoke-draped horizon. "Yes, he's surely over
there--Stonewall.--Going to flank Fitz John Porter--Then we'll hear a
hell of a fuss."
"There's a battery galloping to the front," said the man with the glass.
"Look, one of you! Wipe the glass; it gets misty. If it's the Purcell,
I've got two sons--"
The soldier took the glass, turning it deftly with one hand. "Yes, think
it is the Purcell. Don't you worry, sir! They're all right. Artillerymen
are hard to kill--That's Pender's brigade going now--"
Christianna clutched Miriam. "Look! look! Oh, what is it?"
It soared into the blue, above the smoke. The sunlight struck it and it
became a beautiful iridescent bubble, large as the moon. "Oh, oh!" cried
the boy. "Look at the balloon!"
The hillside kept silence for a moment while it gazed, then--"Is it
ours?--No; it is theirs!--It is going up from the hill behind Beaver Dam
Creek.--Oh, it is lovely!--Lovely! No, no, it is horrible!--Look, look!
there is another!"
A young man, a mechanic, with sleeves rolled up, began to expatiate on
"ours." "We haven't got but one--it was made in Savannah by Dr. Langon
Cheves. Maybe they'll send it up to-day, maybe not. I've seen it. It's
like Joseph's coat in the Bible. They say the ladies gave their silk
dresses for it. Here'll be a strip of purple and here one of white with
roses on it, and here it is black, and here it is yellow as gold. They
melted rubber car-springs in naphtha and varnished it with that, and
they're going to fill it with city gas at the gas works--"
The bubbles floated in the clear air, above and beyond the zone of
smoke. It was now between four and five in the afternoon. The slant rays
of the sun struck them and turned them mother-of-pearl. An old man
lifted a dry, thin voice like a grasshopper's. "Once I went to Niagara,
and there was a balloon ascension. Everybody held their breath when the
fellow went up, and he got into some trouble, I don't remember just what
it was, and we almost died of anxiety until he came down; and when he
landed we almost cried we were so glad, and we patted him on the back
and hurrahed--and he was a Yankee, too! And now it's war time, and
there's nothing I 'd like better than to empty a revolver into that fine
windbag!"
The sound in the air became heavier. A man on horseback spurred along
the base of the hill. The people nearest stopped him. "Tell you? I
can't tell you! Nobody ever knows anything about a battle till it's
over, and not much then. Is Jackson over there? I don't know. He ought
to be, so I reckon he is! If he isn't, it's A. P. Hill's battle, all
alone."
He was gone. "I don't believe it's much more than long-range firing
yet," said the soldier. "Our batteries on the Chickahominy--and they are
answering from somewhere beyond Beaver Dam Creek. No musketry. Hello!
The tune's changing!"
It changed with such violence that after a moment's exclamation the
people sat or stood in silence, pale and awed. Speculation ceased. The
plunging torrent of sound whelmed the mind and stilled the tongue. The
soldier held out a moment. "Close range now. The North's always going to
beat us when it comes to metal soldiers. I wonder how many they've got
over there, anyhow!" Then he, too, fell silent.
The deep and heavy booming shook air and earth. It came no longer in
distinct shocks but with a continuous roar. The smoke screen grew denser
and taller, mounting toward the balloons. There was no seeing for that
curtain; it could only be noted that bodies of grey troops moved toward
it, went behind it. A thin, elderly man, a school-teacher, borrowed the
glass, fixed it, but could see nothing. He gave it back with a shake of
the head, sat down again on the parched grass, and veiled his eyes with
his hand. "'Hell is murky,'" he said.
No lull occurred in the firing. The sun as it sank reddened the battle
cloud that by now had blotted out the balloons. "When it is dark," said
the soldier, "it will be like fireworks." An hour later the man with the
glass discovered a string of wagons on one of the roads. It was coming
citywards. "Ambulances!" he said, in a shaking voice.
"Ambulances--ambulances--" The word went through the crowd like a sigh.
It broke the spell. Most on the hillside might have an interest there.
Parents, wives, brothers, sisters, children, they rose, they went away
in the twilight like blown leaves. The air was rocking; orange and red
lights began to show as the shells exploded. Christianna put her hand on
Miriam's. "Miss Miriam--Miss Miriam! Mrs. Cleave'll say I didn't take
care of you. Let's go--let's go. They're bringing back the wounded. Pap
might be there or Dave or Billy or--Miss Miriam, Miss Miriam, your
brother might be there."
The long June dusk melted into night, and still the city shook to the
furious cannonading. With the dark it saw, as it had not seen in the
sunshine. As the soldier said, it was like fireworks.
Beginning at twilight, the wagons with the wounded came all night long.
Ambulances, farm wagons, carts, family carriages, heavy-laden, they
rumbled over the cobblestones with the sound of the tumbrels in the
Terror. It was stated that a number of the wounded were in the field
hospitals. In the morning the knowledge was general that very many had
lain, crying for water, all night in the slashing before Beaver Dam
Creek.
All the houses in Richmond were lighted. Through the streets poured a
tide of fevered life. News--News--News!--demanded from chance couriers,
from civilian spectators of the battle arriving pale and exhausted, from
the drivers of wagon, cart, and carriage, from the less badly
wounded--"Ours the victory--is it not? is it not?--Who led?--who
fought?--who is fighting now? Jackson came? Jackson certainly came? We
are winning--are we not? are we not?" Suspense hung palpable in the hot
summer night, suspense, exaltation, fever. It breathed in the hot wind,
it flickered in the lights, it sounded in the voice of the river. For
many there sounded woe as well--woe and wailing for the dead. For
others, for many, many others, there was a misery of searching, a
heart-breaking going from hospital to hospital. "Is he here?--Are they
here?" The cannon stopped at nine o'clock.
The Stonewall Hospital was poorly lighted. In ward number 23 the oil
lamps, stuck in brackets along the walls, smoked. At one end, where two
pine tables were placed, the air from the open window blew the flames
distractingly. A surgeon, half dead with fatigue, strained well-nigh to
the point of tears, exclaimed upon it. "That damned wind! Shut the
window, Miss Cary. Yes, tight! It's hell anyhow, and that's what you do
in hell--burn up!"
Judith closed the window. As she did so she looked once at the light on
the northern horizon. The firing shook the window-pane. The flame of the
lamp now stood straight. She turned the wick higher, then lifted a
pitcher and poured water into a basin, and when the surgeon had washed
his hands took away the reddened stuff. Two negroes laid a man on the
table--a gaunt North Carolinian, his hand clutching a shirt all
stiffened blood. Between his eyelids showed a gleam of white, his breath
came with a whistling sound. Judith bent the rigid fingers open, drew
the hand aside, and cut away the shirt. The surgeon looked. "Humph!
Well, a body can but try. Now, my man, you lie right still, and I won't
hurt you much. Come this side, Miss Cary--No, wait a moment!--It's no
use. He's dying."
The North Carolinian died. The negroes lifted him from the table and put
another in his place. "Amputation," said the surgeon. "Hold it firmly,
Miss Cary; just there." He turned to the adjoining table where a younger
man was sewing up a forearm, ripped from wrist to elbow by a piece of
shell. "Lend me your saw, will you, Martin?--Yes, I know the heat's
fearful! but I can't work by a lamp that has Saint Vitus!" He turned