The Long Roll
back to his table. "Now, my lad, you just clench your teeth. Miss Cary
and I aren't going to hurt you any more than we can help. Yes, above the
knee." The younger surgeon, having finished the cut, wiped away with a
towel the sweat that blinded him. "The next.--Hm! Doctor, will you look
here a moment?--Oh, I see you can't! It's no use, Mrs. Opie. Better have
him taken back. He'll die in an hour.--The next."
The ward was long, low ceiled, with brown walls and rafters. Between the
patches of lamplight the shadows lay wide and heavy. The cots, the
pallets, the pew cushions sewed together, were placed each close by
each. A narrow aisle ran between the rows; by each low bed there was
just standing room. The beds were all filled, and the wagons bringing
more rumbled on the cobblestones without. All the long place was
reekingly hot, with a strong smell of human effluvia, of sweat-dampened
clothing, of blood and powder grime. There was not much crying aloud;
only when a man was brought in raving, or when there came a sharp scream
from some form under the surgeon's knife. But the place seemed one
groan, a sound that swelled or sank, but never ceased. The shadows on
the wall, fantastically dancing, mocked this with nods and becks and
waving arms,--mocked the groaning, mocked the heat, mocked the smell,
mocked the thirst, mocked nausea, agony, delirium, and the rattle in the
throat, mocked the helpers and the helped, mocked the night and the
world and the dying and the dead. At dawn the cannon began again.
CHAPTER XXXII
GAINES'S MILL
Dawn broke cold and pure, the melancholy ashen seas slowly, slowly
turning to chill ethereal meads of violets, the violet more slowly yet
giving place to Adonis gardens of rose and daffodil. The forests stood
dew-drenched and shadowy, solemn enough, deep and tangled woodlands that
they were, under the mysterious light, in the realm of the hour whose
finger is at her lips. The dawn made them seem still, and yet they were
not still. They and the old fields and the marshes and the wild and
tangled banks of sluggish water-courses, and the narrow, hidden roads,
and the low pine-covered hilltops, and all the vast, overgrown, and
sombre lowland were filled with the breathing of two armies. In the cold
glory of the dawn there faced each other one hundred and eighty thousand
men bent on mutual destruction.
A body of grey troops, marching toward Cold Harbour, was brought to a
halt within a taller, deeper belt than usual. Oak and sycamore, pine and
elm, beech, ash, birch and walnut, all towered toward the violet meads.
A light mist garlanded their tops, and a graceful, close-set underbrush
pressed against their immemorial trunks. It was dank and still, dim and
solemn within such a forest cavern. Minutes passed. The men sat down on
the wet, black earth. The officers questioned knew only that Fitz John
Porter was falling back from Beaver Dam Creek, presumably on his next
line of intrenchments, and that, presumably, we were following. "Has
Jackson joined?" "Can't tell you that. If he hasn't, well, we'll beat
them anyhow!"
This body of troops had done hard fighting the evening before and was
tired enough to rest. Some of the men lay down, pillowing their heads on
their arms, dozing, dozing in the underbrush, in the misty light,
beneath the tall treetops where the birds were cheeping. In the meantime
a Federal balloon, mounting into the amethyst air, discovered that
this stretch of woodland was thronged with grey soldiers, and signalled
as much to Fitz John Porter, falling back with steadiness to his second
line at Gaines's Mill. He posted several batteries, and ordered them to
shell the wood.
In the purple light the guns began. The men in grey had to take the
storm; they were in the wood and orders had not come to leave it. They
took it in various ways, some sullenly, some contemptuously, some with
nervous twitchings of head and body, many with dry humour and a
quizzical front. The Confederate soldier was fast developing a
characteristic which stayed with him to the end. He joked with death and
gave a careless hand to suffering. A few of the more imaginative and
aesthetically minded lost themselves in open-mouthed contemplation of the
bestormed forest and its behaviour.
The cannonade was furious, and though not many of the grey soldiers
suffered, 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 shell
and torn twig from twig, they fell in a shower of slivers, or, chopped
clean from the trunk, down they crashed from leafy level to level till
they reached the forest floor. Beneath them rose shouts of warning, came
a scattering of grey mortals. Younger trees were cut short off. Their
woodland race was run; down they rushed with their festoons of vines,
crushing the undergrowth of laurel and hazel. Other shells struck the
red brown resinous bodies of pines, set loose dangerous mists of bark
and splinter. As by a whirlwind the air was filled with torn and flying
growth, 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 violet
fields and the vermeil gardens were blotted out, and in the shrieking of
the shells the birds could not have been heard to sing even were they
there. They were not there; they were all flown far away. It was dark in
the wood, dark and full of sound and of moving bodies charged with
danger. The whirlwind swept it, the treetops snapped off. "_Attention!_"
The grey soldiers were glad to hear the word. "_Forward! March!_" They
were blithe to hear the order and to leave the wood.
They moved out into old fields, grown with sedge and sassafras, here and
there dwarf pines. Apparently the cannon had lost them; at any rate for
a time the firing ceased. The east was now pink, the air here very pure
and cool and still, each feather of broom sedge holding its row of
diamond dewdrops. The earth was much cut up. "Batteries been along
here," said the men. "Ours, too. Know the wheel marks. Hello! What you
got, Carter?"
"Somebody's dropped his photograph album."
The man in front and the man behind and the man on the other side all
looked. "One of those folding things! Pretty children! one, two, three,
four, and their mother.--Keep it for him, Henry. Think the Crenshaw
battery, or Braxton's, or the King William, or the Dixie was over this
way."
Beyond the poisoned field were more woods, dipping to one of the
innumerable sluggish creeks of the region. There was a bridge--weak and
shaken, but still a bridge. This crossed at last, the troops climbed a
slippery bank, beneath a wild tangle of shrub and vine, and came
suddenly into view of a line of breastworks, three hundred yards away.
There was a halt; skirmishers were thrown forward. These returned
without a trigger having been pulled. "Deserted, sir. They've fallen
back, 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 little
green, boggy place commanded by the breastworks. Apparently grey troops
had made a charge here, the evening before. The trees that fringed the
small, irregular oval, and the great birds that sat in the trees, and
the column whose coming had made the birds to rise, looked upon a meadow
set as thick with dead men as it should have been with daisies. They lay
thick, thick, two hundred and fifty of them, perhaps, heart pierced,
temple pierced by minie balls, or all the body shockingly torn by grape
and canister. The wounded had been taken away. Only the dead were here,
watched by the great birds, the treetops and the dawn. They lay
fantastically, some rounded into a ball, some spread eagle, some with
their arms over their eyes, some in the posture of easy sleep. At one
side was a swampy place, and on the edge of this a man, sunk to the
thigh, kept upright. The living men thought him living, too. More than
one started out of line toward him, but then they saw that half his head
was blown away.
They left the meadow and took a road that skirted another great piece of
forest. The sun came up, drank off the vagrant wreaths of mist and dried
the dew from the sedge. There was promise of a hot, fierce, dazzling
day. Another halt. "What's the matter this time?" asked the men. "God! I
want to march on--into something happening!" Rumour came back. "Woods in
front of us full of something. Don't know yet whether it's buzzards or
Yankees. Get ready to open fire, anyway." All ready, the men waited
until she came again. "It's men, anyhow. Woods just full of bayonets
gleaming. Better throw your muskets forward."
The column moved on, but cautiously, with a strong feeling that it, in
its turn, was being watched--with muskets thrown forward. Then suddenly
came 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 up
there in the blessed old Valley!' 'Hello, boys! If you don't look out
you'll be getting your names in the papers!' 'Hello, boys! come to help
us kill mosquitoes? Haven't got any quinine handy, have you?' 'Hello,
boys! Hello Kernstown, McDowell, Front Royal, Winchester, Harper's
Ferry, Cross Keys, Port Republic! Yaaaih! Yaaaaaihh!' 'Hello, you damned
Cohees! 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 best
gun'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 in
the flesh!--Oh, we're going to halt. You halted, too?--Regular love
feast, by jiminy! Got any tobacco?"
A particularly ragged private, having gained permission from his
officer, came up to the sycamore beneath which his own colonel and the
colonel of the 65th were exchanging courtesies. The former glanced his
way. "Oh, Cary! Oh, yes, you two are kin--I remember. Well, colonel, I'm
waiting for orders, as you are. Morally sure we're in for an awful
scrap. Got a real respect for Fitz John Porter. McClellan's got this
army trained, too, till it isn't any more like the rabble at Manassas
than a grub's like a butterfly! Mighty fine fighting machine now. Fitz
John's got our old friend Sykes and the Regulars. That doesn't mean what
it did at Manassas--eh? We're all Regulars now, ourselves.--Yes, Cold
Harbour, I reckon, or maybe a little this way--Gaines's Mill. That's
their second line. Wonderful breastworks. Mac's a master engineer!--Now
I'll clear out and let you and Cary talk."
The two cousins sat down on the grass beneath the sycamore. For a little
they eyed each other in silence. Edward Cary was more beautiful than
ever, and apparently happy, though one of his shoes was nothing more
than a sandal, and he was innocent of a collar, and his sleeve demanded
a patch. He was thin, bright-eyed, and bronzed, and he handled his rifle
with lazy expertness, and he looked at his cousin with a genuine respect
and liking. "Richard, I heard about Will. I know you were like a father
to 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 like
his cousin, though not ragged. Dundee grazed at hand, and scattered upon