The Long Roll
Yorktown. The head of his column was set for the James, for Harrison's
Landing and the gunboats. There were twenty-five difficult miles to go.
He had something like a hundred thousand men. He had five thousand
wagons, heavy artillery trains, enormous stores, a rabble of camp
followers, a vast, melancholy freight of sick and wounded. He left his
camps and burned his depots, and plunged into the heavy, still, and
torrid forest. This Sunday morning, the twenty-ninth, the entrenchments
before Richmond, skilful, elaborate pieces of engineering, were found by
Magruder's and Huger's scouts deserted by all but the dead and a few
score of sick and wounded, too far gone to be moved. Later, columns of
smoke, rising from various quarters of the forest, betrayed other
burning camps or depots. This was followed by tidings which served to
make his destination certain. He was striking down toward White Oak
Swamp. There the defeated right, coming from the Chickahominy, would
join him, and the entire great force move toward the James. Lee issued
his orders. Magruder with Huger pursued by the Williamsburg road. A. P.
Hill and Longstreet, leaving the battlefield of the twenty-seventh,
crossed the Chickahominy by the New Bridge, passed behind Magruder, and
took the Darbytown road. A courier, dispatched to Ewell, ordered him to
rejoin Jackson. The latter was directed to cross the Chickahominy with
all his force by the Grapevine Bridge, and to pursue with eagerness. He
had the directest, shortest road; immediately before him the corps which
had been defeated at Gaines's Mill. With D. H. Hill, with Whiting and
Lawton, he had now fourteen brigades--say twenty thousand men.
The hours passed in languid sunshine on the north bank of the
Chickahominy. The troops were under arms, but the bridge was not
finished. The smoke and sound of the rival batteries, the crack of the
hidden rifles on the southern side, concerned only those immediately at
issue and the doggedly working pioneers. Mere casual cannonading,
amusement of sharpshooters, no longer possessed the slightest tang of
novelty. Where the operation was petty, and a man in no extreme personal
danger, he could not be expected to be much interested. The troops
yawned; some of the men slept; others fretted. "Why can't we swim the
damned old trough? They'll get away! Thank the Lord, I wasn't born in
Tidewater Virginia! Oh, I'd like to see the Shenandoah!"
The 65th Virginia occupied a rise of sandy ground covered with hazel
bushes. Company A had the brink of it, looking out toward the enormously
tall trees towering erect from the river's margin of swamp. The hazel
bushes gave little shade and kept off the air, the blue above was
intense, the buzzards sailing. Muskets were stacked, the men sprawling
at ease. A private, who at home was a Sunday School superintendent, read
his Bible; another, a lawyer, tickled a hop toad with a spear of grass;
another, a blacksmith, rebound the injured ankle of a schoolboy. Some
slept, snoring in the scanty shade; some compared diaries or related,
scrappily enough, battle experiences. "Yes, and Robinson was scouting,
and he was close to Garland's line, and, gosh! he said it was short
enough! And Garland rode along it, and he said, said he, 'Boys, you are
not many, but you are a noble few.'" Some listened to the booming of the
sparring batteries; two or three who had lost close friends or kinsmen
moped aside. The frank sympathy of all for these made itself apparent.
The shadiest hazel bushes unobtrusively came into their possession;
there was an evident intention of seeing that they got the best fare
when dinner was called; a collection of tobacco had been taken and
quietly pushed their way. Some examined knapsack and haversacks, good
oilcloths, belts, rolled blankets, canteens, cartridge-boxes and
cartridges, picked up upon the road. Others seriously did incline to
search for certain intruders along the seams of shirt and trousers;
others merely lay on their backs and looked up into Heaven. Billy Maydew
was one of these, and Steve Dagg overturned the contents of a knapsack.
It was well filled, but with things Steve did not want. "O Gawd! picters
and pincushions and Testaments with United States flags in them--I never
did have any luck, anyhow!--in this here war nor on Thunder Run
neither!"
Dave Maydew rolled over. "Steve says Thunder Run didn't like him--Gosh!
what's a-going to happen ef Steve takes to telling the truth?"
Sergeant Coffin turned from contemplation of a bursting shell above the
Grapevine crossing. "If anybody finds any letter-paper and doesn't want
it--"
A chorus arose. "Sorry we haven't got any!"--"I have got some--lovely!
But I've got a girl, too."--"Sorry, sergeant, but it isn't pale blue,
scented with forget-me-nots."--"Just _think_ her a letter--think it out
loud! Wait, I'll show you how. _Darling Chloe_--Don't get angry! He's
most gotten over getting angry and it becomes him beautifully--_Darling
Chloe_--What're _you_ coming into it for, Billy Maydew? 'Don't tease
him!'--My son, he loves to be teased. All lovers love to be teased.
_Darling Chloe._ It is Sunday morning. The swans are warbling your name
and so are half a dozen pesky Yankee Parrotts. The gentle zephyrs speak
of thee, and so does the hot simoom that blows from Chickahominy,
bringing an inordinate number of mosquitoes. I behold thy sinuous grace
in the curls of smoke from Reilly's battery, and also in the slide and
swoop of black buzzards over a multitude of dead horses in the woods.
Darling Chloe, we are stranded on an ant heap which down here they call
a hill, and why in hell we don't swim the river is more than at the
moment I can tell you. It's rumoured that Old Jack's attending church in
the neighbourhood, but we are left outside to praise God from whom all
blessings flow. Darling Chloe, this company is not so unpopular with me
as once it was. War is teaching it a damned lot, good temper and pretty
ways and what not--It is teaching it! Who says it is not?--Darling
Chloe, if you could see how long and lean and brown we are and how
ragged we are and how lousy--Of course, of course, sergeant, you're not!
Only the high private in the rear rank is, and even he says he's
not--Darling Chloe, if I could rise like one of those damned crows down
there and sail over these damned flats and drop at your feet in God's
country beyond the mountains, you wouldn't walk to church to-day with
me. You'd turn up your pretty little nose, and accept the arm of some
damned bombproof--Look out! What's the matter here? 'The last straw!
shan't slander her!'--I'm not slandering her. I don't believe either
she'd do it. Needn't all of you look so glum! I'll take it back. We
know, God bless every last woman of them, that they don't do it! They
haven't got any more use for a bombproof than we have!--I can't retract
handsomer than that!--Darling Chloe, the Company's grown amiable, but it
don't think much so far of its part in this campaign. Heretofore in
tableaux and amateur theatricals it has had a star role, and in this
damned Richmond play it's nothing but a walking shadow! Darling Chloe,
we want somebody to whoop things up. We demand the centre of the
stage--"
It was so hot on the little sandy hill that there was much straggling
down through the woods to some one of the mesh of water-courses. The men
nearest Steve were all turned toward the discourser to Chloe, who sat on
a lift of sand, cross-legged like an Eastern scribe. Mathew Coffin, near
him, looked half pleased, half sulky at the teasing. Since Port Republic
he was a better-liked non-commissioned officer. Billy Maydew, again flat
on his back, stared at the blue sky. Steve stole a tin cup and slipped
quietly off through the hazel bushes.
He found a muddy runlet straying off from the river and quenched his
thirst, then, turning, surveyed through the trees the hump of earth he
had left and the company upon it. Beyond it were other companies, the
regiment, the brigade. Out there it was hot and glaring, in here there
was black, cool, miry loam, shade and water. Steve was a Sybarite born,
and he lingered here. He didn't mean to straggle, for he was afraid of
this country and afraid now of his colonel; he merely lingered and
roamed about a little, beneath the immensely tall trees and in the thick
undergrowth. In doing this he presently came, over quaking soil and
between the knees of cypresses, flush with the Chickahominy itself. He
sat down, took his own knees in his arms and looked at it. It was not so
wide, but it looked stiller than the sky, and bottomless. The banks were
so low that the least rain lifted it over. It strayed now, here and
there, between tree roots. There was no such word as "sinister" in
Steve's vocabulary. He only said, "Gawd! I wouldn't live here for
choice!" The country across the stream engaged his attention. Seen from
this bank it appeared all forest clad, but where his own existence from
moment to moment was in question Steve could read the signboards as well
as another. Certain distant, southward moving, yellowish streaks he
pronounced dust clouds. There were roads beneath, and moving troops and
wagon trains. He counted four columns of smoke of varying thickness. The
heavier meant a cluster of buildings, holding stores probably, the
thinner some farmhouse or barn or mill. From other signs he divined that
there were clearings over there, and that the blue troops were burning
hayricks and fences as well as buildings. Sound, too--it seemed deathly
still here on the brim of this dead water, and yet there was sound--the
batteries, of course, down the stream where they built the bridge, but
also a dull, low, dreary murmur from across,--from the thick forest and
the lost roads, and the swamps through which guns were dragged; from the
clearings, the corn and wheat fields, the burning depots and encampments
and houses of the people--the sound of a hostile army rising from the
country where two months before it had settled. All was blended; there
came simply a whirring murmur out of the forest beyond the Chickahominy.
Steve rose, yawned, and began again to prowl. Every rood of this region
had been in possession of that humming army over there. All manner of
desirable articles were being picked up. Orders were strict. Weapons,
even injured weapons, ammunition, even half-spoiled ammunition,
gun-barrels, ramrods, bayonets, cartridge-boxes, belts--all these must
be turned in to the field ordnance officer. The South gleaned her
battlefields of every ounce of lead or iron, every weapon or part of a
weapon, every manufactured article of war. This done, the men might
appropriate or themselves distribute apparel, food, or other matters.
Steve, wandering now, his eyes on earth, saw nothing. The black wet
soil, the gnarled roots, the gloomy meanders of the stream, looked
terribly lonely. "Gawd! even the water-rats don't come here!" thought
Steve, and on his way back to the hill entered a thicket of low bushes
with shiny green leaves. Here he all but stumbled over a dead soldier in
a blue uniform. He lay on his face, arms out, hands clutching at some
reed-like grass. His rifle was beside him, haversack--all undisturbed.
"Picket," said Steve. "O Gawd, ain't war glorious?"
Not at all without imagination, he had no fondness for touching dead
men, but there were several things about this one that he wanted. He saw
that the shoes wouldn't fit, and so he left them alone. His own rifle
was back there, stacked with the others on the hot hillside, and he had
no intention of bothering with this one. If the ordnance officer wanted
it, let him come himself and get it! He exchanged cartridge-boxes, and
took the other's rolled oilcloth, and then he looked into the haversack.