The Long Roll
The artilleryman began to crow. "It's Lieutenant Barry and the railroad
gun! Siege piece run on a car. Iron penthouse over it, muzzle sticking
out--engine behind--"
"The Yankees skedaddle as though in haste
But this thirty-two pounder howitzer imp
It makes them halt and it makes them limp,
This railroad gun on a flat car placed."
"Hurry up there! Hurry up! Hurry! Steam's up! Coal's precious! Can't
stay here burning diamonds like this all day!"
"Come on!" said the artilleryman. "I can sit down and dig. We've got to
clear that thing away in a hurry." A shell from a hidden blue battery
burst over the working party. Steve held back. "Gawd, man, we can't do
no good! We're both lame men. If we got back a little into the wood we
could see fine. That's better than fighting--when you're all used up
like us--"
The artilleryman regarded him. "No, it isn't better than fighting. I've
been suspicioning you for some time, and I've stopped liking the company
I'm in. All the same, I'm not going to drop it. Now you trot along in
front. Being artillery I haven't a gun any more than you have, but I've
a stick, and there isn't anything in the world the matter with my arm.
It's used to handling a sponge staff. Forward! trot!"
On the other side the ruined station, on the edge of an old field,
Magruder, with him McLaws, waited for the return of a staff officer whom
he had sent to the Grapevine Bridge three miles away. The shell which
had burst over the party clearing the railroad track was but the first
of many. Concealed by the heavy woods, the guns of the Federal rearguard
opened on the grey brigades. Kershaw and Griffith, to the right of the
road, suffered most. Stephen D. Lee sent forward Carlton's battery, and
Kemper's guns came to its aid. They took position in front of the centre
and began to answer the blue guns. A courier arrived from the
skirmishers thrown out toward the dense wood. "Enemy in force and
advancing, sir. Sumner and Franklin's corps, say the scouts."
"All wight!" said Magruder. "Now if Jackthon's over, we'll cwush them
like a filbert."
The staff officer returned. "Well, thir, well, thir? Ith General
Jackthon acroth? Will he take them in the rear while I thrike
here?--Bryan, you look intolerably thober! What ith it?"
"The bridge will not be finished for two hours, sir. Two or three
infantry companies have crossed by hook or crook, but I should say it
would be morning before the whole force is over."
"Damn! Well--"
"I left my horse and got across myself, sir, and saw General Jackson--"
"Well, well, well--"
"He says, sir! 'Tell General Magruder that I have other important duties
to perform'"--
There was a dead silence. Then McLaws spoke with Roman directness. "In
my opinion there are two Jacksons. The one that came down here left the
other one in the Valley."
A great shell came with a shriek and exploded, a fragment mortally
wounding General Griffith at the head of the Mississippi brigade. The
Mississippians uttered a loud cry of anger. Carleton's battery thundered
defiantly. Magruder drew a long breath. "Well, gentlemen; philothophy to
the rethcue! If we can't bag the whole rearguard, we'll bag what we can.
General advanthe and drive them!"
Back on the railroad, in the long shadows of the late afternoon, the
working party cleared away the last layer of earth and log and stood
back happy. "Come on, you old railroad gun, and stop your blaspheming!
Should think the engine'd blush for you!"
The railroad gun puffed up, cannoneers picturesquely draped where there
was hold for foot or hand. There was a momentary pause, filled with an
interchange of affectionate oaths and criticism. The lame artilleryman
laid hold of the flat car. "Take me along, won't you, and shuck me at my
battery! Kemper's, you know. Can't I go, lieutenant?"
"Yes, yes, climb on!"
"And can't my friend here go, too? He's infantry, but he means well. He
volunteered to swim the Chickahominy, and now he wants to get back so's
he can report to Stonewall Jackson. Sh! don't deny it now. You're too
modest. Can't he go, too, lieutenant?"
"Yes, yes. Climb on! All right, Brown! Let her go!"
Kershaw, Griffith, and Semmes' brigades, advancing in line through light
and shadow, wood and clearing, came presently into touch with the enemy.
There followed a running fight, the Federals slowly retreating.
Everywhere, through wood and clearing, appeared McClellan's earthworks.
Behind these the blue made stand, but at last from line to line the grey
pressed them back. A deep cut appeared, over which ran a railroad
bridge; then woods, fields, a second ruined railroad station, beside
which were burning cars filled with quartermaster's stores; beyond these
a farmhouse, a peach orchard, and a field crossed by long rows of
hospital tents. Before the farmhouse appeared a strong Federal line of
battle, and from every little eminence the blue cannon blazed. Kershaw
charged furiously; the two lines clashed and clanged. Semmes' brigade
came into action on the right, Kemper's battery supporting. Griffith's,
now Barksdale's--joined battle with a yell, the Mississippians bent on
avenging Griffith. The air filled with smoke, the roar of guns and the
rattle of musketry. There occurred, in the late afternoon, a bloody
fight between forces not large, and fairly matched.
The engine pushing the railroad gun alternately puffed and shrieked
through dark woodland and sunset-flooded clearing. A courier appeared,
signalling with his hat. "General Magruder's there by the bridge over
the cut! Says, 'Come on!' Says, 'Cross the bridge and get into battery
in the field beyond,' Says, 'Hurry up!'"
The siege-piece and the engine hurried. With a wild rattle and roar, the
crew all yelling, black smoke everywhere, and the whistle screaming like
a new kind of shell, the whole came out of the wood upon the railroad
bridge. Instantly there burst from the blue batteries a tremendous,
raking fire. Shot and shell struck the engine, the iron penthouse roof
over the siege-piece, the flat car, the bridge itself. From the car and
the bridge slivers were torn and hurled through the air. A man was
killed, two others wounded, but engine and gun roared across. They
passed Magruder standing on the bank. "Here we are, general, here we
are! Yaaih! Yaaaih!"
"Th' you are. Don't thop here! Move down the track a little. Other
Richmond howitthers coming."
The other howitzers, four pieces, six horses to each, all in a gallop,
captain ahead, men following in a mad run, whips crackling, drivers
shouting, came all in thunder on the bridge and across. The blue shells
flew like harpies, screaming, swooping, scattering ruin. A red gleam
from the declining sun bathed the wild train. In a roar of sound the
whole cleared the bridge and plunged from the track to the level field.
_Forward into battery, left oblique, march!_
McLaws on the right, hard pressed, sent to Magruder for reinforcements.
The 13th and 21st Mississippi answered. Kershaw, supported by Semmes and
Kemper, advancing under an iron hail by deserted camp and earthwork,
ordered the 2d, 3d and 7th South Carolina to charge. They did so, with a
high, ringing cry, through the sunset wood into the fields, by the farm
and the peach orchard, where they and the blue lines stubbornly engaged.
On both sides, the artillery came furiously into action.
The long twilight faded, the stars began to show. The firing slackened,
died to occasional sullen outbursts, then to silence. On both sides the
loss was heavy; the action remained indecisive. The grey rested on the
field; the blue presently took up again their line of retreat toward
White Oak Swamp. They left in the hands of the grey their dead, several
hundred prisoners, and twenty-five hundred men in hospital. In the hot
and sultry night, dark, with presage of a storm, through a ruined
country, by the light of their own burning stores, the blue column
wound slowly on by the single road toward White Oak Swamp and its single
bridge. The grey brigades lit their small camp-fires, gathered up the
wounded, grey and blue, dug trenches for the dead, found food where they
might and went hungry where there was none, answered to roll call and
listened to the silence after many names, then lay down in field and
wood beneath the gathering clouds.
Some time between sunset and the first star Steve Dagg found himself, he
hardly knew how, crouching in a line of pawpaw bushes bordering a
shallow ravine. The clay upon his shirt and trousers made it seem
probable that he had rolled down the embankment from the railroad gun to
the level below. That he was out of breath, panting in hard painful
gasps, might indicate that he had run like a hare across the field. He
could not remember; anyhow here he was, a little out of hell, just
fringing it as it were. Lying close to earth, between the smooth pawpaw
stems, the large leaves making a night-time for him, Steve felt deadly
sick. "O Gawd! why'd I volunteer in, seein' I can't volunteer out?"
Behind him he heard the roaring of the guns, the singing of the minies.
A chance shell went over his head, dug itself into the soil at the
bottom of the ravine, and exploded. The earth came pattering upon the
pawpaw leaves. Steve curled up like a hedgehog. "O Gawd! I ain't got a
friend in the world. Why didn't I stay on Thunder Run and marry Lucinda
Heard?"
At dark the guns ceased. In the silence his nausea lessened and the
chill sweat dried upon him. He lay quiet for awhile, and then he parted
the pawpaw bushes and crept out. He looked over his shoulder at the
field of battle. "I ain't going that-a-way and meet that gunner
again--damn him to everlasting hell!" He looked across the ravine toward
the west, but a vision came to him of the hospital in the wood, and of
how the naked dead men and the severed legs and arms might stir at
night. He shivered and grew sick again. Southward? There was a glare
upon all that horizon and a sound of distant explosions. The Yankees
were sweeping through the woods that way, and they might kill him on
sight without waiting for him to explain. A grey army was also over
there,--Lee and Longstreet and A. P. Hill. He was as afraid of the grey
as of the blue; after the railroad gun he was afraid of a shadow.
Finally, he turned northward toward the Chickahominy again.
The night, so dark and hot, presently became darker by reason of masses
of clouds rising swiftly from the horizon and blotting out the stars.
They hung low, they pressed heavily, beneath them a sulphur-tainted and
breathless air. Lightnings began to flash, thunder to mutter. "Yah!"
whimpered Steve. "I'm going to get wet again! It's true. Everything's
agin me."
He came again upon the swampy margin of the Chickahominy. It was wide,
threaded by motionless waters, barred and banded with low-growing swamp
shrubs, set with enormously tall and solemn trees. Steve, creeping
between protruding roots, heard a screech owl in the distance. It cried
and cried, but then the thunder rolled more loudly and drowned its
hooting. He came flush with the dark stretch of the river. "Gawd, do I
want to get across, or do I want to stay here? I wish I was dead--no, I
don't!" He faced the lightning. "Gawd, that was jes' a mistake--don't
take any notice of it, please.--Yaaah!" He had set his foot on a log,
which gave beneath it and sank into deep water. With a screech like the
owl's he drew back and squeezed himself, trembling, between the roots of
a live-oak. He concluded that he would stay here until the dawn.
The storm drew nearer, with long lightnings and thunder that crashed and
rolled through the swamp. A vivid flash, holding a second or more,
showed the stretch of the river, and several hundred yards above Steve's