The Long Roll
nook a part of a high railroad bridge. The gaunt trestle ran out past
midstream, then stopped, all the portion toward the northern shore
burned away. It stood against the intensely lit sky and stream like the
skeleton of some antediluvian monster, then vanished into Stygian
darkness. The thunder crashed at once, an ear-splitting clap followed by
long reverberations. As these died, in the span of silence before should
come the next flash and crash, Steve became conscious of another sound,
dull and distant at first, then nearer and rushingly loud. "Train on the
track down there! What in hell--It can't cross!" He stood up, held by a
sapling, and craned his neck to look up the river. A great flash showed
the bridge again. "Must be Yankees still about here--last of the
rearguard we've been fighting. What they doing with the train? They must
have burned the bridge themselves! Gawd!"
A wildly vivid orange flash lit water, wood and sky, and the gaunt half
of a bridge, stopping dead short in the middle of the Chickahominy. The
thunder crashed and rolled, then out of that sound grew another--the
noise of a rushing train. Something huge and dark roared from the wooded
banks out upon the bridge. It belched black smoke mingled with sparks;
behind it were cars, and these were burning. The whole came full upon
the broken bridge. It swayed beneath the weight; but before it could
fall, and before the roaring engine reached the gap, the flames of the
kindled cars touched the huge stores of ammunition sent thus to
destruction by the retreating column. In the night, over the
Chickahominy, occurred a rending and awful explosion.... Steve, coming
to himself, rose to his knees in the black mire. The lightning flashed,
and he stared with a contorted face. The bridge, too, was gone. There
was only the churned water, filled with scantlings and torn branches of
trees. The rain was falling, a great hissing sweep of rain, and the wind
howled beneath the thunder. Steve turned blindly; he did not know where
he was going, but he had a conviction that the river was rising and
would come after him. A hundred yards from the water, in the midnight
wood, as he hurried over earth that the rain was fast turning into
morass, he stumbled over some obstacle and fell. Putting out his hands,
they came flat against a dead man's face. He rose and fled with a
screech, southwardly now, in the direction of White Oak Swamp.
CHAPTER XXXV
WHITE OAK SWAMP
The Grapevine Bridge being at last rebuilt, Stonewall Jackson's fourteen
brigades crossed the Chickahominy, the movement occupying a great part
of the night. Dawn of the thirtieth found the advance at Savage Station.
The storm in the night had swelled the myriad creeks, and extended all
morasses. The roads were mud, the wild tangles of underwood held water
like a sponge. But the dawn was glorious, with carmine and purple towers
and the coolest fresh-washed purity of air and light. Major-General
Richard Ewell, riding at the head of his division, opined that it was as
clear as the plains. A reconnoitring party brought him news about
something or other to the eastward. He jerked his head, swore
reflectively, and asked where was "Old Jackson."
"He rode ahead, sir, to speak to General Magruder."
"Well, you go, Nelson, and tell him--No, you go, Major Stafford."
Stafford went, riding through the cool, high glory of the morning. He
found Jackson and Magruder at the edge of the peach orchard. All around
were Magruder's troops, and every man's head was turned toward the stark
and dust-hued figure on the dust-hued nag. The first had come from the
Valley with a towering reputation, nor indeed did the last lack bards to
sing of him. Whatever tarn cap the one had worn during the past three
days, however bewildering had been his inaction, his reputation held.
This was Jackson.... There must have been some good reason ... this was
Stonewall Jackson. Magruder's brigades cheered him vehemently, and he
looked at them unsmiling, with a mere motion of his hand toward the
rusty old cadet cap. Magruder, magnificently soldierly, with much of
manner and rich colour, magnanimously forgetful this morning of "other
important duties" and affably debonair though his eyelids dropped for
want of sleep, came gradually to halt in his fluent speech.--"Weally,
you can't talk forever to a potht! If thilenthe be golden he ith the
heavietht weight of hith time."--Jackson gathered up his reins, nodded
and rode off, the troops cheering as he went by.
Stafford, coming up with him, saluted and gave his message. Jackson
received it with impassivity and rode on. Conceiving it to be his duty
to attend an answer, the staff officer accompanied him, though a little
in the rear. Here were an aide and a courier, and the three rode
silently behind their silent chief. At the Williamsburg road there came
a halt. Jackson checked Little Sorrel, and sat looking toward Richmond.
Down the road, in the sunrise light, came at a canter a knot of horsemen
handsomely mounted and equipped, the one in front tall and riding an
iron-grey. Stafford recognized the commander-in-chief. Jackson sat very
still, beneath a honey locust. The night before, in a wood hard by, the
17th Mississippi had run into a Federal brigade. The latter had fired,
at point blank, a withering volley. Many a tall Mississippian had
fallen. Now in the early light their fellow soldiers had gone seeking
them in the wood, drawn them forth, and laid them in a row in the wet
sedge beside the road. Nearly every man had been shot through the brain.
They lay ghastly, open-eyed, wet with rain, staring at the cool and pure
concave of the sky. Two or three soldiers were moving slowly up and down
the line, bent on identifications. Presumably Jackson was aware of that
company of the dead, but their presence could not be said to disturb
him. He sat with his large hands folded over the saddle-bow, with the
forage cap cutting all but one blue-grey gleam of his eyes, still as
stone wall or mountain or the dead across the way. As the horsemen came
nearer his lips parted. "That is General Lee?"
"Yes, general."
"Good!"
Lee's staff halted; Lee himself came on, checked the iron-grey,
dismounted, and walked toward the honey locust. Jackson swung himself
stiffly out of the saddle and stepped forward. The two met. Lee
stretched out his hand, said something in his gracious voice. The
piteous row of dead men, with their open eyes, caught his glance. He
drew his brows together, pressed his lips hard, parted them in a sigh
and went on with his speech. The two men, so different in aspect, talked
not long together. The staff could not hear what was said, but Lee spoke
the most and very earnestly. Jackson nodded, said, "Good!" several
times, and once, "It is in God's hands, General Lee!"
The courier holding Traveller brought him up. Lee mounted, tarried, a
great and gallant figure, a moment longer, then rode toward Magruder at
the peach orchard. His staff followed, saluting Stonewall Jackson as
they passed. He, too, remounted in his stiff and awkward fashion, and
turned Little Sorrel's head down the Williamsburg road. Behind him now,
in the clear bright morning, could be heard the tramp of his brigades.
Stafford pushed his horse level with the sorrel. "Your pardon, general,
but may I ask if there's any order for General Ewell--"
"There is none, sir."
"Then shall I return?"
"No, you will wait, sir. From the cross-roads I may send directions."
They rode on by wood and field. Overhead was a clear, high, azure sky;
no clouds, but many black sailing specks. Around, on the sandy road, and
in the shaggy, bordering growth, were witnesses enough to the Federal
retreat--a confused medley of abandoned objects. Broken and half-burned
wagons appeared, like wreckage from a storm. There did not lack dead or
dying horses, nor, here and there, dead or wounded men. In the thicker
woods or wandering through the ruined fields appeared, forlornly,
stragglers from the Federal column. D. H. Hill, leading the grey
advance, swept up hundreds of these. From every direction spirals of
smoke rose into the crystal air,--barns and farmhouses, mills, fences,
hayricks, and monster heaps of Federal stores set on fire in that
memorable "change of base." For all the sunshine of the June morning,
the rain-washed air, the singing birds in the jewelled green of the
forest, there was something in the time and place inexpressibly sinister
and sad.
Or so thought Maury Stafford, riding silently with the aide and the
courier. At Gaines's Mill he had won emphatic praise for a cool and
daring ride across the battlefield, and for the quick rallying and
leading into action of a command whose officers were all down. With
Ewell at Dispatch Station, he had volunteered for duty at the crossing
of the Chickahominy, and in a hand-to-hand fight with a retiring Federal
regiment he and his detachment had acquitted themselves supremely well.
As far as this warfare went, he had reason to be satisfied. But he was
not so, and as he rode he thought the morning scene of a twilight
dreariness. He had no enthusiasm for war. In every aspect of life, save
one, that he dealt with, he carried a cool and level head, and he
thought war barbarous and its waste a great tragedy. Martial music and
earth-shaking charges moved him for a moment, as they moved others for
an hour or a day. The old, instinctive response passed with swiftness,
and he settled to the base of a steadfast conclusion that humanity
turned aside to the jungle many times too often in a century. That,
individually, he had turned into a certain other allied jungle, he was
conscious--not sardonically conscious, for here all his judgment was
warped, but conscious. His mind ranged in this jungle with an unhappy
fury hardly modern.
As he rode he looked toward Richmond. He knew, though he scarcely knew
how he knew, that Judith Cary was there. He had himself meant to ride to
Richmond that idle twenty-eighth. Then had come the necessity of
accompanying Ewell to Dispatch Station, and his chance was gone. The
Stonewall Brigade had been idle enough.... Perhaps, the colonel of the
65th had gone.... It was a thick and bitter jungle, and he gathered
every thorn within it to himself and smelled of every poisonous flower.
The small, silent cavalcade came to a cross-roads. Jackson stopped,
sitting Little Sorrel beneath a tall, gaunt, lightning-blackened pine.
The three with him waited a few feet off. Behind them they heard the
on-coming column; D. H. Hill leading, then Jackson's own division. The
sun was above the treetops, the sky cloudless, all the forest
glistening. The minutes passed. Jackson sat like a stone. At last, from
the heavy wood pierced by the cross-road, came a rapid clatter of hoofs.
Munford appeared, behind him fifty of his cavalry. The fifty checked
their horses; the leader came on and saluted. Jackson spoke in the
peculiar voice he used when displeased. "Colonel Munford, I ordered you
to be here at sunrise."
Munford explained. "The men were much scattered, sir. They don't know
the country, and in the storm last night and the thick wood they
couldn't see their horses' ears. They had nothing to eat and--"
He came to a pause. No amount of good reasons ever for long rolled
fluently off the tongue before Jackson. He spoke now, still in the
concentrated monotony of his voice of displeasure. "Yes, sir. But,
colonel, I ordered you to be here at sunrise. Move on with your men. If
you meet the enemy drive in his pickets, and if you want artillery
Colonel Crutchfield will furnish you."
Munford moved on, his body of horse increasing in size as the lost
troopers emerged in twos and threes or singly from the forest and turned