CAPTAIN COLBURNE REINFORCES THE RAVENELS IN TIME TO AID THEM IN RUNNING
AWAY.
Colburne had been two or three weeks in the hospital when he was
startled by seeing Doctor Ravenel advancing eagerly upon him with a face
full of trouble. The Doctor had heard of the young man's hurt, and as
his sensitive sympathy invariably exaggerated danger and suffering,
especially if they concerned any one whom he loved, he had imagined the
worst, and taken the first boat for New Orleans. On the other hand,
Colburne surmised from that concerned countenance that the Doctor
brought evil tidings of his daughter. Was she unhappy in her marriage,
or widowed, or dead? He laughed outright, with a sense of relief
equivalent to positive pleasure, when he learned that he alone was the
cause of Ravenel's worry.
"I am getting along famously," said he. "Ask Doctor Jackson here. I am
not sick at all above my left elbow. Below the elbow the arm seems to
belong to some other man."
The Doctor shook his head with the resolute incredulity of a man who is
too anxious not to expect the worst.
"But you can't continue to do well here. This air is infected. This
great mass of inflammation, suppuration, mortification and death, has
poisoned the atmosphere of the hospital. I scented it the moment I
entered the door. Am I not right, Dr. Jackson?"
"Just so. Can't help it. Horrid weather for cases," replied the chief
surgeon, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. "Air _is_ poisoned.
Wish to God I could get a fresh building. My patients would do better in
shanties than they will here."
"I knew it," said Ravenel. "Now then, I am a country doctor. I can take
this young man to a plantation, and give him pure air."
"That's what you want," observed Jackson, turning to Colburne. "Your arm
don't need ice now. Water will do. Better go, I think. I'll see that you
have a month's leave of absence. Come, you can go to Taylorsville, and
still not miss a chance for fighting. Tried to send him north," he
added, addressing Ravenel. "But he's foolish about it. Wants to see Port
Hudson out--what you call a knight-errant."
Colburne was in a tremble, body and soul, at the thought of meeting Mrs.
Carter; he had never been so profoundly shaken by even the actuality of
encountering Miss Ravenel. Most of us have been in love enough to
understand all about it without explanation, and to feel no wonder at
him because, after reeling mentally this way and that, he finally said,
"I will go." Now and then there is a woman who cannot bear to look upon
the man whom she has loved and lost, and who will turn quick corners and
run down side streets to escape him, haunting him spiritually perhaps,
but bodily keeping afar from him all her life. But stronger natures, who
can endure the trial, frequently go to meet it, and seem to find some
dolorous comfort in it. As regards Colburne, it may be that he would not
have gone to Taylorsville had he not been weak and feverish, and felt a
craving for that petting kindness which seems to be a necessity of
invalids.
I doubt whether the life in Ravenel's house contributed much to advance
his convalescence. His emotions were played upon too constantly and
powerfully for the highest good of the temporarily shattered instrument.
He had supposed that he would undergo one great shock on meeting Mrs.
Carter, and that then his trouble would be over. The first thrill was
not so potent as he expected; but it was succeeded by a constant unrest,
like the burning of a slow fever; he was uneasy all day and slept badly
at night. In the house he could not talk freely and gaily, because of
Lillie's presence; and out of it he could not feel with calmness,
because he was perpetually thinking of her. After all, it may have been
the splinters of bone in the arm, quite as much as the arrow in the
heart, which worried him. Of Mrs. Carter I must admit that she was not
merciful; she made the doubly-wounded Captain talk a great deal of his
Colonel. He might recite Carter's martial deeds and qualities as
lengthily as he pleased, and recommence _da capo_ to recite them over
again, not only without fatiguing her, but without exciting in her mind
a thought that he was doing any thing remarkable. She was very much
pleased, but she was not a bit grateful. Why should she be! It was
perfectly natural to her mind that people should admire the Colonel, and
talk much of his glory. Colburne performed this ill-paid task with
infinite patience, sympathy, and self-sacrificing love; and no warrior
was ever better sung in conversational epics than was Carter the
successful by Colburne the disappointed. Under the rude oppression of
this subject the bruised shrub exhaled daily sweetness. It is almost
painful to contemplate these two loving hearts: the one sending its
anxious sympathies a hundred miles away into the deadly trenches of
Port Hudson; the other pouring out its sympathies for a present object,
but covertly and without a thought of reward. If the passionate
affection of the woman is charming, the unrequited, unhoping love of the
man is sublime.
The Doctor perhaps saw what Lillie could not or would not see.
"My dear," he observed, "you must remember that Colonel Carter is not
the husband of Captain Colburne."
"Oh papa!" she answered. "Do you suppose that he doesn't like to talk
about Colonel Carter? Of course he does. He admires him, and likes him
immensely."
"I dare say--I dare say. But nevertheless you give him very large doses
of your husband."
"No, papa; not too large. He is such a good friend that I am sure he
doesn't object. Just think how unkind it would be not to want to talk
about my husband. You don't understand him if you think he is so
shabby."
Nevertheless the Doctor was partially right, and shabby as it may have
been, Colburne was no better for the conversation which so much
gratified Mrs. Carter. His arm discharged its slivers of bone and healed
steadily, but he was thin and pale, slept badly, and had a slow fever.
It must not be supposed that he wilfully brooded over his
disappointment; much less that he was angry about it or felt any desire
to avenge it. He was too sensible not to struggle against useless
pinings; too gentle-hearted and honorable to be even tempted of base or
cruel spirits. Not that he was a moral miracle; not that he was even a
marvellously bright exception to the general run of humanity; on the
contrary he was like many of us, especially when we are under the
influence of elevating emotion. Some by me forgotten author has remarked
that no earthly being is purer, more like the souls in paradise, than a
young man during his first earnest love.
At one time Colburne entirely forgot himself in his sympathy for Mrs.
Carter. When the news came of the unsuccessful and murderous assault of
the fourteenth of June, she was nearly crazy for three days because of
her uncertainty concerning the fate of her husband. She must hear
constantly from her comforters the assurance that all was undoubtedly
well; that, if the Colonel had been engaged in the fighting, he would
certainly have been named in the official report; that, if he had
received any harm, he would have been all the more sure of being
mentioned, etc., etc. Clinging as if for life to these two men, she
demanded all their strength to keep her out of the depths of despair.
Every day they went two or three times to the fort, one or other of
them, to gather information from passing boats concerning the new
tragedy. Very honestly and earnestly gratified was Colburne when he was
able to bring to Mrs. Carter a letter from her husband, written the day
after the struggle, and saying that no harm had befallen him. How that
letter was wept over, prayed over, held to a beating heart, and then to
loving lips! The house was solemn all day with that immense and
unspeakable joy.
Circumstances soon occurred which caused this lonely and anxious family
to be troubled about its own safety. To carry on the siege of Port
Hudson, Banks had been obliged to reduce the garrison of New Orleans and
of its vast exterior line of defences (a hundred miles from the city on
every side) to the lowest point consistent with safety. Meantime Taylor
reorganized the remnant of his beaten army, raised new levies by
conscription, procured reinforcements from Texas, and resumed the
offensive. Brashear City on the Atchafalaya, with its immense mass of
commissary stores, and garrison of raw Nine Months' men, was captured by
surprise. A smart little battle was fought at Lafourche Crossing, near
Thibodeaux, in which Greene's Texans charged with their usual brilliant
impetuosity, but were repulsed by our men with fearful slaughter after a
hand-to-hand struggle over the contested cannon. Nevertheless the Union
troops soon retired before superior numbers, and Greene's wild mounted
rangers were at liberty to patrol the Lafourche Interior.
"We can't stay here long," said Colburne, in the council of war in which
the family talked these matters over. "Greene will come this way sooner
or later. If he can take Fort Winthrop, he will thereby blockade the
Mississippi, cut off Banks' supplies, and force him to raise the siege
of Port Hudson. He is sure to try it sooner or later."
"Must we leave our plantation, then?" asked Ravenel in real anguish. To
lose his home, his invested capital, pigs, chickens, prospective crop of
vegetables, and, worse yet, of enlightened and ennobled negroes, was
indeed a torturing calamity. Had he known on the afternoon of that day,
that before morning the shaggy ponies and long, lank, dirty mosstroopers
of Greene's brigade would be upon him, he would not have paused to
examine the situation from so many different points of view. Colburne
knew by experience the celerity of Texan rangers; he had chased them in
forced marches from Brashear City to Alexandria without ever seeing a
tail of their horses; and yet even he indulged in a false security.
"I think we have twelve hours before us," he observed. "To-morrow
morning we shall have to get up and get, as the natives say. Still it's
my opinion--I don't believe Mrs. Carter had better stay here; she ought
to go to the fort to-night."
"Are you going, papa?" asked Mrs. Carter, who somehow was not much
alarmed.
"My dear, I must stay here till the last moment. We have so much
property here! You will have to go without me."
"Then I won't go," she answered; and so that was settled.
"_You_ ought to be off," said the Doctor to Colburne. "As a United
States officer you are sure to be kept a prisoner, if taken. I certainly
think that you ought to go."
Colburne thought so too, but would not desert his friends; he shrugged
his shoulders in spirit and resolved to endure what might come. The
negroes were in a state of exquisite alarm. The entire black population
of the Lafourche Interior was making for the swamps or other places of
shelter; and only the love of the Ravenel gang for their good massa and
beautiful missus kept them from being swept away by the contagious
current. The horror with which they regarded the possibility of being
returned into slavery delighted the Doctor, who, even in those
circumstances, dilated enthusiastically upon it as a proof that the race
was capable of high aspirations.
"They have already acquired the love of individual liberty," said this
amiable optimist. "The cognate love of liberty in the abstract, the
liberty of all men, is not far ahead of them. How superior they already
are to the white wretches who are fighting to send them back to
slavery!--Shedding blood, their own and their brothers', for slavery! Is
it not utterly amazing? Risking life and taking life to restore slavery!
It is the foolishest, wickedest, most demoniacal infatuation that ever
possessed humanity. The Inquisition, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew,
were common sense and evangelical mercy compared to this pro-slavery
rebellion. And yet these imps of atrocity pretend to be Christians. They
are the most orthodox creatures that ever served the devil. They rant
and roar in the Methodist camp-meetings; they dogmatize on the doctrines
in the Presbyterian church; they make the responses in the Episcopal
liturgy. There is only one pinnacle of hypocrisy that they never have
had the audacity to mount. They have not yet brought themselves to make
the continuance and spread of slavery an object of prayer. It would be
logical, you know; it would be just like their impudence. I have
expected that they would come to it. I have looked forward to the time
when their hypocritical priesthood would put up bloody hands in the face
of an indignant Heaven, and say, 'O God of Justice! O Jesus, lover of
the oppressed! bless, extend and perpetuate slavery; prosper us in
selling the wife away from the husband, and the child away from the
parent; enable us to convert the blood and tears of our fellow creatures
into filthy lucre; help us to degrade man, who was made in Thine image;
and to Father, Son and Spirit be all the Glory!'--Can you imagine
anything more astoundingly wicked than such a petition? And yet I am
positively astonished that they have not got up monthly concerts of
prayer, and fabricated a liturgy, all pregnant with just such or similar
blasphemies. But God would not wait for them to reach this acme of
iniquity. His patience is exhausted, and He is even now bringing them to
punishment."
"They have some power left yet, as we feel to-night," said Colburne.
"Yes. I have seen an adder's head flatten and snap ten minutes after the
creature was cut in two. I dare say it might have inflicted a poisonous
wound."
"I think you had better send the hands to the fort."
"Do you anticipate such immediate danger?" inquired the Doctor, his very
spectacles expressing surprise.
"I feel uneasy every time I think of those Texans. They are fast boys.
They outmarch their own shadows sometimes, and have to wait for them to
come in after nightfall."
"I really ought to send the hands off," admitted the Doctor after a
minute of reflection. "I never could forgive myself if through my means
they should be returned to bondage."
"It would be a poor result of a freedman's labor experiment."
The Doctor went to the back door and shouted for Major Scott.
"Major," said he, "you must take all the people down to the fort as soon
as they can get ready."
"They's all ready, Marsr. They's only a waitin' for the word."
"Very well, bring them along. I'll write a note to the commandant,
asking him to take you in for the night. You can come back in the
morning if all is quiet."
"What's a gwine to come of you an' Miss Lillie?"
"Never mind that now. I will see to that presently. Bring the people
along."
In five minutes fifteen men, six women and four pickaninnies, the whole
laboring force of the plantation, were in the road before the house,
each loaded with a portion of his or her property, such as blankets,
food, and cooking utensils. The men looked anxious; the women cried
loudly with fright and grief; the pickaninnies cried because their
mothers did.
"Oh, Mars Ravenel! you'll be cotched suah," sobbed the old mamma who did
the family cooking. "Miss Lillie, do come 'long with us."
"We'se gwine to tote some o' your fixin's 'long," observed Major Scott.
"Better let him do it," said Colburne. "It may be your only chance to
save necessaries."
So the negroes added to their loads whatever seemed most valuable and
essential of the Ravenel baggage. Then Scott received the note to the
commandant of the fort, handed it to Julius, the second boss, and
remarked with dignity, "I stays with Marsr." The Major was undisguisedly
alarmed, but he had a character to sustain, and a military title to
justify. He was immediately joined in his forlorn hope by Jim the "no
'count nigger," who, being a sly and limber darkey, fleet of foot, and
familiar with swamp life, had a faith that he could wriggle out of any
danger or captivity.
"Keep them," said Colburne to Ravenel. "We shall want them as look-outs
during the night."
There was an evident hesitation in the whole gang as to whether they
should go or stay; but Colburne settled the question by pronouncing in a
tone of military command, "Forward, march!"
"Ah! they knows how to mind that sort o' talk," said Major Scott,
highly gratified with the spectacular nature of the scene. "I'se a been
eddycatin' 'em to millingtary ways. They knows a heap a'ready, they
doos."
He smiled with a simple and transitory joy, although he could hear the
voice of his wife (commonly called Mamma Major) rising in loud lament
amid the chorus of sorrow with which the women and children moved away.
The poor creature kept no grudge against her husband for his infidelity
of a month previous.
In the lonely and imperilled little household Colburne now took command.
"Since you will fight," he said smiling, "you must fight under my
orders. I am the military power, and I proclaim martial law."
He forbade the Ravenels to undress; they must be prepared to run at a
moment's notice. He laughed at the Doctor's proposition to barricade the
doors and windows, and, instead thereof, opened two or three trunks and
scattered articles of little value about the rooms. The property would
be a bait, he said, which might amuse the raiders while the family
escaped. To gratify Major Scott's tremulous enthusiasm he loaded his own
revolver and the Doctor's doubled-barreled fowling-piece, smiling sadly
to himself to think how absurd was the idea of fighting off a band of
Texans with such a feeble artillery. He posted the two negroes as a
vidette a quarter of a mile down the road, with strict orders not to
build a fire, not to sleep, not to make a noise, but in case of the
approach of a party to hasten to the house and give information. The
Major begged hard for the fowling-piece, but Colburne would not let him
have it.
"He would be worse than a Nine Months' man," he said to the Doctor. "He
would be banging away at stumps and shadows all night. There wouldn't be
a living field mouse on the plantation by morning."
The Doctor's imagination was seriously affected by these business-like
preparations, and he silently regretted that he had not gone to the
fort, or at least sent his daughter thither. Lillie, though quiet, was
very pale, and wished herself in the trenches of Port Hudson, safe under
the protection of her invincible husband. Colburne urged and finally
ordered them to lie down and try to sleep. Two mules were standing in
the yard, saddled and ready to do their part in the hegira when it
should be necessary. He examined their harness, then returned into the
house, buckled on his sword and revolver, extinguished every light, took
his seat at an open window looking towards the danger, waited and
listened. The youthful veteran was perfectly calm; notwithstanding that
he had taken more precautions than a greenhorn, however timorous, would
have thought of. Once in each hour he visited the negroes to see if they
were awake; then mounted the levee to listen for tramp of men or horses
across the bayou; then went to the sugar-house and listened towards the
woods which backed the plantation; then resumed his silent watch at the
open window. At two o'clock the moon still poured a pale light over the
flat landscape. Colburne, feverish with fatigue, want of sleep, and the
small remainder of irritation in his wound, was just saying to himself,
"We _must_ go to-morrow," when he saw two dark forms glide rapidly
towards the house under cover of a fence, and rush crouching across the
door-yard. Without waiting to hear what the negroes had to say, he
stepped into the parlor and awoke the two sleepers on the sofas.
"What is the matter?" gasped the Doctor, with the wild air common to
people startled out of an anxious slumber.
"Perhaps nothing," answered Colburne. "Only be ready."
By this time the two videttes were in the house, breathless with running
and alarm.
"Oh, Cap'm! they's a comin'," whispered Scott. "They's a comin' right
smart. We heerd the hosses. They's a quarter mile off, mebbe; but
they's a comin' right smart. Oh Cap'm, please give me the double-barril
gun. I wants to fight for my liberty an' for Mars Ravenel an' for Miss
Lillie."
"Take it," said Colburne. "Now then, Doctor, you and Jim will hurry Mrs.
Carter directly down the road to the fort. Jim can keep up on foot. The
Major and I will go to the woods, fire from there, and draw the enemy in
that direction."
Every one obeyed him without a word. The approaching tramp of horses was
distinctly audible at the house when the Ravenels mounted the mules and
set off at a lumbering trot, the animals being urged forward by
resounding whacks from Jim's bludgeon. Colburne scowled and grated his
teeth with impatience and vexation.
"I ought to have sent them away last evening," he muttered with a throb
of self-reproach.
"Scott, you and I will have to fight," he said aloud. "They never can
escape unless we keep the rascals here. We must fire once from the
house; then run to the woods and fire again there. We must show
ourselves men now."
"Yes, Mars Cap'm," replied the Major. His voice was tremulous, and his
whole frame shook, but he was nevertheless ready to die, if need be, for
his liberty and his benefactors. Of physical courage the poor fellow had
little; but in moral courage he was at this moment sublime.
Colburne posted himself and his comrade at a back corner of the house,
where they could obtain a view of the road which led toward Thibodeaux.
"Now, Scott," he said, "you must not fire until I have fired. You must
not fire until you have taken aim at somebody. You must fire only one
barrel. Then you must make for the woods along the line of this fence.
If they follow us on horseback we can bother them by dodging over the
fence now and then. If they catch us, we must fight as long as we can.
Cheer up, old fellow. It's all right. It's not bad business as soon as
you're used to it."
"Cap'm, I'se ready," answered Scott solemnly. "I'se not gwine for ter be
cotched alive."
Then he prayed for some minutes in a low whisper, while Colburne stood
at the corner and watched. "Watch and pray," the latter repeated to
himself, smiling inwardly at the odd compliance with the double
injunction, so strangely does the mind work on such occasions. It was
not a deliberate process of intellection with him; it was an instinctive
flash of ideas, not traceable to any feeling which was in him at the
time; on the contrary, his prevailing emotion was one of extreme
anxiety. The tramp which fled toward the fort gently diminished in the
distance, while the tramp which approached from the opposite side grew
nearer and louder. When the advancing horsemen got within a hundred
yards of the house, they slackened their pace to a walk, and finally
halted, probably to listen. Some of them must have dismounted at this
time, for Colburne suddenly beheld four footmen at the front gate. He
scowled at this sign of experienced caution, and gave a hasty glance
toward the garden in his rear, to see if others were not cutting off his
retreat. He could not discover the features of any of the four, but he
could see that they were of the tall and lank Texan type, dressed in
brownish clothing, and provided with short guns, no doubt
double-barreled fowling-pieces. Inside of the gate they halted and
seemed to hearken, while one of them pointed up the road toward the
fort, and whispered to his comrades. Colburne had hoped that they would
get into the house, and fall to plundering; but they had evidently
overheard the fugitives, for there was a simultaneous backward movement
in the group--they were going to remount and pursue. Now was his time,
if ever, to effect the proposed diversion. Aiming his six-inch revolver
at the tallest, he fired a single barrel. The man yelled a curse,
staggered, dropped his gun, and leaned against the fence. Two of his
comrades sprang across the road, and threw themselves behind the levee
as a breast-work, while the fourth, all grit, turned short and brought
his fowling-piece to a level as Colburne drew behind his cover. In that
same moment, Major Scott, wild with a sudden madness of conflict,
shouted like a lion, bounded beyond the angle of the house, planting
himself on two feet set wide apart, his mad black face set toward the
enemy, and his gun aimed. Both fired at the same instant, and both fell
together, probably alike lifeless. The last prayer of the negro was, "My
God!" and the last curse of the rebel was "Damnation!"
By the light of the moon Colburne looked at his comrade, and saw the
brains following the blood from a hole in the centre of his forehead. He
cast a glance at the levee, fired one more barrel at a broad-brimmed hat
which rose above it, listened for a second to an advancing rush of hoofs
in order to decide whether it came by the road or by the fields, turned,
crossed the garden on a noiseless run, placed himself on the further
side of a high and close plantation-fence, and followed its cover
rapidly toward the forest. The distance was less than a quarter of a
mile, but he was quite breathless and faint before he had traversed it,
so weak was he still, and so little accustomed to exercise. In the edge
of the wood he sat down on a fallen and mouldering trunk to listen. If
the cavalry were pursuing their course up the road, they were doing it
very prudently and slowly, for he could hear no more trampling of
horses. Tolerably satisfied as to the safety of the Ravenels, he
reloaded his two empty barrels, settled his course in his mind, and
pushed as straight as he could for Taylorsville without quitting the
cover of the forest. Although the fort was not four miles away in a
direct line, it was daybreak when he came in sight of a low flattened
outline, as of a truncated mound, which showed dimly through the
yellowish morning mist. He had still to cross a dead level of four or
five hundred yards, with no points of shelter but three small wooden
houses. At this moment, when safety seemed so near and sure, he saw on
the bayou road, two hundred yards to his right, half a dozen black and
indistinct bunches moving in a direction parallel to his own. They were
unquestionably horsemen going toward the fort, and nearer to it than he.
Changing his direction, he made straight for the river, struck it above
the fortification, and got behind the levee, thus securing both a
covered way to hide his course, and an earthwork from behind which he
could fight. He lost no time in peeping over the top of the mound, but
pushed ahead at his best speed, supposing that no cavalry scouts would
dare approach very near to a garrison supplied with artillery. He could
see a sentry pacing the ramparts, the dark uniform showing clear against
the grey sky beyond. He even thought that the man perceived him, and
supposed that his dangers were over for the present. He was full of
exhilaration, and glanced back at the events of the night with a sense
of satisfaction, taking it all for granted with a resolute faith of
satisfaction, that the Ravenels had escaped. Major Scott was dead; he
was really quite sorry for that; but then two Texans had been killed, or
at least disabled; the war was so much nearer its close. In a small way
he felt much as a general does who has effected a masterly retreat, and
inflicted severe loss upon the pursuing enemy.
Presently a break in the bank forced him to mount the levee. As he
reached the top he stared in astonishment and some dismay at a man in
butternut-colored clothing, mounted on a rough pony, with the
double-barreled gun of Greene's mosstroopers across his saddle-bow, who
was posted on the road not forty feet distant. The Butternut immediately
said, in the pleasant way current in armies, "Halt, you son of a bitch!"
He fired, but missed, as Colburne skirted the break on a run, and sprang
again behind the levee. The Captain then fired in return, with no other
effect than to make the Butternut gallop beyond revolver range. From
this distance he called out, ironically, "I say, Yank, have you heard
from Brashear City?"
Colburne made no reply, but continued his retreat unmolested. When the
sentinel challenged, "Halt! who comes there?" he thought he had never
heard a pleasanter welcome.
"Friend," he answered.
"Halt, friend! Corporal of the guard, number five," shouted the sentry.
The corporal appeared, recognized Colburne, and let him in through the
gate in a palisade which connected one angle of the fort with the river.
The garrison was already under arms, and the men were lying down behind
the low works, with their equipments on and their muskets by their
sides. The first person from the plantation whom Colburne saw was Mauma
Major.
"Where is Mrs. Carter, aunty?" he asked.
"They's all here, bress the Lord! And now you's come!" shouted the good
fat creature, clapping her hands with delight. "Whar my ole man?"
"In heaven," said Colburne, with a solemn tenderness which carried
instant conviction. The woman screamed, and went down upon her knees
with an air and face of such anguish as might cast shame upon those
philosophers as have asserted that the negro is not a man.
"Oh! the Lord gave! The Lord gave!" she repeated, wildly.
Perhaps she had forgotten, perhaps she never knew, the remainder of the
text; but its piteous sense of bereavement, and of more than human
consolation, was evidently clear in some manner to her soul.