Drake Talcott, a Union prisoner, marched with other prisoners
seventy-five miles to Danville, on thirteen crackers. They travelled
from there to Andersonville, six days by rail, on four crackers a day,
and, as a consequence of the rations, came in due course of time to a
general sense of emptiness, and an incorrigible tendency to think of
roast beef, boiled chicken, fried oysters, and other like dainties; and
many of the prisoners, after battling awhile with the emptiness and the
mental tendency, fell down exhausted, and were stowed away in the wagons
following on in the rear of the train. But Talcott, though with youth
and the brawn and muscle and lusty craving vitality of an athlete
against him in the cracker point of view, possessed likewise a mighty
will, and a stubborn, tenacious endurance, nowise weakened by the
discipline of two years of camp and battle; and not only marched with
courage and elasticity, but actually set himself, out of the abundance
of his resources, to spur the flagging spirits of his comrades, as they
huddled in disconsolate confusion about the little station at
Andersonville.
"Boys," said our orator, "the Rebels keep their best generals for their
Home Guard. Lee and Early, and the rest of the crew, are lambs and
sucking doves to Generals Starvation, Wear-'em-out, and
Grumble,--especially that last-named fellow, who is the worst of the
three, because he comes under our own colors, and we feel shy about
firing on our own men. I believe we are all too apt to think that
muscles are the vital forces, and that man lives by beef; but, boys,
muscles are only hammers, and it takes a thought to raise them; and
though beef is good eating, and we should all like a slice uncommonly,
let me tell you, when it isn't to be had, that _backbone_ is the next
thing to it, and it is surprising how long a man can live on it. For it
is the brain that is the commander-in-chief, and does the strategy and
the planning for this precious life that we all set such store by,--the
brain, that I used to think a lazy bummer, that lived at the stomach's
expense; and when the quartermaster--that's the stomach--telegraphs up
that he's fairly cleaned out, not a half-ration left, says our little
commander, cool and calm, 'Serve out grit and backbone to the troops,
and send out the senses on a scout.' And, men, if you've got the grit,
and keep on the sharp look-out, you are likely to get on; but shut down
on grumbling,--that's a luxury for fellows that get three meals a day;
for while you are busy about that, Starvation and Wear-'em-out will sail
in at you, and once you get weak in the knees, and limp in the back, and
dizzy in the head, you're played out. Remember, we aren't going to Belle
Isle. I don't know anything about Andersonville, but it can't be so bad
as that hole."
The men cheered. Up came an officer on the double-quick.
"What's the row about now? You Yankees are always chattering like
crows."
"So you scarecrows come to look after us," retorted Drake, quick as
light: at which poor piece of wit the soldiers were pleased to laugh
vociferously,--the irritating laugh that assumes your defeat, without
granting you a hearing,--before which the man in authority, not having
the art of looking like a fool with propriety, retreated, reddening and
snarling, but turned on the platform of the cars, and flung back this
Parthian arrow at the laughing Yankees:--
"You're a bad lot of men, saucy as the Devil; but I reckon you'll get
the impudence taken out of you here, d----d quick!"
"It is all you have left them to take, anyhow," said a voice,--and
"That's so," chorused the crowd; and the whistle sounding, the Captain,
whose reign was over, departed, hard-hit and growling, but left, so to
speak, his sting behind him: for the last of his speech had one terrible
merit,--it was true.
The prisoners, over a thousand strong, were formed in line and ordered
to march. As they tramped along the dusty road, they strained their
eyes, eagerly, but furtively, for the first show of their prison. Seeing
tents on the left, there was a little stir among them, but that proved
to be a Rebel camp; then some one spied heights topped with cannon, and
"Now," said they, "we are close upon it," and then stopped short for
wonder, for here the road ended, ran butt against the wall of a huge
roofless inclosure, made of squared pines set perpendicularly and close
together in the ground.
"Is it a pen?" asked one, doubtfully.
"Yes, yours," retorted one of the guard, with a grin,--"the Stockade
Prison."
The word ran down the line like a shiver, and the men stood mute, eying
each other doubtfully. And now, if I could, I would get at your hearts,
you who read this, and you should not read mistily, and hold the story
at loose ends as it were, but feel by the answering throb within
yourselves what thoughts gnawed at the hearts of these men under their
brave show of indifference: for though these be facts, facts written are
disembodied, and, like spirits, have no power to speak to you, unless
you give them the voice of your sympathy; and without that, I question
which touches you most deeply, a thousand rats following the Pied Piper
of Hamelin, and wondering, as he neared the wharves, where the Deuse
they were going, or the thousand Union soldiers standing stunned before
a gate from which should have wailed forth, as they filed through,
"_Leave all hope behind!_"
They were hardly in, when there was a scramble, and a cry of "Rations!"
and came lumbering a train of wagons, bringing the day's supplies. There
were at this time under torture twenty-eight thousand prisoners,--more
than the population of Hartford; and as the Southern Confederacy, a
Christian association, and conducting itself with many appeals to
Christian principle, believes the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb,
and so shears the Yankees as close as possible, these men had all been
formally fleeced of such worldly gear as blankets, money, and extra
clothing. Some further shearing there had been also, but irregular,
depending chiefly on the temper of the captors,--stripping them
sometimes to shirt and drawers, leaving them occasionally jacket and
shoes; so now most were barefooted, most in rags, and some had not even
rags. They had lain on the bare earth, sodden with damp or calcined into
dust, and borne storm and heat helplessly, without even the shelter of a
board, till they were burned and wasted to the likeness of haggard
ghosts; most had forgotten hope, many decency; some were dying, and
crawled over the ground with a woful persistency that it would have
broken your heart to see; they were all fasting, for the day's rations,
tossed to them the afternoon before, had been devoured, as was the
custom, at a single meal, and proved scant at that; and they crowded
wolfishly about the wagons, the most miserable, pitiable mob that ever
had mothers, wives, and sisters at home to pray for them.
The new comers looked on amazed, and "How about Belle Isle now?" they
said bitterly to Drake. He, poor fellow, was having his first despondent
chill, and sneering at himself for having it, after all his fine talk
about "backbone"; and finding reasons for despair thicken, the harder he
tried to make elbow-room for hope, till altogether confounded at the
muddle, he flung up thought, with "Brain's full and stomach's empty, and
it's ill talking between a full man and a fasting," and set about
cooking his rations. "But first catch your hare," cries Mrs. Glass.
Drake had his hare, such as it was, but found something quite as
important lacking,--wood.
"I say, my friend, where do we find fuel?" he asked of a man sitting
quietly on the ground.
"Where the Israelites found the straw for their bricks," was the answer.
"There is no special provision made, unless it be an occasional permit
to forage outside, under----Hold off there!--don't touch that, man,
unless you want to be cooked yourself for supper!--that's the 'dead
line'!"
Drake drew back from a light railing running parallel with the
inclosure, on which he had nearly laid his hand.
"What the Deuse is the dead line?"
"The new way to pay old debts, and put a Yankee out of the world cheap.
Show so much as your little finger outside of that, and the guard nails
you with a bullet; and as they like that sort of thing, they blaze away
whenever they get a chance,--which is once or twice a day,--for our men
expose themselves voluntarily. When Satan said, 'Skin for skin, yea, all
that a man hath will he give for his life,' he hadn't invented the
Stockade Prison."
The man who said these things, in a quiet, unexcited way, as if
discussing some abstraction of the schools, not murder, was too wan and
wasted, too shrunken and despairing, to afford a guess as to what manner
of man he might have been, and too unkempt and ragged for any inference
concerning his rank, having neither jacket, cap, nor shoes, matted hair
and beard, torn shirt and ragged trousers: but his look of resolved
patience, and an occasional smile while he talked, sadder than tears,
made Drake's stout heart twinge with pain. "A strong soul in a feeble
body," he said to himself, as he walked on; and furthermore, "The man
that can smile here like that is near heaven, and fit for it."
Presently he came on a farmer selling wood by the stick, price in
proportion to its size, and as many times its value as the Rebel, by
his own showing, exceeds the Yankee. Drake had money, spite of shearing
and searching. He had hidden it----But I forbear to tell of what
ingenious shift he had availed himself, for I remember, that, spite of
its well-known loyalty, the "Atlantic Monthly" runs the blockade. First
he passed the man, prudence pulling him by the sleeve, and searched
lynx-eyed for chips or twigs, over ground scoured daily, in such faint
hope as his, by thousands; but he might as well have dragged a brook for
the wreck of a seventy-four among its pebbles. Having wasted a precious
half-hour of fading daylight, he came back to the dealer to find his
stock on the rise; for the influx of new comers had produced an upward
tendency in a market sensitive as that of Wall Street. Lest it should
swell quite beyond the compass of his pocket, he made haste to
buy,--scores of meagre wretches looking anxiously on. That pitiful sight
made his heart sore again; and he hardly persuaded himself to take his
wood and be off, till he remembered the poor fellow whom he had left
resigned and hopeless, sitting quietly on the ground while all was eager
stir about him, and hurried back to the spot where he had seen him to
find him gone. He had crawled away, and was lost in that great throng.
Not to be balked entirely, Drake shared his firing with those around
him; and Virtue, in place of her usual promissory note, gave him his
reward instantly, in the shape of a tin cup belonging to one of the
party, and their sole cooking-utensil,--for the prison authorities
furnish none. His rations--a day's rations, remember--were eight ounces
of Indian meal, cob and kernel ground together, (as with us for pigs,)
and sour, (a common occurrence,) and two ounces of condemned pork (not
to appear again in our pages, as it proved too strong even for poor
Drake's hunger). He brought water in the cup from a ditch that traversed
the inclosure, and filtered it through a bit of cloth torn from his
shirt; and the meal being mixed with this water, (salt was not even
hinted at, the market price of that article being four dollars a pound
at Andersonville,) it was placed on a strip of wood before the fire, to
bake up to the half-raw point, that being the highest perfection
attainable in Drake's kitchen: for a range and a steady heat find the
baking of meal, so mixed, no easy matter. Eight ounces of meal make a
cake six inches long, five broad, and half an inch thick: that is to
say, Drake's dinner and supper for that day, and his breakfast and
dinner for the next day, were in the mass six inches long, five inches
broad, and half an inch thick. Give the figures an Indian-meal
consistency, you who are not of that order of Stoics that endures its
neighbor's sufferings without a groan. Try the experiment in your own
kitchen. One baking will carry conviction farther than batches of
statistics. Drake being famished chose to take four meals in
one,--improvident man! That done, he went to bed: quite an elaborate
arrangement, as practised among us, what with taking off of clothes, and
possibly washing and combing, and pulling up of sheets and coverlets,
and fitting of pillows to neck and shoulders; but nothing can be more
simple than the way they do it there. You just lie down wherever you
are,--and sleep, if you can. Drake could and did sleep most soundly.
This was our hero's first taste of prison-life. But a little reading and
much talk about camp-fires and behind earth-works--when there was a lull
in the storm of shot and shell--had etched out for him certain crude
theories, for which he was as ready to do battle as any other hot-headed
lad of twenty-three. "Starvation is the masked battery that plays the
Deuse with us all," he insisted; "and we must take that, or be taken
out--feet foremost. As for your '_how_,' good Incredulity and Unbelief,
where there is an end, and the will to reach it, the means are tolerably
sure to be lying around loose somewhere." But examinations for
candidates, and the hundred-pound hail, and the sharp beak of the ram
for the untried monitor, are facts for theories; and without the proof
of these, none of the three have the positive value of a skillet that
has been tried. We have Drake's theory. Here are the facts.
No cooking-utensils were allowed the prisoner; no blankets were allowed
the prisoner; no shelter of any sort was allowed the prisoner; no tools
or materials to construct a shelter were allowed the prisoner; no means
of living as a civilized man were allowed the prisoner; no way of
helping himself as a savage was allowed the prisoner. The rations were
at all times insufficient, and frequently so foul that starvation itself
could not swallow them: consequence, stomach and body weakened by a
perpetual hunger, and in many cases utter inability to retain food, good
or bad. More than that, the sluggish water-course that served as their
reservoir crept across their pen foul and thick with the _débris_ of the
Rebel camp above, and in the centre filtered through the spongy ground,
and creamed and mantled and spread out loathsomely into a hateful swamp;
and the fierce sun, beating down on its slimy surface, drew from its
festering pools and mounds of refuse a vapor of death, and the prisoners
breathed it; and the reek of unwashed and diseased bodies crowding close
on each other, and the sickening, pestilential odor of a huge camp
without sewerage or system of policing, made the air a horror, and the
prisoners breathed it.
Drake woke, stifling with the heat and horrible steam, and turning and
throwing out his arm, only yet half awake, struck on something cold and
stiff: the corpse of some poor fellow who had died there in the night
beside him. Drake, in a two years' campaign, had grown familiar with
death, but could not yet receive him as a bed-fellow, and scrambled up
in sickening horror to a day in which there was no breakfast to eat, no
arms to clean, no shoes to black, no dress to change, no work of any
sort to do, no letters to write or hope for, no books to read, no dinner
to prepare, at least till four P.M., when they served out
rations,--nothing to fix the eye, or offer subject of thought, but the
general and utter wretchedness. Nor could Drake and his fellows take
refuge in that unconscious self-gratulation with which we see the
miseries of our neighbors; for the future here threw shadows backward.
That skeleton, (I use the word not in the exaggerated sense in which we
are apt to apply it, but advisedly; and I mean a living human being,
whose skin is literally drawn over hideously projecting bones, and who,
having actually lost all rounding-out and filling of flesh, has grown
transparent, so that by holding an arm in the light you may see the
blood-vessels and the inner edges of the bones,)--this skeleton lying
there was, perhaps, what Drake should be two months hence; those men
quarrelling, hyena-like, for the "job" of burying their dead comrades,
that scarred old man moaning for a compass, because he had lost his way
and could not find the North, were not lower or more pitiful than Drake
might yet be: for stout heart and brave blood and quick brain have no
charm against famine, pestilence, and a steady pressure of misery in all
possible forms.
The majority of his comrades sank helplessly into this quaking bog. Out
of fifty captured of his regiment, Williams, a delicate lad, sickened at
once; Dean, a stout old Scotchman, was close on idiocy in a month;
Allan, the color-bearer, was shot by the guard,--he had slipped near the
dead line, and fallen with his head outside; fourteen were dead of
disease; twelve more sank in rayless, hopeless apathy; and Drake--was
busy on "A History of the Stockade Prison." The way in which he got the
idea and his stationery is worth telling.
There had fallen upon him a dread of motion,--a sombre endurance,--a
discouraged sense of thirty thousand hopeless men dragging him down to
despair,--a dark cloud that shut out God and home and help,--an
inability to compose and fix his drowsy, reeling thought, that spun off
dizzily to times at school, and love and laughter at home, and lapsed
itself in forgetfulness, and ceased to be even dreamy speculation.
Drake, in short, was going to the bottom with his theory about his neck,
when a "Providence,"--the modern way of dodging an acknowledgment to
God, whom, by the by, our poor boy had quite omitted in his little
theory of self-preservation,--in the curious shape of an official
blunder, stepped in to his rescue. A cook-house was in erection without
the limits of their pen, and, though no carpenter, Drake was set with
others to work under guard. The first glimpse of the open country,
stretching away to meet the low horizon, brought back the half-forgotten
thought of Freedom; and the very trail of her robe is so glorious, that
even this poor savage liberty of rock and clod roused in him anew wit to
devise and courage to endure. He worked then so merrily and with such
good heart, that an admiring inspector more than hinted "at the pity it
was to see a decent young fellow like him shut up in the pen yonder."
"So I think," returned Drake, calmly, cutting away at his board.
The official edged a little closer.
"Why don't you come over to us, then? The Confederacy gives good wages.
Our Government knows how to pay its men."
"Right there!" retorted Drake. "The Confederacy pays its servants in
death and ruin, which, as you say, are the just wages of a traitor. As
for me, I want no more of Georgia soil than will make me a grave. That
is as much as a man can own here now and be honest."
It was then, from some occult connection of ideas too subtile for
searching out, that he imagined, first, a history of the Stockade
Prison. He secured a number of long, thin boards, and planed them
smooth, for foolscap, pointed bits of wood for pens, manufactured his
ink from the rust of some old nails, and made himself a knife by
grinding two pieces of iron hoop one upon the other, and, his work on
the cook-house at an end, set bravely about his history, when Fate
nipped it, as she has done many a more promising one before it; for even
when on the final flourish of his title, he heard a sound between a
groan and a sigh, and, turning, saw Corny Keegan, a strapping Irishman,
and sergeant in his regiment, lying near him. Drake put the tail on his
_n_, and then some uneasy consciousness would have him look again over
the edge of his board at the sergeant; for, though there were scores of
men lying within view on the ground, there was something in the "give"
and laxity of Corny's posture that augured ill for him in Drake's
experienced eyes, and, laying the history aside, he went over and
kneeled down beside him. The man's eyes were closed, and a dull,
yellowish pallor had taken the place of the usual brick tint of his
face. Drake essayed to lift his heavy head and shoulders; but Corny
settled back again with a groan.
"Och! wurra! Musther Talcott, lave me alone. It's dead I am, kilt
intirely, wid the wakeness. Divil's the bit of wood I've had these two
days, and not a cint or a frind to the fore, and I'm jist afther mixin'
the male here with wather, thinkin' to ate it that way, but it stuck in
me throat, and I'm all on a thrimble, and it's a gone man is Corny
Keegan; though it's not fur meself that I'd make moan, sence it's aisier
dyin' than livin', only the ould mother and Mary that'll fret
and----Holy Mother! there comes the sickness, bad scran to it!"
You see now how it happened unto the History of the Stockade Prison to
vanish in smoke; for Drake, having neither wood nor the money to buy it,
made a fire with his precious boards, and baked Corny's raw meal in a
cake, which the poor fellow devoured with a half-starved avidity that
made Drake ashamed of the reluctance with which he had offered up his
sacrifice. A little corner of his cake Corny left untouched, saying,--
"That's fur the poor crathur over beyant."
"What poor creature?" asked Drake; but Corny's eyes were fixed on the
pens and ink, and the sorry remains of his foolscap,--a half-strip of
board.
"Och! murther! Musther Talcott, and wuz it thim bits of board ye's
writin' on? and ye's burned thim fur me, afther all the throuble ye took
wid thim? and to think of the thick head of me, to ate up all that
illigant histhry, when I'd heerd the boys talkin' on it, by the same
token, and bad scran to me! The Lord be good to ye fur your kindness,
Musther Talcott, and make your bed as soft as your heart is, and give ye
a line in the Book of Life fur the one I've ate, and"----
"But the poor creature, Corny."
"Thrue for you; and I'm a baste fur forgettin' him, and him starvin' the
while. It's jist Cap'n Ireland, if ye chance to mind him. He was the
illigant officer and the kind-hearted man; and to see him now! If ye'll
come away, Musther Talcott, I'm quite done wid the wakeness, and it's
jist over here beyant that he's lyin', poor jontleman, that'll not be
long lyin' anywhere out of his grave."
Corny pointed, as he spoke, to a man, or, rather, a bundle of rags
having some faint outlines of humanity, on the ground before
them,--limbs out helplessly, face set and ghastly, hardly a stir among
his tatters to assure them that he yet breathed; and Drake recognized
with a thrill of horror, though more wan, more woful, more shadow-like,
if possible, the man who had so moved his compassion on the night of his
arrival. Keegan knelt beside him, and put his corner of cake to the
sufferer's mouth, saying, "Ate a bit, Cap'n dear; thry now"; and then,
seeing that the food rested on white and quiet lips,--"Cap'n, don't ye
hear me? It's Corny, that spoke wid ye a while back. Saints be merciful
to us, he's gone!"
"He is not so happy," said Drake, savagely; "he has only fainted. He has
days of such torture as this before him. It would be a mercy to him, and
I'm not sure but good religion, to put him outside of the dead line. I
wonder why they don't tie us to the cannon's mouth at once. Here! you!
guard, there! holla!"
This last was addressed to a soldier in the Rebel gray, who was
proceeding leisurely past, but who, on hearing himself so
unceremoniously summoned, turned and came slowly towards them.
"Here is a man," said Drake, passionately, "who is dying, not because it
pleases God to take him, but because it pleases you to starve him. We
have no wood to make a fire, no food to give him, unless it is this
scrap of meal that he cannot swallow; but you can save him, and will, if
you are a man, and have a man's heart under that dress."
The soldier stared, but, being a phlegmatic animal, heard him quietly to
the end, and opened his jaws to answer with due deliberation.
"If you don't like our rules, you shouldn't have come here, you know.
And we haven't any orders about wood: you are to look out for
yourselves. As for the man, if he's sick, why don't you take him to the
stockade yonder, where the doctor is examining for admittance to the
hospital?--though I don't see the use: he's too far gone."
Drake and Corny lifted the poor wasted frame, that seemed all too frail
to hold the nickering, struggling breath, and carried it to a small
stockade crowded with men desirous to enter the hospital. The first
assistant to whom they applied was a nervous porcupine, fretted with
overwork, and repulsed them roughly.
"What is the use of bringing a dead man here? We have enough living ones
on hand."
"Och, and that's no raison, sence it's aisy to see thim's the kind you
like best," muttered Corny; but Drake silenced him hastily.
"Keep a civil tongue, Corny. They're the masters here; and it will only
be the worse for poor Ireland, if you anger them. Here's another; we'll
try him."
But Number Two was Sir Imperturbability, and, without even looking
towards them, answered, in a hard, even tone, "Our number is filled; you
are too late," and, without lifting an eyelash, went on with his work.
Drake grew white to the lips. The great veins started out on his
forehead, and his fingers worked nervously; but it was Corny's turn to
interfere.
"Musther Talcott, sure and ye'll not mind what that spalpeen's saying;
and there's the docthor himself beyant, and a kind and pleasant
jontleman he is. Jist lift the Cap'n, aisy now, and we'll see what the
docthor'll say to him."
For the third time, then, Drake made his appeal in behalf of the poor
fellow at his feet. The doctor heard him kindly, but answered, as his
assistant had done, that their number was full for the day, and was
moving on, when Talcott caught him by the arm.
"Doctor," he said, sternly, "one of your assistants refuses my comrade
because he is a dying man; another tells me, as you have done, that your
number is full for the day. Your own eyes can tell you, that, if not
dying now, he will be before to-morrow, of want and exposure. I know
nothing of your rules; but I do know, that, if my comrade's life is to
be saved, it is to be saved _now_, and that you have the means, if means
there are, for its salvation; and let the awful guilt of the cruelty
that brought him here weigh down whose neck it will, as there is a God
above us, I do not see how you can write yourself free of murder, or
think your hands clean from blood, if you send him back to die."
"God forbid! God forbid!" answered the doctor, shrinking from Drake's
vehemence. "You are unjust, young man; it is not my will, but my power
to help, that is limited. However, he shall not be sent back; we will do
for him what we can, if I have to lodge him in my own house."
"And didn't I tell ye the docthor was the kind jontleman?" cried Corny,
joyfully. "Though the hospital is no sich great matther: jist a few
tints; but thin he'll be gettin' a bed there, and belike a dhrap of
whiskey or a sup of porridge: and if he gits on, it's you he has to
thank for it; fur if it hadn't been fur your prachement, my sowl, the
docthor would have turned him off, too; and long life to you, says Corny
Keegan, and may you niver be needin' anybody's tongue to do the like fur
you!"
Drake made no answer; after the fever comes the chill, and he was
thinking drearily of the smouldering "History," and of the intolerable
leaden hours stretching out before him; but it was not in Corny's nature
to remain silent.
"It's the ould jontleman wid the scythe that takes us down, afther all,
Musther Talcott; the hours and hours that we sit mopin', wid our fingers
as limp as a lady's, and our stomachs clatterin' like an impty can, and
sorra a thing to think of but the poor crathurs that's dead, rest their
souls! and whin our turn's comin; and it's wishin' I am that it was in
the days of the fairies, and that the quane of thim ud jist give us a
call, till I'd ask her if she'd iver a pipe and its full of tobacky
about her,--or, failin' that, if she'd hoppen to have a knife in her
pocket, till I cut out the ould divil Jeff on the gallows, and give him
what he'd git, if we iver put our hands on him."
"A knife," repeated Drake, starting from his abstraction, and fumbling
in his pocket, from which he drew an old bit of iron. "I am not the
queen of the fairies; but with this you can hang Jeff and his cabinet in
effigy, if you choose, and can find the material to carve."
"Arrah, and that's aisy, wid illigant bones like these, that chips off
like marble or wud itself; but I'm misdoubtin' I'm robbin' ye, Musther
Talcott."
"I have another," said Drake, producing it; and as he did so, there
breathed upon him, like a breeze from home, a recollection of the dim
light shining in an old library down on a broad-leaved volume resting on
a carved rack,--of a brown-tressed girl who stood with him before it,
her head just at his shoulder, looking at the cathedral on its page,--of
the chance touch of a little hand on his,--of the brush of a perfumed
sleeve,--of the flitting color in her clear cheek,--of a subtile magic,
interweaving blush, perfume, picture, and thought of Alice. Dainty
pinnacle and massive arch and carved buttress were photographed on his
brain, and arch and pinnacle and buttress could be notched out in bone
by his poor skill,--and if he died, some kindly comrade should carry it
to Alice, and it should tell her what he had left unsaid,--and if he
lived, he would take it to her himself, and it should serve him for the
text of his story. That the carving of a design so intricate, on so
minute a scale, must prove tedious argued in its favor; and putting off
mourning weeds for his history, he took to this new love with a
complacency that excited Corny's special admiration.
"Sure, and it's a beautiful thing is religion; and the Divil fly away
wid me, if I don't be afther gittin' it meself! Here's Musther Talcott:
if he was fur carving a fort or a big gun, the eyes and the face of him
would be little but scowls and puckers; and there he sits, though it's
only the dumb likeness of a church that he's at, by the same token that
it's no bigger than me thumb, and, by the howly piper, you'd think the
light that flings away from the big colored windy down the church was
stramin' in his face, he looks so paceful-like; and he no betther than a
heretic nayther, though he's the heart of a good Catholic, as no one
knows betther than meself."
Indeed, Corny's gratitude never grew cold. Few sentences of his that did
not end, like the one just quoted, in eulogiums on "Musther Talcott." If
Drake was busy with his cathedral, there sat Corny, a few paces distant,
hacking at Jeff Davis. If Drake, who had resolved himself into a sort of
duo-decimo edition of the Sanitary Commission, was about his work of
mercy, there was Corny, a shadow at his heels, bringing water, lifting
the poor groaning wretches, and adding his word of comfort. "Cheer up,
honey, and do jist as Musther Talcott says; for it's nixt to iverything
that he knows, and thim things that he don't know isn't worth a body's
attintion." And when Drake himself was ailing, it was Corny who tended
him with terrified solicitude, foraged for his wood, and cooked his
rations. "When Drake was ailing!"--that was often. His courage was
undaunted, his hope perhaps higher, but he had grown perceptibly weak
and languid; and there were days--many, alas!--when he lay quietly on
the ground, giving an occasional lazy touch to his cathedral, while
Corny, as he laughingly said, ruled in his stead.
It was on one of these days that there arose a sudden stir and commotion
throughout the camp, a deep and joyful hum, that went from mouth to
mouth; and men were seen running hastily from all quarters, the rush
setting towards the gate, and drawing in even the sick, who crawled and
hobbled along with the stream, at the risk of being trampled by the
excited throng, struggling and crowding on pellmell. While Drake looked
on in surprise, Corny made his appearance, his eyes sparkling with
pleasure.
"News, Musther Talcott dear! an ye wuz dyin', here's news to put the
strength in yer legs! Letthers from home, and they say there's five
thousand on 'em; and there's an officer chap, wid a mouth like a thrap,
countin' 'em as if he was a machine, for all the wuruld, and bad 'cess
to him! wid the poor boys crowdin', and heart-famished for only a look
at thim, the crumpled things, for it's batthered they is! and he, the
spalpeen, won't let one of 'em touch 'em, and no more feelin' with him
than if he was a gun, instead of the son of one; and I'm cock-sure I
read yer name, Musther Talcott, and there's mine too on the back of a
letther, and that's from Mary, hurra! and God bless her! and come,
Musther Talcott, fur they'll be dalin' out the letthers or iver we get
there."
Drake rose at once; but a description of his sensations, as he hastily
made his way towards the throng that surged about the imperturbable
official like a sea, is beyond the power of words. The overwhelming
surprise and joy of a man who in that evil den had almost forgotten home
and the possibility of hearing from it, and his agonizing uncertainty,
could be fathomed only by the poor wretches suffering like him, who
anxiously pressed on the Rebel officer, and clutched at the letters,
and fell back sick with impatience and suspense at his formal delay. At
last he opened his grim jaws. The men listened breathlessly.
"All right. Men, there is ten cents postage due on each letter."
An instant's stunned pause, and then half a dozen voices speaking
together: "Why, man, you must have had ten cents on each of these
letters, before they crossed the lines"; and "How can _we_ pay postage?"
"He _knows_ we have no money"; "What good will the bits of paper do him
at all, at all?" But the man kept on like an automaton.
"My orders are to collect ten cents on each letter; and I am here to
obey orders, not to argue."
Meanwhile those in the rear ranks had heard indistinctly or not at all,
and pressed on those in front to know the meaning of the sudden
recoil,--for the men had instinctively given back,--and being told,
buzzed it on to those behind them; and there began in the crowd a low,
deep hum, growing louder, as muttering rose to curses,--growing fiercer,
for there is nothing half so savage as despair that has been fooled with
a hope,--swelling into a wave of indignation that swept and swayed the
whole throng with it, and seemed an instant to threaten and topple over
the officer in their midst. But it came to nought. The prudent nudged
their neighbors, "With the cannon, boys, they can rake us on all sides";
and the angrier ones fell apart in little groups, and talked in
whispers, and glared menacingly at the guard, but made no further
demonstration. Those who were happy enough to possess the money received
their letters: the feebler ones crawled away with tears furrowing their
wan cheeks; and the unmoved official thrust the remaining letters of
mother, father, wife, and children of these men into the bags before
their longing eyes; and even while the miserable men flung themselves
before him, and with outstretched hands tried to hold him back, the gate
clanged after him.
Drake, who long ago had spent his little hoard, had received this
terrible blow in entire silence, and turned to go without comment or
answer to Corny's vociferations. But eyes were dim, or head was reeling;
for a few paces on he stumbled, and would have fallen over a soldier
lying in his path, but for Corny, who was close behind him, and who at
once assailed the man over whom Drake had tripped, and who still lay
quietly, without even a stir or motion of his head.
"Ye lazy spalpeen! what the Divil are ye stretched out there for, to
break dacent folk's necks over the length of ye? Stir yourself, or
I'll"----Then with a sudden and total change of tone, as he looked more
closely into the quiet face, "The Saints pity us! it's Cap'n Ireland;
and in the name of Hiven, how came yer Honor here on the----Och! Lord
forgive me! Talking to a dead corpse! Och! wurra! wurra! Musther
Talcott, it's dead he is, sure! kilt this time intirely!"
"You may well say killed," said a soldier who had joined them. "If ever
a man committed murder, then that man did that kicked him out of the
hospital to die."
"What is that?" demanded Drake, who had seemed in a sort of stupor, but
roused out of it fiercely at the man's last words. "Do you know what you
are saying?"
"I think I ought," returned the soldier. "I was in the hospital at the
time; I'm only just out; and I saw it myself. The assistant surgeon
stops at his bed, where he laid only just breathing like, and says he,
'What man is this? I've seen him before'; and says some one, 'His name
is Ireland'; and says the surgeon, like a flash, 'Ireland? Ireland of
the --th? Do you know what that is? It is a colored regiment, and this
Abolition scoundrel is the captain of it. I knew I had seen him. Here!
put him out; let him go and herd with the rest'; and when some one said
he was dying any way, said the surgeon, with a string of oaths, 'Put him
out, I tell you; the bed is too good for him'; and then, Sir, when the
poor young gentleman, who was dizzy-like, and didn't understand, fell
down beside the door, from weakness, that--that infernal brute kicked
him, and swore at him, as vermin that cumbered the ground; and the men
brought him away here, Sir, it's two days back, and he's just passed
away"; and kneeling beside the body, and lifting the poor wasted hands,
"I swear, if ever I get back, to revenge his death, and never to let
sword or pistol drop while this cursed Rebellion is going on."
"Amin!" said Corny, solemnly, and "Amen" formed itself on Drake's white
lips; but by some curious mental process his thoughts would wander away
from the stiffening body before him to a vision of home, and Sabbaths
when sweet-toned bells called quiet families to church, and little
children playing about the doorsteps, and peaceful women in sunny
houses, and gay girls waving on men to battle through glittering
streets, and prayers, and looks of love, and songs, and flowers, and
Alice; and in on this rolled suddenly a sense of what was actually
around him, as under a calm sky and out of a still sea swoops sometimes
suddenly some huge wave in on the quiet beach. He saw about him rags,
filth, men sick, men dying, men dead, men groaning, men cursing, men
gibbering. There rose up before him the grim succession of days of
hunger, pain, sorrow, and loneliness, already past; there came upon him
a terrible threatening of days to come, yet worse,--without hope or
relief, unless at the dead line. He rose, staggering, and with a wild
and desperate look that startled Corny.
"Fur the Lord's sake, wud ye desthroy yerself?" cried the faithful
fellow, throwing his arms about him to hold him fast. "Och, honey! ye're
a heretic, and the good Lord's a Catholic; but thin He made us all, and
He has pity on the poor crathurs that's sufferin' here, or His heart's
harder nor Corny's: the Saints forgive me fur such a spache! Pray,
Musther Talcott, pray"----
"Pray!" exclaimed Drake; "is there a God looking down here?"--and
dropping on his knees, he gasped out,--
"O God! if Thou dost yet hear, save me--from going mad!" and fell
forward at Corny's feet, senseless.
He was carried to the hospital, and lay there weeks, lost in the
delirium of a fever; and every morning there peered in at the inner door
of the stockade a huge shock of hair, and a red, anxious face, with,--
"The top of the mornin' to ye, docthor, and it's ashamed I am to be
afther throublin' ye so often; but will yer Honor plase to tell me how
Musther Talcott is the day?"--and having received the desired
information, Corny would take himself off with blessings "on his Honor,
that had consideration for the feelings of the poor Irishman."
One morning there was a change in the programme.
"I have good news for you, Corny," said the kindly doctor. "Talcott is
out of danger."
"Hurray! and the Saints be praised fur that!" shouted Corny, cutting a
caper.
"But I have better news yet," continued the doctor, watching Corny
closely. "His name is on the list of exchanged prisoners, and he will be
sent home on Thursday next."
Corny's face fell.
"Is he, yer Honor?" very hesitatingly; and then, suddenly clearing up,
"and hurra fur that, too! and I'm an ongrateful baste to be sorry that
he's to be clear of this hole,--bad scran to it!--and long life till
him, and a blessin' go wid him! and if"--choking--"we don't mate on
earth, sure the Lord won't kape him foriver in purgatory, and he so kind
and feelin' for the sick."
The doctor could not suppress a laugh at this limited hope.
"But, Corny, what if you are to be sent home too?"
"Me?--and was it me yer Honor was sayin'? Och, Hivin bless ye fur that
word!--and it's not laughin' at me is yer Honor? Sure ye'd niver have
the heart to chate a poor boy like that. All the Saints be praised! I'm
a man agin, and not a starvin' machine; and I shall see ye, Mary,
mavourneen! but, och, the poor boys that we're lavin'! Hurra! how iver
will I ate three males a day, and slape under a blanket, and think of
thim on the ground and starvin' by inches!"
During the remainder of his stay, Corny balanced between joy and
his selfishness in being joyful, in a manner sufficiently
ludicrous,--breaking out one moment in the most extravagant
demonstration, to be twitched from it the next by a penitential spasm.
As for Drake, hardly yet clear of the shadows that haunted his fever, he
but mistily comprehended the change that was before him; and it will
need weeks and perhaps months of home-nursing and watching before body
and mind can win back their former strength and tone.
Meanwhile, people of the North, what of the poor boys left behind at
Andersonville, starving, as Corny said, by inches, with the winter
before them, and their numbers swelled by the hundreds that a late Rebel
paper gleefully announces to be on their way from more Northern prisons?