It was near to seven when he went down to his parked guns, seeing as he
went that the ways were kept clear, and finding ready hot coffee and
broiled chicken.
"Where did you get this, Josiah?" he asked.
"Kind of came in, sir--know'd he was wanted--laid two eggs." The colonel
laughed and asked no further questions.
"Pull off my boots. Horses all right?"
"Yes, sir."
Without-undressing he fell on his camp-bed and, towards dusk thinking
with grim humour of his wife and the Penhallow guns, fell asleep. About
four in the morning the mad clamour of battle awakened him. He got up and
went out of the tent. The night air was hot and oppressive. Far to our
right there was the rattle of musketry and the occasional upward flare of
cannon flashes against low-lying clouds. From the farthest side of the
Taneytown road at the rear he heard the rattle of ambulances arriving
from the field of fight to leave the wounded in tent hospitals. They came
slowly, marked by their flickering lanterns, and were away again more
swiftly. He gave some vague thought to the wounded and to the surgeons,
for whom the night was as the day. At sunrise he went up past the already
busy headquarters and came to the bush-hidden lines, where six thousand
men of the Second Corps along a half mile of the irregular far-stretched
Crest were up and busy. Fires were lighted, coffee boiled and biscuits
munched. An air of confidence and gaiety among the men pleased him as he
paused to give a sergeant a pipe light and divided his tobacco among a
thankful group of ragged soldiers. All was quiet. An outpost skirmish on
the right, as a man said, "was petering out." He paused here and there to
talk to the men, and was interested to hear them discussing with
intelligence the advantage of our short line. Now and then the guns far
to left or right quarrelled, but at eleven in the morning this third of
July all was quiet except the murmurous noise of thousands of men who
talked or lay at rest in the bushes or contrived a refuge from the sun
under shelter of a canvas hung on ramrods.
Generals Gibbon and Webb, coming near, promised him a late breakfast,
and he went with them to the little peach orchard near the headquarters
on the Taneytown road. They sat down on mess-chests or cracker-boxes,
and to Penhallow's amusement Josiah appeared with John, the servant
of Gibbon, for Josiah was, as he said, on easy terms with every black
servant in the line. Presently Hancock rode up with Meade. Generals
Newton and Pleasanton also appeared, and with their aides joined them.
These men were officially Penhallow's superiors, and although Hancock
and Gibbon were his friends, he made no effort to take part in the
discussion in regard to what the passing day would bring. He had his
own opinion, but no one asked for it and he smoked in an undisturbed
private council of war.
At last, as he rose, Newton said, "You knew John Reynolds well,
Penhallow. A moment before he fell, his aide had begged him to fall
back to a less dangerous position."
"He was my friend--a soldier of the best."
"The Pennsylvanians are in force to-day--you and I and--"
"Oh, colonels don't count," laughed Penhallow; "but there are Meade,
Hancock, Gregg, Humphreys, Hays, Gibbon, Geary, Crawford--"
Hancock said, "We Pennsylvanians hold the lowest and weakest point of our
line--all Pennsylvanians on their own soil."
"Yes, but they will not attack here," said Newton.
"Oh, do you think so?" said Hancock. "Wait a little."
The headquarters' ambulance drove up with further supplies. The chickens
were of mature age, but every one was hungry. Cigars and pipes were
lighted, and Newton chaffed Gibbon as the arrogant young brigadier in
command for the time of Hancock's Corps. The talk soon fell again upon
the probabilities of the day. Penhallow listened. Meade grave and silent
sat on a cracker-box and ate in an absent way, or scribbled orders, and
at last directed that the picked body of men, the provost's guards,
should join their regimental commands. About a quarter to noon the
generals one by one rode away.
Having no especial duty, Penhallow walked to where on the Crest the
eighteen guns were drawn up. The sky was clear as yet, a windless, hot
day. Gibbon joined him.
"What next?" said Gibbon, as Penhallow clambered up and stood a tall
figure on the limber of one of Cushing's guns, his field glass searching
the valley and the enemy's position. "Isn't it like a big chess-board?"
"Yes--their skirmishers look like grey posts, and our own blue. They seem
uneasy."
"Aren't they just like pawns in the game!" remarked Captain Haskell of
the Staff.
Penhallow, intent, hardly heard them, but said presently, "There are
guidons moving fast to their right."
"Oh, artillery taking position. We shall hear from them," returned
Gibbon. "Hancock thinks that being beaten on both flanks, Lee will attack
our centre, and this is the lowest point."
"Well," said Haskell, "it would be madness--can Lee remember Malvern
Hill?"
"I wonder what Grant is doing?" remarked Gibbon. At that time, seated
under an oak, watched at a distance by John Penhallow and a group of
officers, he was dictating to unlucky Pemberton the terms of Vicksburg's
surrender.
Penhallow got down from his perch and wandered among the other guns,
talking to the men who were lying on the sod, or interested in the
battery horses behind the shelter of trees quietly munching the thin
grasses. He returned to Cushing's guns, and being in the mental attitude
of intense attention to things he would not usually have noticed, he was
struck with the young captain's manly build, and then with his delicacy
of feature, something girl-like and gentle in his ways.
Penhallow remarked that the guns so hot already from the sun would be too
easily overheated when they were put to use. "Ah," returned Cushing, "but
will they be asked to talk today?" The innocent looking smile and the
quick flash of wide-opened eyes told of his wish to send messages across
the vale.
"Yes, I think so," said the colonel; "I think so,"--and again observant
he saw the slight figure straighten and a quite other look of tender
sadness come upon his face.
"How quiet they are--how very quiet!" Then he laughed merrily. "See that
dog on the Emmitsburg road. He doesn't know which side he's on."
Penhallow looked at his watch. "It is one o'clock." Then his glass was
up. "Ah!" he exclaimed, as he closed it, "now we shall catch it. I
thought as much."
A mile away, far on Lee's right, on the low ridge in front of his
position, a flash of light was seen. As the round ring of smoke shot
out from the cannon, the colonel remembered the little Leila's delight
when he blew smoke rings as they sat on the porch. Instantly a second
gun spoke. The two shells flew over our line and lit far to the rear,
while at once along Lee's position a hundred and fifty guns rang out and
were instantly answered by our own artillery from Round Top to Cemetery
Hill. General Hunt beside him replying to the quick questions he put,
said, "We could not place over seventy-five guns--not room enough."
"Is that all? They are distributing their favours along our whole front."
At once a vast shroud of smoke rose and hid both lines, while out of it
flew countless shell and roundshot. At first most of the Confederate
missiles flew high and fell far behind our Crest. The two officers were
coolly critical as they stood between the batteries.
"He must think our men are back of the guns like his own. The wall and
bushes hide them."
"The fuses are too long," said Hunt quietly. "That's better and worse,"
he added, as a shell exploded near by and one of Woodruff's guns went out
of action and the ground was strewn with the dead and wounded. "We shall
want some of your guns."
Penhallow went in haste to the rear. What he saw was terrible. The iron
hail of shells fell fast around him on the wide open space or even as far
away as the hospital tents. On or near the Taneytown road terror-stricken
wagon-drivers were flying, ammunition mules were torn to pieces or lying
mangled; a shell exploded in a wagon,--driver, horses and a load of bread
were gone. Horses lay about, dead or horribly torn; one horse hitched to
a tree went on cropping grass. Penhallow missed nothing. He was in the
mood peril always brought. Men said he was a slow, sure thinker, and
missed seeing things which did not interest him. Now he was gay, tuned to
the highest pitch of automatic watchfulness, as this far-sent storm of
bursting shells went over and past the troops it was meant to destroy.
Hurrying through it he saw the wide slope clear rapidly of what was left
of active life. He laughed as a round shot knocked a knapsack off a man's
back. The man unhurt did not stay to look for it. Once the colonel
dropped as a shell lit near him. It did not explode. He ejaculated,
"Pshaw," and went on. He came near the Taneytown road to find that his
artillery had suffered. A score of harnessed horses lay dead or horribly
mangled. His quick orders sent up to the front a dozen guns. Some were
horsed, some were pulled with ropes by the cheering, eager cannoneers.
Their way was up the deserted slope, "well cleared by the enemy," thought
Penhallow with a smile. Once he looked back and saw the far flight of a
shell end in or near an ambulance of the wounded beyond the Taneytown
road.
During his absence gun after gun had been disabled and a caisson
exploded; the gun crews lay dead or wounded. What more horribly disturbed
Penhallow was the hideous screams of the battery horses. "Ah! the pity of
it. They had no cause to die for--no duty--no choice." As he assisted in
replacing the wreckage of the guns, he still heard the cries of the
animals who so dumb in peace found in torture voices of anguish unheard
before--unnatural, strange. The appalling tempest of shells screamed on
and on, while the most of them fell beyond the Crest. Penhallow looked up
to note their flight. They darted overhead shrill-voiced or hissing.
There was a white puff of smoke, a red flash, and an explosion.
General Gibbon, coming back from the long line of his corps, said, "My
men have suffered very little, but the headquarters behind them are in
ruin. Meade has moved back." As he spoke the shells began to fall on the
Crest.
"They seem to be more attentive to us," said the battery Captain
Woodruff. "Thought we'd catch it!"
"Horrible!--Those horses, Gibbon," said Penhallow.
At last there seemed to be more concentrated firing on the Crest. Many
shells fell near the imperfect wall-shelter of the crouching men, while
others exploded among the lines to left or right in the bushes.
"They are doing better now, confound them!" said the young general
coolly. "Our men at the wall seem disturbed.
"Come with me," he said to Penhallow and Haskell of the Staff, who had
just joined them.
They went down in front of the guns to where behind the low wall lay the
two thin lines of the Pennsylvania regiments. He spoke to the Colonel of
the 71st, who with other officers was afoot encouraging the men.
"Keep cool, boys," said Gibbon.
The men laughed. "Oh, we're all right, General, but we ain't cool."
Gibbon laughed. "Let us go over the wall and try to see a little better,"
said Penhallow.
A hundred yards beyond the lines they sat down. The ceaseless rain of
shot and shell from both sides went over them, the canopy of smoke being
so high above that the interspace between the lines was now more or less
visible. Far beyond them our skirmish outposts were still motionless on
guard; and yet further farms and houses, some smoking in ruin, lay among
the green fields along the Emmitsburg Pike.
"It is pretty safe here," said the Corps Commander, while far above them
the shells sang their war notes.
Penhallow looked back. "They've got the range--there goes one of the
guns--oh! and another."
"Let's go back," said Gibbon, rising, "we are too safe here."
They laughed at his reason and followed him, Haskell remarking on the
lessening of the fire. As they moved about the forty-foot spaces between
the disabled batteries, the last cannon-ball rolled by them and bounded
down the slope harmless. At once there was movement,--quick orders,
officers busy, as fresh cannon replaced the wrecked pieces. Many of
the unhurt cannoneers lay down utterly exhausted. The dead were drawn
aside, while the wounded crawled away or were cared for by the
stretcher-bearers and surgeons. Meanwhile the dense, hot, smoke-pall
rose slowly and drifted away. The field-glasses were at once in use.
"It is half-past two," said General Hunt; "what next? Oh! our skirmishers
are falling back."
"They are going to attack," said Haskell, "and can they mean our whole
line--or where?"
The cannoneers were called to their pieces, and silently expectant the
little group waited on the fateful hour, while the orderly quiet of
discipline was to be seen on the Crest. The field-glasses of the officers
were searching with intense interest the more and more visible vale.
"Pretty plain now, Gibbon," said Hunt.
"Yes, we are in for it."
"They are forming," said Penhallow. A line appeared from the low swell of
ground in front of Lee's position--then a second and a third. Muskets and
bayonets flashed in the sun.
"Can you make out their flags?" asked Gibbon, "or their numbers?"
"Not the flags." He waited intent, watchful. No one spoke--minute after
minute went by. At last Penhallow answered. "A long line--a good half
mile--quite twelve thousand--oh, more--more. Now they are advancing _en
échelon_."
To left, to right, along our lines was heard the thud, thud, of the
ramrods, and percussion-cap boxes were slid around the waist to be handy.
Penhallow and others drew their pistols. The cannon were now fully
replaced, the regimental flags unrolled, and on the front line, long
motionless, the trefoil guidons of the two divisions of the Second Corps
fluttered feebly. The long row of skirmishers firing fell back more and
more rapidly, and came at last into our lines.
Penhallow said, turning to Gibbon, "They have--I think--they have no
supporting batteries--that is strange." Haskell and Gibbon had gone as he
spoke and the low crest was free at this point of all but the artillery
force. To left, the projecting clump of trees and the lines of the Second
Corps--all he could see--were ominously quiet.
Gibbon came back to the crest. He said, "We may need backing if they
concentrate on us; here our line is too thin." And still the orderly grey
columns came on silently, without their usual charging-yell.
"Ah!" exclaimed Penhallow without lowering his glass, as he gazed to our
left. The clamour of cannon broke out from little Round Top.
"Rifles!" exclaimed Gibbon. "Good!" Their left made no reply, but seemed
to draw away from the fire.
"I can see no more," said the Colonel, "but they stopped at the
Emmitsburg road."
The acrid odour of musketry drifted across the field as he turned to
gaze at the left wing of the fast coming onset. Far to our right they
came under the fire of Cemetery Hill and of an advanced Massachusetts
regiment. He saw the blue flags of Virginia sway, fall, and rise no
more, while scattered and broken the Confederates fled or fell under
the fury of the death messages from above the long-buried dead of the
village graves. "Now then, Cushing!" cried Hunt, and the guns on the
Crest opened fire.
It was plain that the long Confederate lines, frayed on each flank, had
crowded together making a vast wedge of attack. Then all along our miles
of troops a crackle of musketry broke out, the big guns bellowing. The
field was mostly lost to view in the dense smoke, under which the
charging-force halted and steadily returned the fire.
"I can't see," cried Cushing near by.
"Quite three hundred yards or more," said the colonel, "and you are hurt,
Cushing. Go to the rear." The blood was streaming down his leg.
"Not I--it is nothing. Hang those fellows!" A New York battery gallantly
run in between disabled guns crowded Cushing's cannon. He cried, "Section
one to the front, by hand!"
He was instantly obeyed. As he went with it to the front near to the
wall, followed by Penhallow, he said, "It is my last canister, colonel. I
can't see well."
Dimly seen figures in the dense smoke were visible here and there some
two hundred yards away, with flutter of reeling battle-flags in the
smoke, while more and more swiftly the wedge of men came on, losing
terribly by the fire of the men at the wall along the lines.
Cushing stood with the lanyard of the percussion trigger in his hand.
It seems inconceivable, but the two men smiled. Then he cried, "My
God!"--his figure swayed, he held his left hand over a ghastly wound
in his side, and as he reeled pulled the lanyard. He may have seen
the red flash, and then with a bullet through the open mouth fell dead
across the trail of his gun.
For a moment Penhallow was the only officer of rank near the silent
battery. Where Cushing's two guns came too near the wall, the men moved
away to the sides leaving an unguarded space. Checked everywhere to
right and left, the assailants crowded on to the clump of trees and to
where the Pennsylvania line held the stone wall. Ignorant of the ruin
behind them, the grey mass came on with a rush through the smoke. The
men in blue, losing terribly, fell back from a part of the wall in
confusion--a mere mob--sweeping Webb, Penhallow and others with them,
swearing and furious. Two or three hundred feet back they stopped, a
confused mass. General Webb, Haskell and other officers rallied them. The
red flags gathered thicker, where the small units of many commands stood
fast under the shelter of a portion of the lost wall. Penhallow looked
back and saw the Massachusetts flags--our centre alone had given way.
The flanks of the broken regiments still held the wall and poured in a
murderous fire where the splendid courage of the onset halted, unwilling
to fly, unable to go on.
Webb, furious, rallied his men, while Penhallow, Haskell and Gibbon
vainly urged an advance. A colour-sergeant ran forward and fell dead. A
corporal caught up the flag and dropped. A Confederate general leaped
over the deserted wall and laid a hand on Cushing's gun. He fell
instantly at the side of the dead captain, as with a sudden roar of fury
the broken Pennsylvanians rolled in a disordered mass of men and officers
against the disorganized valour which held the wall.
The smoke held--still holds, the secret of how many met the Northern men
at the wall; how long they fought among Cushing's guns, on and over the
wall, no man who came out of it could tell. Penhallow emptied his
revolver and seizing a musket fought the brute battle with the men who
used fists, stones, gun-rammers--a howling mob of blue and grey. And so
the swaying flags fell down under trampling men and the lost wall was
won. The fight was over. Men fell in scores, asking quarter. The flanking
fires had been merciless, and the slope was populous with dead and
wounded men, while far away the smoke half hid the sullen retreat of the
survivors. The prearranged mechanism of war became active. Thousands of
prisoners were being ordered to the rear. Men stood still, gasping,
breathless or dazed. As Penhallow stood breathing hard, from the right
wing, among the long silent dead of Cemetery Hill, arose a wild hurrah.
It gathered volume, rolled down the long line of corps after corps, and
died away among the echoes of the Pennsylvania hills. He looked about him
trying to recover interest. Some one said that Hancock and Gibbon were
wounded. The rush of the _mêlée_ had carried him far down the track of
the charge, and having no instant duty he sat down, his clothes in
tatters. As he recovered strength, he was aware of General Meade on
horseback with an aide. The general, white and grave, said to Haskell,
"How has it gone here?"
An officer cried, "They are beaten," showing two flags he held.
Meade said sharply: "Damn the flags! Are the men gone?"
"Yes, sir, the attack is over."
He uncovered, said only, "Thank God!" gave some rapid orders and rode
away beside the death-swath, careful, as Penhallow saw, to keep his horse
off of the thirty scattered flags, many lying under or over the brave who
had fought and lost in this memorable charge.
Penhallow could have known of the battle only what he had seen, but a few
words from an officer told him that nowhere except at this part of the
line of the Second Corps had the attack been at all fortunate.
On the wide field of attack our ambulance corps was rescuing the hundreds
of wounded Confederates, many of them buried, helpless, beneath the
bodies of the motionless dead. Two soldiers stood near him derisively
flaunting flags.
"Quit that," cried the Colonel, "drop them!" The men obeyed.
"Death captured them--not we," said Penhallow, and saw that he was
speaking to a boyish Confederate lieutenant, who had just dragged himself
limping out of the ghastly heap of dead.
Touching his forehead in salute, he said, "Thank you, sir. Where shall I
go?"
"Up there," replied the colonel. "You will be cared for."
The man limped away followed by Penhallow, who glanced at the torn
Confederate banners lying blood-stained about the wall and beyond it. He
read their labels--Manassas, Chancellorsville, Sharpsburg. One marked
Fredericksburg lay gripped in the hand of a dead sergeant. He crossed the
wall to look for the body of the captain of the battery; men were lifting
it. "My God!--Poor boy!" murmured the colonel, as he looked on the white
face of death. He asked who was the Rebel general who had fallen beside
Cushing.
"General Armistead," said an officer--"mortally wounded, they say."
Penhallow turned and went down the slope again. Far away, widely
scattered, he caught glimpses of this rash and gallant attack. He was
aware of that strange complex odour which rises from a battlefield. It
affected him as horrible and as unlike any other unpleasant smell.
Feeling better, he busied himself directing those who were aiding the
wounded. A general officer he did not know said to him, "Stop the
firing from that regiment."
A number of still excited men of one of the flanking brigades on our
right were firing uselessly at the dimly seen and remote mass of the
enemy. Penhallow went quickly to the right, and as he drew near shouted,
"Stop those men--quit firing!" He raised his hand to call attention to
his order. The firing lessened, and seeing that he was understood he
turned away. At the moment he was not fifty feet from the flanking line,
and had moved far down the slope as one of the final shots rang out.
He felt something like a blow on his right temple, and as he staggered
was aware of the gush of blood down his face. "What fool did that?" he
exclaimed as he reeled and fell. He rose, fell, rose again, and managed
to tie a handkerchief around his head. He stumbled to the wall and lay
down, his head aching. He could go no further. "Queer, that," he
murmured; "they might have seen." He sat up; things around him were
doubled to his view.
"Are you hit?" said Haskell, who was directing stretcher-bearers and
sending prisoners to the rear.
"Not badly." He was giddy and in great pain. Then he was aware of the
anxious face of Josiah.
"My God! you hurt, sir? Come to look for you--can you ride? I fetched
Dixy--mare's killed."
"I am not badly hurt. Tighten this handkerchief and give me your
arm--I can't ride,"
He arose, and amazed at his weakness, dragged himself down the slope,
through the reforming lines, the thousands of prisoners, the reinforcing
cannon and the wreckage of the hillside. He fell on his couch, and more
at ease began to think, with some difficulty in controlling his thoughts.
At last he said, "I shall be up to-morrow," and lay still, seeing, as the
late afternoon went by, Grey Pine and Ann Penhallow. Then he was aware of
Captain Haskell and a surgeon, who dressed his wound and said, "It was
mere shock--there is no fracture. The ball cut the artery and tore the
scalp. You'll be all right in a day or two."
Penhallow said, "Please to direct my servant to the Sanitary Commission.
I think my friend, the Rev. Mark Rivers, is with them."
He slept none. It was early dawn when Rivers came in anxious and
troubled. For the first time in years of acquaintance he found Penhallow
depressed, and amazed because so small a wound made him weak and unable
to think clearly or to give orders. "And it was some stupid boy from our
line," he said.
His incapacity made Rivers uneasy, and although Penhallow broke out to
his surprise in angry remonstrance, he convinced him at last that he must
return to Grey Pine on sick leave. He asked no question about the army.
Insisting that he was too well to give up his command, nevertheless he
talked much of headache and lack of bodily power. He was, as Rivers saw,
no longer the good-humoured, quiet gentleman, with no thought of self. In
a week he was stronger, but as his watchful friend realized, there was
something mysteriously wrong with his mental and moral mechanism.
On the day after the battle Penhallow asked to have his wife telegraphed
that he was slightly wounded, and that she must not come to him. Rivers
wrote also a brief and guarded letter to Leila of their early return to
Grey Pine.
In a vain effort to interest the colonel, he told him of the surrender of
Vicksburg.--He asked where it was and wasn't John there, but somewhat
later became more clear-minded and eager to go home.