Jerome Searing, a private soldier of General Sherman's army, then
confronting the enemy at and about Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, turned
his back upon a small group of officers with whom he had been talking in
low tones, stepped across a light line of earthworks, and disappeared in
a forest. None of the men in line behind the works had said a word to
him, nor had he so much as nodded to them in passing, but all who saw
understood that this brave man had been intrusted with some perilous
duty. Jerome Searing, though a private, did not serve in the ranks; he
was detailed for service at division headquarters, being borne upon the
rolls as an orderly. "Orderly" is a word covering a multitude of duties.
An orderly may be a messenger, a clerk, an officer's servant--anything.
He may perform services for which no provision is made in orders and
army regulations. Their nature may depend upon his aptitude, upon favor,
upon accident. Private Searing, an incomparable marksman, young, hardy,
intelligent and insensible to fear, was a scout. The general commanding
his division was not content to obey orders blindly without knowing what
was in his front, even when his command was not on detached service, but
formed a fraction of the line of the army; nor was he satisfied to
receive his knowledge of his _vis-à-vis_ through the customary channels;
he wanted to know more than he was apprised of by the corps commander
and the collisions of pickets and skirmishers. Hence Jerome Searing,
with his extraordinary daring, his woodcraft, his sharp eyes, and
truthful tongue. On this occasion his instructions were simple: to get
as near the enemy's lines as possible and learn all that he could.
In a few moments he had arrived at the picket-line, the men on duty
there lying in groups of two and four behind little banks of earth
scooped out of the slight depression in which they lay, their rifles
protruding from the green boughs with which they had masked their small
defenses. The forest extended without a break toward the front, so
solemn and silent that only by an effort of the imagination could it be
conceived as populous with armed men, alert and vigilant--a forest
formidable with possibilities of battle. Pausing a moment in one of
these rifle-pits to apprise the men of his intention Searing crept
stealthily forward on his hands and knees and was soon lost to view in a
dense thicket of underbrush.
"That is the last of him," said one of the men; "I wish I had his rifle;
those fellows will hurt some of us with it."
Searing crept on, taking advantage of every accident of ground and
growth to give himself better cover. His eyes penetrated everywhere, his
ears took note of every sound. He stilled his breathing, and at the
cracking of a twig beneath his knee stopped his progress and hugged the
earth. It was slow work, but not tedious; the danger made it exciting,
but by no physical signs was the excitement manifest. His pulse was as
regular, his nerves were as steady as if he were trying to trap a
sparrow.
"It seems a long time," he thought, "but I cannot have come very far; I
am still alive."
He smiled at his own method of estimating distance, and crept forward. A
moment later he suddenly flattened himself upon the earth and lay
motionless, minute after minute. Through a narrow opening in the bushes
he had caught sight of a small mound of yellow clay--one of the enemy's
rifle-pits. After some little time he cautiously raised his head, inch
by inch, then his body upon his hands, spread out on each side of him,
all the while intently regarding the hillock of clay. In another moment
he was upon his feet, rifle in hand, striding rapidly forward with
little attempt at concealment. He had rightly interpreted the signs,
whatever they were; the enemy was gone.
To assure himself beyond a doubt before going back to report upon so
important a matter, Searing pushed forward across the line of abandoned
pits, running from cover to cover in the more open forest, his eyes
vigilant to discover possible stragglers. He came to the edge of a
plantation--one of those forlorn, deserted homesteads of the last years
of the war, upgrown with brambles, ugly with broken fences and desolate
with vacant buildings having blank apertures in place of doors and
windows. After a keen reconnoissance from the safe seclusion of a clump
of young pines Searing ran lightly across a field and through an orchard
to a small structure which stood apart from the other farm buildings, on
a slight elevation. This he thought would enable him to overlook a large
scope of country in the direction that he supposed the enemy to have
taken in withdrawing. This building, which had originally consisted of a
single room elevated upon four posts about ten feet high, was now little
more than a roof; the floor had fallen away, the joists and planks
loosely piled on the ground below or resting on end at various angles,
not wholly torn from their fastenings above. The supporting posts were
themselves no longer vertical. It looked as if the whole edifice would
go down at the touch of a finger.
Concealing himself in the debris of joists and flooring Searing looked
across the open ground between his point of view and a spur of Kennesaw
Mountain, a half-mile away. A road leading up and across this spur was
crowded with troops--the rear-guard of the retiring enemy, their
gun-barrels gleaming in the morning sunlight.
Searing had now learned all that he could hope to know. It was his duty
to return to his own command with all possible speed and report his
discovery. But the gray column of Confederates toiling up the mountain
road was singularly tempting. His rifle--an ordinary "Springfield," but
fitted with a globe sight and hair-trigger--would easily send its ounce
and a quarter of lead hissing into their midst. That would probably not
affect the duration and result of the war, but it is the business of a
soldier to kill. It is also his habit if he is a good soldier. Searing
cocked his rifle and "set" the trigger.
But it was decreed from the beginning of time that Private Searing was
not to murder anybody that bright summer morning, nor was the
Confederate retreat to be announced by him. For countless ages events
had been so matching themselves together in that wondrous mosaic to some
parts of which, dimly discernible, we give the name of history, that the
acts which he had in will would have marred the harmony of the pattern.
Some twenty-five years previously the Power charged with the execution
of the work according to the design had provided against that mischance
by causing the birth of a certain male child in a little village at the
foot of the Carpathian Mountains, had carefully reared it, supervised
its education, directed its desires into a military channel, and in due
time made it an officer of artillery. By the concurrence of an infinite
number of favoring influences and their preponderance over an infinite
number of opposing ones, this officer of artillery had been made to
commit a breach of discipline and flee from his native country to avoid
punishment. He had been directed to New Orleans (instead of New York),
where a recruiting officer awaited him on the wharf. He was enlisted and
promoted, and things were so ordered that he now commanded a Confederate
battery some two miles along the line from where Jerome Searing, the
Federal scout, stood cocking his rifle. Nothing had been neglected--at
every step in the progress of both these men's lives, and in the lives
of their contemporaries and ancestors, and in the lives of the
contemporaries of their ancestors, the right thing had been done to
bring about the desired result. Had anything in all this vast
concatenation been overlooked Private Searing might have fired on the
retreating Confederates that morning, and would perhaps have missed. As
it fell out, a Confederate captain of artillery, having nothing better
to do while awaiting his turn to pull out and be off, amused himself by
sighting a field-piece obliquely to his right at what he mistook for
some Federal officers on the crest of a hill, and discharged it. The
shot flew high of its mark.
As Jerome Searing drew back the hammer of his rifle and with his eyes
upon the distant Confederates considered where he could plant his shot
with the best hope of making a widow or an orphan or a childless
mother,--perhaps all three, for Private Searing, although he had
repeatedly refused promotion, was not without a certain kind of
ambition,--he heard a rushing sound in the air, like that made by the
wings of a great bird swooping down upon its prey. More quickly than he
could apprehend the gradation, it increased to a hoarse and horrible
roar, as the missile that made it sprang at him out of the sky, striking
with a deafening impact one of the posts supporting the confusion of
timbers above him, smashing it into matchwood, and bringing down the
crazy edifice with a loud clatter, in clouds of blinding dust!
When Jerome Searing recovered consciousness he did not at once
understand what had occurred. It was, indeed, some time before he opened
his eyes. For a while he believed that he had died and been buried, and
he tried to recall some portions of the burial service. He thought that
his wife was kneeling upon his grave, adding her weight to that of the
earth upon his breast. The two of them, widow and earth, had crushed his
coffin. Unless the children should persuade her to go home he would not
much longer be able to breathe. He felt a sense of wrong. "I cannot
speak to her," he thought; "the dead have no voice; and if I open my
eyes I shall get them full of earth."
He opened his eyes. A great expanse of blue sky, rising from a fringe of
the tops of trees. In the foreground, shutting out some of the trees, a
high, dun mound, angular in outline and crossed by an intricate,
patternless system of straight lines; the whole an immeasurable distance
away--a distance so inconceivably great that it fatigued him, and he
closed his eyes. The moment that he did so he was conscious of an
insufferable light. A sound was in his ears like the low, rhythmic
thunder of a distant sea breaking in successive waves upon the beach,
and out of this noise, seeming a part of it, or possibly coming from
beyond it, and intermingled with its ceaseless undertone, came the
articulate words: "Jerome Searing, you are caught like a rat in a trap--
in a trap, trap, trap."
Suddenly there fell a great silence, a black darkness, an infinite
tranquillity, and Jerome Searing, perfectly conscious of his rathood,
and well assured of the trap that he was in, remembering all and nowise
alarmed, again opened his eyes to reconnoitre, to note the strength of
his enemy, to plan his defense.
He was caught in a reclining posture, his back firmly supported by a
solid beam. Another lay across his breast, but he had been able to
shrink a little away from it so that it no longer oppressed him, though
it was immovable. A brace joining it at an angle had wedged him against
a pile of boards on his left, fastening the arm on that side. His legs,
slightly parted and straight along the ground, were covered upward to
the knees with a mass of debris which towered above his narrow horizon.
His head was as rigidly fixed as in a vise; he could move his eyes, his
chin--no more. Only his right arm was partly free. "You must help us out
of this," he said to it. But he could not get it from under the heavy
timber athwart his chest, nor move it outward more than six inches at
the elbow.
Searing was not seriously injured, nor did he suffer pain. A smart rap
on the head from a flying fragment of the splintered post, incurred
simultaneously with the frightfully sudden shock to the nervous system,
had momentarily dazed him. His term of unconsciousness, including the
period of recovery, during which he had had the strange fancies, had
probably not exceeded a few seconds, for the dust of the wreck had not
wholly cleared away as he began an intelligent survey of the situation.
With his partly free right hand he now tried to get hold of the beam
that lay across, but not quite against, his breast. In no way could he
do so. He was unable to depress the shoulder so as to push the elbow
beyond that edge of the timber which was nearest his knees; failing in
that, he could not raise the forearm and hand to grasp the beam. The
brace that made an angle with it downward and backward prevented him
from doing anything in that direction, and between it and his body the
space was not half so wide as the length of his forearm. Obviously he
could not get his hand under the beam nor over it; the hand could not,
in fact, touch it at all. Having demonstrated his inability, he
desisted, and began to think whether he could reach any of the débris
piled upon his legs.
In surveying the mass with a view to determining that point, his
attention was arrested by what seemed to be a ring of shining metal
immediately in front of his eyes. It appeared to him at first to
surround some perfectly black substance, and it was somewhat more than a
half-inch in diameter. It suddenly occurred to his mind that the
blackness was simply shadow and that the ring was in fact the muzzle of
his rifle protruding from the pile of débris. He was not long in
satisfying himself that this was so--if it was a satisfaction. By
closing either eye he could look a little way along the barrel--to the
point where it was hidden by the rubbish that held it. He could see the
one side, with the corresponding eye, at apparently the same angle as
the other side with the other eye. Looking with the right eye, the
weapon seemed to be directed at a point to the left of his head, and
_vice-versa._ He was unable to see the upper surface of the barrel, but
could see the under surface of the stock at a slight angle. The piece
was, in fact, aimed at the exact centre of his forehead.
In the perception of this circumstance, in the recollection that just
previously to the mischance of which this uncomfortable situation was
the result he had cocked the rifle and set the trigger so that a touch
would discharge it, Private Searing was affected with a feeling of
uneasiness. But that was as far as possible from fear; he was a brave
man, somewhat familiar with the aspect of rifles from that point of
view, and of cannon too. And now he recalled, with something like
amusement, an incident of his experience at the storming of Missionary
Ridge, where, walking up to one of the enemy's embrasures from which he
had seen a heavy gun throw charge after charge of grape among the
assailants he had thought for a moment that the piece had been
withdrawn; he could see nothing in the opening but a brazen circle. What
that was he had understood just in time to step aside as it pitched
another peck of iron down that swarming slope. To face firearms is one
of the commonest incidents in a soldier's life--firearms, too, with
malevolent eyes blazing behind them. That is what a soldier is for.
Still, Private Searing did not altogether relish the situation, and
turned away his eyes.
After groping, aimless, with his right hand for a time he made an
ineffectual attempt to release his left. Then he tried to disengage his
head, the fixity of which was the more annoying from his ignorance of
what held it. Next he tried to free his feet, but while exerting the
powerful muscles of his legs for that purpose it occurred to him that a
disturbance of the rubbish which held them might discharge the rifle;
how it could have endured what had already befallen it he could not
understand, although memory assisted him with several instances in
point. One in particular he recalled, in which in a moment of mental
abstraction he had clubbed his rifle and beaten out another gentleman's
brains, observing afterward that the weapon which he had been diligently
swinging by the muzzle was loaded, capped, and at full cock--knowledge
of which circumstance would doubtless have cheered his antagonist to
longer endurance. He had always smiled in recalling that blunder of his
"green and salad days" as a soldier, but now he did not smile. He turned
his eyes again to the muzzle of the rifle and for a moment fancied that
it had moved; it seemed somewhat nearer.
Again he looked away. The tops of the distant trees beyond the bounds of
the plantation interested him: he had not before observed how light and
feathery they were, nor how darkly blue the sky was, even among their
branches, where they somewhat paled it with their green; above him it
appeared almost black. "It will be uncomfortably hot here," he thought,
"as the day advances. I wonder which way I am looking."
Judging by such shadows as he could see, he decided that his face was
due north; he would at least not have the sun in his eyes, and north--
well, that was toward his wife and children.
"Bah!" he exclaimed aloud, "what have they to do with it?"
He closed his eyes. "As I can't get out I may as well go to sleep. The
rebels are gone and some of our fellows are sure to stray out here
foraging. They'll find me."
But he did not sleep. Gradually he became sensible of a pain in his
forehead--a dull ache, hardly perceptible at first, but growing more and
more uncomfortable. He opened his eyes and it was gone--closed them and
it returned. "The devil!" he said, irrelevantly, and stared again at the
sky. He heard the singing of birds, the strange metallic note of the
meadow lark, suggesting the clash of vibrant blades. He fell into
pleasant memories of his childhood, played again with his brother and
sister, raced across the fields, shouting to alarm the sedentary larks,
entered the sombre forest beyond and with timid steps followed the faint
path to Ghost Rock, standing at last with audible heart-throbs before
the Dead Man's Cave and seeking to penetrate its awful mystery. For the
first time he observed that the opening of the haunted cavern was
encircled by a ring of metal. Then all else vanished and left him gazing
into the barrel of his rifle as before. But whereas before it had seemed
nearer, it now seemed an inconceivable distance away, and all the more
sinister for that. He cried out and, startled by something in his own
voice--the note of fear--lied to himself in denial: "If I don't sing out
I may stay here till I die."
He now made no further attempt to evade the menacing stare of the gun
barrel. If he turned away his eyes an instant it was to look for
assistance (although he could not see the ground on either side the
ruin), and he permitted them to return, obedient to the imperative
fascination. If he closed them it was from weariness, and instantly the
poignant pain in his forehead--the prophecy and menace of the bullet--
forced him to reopen them.
The tension of nerve and brain was too severe; nature came to his relief
with intervals of unconsciousness. Reviving from one of these he became
sensible of a sharp, smarting pain in his right hand, and when he worked
his fingers together, or rubbed his palm with them, he could feel that
they were wet and slippery. He could not see the hand, but he knew the
sensation; it was running blood. In his delirium he had beaten it
against the jagged fragments of the wreck, had clutched it full of
splinters. He resolved that he would meet his fate more manly. He was a
plain, common soldier, had no religion and not much philosophy; he could
not die like a hero, with great and wise last words, even if there had
been some one to hear them, but he could die "game," and he would. But
if he could only know when to expect the shot!
Some rats which had probably inhabited the shed came sneaking and
scampering about. One of them mounted the pile of débris that held the
rifle; another followed and another. Searing regarded them at first with
indifference, then with friendly interest; then, as the thought flashed
into his bewildered mind that they might touch the trigger of his rifle,
he cursed them and ordered them to go away. "It is no business of
yours," he cried.
The creatures went away; they would return later, attack his face, gnaw
away his nose, cut his throat--he knew that, but he hoped by that time
to be dead.
Nothing could now unfix his gaze from the little ring of metal with its
black interior. The pain in his forehead was fierce and incessant. He
felt it gradually penetrating the brain more and more deeply, until at
last its progress was arrested by the wood at the back of his head. It
grew momentarily more insufferable: he began wantonly beating his
lacerated hand against the splinters again to counteract that horrible
ache. It seemed to throb with a slow, regular recurrence, each pulsation
sharper than the preceding, and sometimes he cried out, thinking he felt
the fatal bullet. No thoughts of home, of wife and children, of country,
of glory. The whole record of memory was effaced. The world had passed
away--not a vestige remained. Here in this confusion of timbers and
boards is the sole universe. Here is immortality in time--each pain an
everlasting life. The throbs tick off eternities.
Jerome Searing, the man of courage, the formidable enemy, the strong,
resolute warrior, was as pale as a ghost. His jaw was fallen; his eyes
protruded; he trembled in every fibre; a cold sweat bathed his entire
body; he screamed with fear. He was not insane--he was terrified.
In groping about with his torn and bleeding hand he seized at last a
strip of board, and, pulling, felt it give way. It lay parallel with his
body, and by bending his elbow as much as the contracted space would
permit, he could draw it a few inches at a time. Finally it was
altogether loosened from the wreckage covering his legs; he could lift
it clear of the ground its whole length. A great hope came into his
mind: perhaps he could work it upward, that is to say backward, far
enough to lift the end and push aside the rifle; or, if that were too
tightly wedged, so place the strip of board as to deflect the bullet.
With this object he passed it backward inch by inch, hardly daring to
breathe lest that act somehow defeat his intent, and more than ever
unable to remove his eyes from the rifle, which might perhaps now hasten
to improve its waning opportunity. Something at least had been gained:
in the occupation of his mind in this attempt at self-defense he was
less sensible of the pain in his head and had ceased to wince. But he
was still dreadfully frightened and his teeth rattled like castanets.
The strip of board ceased to move to the suasion of his hand. He tugged
at it with all his strength, changed the direction of its length all he
could, but it had met some extended obstruction behind him and the end
in front was still too far away to clear the pile of débris and reach
the muzzle of the gun. It extended, indeed, nearly as far as the trigger
guard, which, uncovered by the rubbish, he could imperfectly see with
his right eye. He tried to break the strip with his hand, but had no
leverage. In his defeat, all his terror returned, augmented tenfold. The
black aperture of the rifle appeared to threaten a sharper and more
imminent death in punishment of his rebellion. The track of the bullet
through his head ached with an intenser anguish. He began to tremble
again.
Suddenly he became composed. His tremor subsided. He clenched his teeth
and drew down his eyebrows. He had not exhausted his means of defense; a
new design had shaped itself in his mind--another plan of battle.
Raising the front end of the strip of board, he carefully pushed it
forward through the wreckage at the side of the rifle until it pressed
against the trigger guard. Then he moved the end slowly outward until he
could feel that it had cleared it, then, closing his eyes, thrust it
against the trigger with all his strength! There was no explosion; the
rifle had been discharged as it dropped from his hand when the building
fell. But it did its work.
* * * * *
Lieutenant Adrian Searing, in command of the picket-guard on that part
of the line through which his brother Jerome had passed on his mission,
sat with attentive ears in his breastwork behind the line. Not the
faintest sound escaped him; the cry of a bird, the barking of a
squirrel, the noise of the wind among the pines--all were anxiously
noted by his overstrained sense. Suddenly, directly in front of his
line, he heard a faint, confused rumble, like the clatter of a falling
building translated by distance. The lieutenant mechanically looked at
his watch. Six o'clock and eighteen minutes. At the same moment an
officer approached him on foot from the rear and saluted.
"Lieutenant," said the officer, "the colonel directs you to move forward
your line and feel the enemy if you find him. If not, continue the
advance until directed to halt. There is reason to think that the enemy
has retreated."
The lieutenant nodded and said nothing; the other officer retired. In a
moment the men, apprised of their duty by the non-commissioned officers
in low tones, had deployed from their rifle-pits and were moving forward
in skirmishing order, with set teeth and beating hearts.
This line of skirmishers sweeps across the plantation toward the
mountain. They pass on both sides of the wrecked building, observing
nothing. At a short distance in their rear their commander comes. He
casts his eyes curiously upon the ruin and sees a dead body half buried
in boards and timbers. It is so covered with dust that its clothing is
Confederate gray. Its face is yellowish white; the cheeks are fallen in,
the temples sunken, too, with sharp ridges about them, making the
forehead forbiddingly narrow; the upper lip, slightly lifted, shows the
white teeth, rigidly clenched. The hair is heavy with moisture, the face
as wet as the dewy grass all about. From his point of view the officer
does not observe the rifle; the man was apparently killed by the fall of
the building.
"Dead a week," said the officer curtly, moving on and absently pulling
out his watch as if to verify his estimate of time. Six o'clock and
forty minutes.