"Prisoner, what is your name?"
"As I am to lose it at daylight to-morrow morning it is hardly worth
while concealing it. Parker Adderson."
"Your rank?"
"A somewhat humble one; commissioned officers are too precious to be
risked in the perilous business of a spy. I am a sergeant."
"Of what regiment?"
"You must excuse me; my answer might, for anything I know, give you an
idea of whose forces are in your front. Such knowledge as that is what I
came into your lines to obtain, not to impart."
"You are not without wit."
"If you have the patience to wait you will find me dull enough
to-morrow."
"How do you know that you are to die to-morrow morning?"
"Among spies captured by night that is the custom. It is one of the nice
observances of the profession."
The general so far laid aside the dignity appropriate to a Confederate
officer of high rank and wide renown as to smile. But no one in his
power and out of his favor would have drawn any happy augury from that
outward and visible sign of approval. It was neither genial nor
infectious; it did not communicate itself to the other persons exposed
to it--the caught spy who had provoked it and the armed guard who had
brought him into the tent and now stood a little apart, watching his
prisoner in the yellow candle-light. It was no part of that warrior's
duty to smile; he had been detailed for another purpose. The
conversation was resumed; it was in character a trial for a capital
offense.
"You admit, then, that you are a spy--that you came into my camp,
disguised as you are in the uniform of a Confederate soldier, to obtain
information secretly regarding the numbers and disposition of my
troops."
"Regarding, particularly, their numbers. Their disposition I already
knew. It is morose."
The general brightened again; the guard, with a severer sense of his
responsibility, accentuated the austerity of his expression and stood a
trifle more erect than before. Twirling his gray slouch hat round and
round upon his forefinger, the spy took a leisurely survey of his
surroundings. They were simple enough. The tent was a common "wall
tent," about eight feet by ten in dimensions, lighted by a single tallow
candle stuck into the haft of a bayonet, which was itself stuck into a
pine table at which the general sat, now busily writing and apparently
forgetful of his unwilling guest. An old rag carpet covered the earthen
floor; an older leather trunk, a second chair and a roll of blankets
were about all else that the tent contained; in General Clavering's
command Confederate simplicity and penury of "pomp and circumstance" had
attained their highest development. On a large nail driven into the tent
pole at the entrance was suspended a sword-belt supporting a long sabre,
a pistol in its holster and, absurdly enough, a bowie-knife. Of that
most unmilitary weapon it was the general's habit to explain that it was
a souvenir of the peaceful days when he was a civilian.
It was a stormy night. The rain cascaded upon the canvas in torrents,
with the dull, drum-like sound familiar to dwellers in tents. As the
whooping blasts charged upon it the frail structure shook and swayed and
strained at its confining stakes and ropes.
The general finished writing, folded the half-sheet of paper and spoke
to the soldier guarding Adderson: "Here, Tassman, take that to the
adjutant-general; then return."
"And the prisoner, General?" said the soldier, saluting, with an
inquiring glance in the direction of that unfortunate.
"Do as I said," replied the officer, curtly.
The soldier took the note and ducked himself out of the tent. General
Clavering turned his handsome face toward the Federal spy, looked him in
the eyes, not unkindly, and said: "It is a bad night, my man."
"For me, yes."
"Do you guess what I have written?"
"Something worth reading, I dare say. And--perhaps it is my vanity--I
venture to suppose that I am mentioned in it."
"Yes; it is a memorandum for an order to be read to the troops at
_reveille_ concerning your execution. Also some notes for the guidance
of the provost-marshal in arranging the details of that event."
"I hope, General, the spectacle will be intelligently arranged, for I
shall attend it myself."
"Have you any arrangements of your own that you wish to make? Do you
wish to see a chaplain, for example?"
"I could hardly secure a longer rest for myself by depriving him of some
of his."
"Good God, man! do you mean to go to your death with nothing but jokes
upon your lips? Do you know that this is a serious matter?"
"How can I know that? I have never been dead in all my life. I have
heard that death is a serious matter, but never from any of those who
have experienced it."
The general was silent for a moment; the man interested, perhaps amused
him--a type not previously encountered.
"Death," he said, "is at least a loss--a loss of such happiness as we
have, and of opportunities for more."
"A loss of which we shall never be conscious can be borne with composure
and therefore expected without apprehension. You must have observed,
General, that of all the dead men with whom it is your soldierly
pleasure to strew your path none shows signs of regret."
"If the being dead is not a regrettable condition, yet the becoming so--
the act of dying--appears to be distinctly disagreeable to one who has
not lost the power to feel."
"Pain is disagreeable, no doubt. I never suffer it without more or less
discomfort. But he who lives longest is most exposed to it. What you
call dying is simply the last pain--there is really no such thing as
dying. Suppose, for illustration, that I attempt to escape. You lift the
revolver that you are courteously concealing in your lap, and--"
The general blushed like a girl, then laughed softly, disclosing his
brilliant teeth, made a slight inclination of his handsome head and said
nothing. The spy continued: "You fire, and I have in my stomach what I
did not swallow. I fall, but am not dead. After a half-hour of agony I
am dead. But at any given instant of that half-hour I was either alive
or dead. There is no transition period.
"When I am hanged to-morrow morning it will be quite the same; while
conscious I shall be living; when dead, unconscious. Nature appears to
have ordered the matter quite in my interest--the way that I should have
ordered it myself. It is so simple," he added with a smile, "that it
seems hardly worth while to be hanged at all."
At the finish of his remarks there was a long silence. The general sat
impassive, looking into the man's face, but apparently not attentive to
what had been said. It was as if his eyes had mounted guard over the
prisoner while his mind concerned itself with other matters. Presently
he drew a long, deep breath, shuddered, as one awakened from a dreadful
dream, and exclaimed almost inaudibly: "Death is horrible!"--this man of
death.
"It was horrible to our savage ancestors," said the spy, gravely,
"because they had not enough intelligence to dissociate the idea of
consciousness from the idea of the physical forms in which it is
manifested--as an even lower order of intelligence, that of the monkey,
for example, may be unable to imagine a house without inhabitants, and
seeing a ruined hut fancies a suffering occupant. To us it is horrible
because we have inherited the tendency to think it so, accounting for
the notion by wild and fanciful theories of another world--as names of
places give rise to legends explaining them and reasonless conduct to
philosophies in justification. You can hang me, General, but there your
power of evil ends; you cannot condemn me to heaven."
The general appeared not to have heard; the spy's talk had merely turned
his thoughts into an unfamiliar channel, but there they pursued their
will independently to conclusions of their own. The storm had ceased,
and something of the solemn spirit of the night had imparted itself to
his reflections, giving them the sombre tinge of a supernatural dread.
Perhaps there was an element of prescience in it. "I should not like to
die," he said--"not to-night."
He was interrupted--if, indeed, he had intended to speak further--by the
entrance of an officer of his staff, Captain Hasterlick, the
provost-marshal. This recalled him to himself; the absent look passed
away from his face.
"Captain," he said, acknowledging the officer's salute, "this man is a
Yankee spy captured inside our lines with incriminating papers on him.
He has confessed. How is the weather?"
"The storm is over, sir, and the moon shining."
"Good; take a file of men, conduct him at once to the parade ground, and
shoot him."
A sharp cry broke from the spy's lips. He threw himself forward, thrust
out his neck, expanded his eyes, clenched his hands.
"Good God!" he cried hoarsely, almost inarticulately; "you do not mean
that! You forget--I am not to die until morning."
"I have said nothing of morning," replied the general, coldly; "that was
an assumption of your own. You die now."
"But, General, I beg--I implore you to remember; I am to hang! It will
take some time to erect the gallows--two hours--an hour. Spies are
hanged; I have rights under military law. For Heaven's sake, General,
consider how short--"
"Captain, observe my directions."
The officer drew his sword and fixing his eyes upon the prisoner pointed
silently to the opening of the tent. The prisoner hesitated; the officer
grasped him by the collar and pushed him gently forward. As he
approached the tent pole the frantic man sprang to it and with cat-like
agility seized the handle of the bowie-knife, plucked the weapon from
the scabbard and thrusting the captain aside leaped upon the general
with the fury of a madman, hurling him to the ground and falling
headlong upon him as he lay. The table was overturned, the candle
extinguished and they fought blindly in the darkness. The
provost-marshal sprang to the assistance of his Superior officer and was
himself prostrated upon the struggling forms. Curses and inarticulate
cries of rage and pain came from the welter of limbs and bodies; the
tent came down upon them and beneath its hampering and enveloping folds
the struggle went on. Private Tassman, returning from his errand and
dimly conjecturing the situation, threw down his rifle and laying hold
of the flouncing canvas at random vainly tried to drag it off the men
under it; and the sentinel who paced up and down in front, not daring to
leave his beat though the skies should fall, discharged his rifle. The
report alarmed the camp; drums beat the long roll and bugles sounded the
assembly, bringing swarms of half-clad men into the moonlight, dressing
as they ran, and falling into line at the sharp commands of their
officers. This was well; being in line the men were under control; they
stood at arms while the general's staff and the men of his escort
brought order out of confusion by lifting off the fallen tent and
pulling apart the breathless and bleeding actors in that strange
contention.
Breathless, indeed, was one: the captain was dead; the handle of the
bowie-knife, protruding from his throat, was pressed back beneath his
chin until the end had caught in the angle of the jaw and the hand that
delivered the blow had been unable to remove the weapon. In the dead
man's hand was his sword, clenched with a grip that defied the strength
of the living. Its blade was streaked with red to the hilt.
Lifted to his feet, the general sank back to the earth with a moan and
fainted. Besides his bruises he had two sword-thrusts--one through the
thigh, the other through the shoulder.
The spy had suffered the least damage. Apart from a broken right arm,
his wounds were such only as might have been incurred in an ordinary
combat with nature's weapons. But he was dazed and seemed hardly to know
what had occurred. He shrank away from those attending him, cowered upon
the ground and uttered unintelligible remonstrances. His face, swollen
by blows and stained with gouts of blood, nevertheless showed white
beneath his disheveled hair--as white as that of a corpse.
"The man is not insane," said the surgeon, preparing bandages and
replying to a question; "he is suffering from fright. Who and what is
he?"
Private Tassman began to explain. It was the opportunity of his life; he
omitted nothing that could in any way accentuate the importance of his
own relation to the night's events. When he had finished his story and
was ready to begin it again nobody gave him any attention.
The general had now recovered consciousness. He raised himself upon his
elbow, looked about him, and, seeing the spy crouching by a camp-fire,
guarded, said simply:
"Take that man to the parade ground and shoot him."
"The general's mind wanders," said an officer standing near.
"His mind does _not_ wander," the adjutant-general said. "I have a
memorandum from him about this business; he had given that same order to
Hasterlick"--with a motion of the hand toward the dead provost-marshal--
"and, by God! it shall be executed."
Ten minutes later Sergeant Parker Adderson, of the Federal army,
philosopher and wit, kneeling in the moonlight and begging incoherently
for his life, was shot to death by twenty men. As the volley rang out
upon the keen air of the midnight, General Clavering, lying white and
still in the red glow of the camp-fire, opened his big blue eyes, looked
pleasantly upon those about him and said: "How silent it all is!"
The surgeon looked at the adjutant-general, gravely and significantly.
The patient's eyes slowly closed, and thus he lay for a few moments;
then, his face suffused with a smile of ineffable sweetness, he said,
faintly: "I suppose this must be death," and so passed away.