She sang it. As the second stanza was begun we heard a responsive swell
grow softly to fuller and fuller volume beneath the windows; the
prisoners were singing. I heard an austere voice forbid it, but it rose
straight on from strength to strength:
"Sure I must fight if I would win,
Increase my courage, Lord.
I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
Supported by thy word."
The dying man lifted a hand and Charlotte ceased. He had not heard the
muffled chorus of his followers below; or it may be that he had, and
that the degree of liberty they seemed to be enjoying prompted him to
seek the new favor he now asked. I did not catch his words, but
Charlotte heard, and answered tenderly, yet with a thrill of pain so
keen she could not conceal it even from him.
"Oh! you wouldn't ask a rebel to sing that," she sighed, "would you?"
He made no rejoinder except that his eyes were insistent. She wiped his
temples. "I hate to refuse you."
His gaze was grateful. She spoke again: "I suppose I oughtn't to mind
it."
Miss Harper came in, and Charlotte, taking her hand without a glance,
told the Captain's hard request under her voice. Miss Harper, too, in
her turn, gave a start of pain, but when the dying eyes and smile turned
pleadingly to her she said, "Why, if you can, Charlotte, dear, but oh!
how can you?"
Charlotte addressed the wounded man: "Just a little bit of it, will that
do?" and as he eagerly assented she added, to Miss Harper, "You know,
dear, in its history it's no more theirs than ours."
"No, not so much," said Miss Harper, with a gleam of pride; and
thereupon it was my amazement to hear Charlotte begin guardedly to sing:
"O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?"
But guardedly as she began, the effect on the huddled crowd below was
instant and electrical. They heard almost the first note; looking down
anxiously, I saw the wonder and enthusiasm pass from man to man. They
heard the first two lines in awed, ecstatic silence; but at the third,
warily, first one, then three, then a dozen, then a score, bereft of
arms, standard, and leader, little counting ever again to see freedom,
flag, or home, they raised their voices, by the dawn's early light, in
their song of songs.
Our main body were out in the highway, just facing into column, and the
effect on them I could not see. The prisoners' guards, though instantly
ablaze with indignation, were so taken by surprise that for two or three
seconds, with carbines at a ready, they--and even their sergeant in
command--only darted fierce looks here and there and up at me. The
prisoners must have been used to singing in ordered chorus, for one of
them strode into their middle, and smiling sturdily at the maddened
guard and me, led the song evenly. "No, sir!" he cried, as I made an
angry sign for them to desist, "one verse through, if every damned fool
of us dies for it--let the Captain hear it boys--sing!
"'The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air--'"
Charlotte had ceased, in consternation not for the conditions without
more than for those within. With the first strong swell of the song from
below, the dying leader strove to sit upright and to lift his blade, but
failed and would have slammed back upon the pillows had not she and Miss
Harper saved him. He lay in their arms gasping his last, yet clutching
his sabre with a quivering hand and listening on with rapt face
untroubled by the fiery tumult of cries that broke into and over
the strain.
"Club that man over the head!" cried the sergeant of the guard, and one
of his men swung a gun; but the Yankee sprang inside of its sweep,
crying, "Sing her through, boys!" grappled his opponent, and hurled him
back. In the same instant the sergeant called steadily, "Guard,
ready--aim--"
There sounded a clean slap of levelled carbines, yet from the prisoners
came the continued song in its closing couplet:
"The star-spangled banner! O, long may it wave!--"
and out of the midst of its swell the oaths and curses and defiant
laughter of a dozen men crying, with tears in their eyes, "Shoot! shoot!
why don't you shoot?"
But the command to fire did not come; suddenly there was a drumming of
hoofs, then their abrupt stoppage, and the voice of a vigilant commander
called, "Attention!"
With a few words to the sergeant, more brief than harsh, and while the
indomitable singers pressed on to the very close of the stanza without a
sign from him to desist, Ferry bade the subaltern resume his command,
and turned toward me at the window. He lifted his sword and spoke in a
lowered tone, the sullen guard stood to their arms, and every captive
looked up for my reply.
"Shall I come?" he inquired; but I shook my head.
"What!--gone?" he asked again, and I nodded. He turned and trotted
lightly after the departing column. I remember his pensive mien as he
moved down the grove, and how a soft gleam flashed from his sword, above
his head, as with the hand that held it he fingered his slender
mustache, and how another gleam followed it as he reversed the blade and
let it into its sheath. Then my eyes lost him; for Gholson had taken his
place under the window and was beckoning for my attention.
"Is she coming?" he called up, and Charlotte, at my side, spoke
downward:
"I shall be with you in a moment."
While he waited the second lieutenant of the Louisianians came, and as
guard and prisoners started away she came out upon the veranda steps.
Across her knee, as she and Gholson galloped off by a road across
fields, lay in a wrapping of corn-husks the huge sabre of the dead
northerner.