Presently we were in a very dark road, and at a point where it dropped
suddenly between steep sides we halted in black shadow. A gleam of pale
sand, a whisper of deep flowing waters, and a farther glimmer of more
sands beyond them challenged our advance. We had come to a "grapevine
ferry." The scow was on the other side, the water too shoal for the
horses to swim, and the bottom, most likely, quicksand. Out of the
blackness of the opposite shore came a soft, high-pitched, quavering,
long-drawn, smothered moan of woe, the call of that snivelling little
sinner the screech-owl. Ferry murmured to me to answer it and I sent the
same faint horror-stricken tremolo back. Again it came to us, from not
farther than one might toss his cap, and I followed Ferry down to the
water's edge. The grapevine guy swayed at our side, we heard the scow
slide from the sands, and in a few moments, moved by two videttes, it
touched our shore. Soon we were across, the two videttes riding with us,
and beyond a sharp rise, in an old opening made by the swoop of a
hurricane, we entered the silent unlighted bivouac of Ferry's scouts.
Ferry got down and sat on the earth talking with Quinn, while the
sergeants quietly roused the sleepers to horse.
Now we marched, and when we had gone a mile or so Ned Ferry turned
aside, taking with him only Sergeant Jim, Kendall, another private, and
me. We went at an alert walk single-file for the better part of an hour
and stopped at length in a narrow untilled "deadening." Beyond it at our
left a faint redness shone just above the tree-tops. At our right, in
the northwest, a similar glow was ruddier, the heavens being darker
there except when once or twice they paled with silent lightnings.
Sergeant Jim went forward alone and on foot, and presently was back
again, whispering to Ferry and remounting.
Ferry led Kendall and me into the woods, the other two remaining. We
found rising ground, and had ridden but a few minutes when from its
crest we looked upon a startling sight. In front of us was a stretch of
specially well farmed land. Our woods swept round it on both sides,
crossed a highway, and gradually closed in again so as to terminate the
opening about half a mile away. Always the same crops, bottom cause of
the war: from us to the road an admirable planting of cotton, and from
there to the farther woods as goodly a show of thick corn. The whole
acreage swept downward to that terminus, at the same time sinking inward
from the two sides. On the highway shone the lighted rear window of a
roadside "store," and down the two sides of the whole tract stretched
the hundred tent-fires of two brigade camps of the enemy's cavalry.
Their new, white canvases were pitched in long, even alleys following
the borders of the wood, from which the brush had been cut away far
enough for half of them to stand under the trees. The men had quieted
down to sleep, but at one tent very near us a group of regimental
officers sat in the light of a torch-basket, and by them were planted
their colors. A quartet of capital voices were singing, and one who
joined the chorus, standing by the flag, absently yet caressingly spread
it at such breadth that we easily read on it the name of the command.
Let me leave that out.
As they sang, and as we sat in our saddles behind the low fence that ran
quite round the opening, Ferry turned from looking across into the
lighted window on the road and handed me his field-glass. "How many
candles do you see in there?"
I saw two. "Yes," he said, dismounting and motioning me to do the same.
Kendall took our bridles. Leaving him with the animals we went over the
fence, through the cotton, across the road at a point terribly near the
lighted and guarded shop, and on down the field of corn, to and over its
farthest fence; stooping, gliding, halting, crouching, in the
cotton-rows and corn-rows; taking every posture two upright gentlemen
would rather not take; while nevertheless I swelled with pride, to be
alone at the side--or even at the heels--of one who, for all this
apparent skulking and grovelling, and in despite of all the hidden
drawings of his passion for a fair woman at this hour somewhere in
peril, kept his straight course in lion-hearted pursuit of his duty (as
he saw it) to a whole world of loves and lovers, martyrs and fighters,
hosts of whom had as good a right to their heart's desire as I to mine
or he to his; and I remembered Charlotte Oliver saying, on her knees, "I
believe no beauty and no joy can be perfect apart from a love that loves
the whole world's joy better than any separate joy of any
separate soul."