The moon came up above the cooking fires and shimmered behind the heat
that was still held by the sands of St. Helena Island. Mosquitoes rose
from the swamps and pools and sluggish rivers to the west.
The soldiers unstacked their rifles and cleaned them. They packed their
gear and settled down by the cooking fires and boiled what might be
their last hot meal for quite a while.
Tim and Red shared a tent with Captain Kautz and Dawson but tonight
they sat at the table alone. Tim had set out a candle in a bright brass
holder. A faint breeze stirred the tent flaps, and the light flickered
on the tin cups and plates. Red’s beard glinted in the yellow light.
Most of the boys had already struck their tents, but Kautz liked to
keep things set up until the very last so he could spread out maps and
do his work. He was short and fierce and powerfully built. He would
sit for hours before the company went into action, his blouse open and
his head bent, studying the map. He would pull his beard and fuss and
fidget and suddenly get to his feet with his bristling chin thrust
forward. “And that’s how it will go,” he would say and then smile
frostily to himself. “If the Confederates will cooperate.”
Tonight Kautz was having supper with the colonel. Tim hadn’t seen
Dawson since early morning. Everyone knew the regiment was to sail at
dawn, and the camp hummed with talk of the fighting that lay ahead. The
boys knew they were moving against Charleston, and most of them were
eager to go.
The candle guttered as the two men finished their meal. Red cupped his
hand around the flame and blew it out. In a nearby tent they heard a
clatter of plates, and a shout went up. Tim leaned back so that he
could see past the tent flap. A man was running wildly around a cooking
fire, stripped to the waist. “It’s Corporal Steele,” Tim said. “Every
company has a clown.”
Now Sergeant Fitch and some of the other boys joined the fun. They
whooped and hollered and jigged. The firelight struck their bodies like
a patchwork quilt. Tim smiled to himself.
A voice was suddenly raised above the din. A blond-haired man of middle
height came into the light, with both fists clenched. “You men have
work to do,” he screamed. “Clean your rifles and assemble your gear.
Tomorrow we move up the coast.”
Tim said, “Dawson’s drunk as a lord.” He stood up and stepped outside
the tent, moving toward the fire.
Dawson looked up, his chin trembling. “Lieutenant,” he said in a
shaking voice, “are these your men?”
“Yes, Captain, they’re my men,” Tim said. “Their rifles are clean and
they’re ready to go. They were just letting off a little steam.”
“Are you being insolent with me?”
Tim looked down at the captain’s sweat-streaked shirt. He turned to
Sergeant Fitch. “Sergeant,” he said, controlling the anger in his
voice, “you men look over your gear and report back to me.”
“Captain.” He turned. “Can I help you to a cup of coffee?”
Dawson put his hands on his hips and swayed a little, focusing his
watery eyes on Tim. “Mind your manners, Lieutenant,” he said and turned
and walked unsteadily away.
As soon as he’d gone Red staggered out of the tent. He put his hands on
his hips, swayed back and forth and crossed his eyes. “Were you bein’
inshulent wi’ me?”
Tim grinned, reached out a long arm and pushed Red so hard that he
staggered back and fell on the grass.
It wasn’t long before Sergeant Fitch came back with his boys. “Our
rifles are clean and our gear is packed,” he said.
Tim stood up and kicked some sand into the fire. “Are your buttons nice
and shiny so the Rebs can see them in the dark?”
“Like diamonds, sir.”
Corporal Steele was hanging back, but Tim could see that he was
smiling. “Why don’t you boys sit down for a while?”
Steele sat on an empty hardtack box and the others sprawled on the
grass. Sergeant Fitch cleared his throat. “Lieutenant Kelly, I wonder
would you sing us that Irish lullaby?”
“Now what would a strapping man like you be wanting with a lullaby?”
Red sang in his fine tenor voice.
As other soldiers gathered around, Tim stood up and left the group.
He walked back to the tent. A warm breeze blew in from the ocean. He
reached for his poncho and spread it on the ground not far from the
tent. He lay on his back with his hands behind his head.
Red’s voice came clear in the silence of the starlit night. Tim thought
of Kate. The last time he’d written her he’d known in his heart he was
writing the thoughts of a boy who had left home two long years before.
If only he and Kate could meet and talk for a while.
He remembered the first time he’d danced with her, the light from the
chandeliers striking the whirling figures in the white-painted room
of the new Town Hall. As he drifted into sleep Tim thought about the
dresses, pink and salmon and powder blue against the men’s black suits.
* * * * *
When reveille sounded Tim woke up and rolled over. Red lay on the sand
a few feet away, groaning as he opened his eyes in the predawn light.
“Last night when I curled up here,” he said in a rasping whisper, “I
thought you had a good idea, sleeping on the ground.”
Tim felt his poncho and his clothes. They were soaked with dew.
Captain Kautz was already up, sitting on a keg outside the tent,
straining his eyes to take in every detail of the waking camp, already
thinking about the day that lay ahead. “We break camp now. The
transport moves with the morning tide.” He stood up. “I suppose we have
to set off a charge of powder by Dawson’s head to get him up.”
Dawson came out of the tent and stared, silent and hostile, at Kautz’s
back. “Very funny, Captain,” he said, putting his hand to his head.
The four men ate their rations of salt pork and hardtack and bitter
coffee. The companies formed in columns to march to the pier and board
a ferry that would take them across to Hilton Head.
As they crossed Port Royal Sound the sky in the east was touched by the
light of dawn. A mist hung over the sea. The ferry coasted into the
landing and the soldiers were silent, watching the shore or staring
moodily at the deck, showing none of the spirit of the night before.
The troops waited by the big, gray sheds, built when the islands had
first been occupied. The men talked quietly and some of them realizing
that there would be a wait, took off their cartridge boxes and canteens
and stacked their rifles.
The pier crossed a narrow strip of beach and jutted more than a hundred
yards into the water. A narrow-gauge railroad track ran out to the end
of the pier where a T-shaped float broadened the docking space. Two
large transports waited at the end of the pier, smoke trailing away
from their single funnels. Just ahead of them a smaller vessel was
being unloaded by half-a-dozen stevedores. Beyond the pier were the
masts and funnels of a score of other ships, the farthest ones dim in
the morning mist.
Tim went forward to speak to Kautz. The captain turned. “The colonel
says dispense with roll call. No one will want to desert us here.” He
motioned toward the waiting transports and gestured toward a column of
men that waited on the pier. “We board the ship on the left,” he said.
“Company K will occupy the forward deck. We will occupy the stern.”
Tim made his way back along the wall of one of the sheds. He found Red
no more cheerful than anyone else. Tim said, “At least we’re heading
north.”
“I suppose there should be comfort in that.”
Dawson stood close by. “North or south, it’s all the same to me,” he
said. “I want to see the last of these flea-ridden islands. I’d like to
be defending Beaufort. That’s the job for me. The boys in Beaufort sit
on verandas and rock all day.”
Red smiled. “A veranda in New Haven would look good to me.”
The branches of a spindly oak showed above the roof of the nearest
shed. The place was colorless and barren in the early morning light.
Now the columns of soldiers began to move.
A couple of Navy men dashed past on their way to their ship, holding
their little pie-shaped hats, their bell-bottomed trousers flopping
foolishly around their ankles. A soldier raised a little cheer and the
whole column took it up. One of the sailors blushed and quickened his
pace.
Kautz and Dawson were waiting at the end of the pier. They motioned the
soldiers forward and directed them to climb the gangplank.
As the men reached the deck they passed a solemn old sailor with a full
white beard. He watched them closely as one by one they stepped to the
deck, nodding to each in a silent gesture of mournfulness.
The transport moved through the anchored fleet and into the channel.
She steamed east until she was well away from shore. When she was two
miles out she swung northeast, and some of the soldiers sought shelter
from the heat on the deck below or in the shadows of the boats.
Tim leaned against the rail with Red, watching the distant shore. Close
by, the air seemed clear and the sun reflected on the water, but the
distance was shrouded in haze.
Shortly after noon one of the lookouts gave a yell. A big,
black-bearded gunner shouted to his men, and they struggled up from
where they lounged with the soldiers on the deck.
Two thirty-pound cannon were mounted near the stern, one on either
side. The gunner leaned on the starboard cannon and shielded his eyes,
looking into the mist that veiled the horizon.
Tim strained his eyes, then clutched Red’s arm and pointed across the
crowded deck. “There she is!”
A small, gray packet ghosted through the mist, about two miles off
their starboard bow. The transport swung to port and the soldiers were
ordered to stand clear. The gun crew went to work. They sponged and
rammed. The gunner grabbed a big pinch bar and crouched and moved the
gun around its track. He adjusted the screw to suit his judgment. When
the gun seemed ready the gunner sighted again along the barrel and gave
another wrench with the bar. Then he stepped aside and shouted, “Fire!”
One of his gun crew jerked the lanyard, and the wooden deck trembled
as the cannon thundered and recoiled, straining against the breeching
tackle. The ball arched out of sight, and Tim imagined that he saw a
fleck of white where it hit the water short of its mark.
Before the gunner could fire a second shot the packet had shown them
her stern and was lost in the mist.
Red squinted into the distance. “She must have been a phantom surely.
She could hardly expect to run into Charleston in the afternoon. It
must be risky enough at night.”
“She was probably due to arrive last night. She must have been delayed
somehow. She’s killing time until sundown.”
The gunner heard Tim and nodded his head. “And now we’ll be on the
lookout for her.” He smiled. “But they’re slippery devils, sure enough.”
[Illustration: The South Carolina Coast from Hilton Head to Charleston,
1863]
As the transport approached Folly Island, Captain Kautz spread a map on
the deck. It showed the coast from Savannah to Charleston. Tim’s eyes
traced their course from Hilton Head past St. Helena, Edisto and Kiawa
to Folly Island, Lighthouse Inlet and Morris Island, which lay at the
entrance to Charleston Harbor.
“We bivouac at the southwest end of Folly tonight,” Kautz said, drawing
a stubby finger across the map, “and tomorrow at dusk we march the
length of the island to the shore of Lighthouse Inlet. We will launch
our attack in small boats. Morris Island is a sparsely covered place.”
The captain had things figured one, two, three. He straightened up with
his hands on his hips and looked toward Morris Island, as if he were
going to take a bite out of it with his even white teeth. “It shouldn’t
be more than one day’s work to clear the rifle pits and capture the
batteries along the shore. By Saturday night we’ll be cleaning our
rifles inside the fort.”
Tim studied the map. Morris Island was shaped like a big pork chop,
the thin part curving north toward Fort Sumter. At the end of the thin
part, on Cummings Point, stood Battery Gregg. Guarding this narrow neck
of sand from land assault, Fort Wagner stretched from the ocean on the
east to a tidal creek on the west.
As he and Red turned away from the map Tim said under his breath, “That
fort is in a strong position. I wish I shared the captain’s confidence.”
Folly was a thin, sandy island stretching northeast like a crooked
finger. It was already garrisoned by Union forces.
As the transport ran up Folly River the men could see the tops of
Yankee tents above the undergrowth.
The troops disembarked at Pawnee Landing. They cut through a little
wood on a well-worn path and made their bivouac in a barren place not
far from the beach, close to another Yankee camp.
They built no fires that night. Tim and Red, Dawson and Kautz sat
together breaking out their rations, glad for a chance to rest. Captain
Dawson turned to Kautz. “I wonder if the Rebels know what’s up?”
“It won’t be long before they do.”
Tim was impatient. “Why can’t we march tomorrow morning?”
“We can boil up our rations and clean our rifles,” Dawson said. “We can
make good use of the extra time.”
Red laughed. “If the boys clean their rifles a couple more times
they’ll wear the bores down smooth.”
Dawson didn’t feel like joking. “Sea air is death to firearms,” he said.
Kautz gave no sign of having heard. “We’ll have plenty of support for
our initial attack. We have a hidden battery on the shore of Lighthouse
Inlet. As soon as the enemy sees our boats our mortars will open fire.”