Just before sundown of the following day a corporal from General
Strong’s brigade came around and handed out squares of white cotton
cloth. The men were to sew them to the left sleeves of their blouses to
prevent mistakes if they should be attacked while they marched.
At midnight came the sounds of quiet commands, the tinkle of buckles
and the creak of leather as the men made ready for the march.
Tim’s men grouped around. Sergeant Fitch and Steele and the others
leaned on their rifles.
“We don’t expect trouble tonight but we have to go quiet. General
Strong’s brigade is on our left. We’ll travel close to the beach, with
the Sixth Connecticut just behind.”
Tim found marching a pleasant relief from the heat and boredom of the
day. The moon rose and traced its path across the sky. The breeze from
the ocean riffled the marsh grass and cooled the sand. They reached the
inlet well before dawn.
Tim turned to Sergeant Fitch. “Fall out and be silent,” he whispered.
The boys sat around on the sand.
Captain Kautz moved along the line. “Ten minutes to rest and then we
embark,” he said. “We cross the inlet and wait near shore for a signal
from Colonel Rodman’s boat. When we finally start for the beach, row
fast.”
In the ghostly light the silhouetted figures fussed with the boats,
setting the oarlocks and putting in the oars. The boatloads departed
one by one.
The boats were made of rough milled pine primed over with lead and oil.
Tim cautioned his men to step with care. “The bottom’s eggshell thin,”
he said.
The men rowed silently across the inlet. Tim sat at the tiller in the
stern.
They waited in the shelter of the grass-covered dunes, dipping their
oars so that the boats wouldn’t drift. Aside from the occasional plop
of a clumsy oar, there was barely a sound. Corporal Steele sat just
across from Tim, rowing and watching the rippling grass. “There must be
Rebels behind those dunes,” he whispered. “We’ll be sitting ducks if
they catch us here.” As he spoke the flat of his right oar smacked the
water.
Tim whispered fiercely, “You’re doing your best to give us away.”
The oarsmen rocked and dozed, dipping an occasional oar. Tim started to
worry. Suppose they’d been seen by a random picket as they’d crossed
the inlet, and suppose the picket had held his fire and reported the
presence of Yankee boats? If that had happened, every boat in the inlet
would be blown to bits in the first light of dawn.
Tim combed the shore for signs of life, but there were none. The
lapping of the water against the boats and the distant whisper of the
sea were broken just once in that early morning vigil when a lone gull
rose with an urgent flapping, circled and rested again.
As the rising sun blazed fire across the sky, flooding the sea with an
orange light, the silhouettes of the boats took form and shape.
The silence was shattered by the opening shot. An eight-inch shell from
the Federal battery arched overhead and dropped into the Rebel camp.
The Confederates shouted and ran to their guns. The smoke from the
discharged gun twisted lazily in the morning air. Tim gripped the side
of his boat and watched through the haze for a sign from the colonel.
Now the water was churned by shot and shell. A near miss doused Tim’s
boat, and the boys went pale. “Why the devil must we wait to move?” Tim
said out loud.
A trickle of water ran down his cheek and into his mouth. He wanted to
shout the command himself.
The Yankee battery fired again. The shell burst just behind a nearby
sand hill. A mass of gulls rose against the sun in a speckled cloud and
flew, squawking, toward the open sea.
Now one of the boats was hit. The man in the stern rose from his seat,
swayed and toppled to the water in a trail of blood. Another was
wounded, and his screaming echoed across the water above the sound
of rifle fire and the yells of the Rebels on the shore. There was a
throbbing in Tim’s head. He could feel his temper rise. Now at last the
signal was given, the oarsmen bent to their work and the boats moved
toward shore.
Kautz’s boat was one of the first to scrape the sand. He jumped out,
ranging up and down the beach like a fighting cock, urging the men to
move in fast.
Tim’s boat landed just behind Kautz’s, with other boats following
closely. He jumped over the side and into the water and waded ashore in
a hail of bullets.
Kautz said, “Hit the beach and start firing.” He knelt near Tim. “Half
a minute to get your breath, then move inland with your men and clear
the rifle pits. If you keep moving, the rest of the company will follow
right behind.”
The other boats swarmed in to shore and the soldiers started jumping
out, holding their rifles high and dry.
Sergeant Fitch and the other boys lay close to Tim, their faces
streaming and their chests heaving. Tim fingered his pistol. “A couple
more seconds, then we go.” He raised his hand. “Three yards apart. Keep
me in sight. Move in low and give them a lively target.”
He moved fast to the crest of the nearest dune. The first line of rifle
pits had been deserted. The enemy camp was deserted too. It was strewn
with boots, canteens and other odds and ends. A cooking fire smoldered
on the sand. Tim and his boys moved past the tents. The Rebel garrison
must have been small.
A cannon on the right was standing alone. Red and a squad of his men
moved in to swing it around. Tim ran forward to the second dune and
crouched to see what lay beyond. There was a line of rifle pits a
hundred yards or so away. Men peered anxiously over the sides. Tim
signaled to his men. Rising up in full view of the pits, he gave a yell
and ran a zigzag course, with Sergeant Fitch and Steele by his side.
The other men yelled and followed close on their heels. Neither Yankees
nor Rebels stopped to fire. The Rebels, outnumbered as they were, just
jumped the pits and scurried for the rear.
One of the Rebels was very young. With youthful awkwardness he was
trying all at once to put on his shirt, hold his blouse and rifle, and
run for his life. As he ran his shirt streamed out behind. He dropped
his rifle and when he stopped to pick it up he dropped his blouse. When
the boy’s face turned toward his pursuers Tim raised his pistol as if
to shoot. The boy deliberately picked up his blouse and his rifle and
turned his back; he moved a few steps closer to the shelter of a dune.
Tim signaled for his men to hold their fire. He lowered his pistol.
They watched the lad as he cut loose and sprinted like a rabbit for the
safety of the dune, his shirt still clinging to one of his arms and
streaming out behind.
Tim looked back. The Federal force was moving forward in a solid line.
He scrambled up a knob of sand. Beyond him, over a waste of dunes, a
Rebel battery was just about to be deserted. Behind the cannon the
ground was dotted with soldiers in full retreat.
The attackers paused to catch their breaths. Off to the right Red had
taken prisoners. He was giving orders to three of his men who were
acting as guards. He gestured and pointed toward the rear, then turned
his back on his prisoners, looking over the ground ahead.
Tim and his boys moved forward again, this time so fast that they
caught a gun crew off its guard. Tim dropped behind a crescent-shaped
drift of sand, and edging forward, found himself staring straight into
the muzzle of a cannon--a parrot rifle not fifty yards beyond. Five of
the gun crew made themselves scarce, but two of the braver ones started
to empty their powder barrels. One of the men saw Tim and grabbed for
a rifle, but Tim brought up his pistol and fired. The Rebel winced and
grabbed his shoulder, dropping to the sand as the other man scurried
away.
The fleeing man paused in the cover of a little valley and brought up
his rifle. Corporal Steele lay close to Tim, his rifle cradled easily
in his hands. He squeezed the trigger and the man pitched forward and
lay still on the sand. Then one of Steele’s hands left his rifle. He
reached into a hollow in the sand and brought out a speckled sea-gull
egg. Steele slipped the egg into his cartridge box and both men stood
up and moved toward the gun.
Tim spoke to the man he had shot. “You hurt bad?”
Blood had soaked through the man’s gray blouse. There were patience and
sadness in his face. “The war is finished for me now,” he said.
Tim propped the man against the cannon and took up the chase again.
The sun traveled across the hard blue sky as the Yankees moved along
the shore, taking gun after gun and turning them on men who had manned
them minutes before.
About midday Tim paused with his men to drink from his canteen and eat
some hardtack and a ration of pork.
As the Yankees closed on Wagner there was token resistance, but it was
clear that the Rebels would make their stand inside the fort. By late
afternoon the attackers had traversed the ridge and the last of the
coastal guns was theirs. Tim watched Kautz as Red and his men swung a
big seacoast howitzer around and discharged a shell that burst above
the heads of the retreating cannoneers.
The advance was halted and Tim settled down for a rest. Captain Kautz
sat down close by. From where they rested, part of the fort could be
seen--a great sculptured mound of earth and sand.
Kautz pointed to a bastion close to the sea, then motioned to the left.
“The other salient is just out of sight behind those little trees.
We’re told the fort holds three hundred men. The parapets are bristling
with artillery.”
As if to accent what he had said, a shell from the fort arched high
across the sky and exploded short of its mark. The fire from the fort
was fitful now. The enemy was saving its fury for the Yankee assault.
Kautz spoke again. “We’ll launch our attack at low tide. Just now the
tide is high. The strip of sand between the tidal creek and the sea
wouldn’t hold a company, much less a regiment.”
Ships of the Federal Navy lay in a flat calm, just out of range of the
Confederate shore batteries. The masts of the ships of the coastal
blockade could be seen in the distance.
“Looks as if we’ll have Naval support,” Tim said.
“We’ll need support. As we sit here we’re well within range of the guns
at Sumter and the batteries across the channel on Sullivan’s Island.”
Kautz gestured toward the narrow neck of sand, the pathway to the fort.
“That beach will be a hell on earth when all the batteries open fire.”
Sergeant Fitch came by. He smiled dryly and motioned toward the fort.
“That place is bulging with angry men.” He put a hand on his hip. “But
there’s one Rebel soldier who comes to my mind who might not find the
heart to shoot at all.”
Blue uniforms covered the sand as far as the eye could see. Tim said,
“If numbers counted, we could take the place without a fight.”
“That’s a pretty big ‘if,’ Lieutenant,” Fitch said. “Schoolboys with
slingshots could hold that fort.”
“If we go in strong we’ll take the place,” Tim said. He turned away.
He found Red by a little stream on the westerly side of the neck of
land. Red was stripped to the waist, dousing his hair and scrubbing his
beard with a piece of soap.
Tim took him by surprise. “That beard would frighten the devil himself.”
Red straightened up, grinning.
A row of wounded lay on the sandy bank of the stream, waiting to be
taken to the rear. Tim noticed three gray blouses at the end of the
line. Two mounted officers rode along the crest of the hill above the
stream. A ferry service must have been set up to bring the horses and
wagons across from Folly.
Red finished his washing and the two men moved up the hill. To their
left the tower of Charleston’s St. Michael’s Church was a knife of fire
in the light of the setting sun.
When his boys had cleaned their rifles and settled for the night
Tim found a place close to the ocean, where he could be alone. A
waning moon climbed the dark blue sky, and the phosphor-lighted waves
that edged the mass of the open sea lapped gently against the shore
below. The black outlines of the ships of the Navy--the monitors and
gunboats--were etched against the hazy distance. He thought of a
springtime more than two years ago when he and Kate had sat on Lookout
Rock high above the river in the warmth and freshness of the sun,
letting their eyes wander over the morning haze, finding patches of
pine and green-gold willow trees. He remembered the sun striking the
river and the trailing smoke from a distant train. When he had seen the
train he had touched Kate’s hand. “Do you ever feel you’d like to bust
loose and sprout wings and fly to the ends of the earth?”
Kate’s eyes had shone. “You make me feel that way.”