Tim sheathed his sword.
“Your sword and pistol,” the lieutenant said.
Tim unbuckled his belt, slid off his bolstered pistol and held it
toward the man. “I’ll surrender my sword to the officer who commands
this battery,” he said.
The lieutenant nodded. “As you wish it, sir,” he said, raising his
voice above the rattle of musket fire and pointing to a man who was
stripped to the waist and covered with grime and sweat. “There’s
Captain Chichester. Surrender your sword to him.”
The Confederate captain turned as Tim walked toward him. The Captain
nodded respectfully. He reached for his pistol and handed it to a boy
not more than twelve years old who stood by his side. “Guard this
prisoner,” he said, “and mind you don’t shoot him by mistake.”
Tim walked with the boy to a place near a bombproof shelter where empty
powder barrels were thrown helter-skelter on the sand. “I’ll sit on one
of these,” he said to the boy. “I’m tired.”
The boy stood nearby, serious and manly, but frightened too. He
pointed the revolver at the ground and looked at it to be sure he knew
how it worked. With his chin down he looked back at Tim.
Tim sat on the barrel, looking off through the smoke, the racket of
battle in his ears, the screaming of soldiers, the thunder of cannon
and the chatter of rifle fire. His spirit was chilled. Fitch was dead.
He wondered whether Red and Kautz were lying lifeless in the moat,
or were they prisoners too? He thought of the Rebel soldier he had
wounded, was it yesterday? The man had said, “The war is finished for
me now.” And now, Tim thought, the war is finished for me too.
A huge siege gun was fired close by, shaking the earth and sending
a puff of acrid smoke rolling along the sandbags at the top of the
parapet, making the gunners cough and choke. All at once the firing
stopped, the last musket cracked. The smoke of the battle rose above
the fort and thinned as it was blown away. The sun filtered through the
gloom and there were voices in the silence, loud at first, then soft,
like the voices of schoolboys when the teacher comes into the room.
Captain Chichester, his shirt draped loosely around his shoulders,
walked toward Tim through the thinning smoke.
Tim stood up, reached for his sword and handed it to the captain. The
man’s sand-colored hair and eyebrows were dusted with powder that ran
in streaks down his tanned face. His blue eyes reflected a sleepless
night and a morning of battle. “No cause for Yankee shame today,” he
said.
The powder monkey stood by his captain now, handing him his pistol,
looking up at his face.
Tim looked toward the big guns. “Captain,” he said, “I wonder if I
could see the field beyond the parapet?”
The captain lowered his eyes. “It’s a heartbreaking sight,” he said,
and he raised his eyes and held Tim’s gaze, as if he wished he could
say more.
The two men walked toward the parapet, the boy tagging along behind.
The Rebel soldiers gawked, and one big sergeant spat hard on the
blackened sand.
“Save your spit for the next assault,” the captain said with a look of
towering disgust. As they reached the gun he turned to Tim. “There’s an
armistice in effect,” he said, “to give your men a chance to carry off
the wounded and bury the dead. The boy and I will stay back here. I’ve
seen enough today.”
Tim moved up beside a gun and looked across the plain. The dusky,
shadowy world of early morning had given way to a sunlit day. There
were no shellbursts or knifelike tongues of flame--just silence and the
litter of death, scattered in terrible profusion on the sand.
Under a flag of truce ambulances moved along the beach, hurrying to
gather up the wounded before they were claimed by the incoming tide. A
surgeon who was working at the edge of the moat signaled to a driver.
“Here’s one alive,” he called. An ambulance creaked and rattled to
where the man lay. The surgeon and the driver lifted the wounded man
gently into the canvas-covered vehicle.
With sickening dread Tim’s eyes moved across the distance, studying the
men who lay on the sand. He fancied he saw a red-haired officer lying
in the distance with his feet to the sun, but he couldn’t be sure. Men
lay at the base of the parapet, almost covered by the waters of the
moat which was fed by the ocean tides. Tim suddenly wondered what had
happened to Private Greene.
He looked once more across the plain at the dead and broken and dying.
Then he turned to the captain and the boy who stood by his side.
“There are other prisoners waiting by the sally port,” Chichester said.
He looked down at the boy. “Billy Moore will show you the way.”
“Thank you for your courtesy, sir.”
“What is your name?”
“Lieutenant Bradford, Seventh Connecticut Volunteers.”
“Maybe we’ll meet again on a happier day,” the captain said. He turned
and walked away with two swords swinging and rattling at his side.
As Tim followed the boy past the bombproof the boy spoke. “All Yankees
aren’t bad,” he grinned, “but most are devils, sure enough.”
“You come from Charleston, lad?”
“I come from Beaufort, sir,” he said with a sudden frown. “It was the
Yankees chased us away.”
They left the shadow of the bombproof and walked through the sally
port, and there, guarded by half-a-dozen men, were forty or fifty
Yankee captives. There was Dawson, hatless, with his corn-colored hair
shining in the sun, his face like death. An ugly welt ran across his
cheek.
One guard laughed when he saw the unarmed boy with the tall Yankee.
“Big fish this time, little Billy,” he rasped. “Give him over to me.”
Tim nodded to the boy and went to Dawson. “Glad to see you still
alive,” he said.
Dawson looked sullenly at Tim. “I’m tired,” he said with bitterness.
“I’m glad to be out of it, if you want to know the truth.”
“Any word of Kelly or Captain Kautz?”
“None that I know of.”
A big Rebel sergeant moved close to them with studied ease and snapped,
“That’s enough talking. You’ll have plenty of time to talk in jail.”
Tim thought, If Red is dead I’ll visit his wife and child when I get
home. But I pray to God he lives.
* * * * *
Off to the east thunderheads were piling up, and a stiff breeze sprang
up.
A rusty steamer came puffing and wallowing across the choppy waters and
made fast to the pier just to the west of the Confederate battery at
Cummings Point.
As the prisoners clattered along the pier Tim wondered if the flimsy
structure would hold them all. It creaked and groaned as one by one the
men jumped to the heaving deck.
As Tim stood by the rail he caught sight of a familiar face. “Private
Greene,” he said.
Greene turned a happy face and worked his way behind the crowd of men
along the rail. Tim clasped the boy’s hand. “Glad to see you, lad.”
Greene just smiled.
“Have you seen Lieutenant Kelly or Captain Kautz?”
“No, Lieutenant.”
As the steamer moved away from the shelter of land it was lifted by
swells that swept in from the open sea. The little ship rolled and
tossed and smacked the waves, sending up sheets of spray and wetting
the men who were wedged along the rails. It seemed to Tim she was
carrying too many men.
“If we make it to Charleston I’ll be surprised.”
Greene smiled shyly. “Let’s mutiny,” he said, “and sail to Boston on
the afternoon tide.”
Suddenly there was a commotion near them at the rail and one of the
prisoners jumped over the side. Tim saw the flash of a shirt then he
saw a boy swimming and drifting swiftly astern. He said, “What chance
does he think he has?”
A guard dashed out of the wheelhouse onto the shuddering deck. He
raised his rifle and fired. Greene gritted his teeth and clenched his
fists in a helpless fury as he watched the head of the struggling boy.
“For the love of mercy, why don’t they give him a chance?”
Two shots followed the first, but the boy’s head still bobbed above
the water. The fourth shot hit its mark. One of the swimmer’s hands
thrashed weakly for a moment and he dipped below the surface, leaving a
slick of blood to mark the place where he had disappeared.
Greene’s face was pale. He quivered with rage and fear. He stared
transfixed and then, with a convulsive shudder, leaned over the rail
and was sick. Tim put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and looked across
the water at the stretch of beach that led to the mouth of the creek
and the freedom of the Yankee lines.
The steamer made straight for Sumter. The fort stood like a block of
granite in the harbor’s mouth, the sea dashing against the outer walls.
Now the sky was solid lead, washed across with moving clouds. The
steamer nudged Fort Sumter’s wharf. The sailors looped the hawsers
around the pilings, the sergeant of the guard leaped to the dock and
was admitted to the fort. The steamer creaked and groaned against the
pilings and Tim leaned on the rail with Greene beside him, looking up
at the silent gray walls.
The sergeant walked back along the pier with his head down and his arms
swinging at his sides.
As the steamer moved toward Charleston, leaving the silent gun ports in
its wake, Tim noticed a flag at the top of the pole inside the fort. It
snapped in the stiffening breeze, its colors sharp against the flat,
gray sky. I wonder, he thought, how long that flag will fly?
The harbor was dotted with the sails of fishing boats seeking shelter
from the coming storm. The city of Charleston was strung across the
horizon, her rose-brick and white-walled buildings like spots of color
in a child’s painting, her church towers standing high above the piers
and parks and the houses that lined the waterfront. Off to the right,
masts and spars and a complex of shrouds marked the wharves on the
eastern shore of the peninsula.
Greene’s voice barely rose above the thump of the paddle wheels. “Where
are they taking us, do you suppose?”
“There’s a jail in Charleston,” Tim said, “and others scattered
throughout the South.”
“Are the stories of Rebel prisons true?”
“I’ve never been in a Rebel jail,” Tim said. “There’s always hope of
being exchanged. The Confederacy can’t afford to have her soldiers
wasting away in Northern prisons.”
Tim watched Greene’s face. “Promise me something, will you, Greene?”
“What would that be, Lieutenant?”
“Promise me if you try to escape you’ll pick a time when you have a
fair chance.”
Greene spoke earnestly. “I wasn’t thinking of escape just yet. I’ll
have to see the prison first. I’ll have to think on it a while.”
Tim laughed. “I’ll waste no more of my worry on you.”
The little steamer swung slowly around as it maneuvered to move toward
one of Charleston’s piers. Now in the moment before the storm Tim saw a
little island at the mouth of the river. Part of the island was struck
by sunlight. On the sandy shore three men struggled to beach a boat,
their figures distinct in the slice of light.
There was a sudden gust of wind and the rain sluiced down, blotting
out the little scene. It streaked down the faces of the prisoners and
ran down their collars. At first it seemed a blessed thing, but as it
drenched the men on the deck Tim stared across the flat, gray water
whipped by rain, and a cold apprehension took root in his heart.
As the little steamer docked the rain stopped and the clouds blew
away. The prisoners marched with their guards along the wharf, across
a glistening cobbled street to a shedlike building that faced the
waterfront. A short, sunny-faced woman came out and spoke to the
sergeant of the guard. “We didn’t have much warning,” she said. “You’ll
have to give us a minute or two.”
The sergeant frowned and mumbled something. Then the woman raised her
chin and looked down the line of men, wet and disconsolate in their
dirty uniforms. “Well, you’ll have to wait,” she said. Without pausing
for an answer she went inside.
Tim stood on the cobbles and studied the row of fine brick houses that
faced the river. This was the first time in months that he had stood
on a street and looked at houses where people dined and slept, where
children were born and raised.
The sunny-faced woman came out again, followed by others carrying trays
of coffee and slices of buttered bread on squares of white paper. As
the women moved among the men Greene straightened up and lowered his
chin and brushed his cheek with the back of his hand.
“They’re just like the ladies of Philadelphia,” Tim said, “who served
us goodies two years ago.”
One of the women, dark haired and young, turned to him. “Need is need,
wherever it may be,” she said with a sweet, sad smile.
Tim noticed how graceful she was in her starched white dress and pale
blue shawl. She was so much like Kate that he felt his knees go weak.
As she turned away he was filled with a yearning for home, a longing to
sit on his horse and ride along the river road underneath the sunlit
leaves until Kate’s house came into view.
When the women had disappeared into the building again the Rebel
sergeant slapped the stock of his rifle. “Quiet,” he said. “Now we
march to the railroad depot.”
They marched through the streets and alleys lined by houses, sometimes
neat and tidy, sometimes deserted and forlorn. There were gardens
filled with summer flowers still in bloom, palmetto trees along the
sidewalk, dark green painted doors with knobs and knockers of polished
brass. People leaned on their windowsills to watch the passing
prisoners. Some of them hissed or spat. Others watched with expressions
of compassion or concern. A scattering of ragged children ran ahead
of the prisoners, spreading the word that they were on the way. They
rounded a corner and walked along a wide cobbled street where most
of the houses were of the “single style,” narrow at the front, with
piazzas facing lawns and gardens at the sides.
People were gathering on the sidewalks, and as the prisoners approached
St. Michael’s church the crowd grew thick, surged from under the
portico and broke into catcalls and jeers. The soldiers of the Rebel
guard flashed their bayonets and drove the people back. Most of the
prisoners walked straight and proud. Tim set his jaw and stiffened his
back but he couldn’t stop the trembling in his knees.
A gang of little boys dodged around the pillars of the church and one
of them skittered through the crowd, made a face and flapped his hands
like donkey ears. He reached into his pocket and brought out a tomato.
Tim saw the boy’s arm arch back as he took deliberate aim. The love
apple caught the Rebel sergeant just over his ear. The sergeant moved
to catch the boy.
“I was aiming at a Yank,” the little fellow screamed as he dashed
behind the skirts and capes that lined the street.
People in the crowd began to laugh, the women first, and then the men.
The sergeant’s face turned red, and even Yankee snickers turned to
laughs. Then there was silence. The laughter of the Yanks had made the
joke go sour.
As they moved along the middle of the street, carriages and wagons
pulled aside to let them pass. The drivers turned hostile faces on the
men in blue.
Tim brushed past the bright red wheels of a gleaming carriage and for
a moment he looked into the face of a woman in the back seat. She was
about his mother’s age and dressed in black. Her face was beautiful and
filled with sadness.
Now the urchins who followed the prisoners were joined by others led
by a dark-haired older boy. They screamed and taunted. They threw
pebbles as they surged along the sidewalks and into the street ahead
of the prisoners’ line of march. The sergeant of the guard was flushed
with anger. When the leader of the gang began to taunt the prisoners
the sergeant grasped the boy’s collar, tearing the shirt right off his
back. “Next time I’ll give you the bayonet,” the sergeant said.
The boy grabbed his shredded shirt from the dirty stones and ran
ahead with his gang behind him to the shelter of a narrow street. The
sergeant and the other guards watched as they passed the street. All
at once the boys appeared again and pelted the column with stones. A
mean-faced Rebel corporal was hit in the leg, and he and the sergeant,
with another guard, dashed after the boys as they scattered like
quicksilver into the alleys and doorways of the dingy street.
Greene’s face showed his excitement as the column was left with just
one guard. Tim grabbed Greene’s arm. “This is no time to think of
escape. Charleston is a cul-de-sac. They could seal off this peninsula
easier than closing a cracker box.”
Greene relaxed. “Never even crossed my mind,” he said with a smile.