That was a pleasant life on picquet, in the delicious early summer of
the South, and among the endless flowery forests of that blossoming
isle. In the retrospect, I seem to see myself adrift upon a horse's back
amid a sea of roses. The various outposts were within a five-mile
radius, and it was one long, delightful gallop, day and night. I have a
faint impression that the moon shone steadily every night for two
months; and yet I remember certain periods of such dense darkness that
in riding through the wood-paths it was really unsafe to go beyond a
walk, for fear of branches above and roots below; and one of my officers
was once shot at by a Rebel scout who stood unperceived at his horse's
bridle.
We lived in a dilapidated plantation-house, the walls scrawled with
capital charcoal-sketches by R., of the New Hampshire Fourth, with a
good map of the island and its paths by C. of the First Massachusetts
Cavalry; there was a tangled garden, full of neglected roses and
camellias, and we filled the great fireplace with magnolias by day and
with logs by night; I slept on a sort of shelf in the corner, bequeathed
to me by Major F., my jovial predecessor,--and if I waked up at any
time, I could put my head through the broken window, arouse my orderly,
and ride off to see if I could catch a picquet asleep. I spell the word
with a _q_, because such was the highest authority, in that Department
at least, and they used to say at post head-quarters that so soon as the
officer in command of the outposts grew negligent, and was guilty of a
_k_, he was instantly ordered in.
To those doing outpost-duty on an island, however large, the main-land
has all the fascination of forbidden fruit, and on a scale bounded only
by the horizon. Emerson says that every house looks ideal until we enter
it,--and it is certainly so, if it be just the other side of the hostile
lines. Every grove in that blue distance appears enchanted ground, and
yonder loitering gray-back, leading his horse to water in the farthest
distance, makes one thrill with a desire to hail him, to shoot at him,
to capture him, to do anything to bridge this inexorable dumb space that
lies between. A boyish feeling, no doubt, and one that time diminishes,
without effacing; yet it is a feeling which lies at the bottom of many
rash actions in war, and of some brilliant ones. For one, I could never
quite outgrow it, though restricted by duty from doing many foolish
things in consequence, and also restrained by reverence for certain
confidential advisers whom I had always at hand, and who considered it
their mission to keep me always on short rations of personal adventure.
Indeed, most of that sort of entertainment in the army devolves upon
scouts detailed for the purpose, volunteer aides-de-camp and
newspaper-reporters,--other officers being expected to be about business
more prosaic.
All the excitements of war are quadrupled by darkness; and as I rode
along our outer lines at night, and watched the glimmering flames which
at regular intervals starred the opposite river-shore, the longing was
irresistible to cross the barrier of dusk, and see whether it were men
or ghosts who hovered round those dying embers. I had yielded to these
impulses in boat-adventures by night,--for it was a part of my
instructions to obtain all possible information about the Rebel
outposts,--and fascinating indeed it was to glide along, noiselessly
paddling, with a dusky guide, through the endless intricacies of those
Southern marshes, scaring the reed-birds, which wailed and fled away
into the darkness, and penetrating several miles into the interior,
between hostile fires, where discovery might be death. Yet there were
drawbacks as to these enterprises, since it is not easy for a boat to
cross still water, even on the darkest night, without being seen by
watchful eyes; and, moreover, the extremes of high and low tide
transform so completely the whole condition of those rivers that it
needs very nice calculation to do one's work at precisely the right
time. To vary the experiment, I had often thought of trying a personal
reconnaissance by swimming, at a certain point, whenever circumstances
should make it an object.
The opportunity at last arrived, and I shall never forget the glee with
which, after several postponements, I finally rode forth, a little
before midnight, on a night which seemed made for the purpose. I had, of
course, kept my own secret, and was entirely alone. The great Southern
fire-flies were out, not haunting the low ground merely, like ours, but
rising to the loftiest tree-tops with weird illumination, and anon
hovering so low that my horse often stepped the higher to avoid them.
The dewy Cherokee roses brushed my face, the solemn "Chuck-will's-widow"
croaked her incantation, and the rabbits raced phantom-like across the
shadowy road. Slowly in the darkness I followed the well-known path to
the spot where our most advanced outposts were stationed, holding a
causeway which thrust itself far out across the separating river,--thus
fronting a similar causeway on the other side, while a channel of
perhaps three hundred yards, once traversed by a ferry-boat, rolled
between. At low tide this channel was the whole river, with broad, oozy
marshes on each side; at high tide the marshes were submerged, and the
stream was a mile wide. This was the point which I had selected. To
ascertain the numbers and position of the picquet on the opposite
causeway was my first object, as it was a matter on which no two of our
officers agreed.
To this point, therefore, I rode, and dismounting, after being duly
challenged by the sentinel at the causeway-head, walked down the long
and lonely path. The tide was well up, though still on the flood, as I
desired; and each visible tuft of marsh-grass might, but for its
motionlessness, have been a prowling boat. Dark as the night had
appeared, the water was pale, smooth, and phosphorescent, and I remember
that the phrase "wan water," so familiar in the Scottish ballads, struck
me just then as peculiarly appropriate. A gentle breeze, from which I
had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm,
breathless Southern night. There was no sound but the faint swash of the
coming tide, the noises of the reed-birds in the marshes, and the
occasional leap of a fish; and it seemed to my over-strained ear as if
every footstep of my own must be heard for miles. However, I could have
no more postponements, and the thing must be tried now or never.
Reaching the farther end of the causeway, I found my men couched, like
black statues, behind the slight earthwork there constructed. I expected
that my proposed immersion would rather bewilder them, but knew that
they would say nothing, as usual. As for the lieutenant on that post, he
was a steady, matter-of-fact, perfectly disciplined Englishman, who wore
a Crimean medal, and never asked a superfluous question in his life. If
I had casually remarked to him, "Mr. Hooker, the General has ordered me
on a brief personal reconnaissance to the Planet Jupiter, and I wish you
to take care of my watch, lest it should be damaged by the Precession of
the Equinoxes," he would have responded with a brief "All right, Sir,"
and a quick military gesture, and have put the thing in his pocket. As
it was, I simply gave him the watch, and remarked that I was going to
take a swim.
I do not remember ever to have experienced a greater sense of
exhilaration than when I slipped noiselessly into the placid water, and
struck out into the smooth, eddying current for the opposite shore. The
night was so still and lovely, my black statues looked so dream-like at
their posts behind the low earthwork, the opposite arm of the causeway
stretched so invitingly from the Rebel main, the horizon glimmered so
low around me,--for it always appears lower to a swimmer than even to an
oarsman,--that I seemed floating in some concave globe, some magic
crystal, of which I was the enchanted centre. With each little ripple of
my steady progress all things hovered and changed; the stars danced and
nodded above; where the stars ended, the great Southern fire-flies
began; and closer than the fire-flies, there clung round me a halo of
phosphorescent sparkles from the soft salt water.
Had I told any one of my purpose, I should have had warnings and
remonstrances enough. The few negroes who did not believe in alligators
believed in sharks; the skeptics as to sharks were orthodox in respect
to alligators; while those who rejected both had private prejudices as
to snapping-turtles. The surgeon would have threatened intermittent
fever, the first assistant rheumatism, and the second assistant
congestive chills; non-swimmers would have predicted exhaustion, and
swimmers cramp; and all this before coming within bullet-range of any
hospitalities on the other shore. But I knew the folly of most alarms
about reptiles and fishes; man's imagination peoples the water with many
things which do not belong there, or prefer to keep out of his way, if
they do; fevers and congestions were the surgeon's business, and I
always kept people to their own department; cramp and exhaustion were
dangers I could measure, as I had often done; bullets were a more
substantial danger, and I must take the chance,--if a loon could dive at
the flash, why not I? If I were once ashore, I should have to cope with
the Rebels on their own ground, which they knew better than I; but the
water was my ground, where I, too, had been at home from boyhood.
I swam as swiftly and softly as I could, although it seemed as if water
never had been so still before. It appeared impossible that anything
uncanny should hide beneath that lovely mirror; and yet when some
floating wisp of reeds suddenly coiled itself around my neck, or some
unknown thing, drifting deeper, coldly touched my foot, it gave that
undefinable sense of shudder which every swimmer knows, and which
especially appeals to the imagination by night. Sometimes a slight sip
of brackish water would enter my lips,--for I naturally tried to swim as
low as possible,--and then would follow a slight gasping and contest
against choking, such as seemed to me a perfect convulsion; for I
suppose the tendency to choke and sneeze is always enhanced by the
circumstance that one's life may depend on keeping still, just as
yawning becomes irresistible where to yawn would be social ruin, and
just as one is sure to sleep in church, if one sits in a conspicuous
pew. At other times, some unguarded motion would create a splashing
which seemed, in the tension of my senses, to be loud enough to be heard
at Richmond, although it really mattered not, since there are fishes in
those rivers which make as much noise on special occasions as if they
were misguided young whales.
As I drew near the opposite shore, the dark causeway projected more and
more distinctly, to my fancy at least, and I swam more softly still,
utterly uncertain as to how far, in the stillness of air and water, my
phosphorescent course could be traced by eye or ear. A slight ripple
would have saved me from observation, I was more than ever sure, and I
would have whistled for a fair wind as eagerly as any sailor, but that
my breath was worth more than anything it was likely to bring. The water
became smoother and smoother, and nothing broke the dim surface except a
few clomps of rushes and my unfortunate head. The outside of this member
gradually assumed to its inside a gigantic magnitude; it had always
annoyed me at the hatter's from a merely animal bigness, with no
commensurate contents to show for it, and now I detested it more than
ever. A physical fooling of turgescence and congestion in that region,
such as swimmers often feel, probably increased the impression. I
thought with envy of the Aztec children, of the headless horseman of
Sleepy Hollow, of Saint Somebody with his head tucked under his arm.
Plotinus was less ashamed of his whole body than I of this inconsiderate
and stupid appendage. To be sure, I might swim for a certain distance
under water. But that accomplishment I had reserved for a retreat, for I
knew that the longer I stayed down the more surely I should have to
snort like a walrus when I came up again, and to approach an enemy with
such a demonstration was not to be thought of.
Suddenly a dog barked. We had certain information that a pack of hounds
was kept at a Rebel station a few miles off, on purpose to hunt
runaways, and I had heard from the negroes almost fabulous accounts of
the instinct of these animals. I knew, that, although water baffled
their scent, they yet could recognize in some manner the approach of any
person across water as readily as by land; and of the vigilance of all
dogs by night every traveller among Southern plantations has ample
demonstration. I was now so near that I could dimly see the figures of
men moving to and fro upon the end of the causeway, and could hear the
dull knock, when one struck his foot against a piece of timber.
As my first object was to ascertain whether there were sentinels at that
time at that precise point, I saw that I was approaching the end of my
experiment. Could I have once reached the causeway unnoticed, I could
have lurked in the water beneath its projecting timbers, and perhaps
made my way along the main shore, as I had known fugitive slaves to do,
while coming from that side. Or had there been any ripple on the water,
to confuse the aroused and watchful eyes, I could have made a circuit
and approached the causeway at another point, though I had already
satisfied myself that there was only a narrow channel on each side of
it, even at high tide, and not, as on our side, a broad expanse of
water. Indeed, this knowledge alone was worth all the trouble I had
taken, and to attempt much more than this, in the face of a curiosity
already roused, would have been a waste of future opportunities. I could
try again, with the benefit of this new knowledge, on a point where the
statements of the negroes had always been contradictory.
Resolving, however, to continue the observation a very little longer,
since the water felt much warmer than I had expected, and there was no
sense of chill or fatigue, I grasped at some wisps of straw or rushes
that floated near, gathering them round my face a little, and then,
drifting nearer the wharf in what seemed a sort of eddy, was able,
without creating further alarm, to make some additional observations on
points which it is not best now to particularize. Then, turning my back
upon the mysterious shore which had thus far lured me, I sank softly
below the surface and swam as far as I could under water.
During this unseen retreat, I heard, of course, all manner of gurglings
and hollow reverberations, and could fancy as many rifle-shots as I
pleased. But on rising to the surface all seemed quiet, and even I did
not create as much noise as I should have expected. I was now at a safe
distance, since they were always chary of showing their boats, and they
would hardly take personally to the water. What with absorbed attention
first, and this submersion afterwards, I had lost all my bearings but
the stars, having been long out of sight of my original point of
departure. However, the difficulties of the return were nothing; making
a slight allowance for the flood-tide, which could not yet have turned,
I should soon regain the place I had left. So I struck out freshly
against the smooth water, feeling just a little stiffened by the
exertion, and with an occasional chill running up the back of the neck,
but with no nips from sharks, no nudges from alligators, and not a
symptom of fever-and-ague.
Time I could not, of course, measure,--one never can, in a novel
position; but, after a reasonable amount of swimming, I began to look,
with a natural interest, for the pier which I had quitted. I noticed,
with some solicitude, that the woods along the friendly shore made one
continuous shadow, and that the line of low bushes on the long causeway
could scarcely be relieved against them, yet I knew where they ought to
be, and the more doubtful I felt about it, the more I put down my
doubts, as if they were unreasonable children. One can scarcely conceive
of the alteration made in familiar objects by bringing the eye as low as
the horizon, especially by night; to distinguish foreshortening is
impossible, and every low near object is equivalent to one higher and
more remote. Still I had the stars; and soon my eye, more practised, was
enabled to select one precise line of bushes as that which marked the
causeway, and for which I must direct my course.
As I swam steadily, but with some sense of fatigue, towards this
phantom-line, I found it difficult to keep my faith steady and my
progress true; everything appeared to shift and waver, in the uncertain
light. The distant trees seemed not trees, but bushes, and the bushes
seemed not exactly bushes, but might, after all, be distant trees. Could
I be so confident, that, out of all that low stretch of shore, I could
select the one precise point where the friendly causeway stretched its
long arm to receive me from the water? How easily (some tempter
whispered at my ear) might one swerve a little, on either side, and be
compelled to flounder over half a mile of oozy marsh on an ebbing tide,
before reaching our own shore and that hospitable volley of bullets with
which it would probably greet me! Had I not already (thus the tempter
continued) been swimming rather unaccountably far, supposing me on a
straight track for that inviting spot where my sentinels and my drapery
were awaiting my return?
Suddenly I felt a sensation as of fine ribbons drawn softly across my
person, and I found myself among some rushes. But what business had
rushes there, or I among them? I knew that there was not a solitary spot
of shoal in the deep channel where I supposed myself swimming, and it
was plain in an instant that I had somehow missed my course, and must be
getting among the marshes. I felt confident, to be sure, that I could
not have widely erred, but was guiding my course for the proper side of
the river. But whether I had drifted above or below the causeway I had
not the slightest clue to tell.
I pushed steadily forward, with some increasing sense of lassitude,
passing one marshy islet after another, all seeming strangely out of
place, and sometimes just reaching with my foot a soft tremulous shoal
which gave scarce the shadow of a support, though even that shadow
rested my feet. At one of these moments of stillness, it suddenly
occurred to my perception (what nothing but this slight contact could
have assured me, in the darkness) that I was in a powerful current, and
that this current set _the wrong way_. Instantly a flood of new
intelligence came. Either I had unconsciously turned and was rapidly
nearing the Rebel shore,--a suspicion which a glance at the stars
corrected,--or else it was the tide itself which had turned, and which
was sweeping me down the river with all its force, and was also sucking
away at every moment the narrowing water from that treacherous expanse
of mud out of whose horrible miry embrace I had lately helped to rescue
a shipwrecked crew. Either alternative was rather formidable. I can
distinctly remember that for about one half-minute the whole vast
universe appeared to swim in the same watery uncertainty in which I
floated. I began to doubt everything, to distrust the stars, the line of
low bushes for which I was wearily striving, the very land on which they
grew, if such visionary tiring could be rooted anywhere. Doubts trembled
in my mind like the weltering water, and that awful sensation of _having
one's feet unsupported_, which benumbs the spent swimmer's heart, seemed
to clutch at mine, though not yet to enter it. I was more absorbed in
that singular sensation of nightmare, such as one may feel equally when
lost by land or by water, as if one's own position were all right, but
the place looked for had somehow been preternaturally abolished out of
the universe. At best, might not a man in the water lose all his power
of direction, and so move in an endless circle until he sank exhausted?
It required a deliberate and conscious effort to keep my brain quite
cool. I have not the reputation of being of an excitable temperament,
but the contrary; yet I could at that moment see my way to a condition
in which one might become insane in an instant. It was as if a fissure
opened somewhere, and I saw my way into a mad-house; then it closed, and
everything went on as before. Once in my life I had obtained a slight
glimpse of the same sensation, and then too, strangely enough, while
swimming,--in the mightiest ocean-surge into which I had ever dared
plunge my mortal body. Keats hints at the same sudden emotion, in a wild
poem written among the Scottish mountains. It was not the distinctive
sensation which drowning men are said to have, that spasmodic passing in
review of one's whole personal history. I had no well-defined anxiety,
felt no fear, was moved to no prayer, did not give a thought to home or
friends; only it swept over me, as with a sudden tempest, that, if I
meant to get back to my own camp, I must keep my wits about me. I must
not dwell on any other alternative, any more than a boy who climbs a
precipice must look down. Imagination had no business here. That way
madness lay. There was a shore somewhere before me, and I must get to
it, by the ordinary means, before the ebb laid bare the flats, or swept
me below the lower bends of the stream. That was all.
Suddenly a light gleamed for an instant before me, as if from a house in
a grove of great trees upon a bank; and I knew that it came from the
window of a ruined plantation-building, where our most advanced outposts
had their head-quarters. The flash revealed to me every point of the
situation. I saw at once where I was, and how I got there: that the tide
had turned while I was swimming, and with a much briefer interval of
slack-water than I had been led to suppose,--that I had been swept a
good way down-stream, and was far beyond all possibility of regaining
the point I had left. Could I, however, retain my strength to swim one
or two hundred yards farther, of which I had no doubt, and if the water
did not ebb too rapidly, of which I had more fear, then I was quite
safe. Every stroke took me more and more out of the power of the
current, and there might even be an eddy. I could not afford to be
carried down much farther, for there the channel made a sweep toward
the wrong side of the river; but there was now no reason why this should
happen. I could dismiss all fear, indeed, except that of being fired
upon by our own sentinels, many of whom were then new recruits, and with
the usual disposition to shoot first and investigate afterwards.
I found myself swimming in shallow and shallower water, and the flats
seemed almost bare when I neared the shore, where the great gnarled
branches of the live-oaks hung far over the muddy bank. Floating on my
back for noiselessness, I paddled rapidly in with my hands, expecting
momentarily to hear the challenge of the picquet, and the ominous click
so likely to follow. I knew that some one should be pacing to and fro,
along that beat, but could not tell at what point he might be at that
precise moment. Besides, there was a faint possibility that some chatty
corporal might have carried the news of my bath thus far along the line,
and they might be partially prepared for this unexpected visitor.
Suddenly, like another flash, came the quick, quaint challenge,--
"Halt! Who's go dar?"
"F-f-friend with the c-c-countersign," retorted I, with chilly, but
conciliatory energy, rising at full length out of the shallow water, to
show myself a man and a brother.
"Ac-vance, friend, and give de countersign," responded the literal
soldier, who at such a time would have accosted a spirit of light or
goblin damned with no other formula.
I advanced and gave it, he recognizing my voice at once. And then and
there, as I stood, a dripping ghost, beneath the trees before him, the
unconscionable fellow, wishing to exhaust upon me the utmost resources
of military hospitality, deliberately _presented arms_.
Now a soldier on picquet, or at night, usually presents arms to nobody;
but a sentinel on camp-guard by day is expected to perform that ceremony
to anything in human shape that has two rows of buttons. Here was a
human shape, but so utterly buttonless that it exhibited not even a rag
to which a button could by any earthly possibility be appended,
buttonless even potentially; and my blameless Ethiopian presented arms
to even this. Where, then, are the theories of Carlyle, the axioms of
"Sartor Resartus," the inability of humanity to conceive "a naked Duke
of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords?" Cautioning my
adherent, however, as to the proprieties suitable for such occasions
thenceforward, I left him watching the river with renewed vigilance, and
awaiting the next merman who should report himself.
Finding my way to the building, I hunted up a sergeant and a blanket,
got a fire kindled in the dismantled chimney, and sat before it in my
single garment, like a moist, but undismayed Choctaw, until my horse and
clothing could be brought round from the Causeway. It seemed strange
that the morning had not yet dawned, after the uncounted periods that
must have elapsed; but when my wardrobe arrived, I looked at my watch
and found that my night in the water had lasted precisely one hour.
Galloping home, I turned in with alacrity, and without a drop of
whiskey, and waked a few hours after in excellent condition. The rapid
changes of which that Department has seen so many--and, perhaps, to so
little purpose--soon transferred us to a different scene. I have been on
other scouts since then, and by various processes, but never with a zest
so novel as was afforded by that night's experience. The thing soon got
wind in the regiment, and led to only one ill consequence, so far as I
know. It rather suppressed a way I had of lecturing the officers on the
importance of reducing their personal baggage to a minimum. They got a
trick of congratulating me, very respectfully, on the thoroughness with
which I had once conformed my practice to my precepts.
* * * * *