_"Into the jaws of death,
Into the mouth of hell."_
Tennyson.
It had rained in torrents. The stiff day of the muddy roads was ankle
deep. Roy's regiment in camp near the Tennessee river was whiling away
its time as best it could. It was generally understood that they were
to be Joined in a day or two by reinforcements, and then march on to
Corinth. Roy knew that Beverly was to be with the expected command.
The young lieutenant--a first lieutenant now--was proud and eager. He
thought it would be a fine thing for him and Beverly to fight side
by side. He meant to show Beverly that he was no longer a boy. A soft
silken mustache had come to accent his fresh complexion, and he was as
handsome and tall and graceful and erect as a young soldier need be.
He carried himself with peculiar grace, and he was an inch taller than
Beverly, now. He hoped that he would be taller than his brother, and
he walked very erect, indeed, as he thought about it. Then he smiled
to himself and said half aloud, "He will be here to-morrow, and I shall
give him a great welcome--and a surprise." This was his last thought
as he turned on his side, and fell into a soldier's dreamless sleep,
in spite of rain and mud, in spite of noise and confusion, in spite of
danger and anxiety.
It was the night of the fifth of April. Roy had planned to appear very
splendid to his brother on the morrow. He had shaved freshly and brushed
his uniform, and rubbed up his new shoulder straps. His sword was
burnished, and the boy had smiled to himself many times as he worked
over these details, to think how vain he was, and how anxious that
Beverly should look pleased and proud when he should see him at his
best. He seemed to have slept only a little while when there straggled
into his consciousness the sound of a shot, then another and another;
then a sudden indescribable noise and confusion roused him wholly. He
sprang to his feet.
The gray of the dawning day was here. Bugles were sounding. Confusion,
noise, action was on all sides. The camp had been surprised! The enemy
was upon them! Grape, canister and Enfield balls tore through the tents.
Shells burst; the first vision that met his eyes as he rushed forth, was
a horse of one of their own batteries, struggling, moaning, whinnying
pitifully with both fore-legs torn away, and the cannon half overturned.
An onrushing force of Confederates shouting in triumph. As his own
regiment tried to form in line, three terrified horses tore past
dragging their fellow, and what was left of the dismantled cannon. They
were wounding each other cruelly in their mad frenzy of pain and fright.
They fell in one mass of struggling, suffering, panic-stricken flesh
into the river and drowned, with their harness binding them together,
and to the wreck of their dismantled burden. Everything was confusion.
Each regiment was doing its best to form and repulse the terrible
onslaught. The surprise had been complete. The scouts had been
surrounded and captured, and the pickets killed or driven in at the
first charge which had awakened the sleeping camp. The horrors, the
disasters and the triumphs of Shiloh had begun!
There was no time to think. Action, alone, was possible--the intuitive
action of the soldier. The men formed as best they could, and fought as
they fell back, or as they advanced a step, with dogged determination to
retrieve lost ground. Some were driven into the river, and when wounded,
fell beneath its waves to rise no more. The intrepid Confederates
followed up their first dash with persistent determination, in spite of
the forced march which had preceded the surprise, and in spite of hunger
and uncertainty when their supplies might come. They aimed at nothing
short of capture. Then supplies would be theirs without delay. But every
foot of ground was being stubbornly contested. Now a gain was made,
now a loss. Both sides were fighting with that desperation which makes
certain only one thing as the issue of the battle--the certainty of an
awful carnage. At Such a time it does not seem possible, and yet it is
true, that a sense of reckless humor finds place and material to feed
its fancy. A good-natured badinage held possession of many of the men.
Roy's regiment had been driven back by the first sudden onrush. It had
formed and fought as it went, but it had undoubtedly been forced from
its position of advantage on the rise of the hill. They were struggling
desperately to regain it. Every man seemed determined to stand again
where he had stood an hour before or die in the attempt. A large piece
of paper pinned to a tree with a bayonet, attracted Roy's attention as
the smoke was lifted for a moment, while they pushed forward inch by
inch. The boys had seen its like before. They understood and it acted
like a stimulant upon them. Some of the boys laughed outright. The
smoke hid the paper. The next volley had driven the Confederates a step
farther back. The ground was strewn with their men, lying side by side
with those who had fallen from the Northern ranks at the first dash of
the enemy. The tree with the paper was a trifle nearer.
"Charge for that challenge, boys! Charge!" shouted Roy, and they
responded with a yell and a murderous volley as they ran. It was almost
within reach now, but the men who had posted it fought like tigers to
hold their ground.
"We'll get it, boys! We'll get it!" rang out with the roar of the
battle. At last the tree was only a few feet away. A private dashed out
of the line, and grasped the bayonet that held the coveted paper and
swung it aloft. The challenge was captured! Even the boys who lay on
the ground joined in the triumphal shout and one of them volunteered to
reply. He had a good arm left! He took a pencil from his breast pocket,
and turned his body painfully, slowly, so that he could write. The stock
of his gun was desk enough. He read the captured paper and laughed. "The
------ La. presents its compliments to the ------ Ind., and intends to
thrash it out of its boots--as usual."
The wounded man turned the paper over and wrote: "The ------ Ind.
returns its compliments to the ------ La. and expresses a desire to see
it accomplish the job." He was so near to the tree that he thought he
could drag himself to it and post up the reply on the far side, but his
legs were numb and helpless, and the pain of dragging himself on hands
and hips conquered him. He looked all about him. The ambulance workers
had come, not far away, to carry off the wounded. One came near and
offered to help him.
"Pin that paper to the far side of that tree, first," he said, with a
grim smile. "I'll wait."
The man refused, but the wounded fellow essaying to drag himself toward
it again, he yielded, and the return challenge was posted.
Two hours later its work, was done. The ------
La. held the hill again! A laughing shout went up. It might have been a
warmly contested game of football, so free from malice was it.
All over the great battle-field the work of the day was back and forth
over the same bloody and trampled ground. The mud of the morning took on
another tinge of red, and the mingled blood of the gallant fellows who
gave their lives for the side they had espoused made hideous mortar of
the ghastly sacrifice. The river ran on its way to the sea, floating the
costliest driftwood ever cast by man as an offering to his own passions,
mistakes, and ambitions; a driftwood pale and ghastly, clad in gray or
in blue, and scattering from Maine to Texas, from ocean to ocean,
the sorrow that travels in the wake of war, the anguish of those who
silently wait by the fireside, for the step that will never come, for
the voice that is silent forever! Ah, the ghastliness of war! Ah, the
costliness of war! It is those who do not fight who pay the heaviest
debt and find its glory ashes!
On the hill was the rivalry of the challenge. It gave grim humor to the
contest. Three challenges were taken, and three replaced, before the
sunset brought that suspension of effort which left the hill, the tree,
and the final glory of the day in the hands of the Confederates. The
drawn battle was over for the night, but the trend of the victory was
southward, and the heavens once more deluged the dead and dying with the
pitiless downpour of chilling rain all the night long. In the
northern camp the tired men slept in spite of rain and mud and distant
cannonading. With the slain beside them, the groans of the dying
about them, the echo of the conflict in their ears, the promise of the
struggle of the morrow, still the tired men slept! In the Confederate
camp sleep was impossible. The Federal relief boats had come! To-morrow
fresh men would fill the Northern ranks. Meantime the thunder of the
great gunboats continued the unequal contest. Shot and shell fell with
the rain into the Confederate camp. All night the bombardment went on.
The river was tinged with red, the heavens kept up the old refrain and
wept for the sins, the mistakes, the cruelties of men, and still the
tired soldiers slept and waited for the morrow--and what? There would be
no more surprises at least. Both understood now that it was a stubborn
fight. Both knew that the reinforcements were here for the Federal
troops. Pickets and scouts were wide awake now; no danger of another
surprise. All night the relief corps worked. All night the distant
echoes from the gunboats brought hope to the one and desperation to the
other army. All night the surgeons labored. All night stragglers came in
dragging wounded limbs. All night suffering horses neighed and whinnied
and struggled and at last died from loss of blood--and still men slept!
Ah, the blessed oblivion and relief of sleep! If to-morrow's action must
come, then to-night nature must restore the wasted energy, and repair
the deathly exhaustion,--and men slept! Soaked through with rain,
begrimed with smoke and with mud, assailed with groans and with
that insidious foe of rest, uncertainty, still men slept, soundly,
profoundly, dreamlessly!
The first gray streak of dawn brought a bugle call: another, another.
The clouds were clearing away. Nature was preparing to witness another
and more desperate struggle. The dreamless sleep, that had refused to
yield to hunger, pain, uproar or anxiety, yielded at the first note
of the réveille. Every man was awake, alert, active. The rain and
action-stiffened limbs were ready for duty again. The seventh of April
had dawned. Reinforcements would soon land; but the battle was on before
they could disembark. The Confederates, flushed with the advantage of
the day before, were determined to overwhelm even the new force. The
battle was on. Roy, the spruce, trim, and some young lieutenant of the
day before, waiting for his brother with proud, brotherly anxiety, was
a sorry sight to-day, but that did not trouble him. His new
shoulder-straps were tarnished, his sword was marked with an ugly red
stain, his freshly brushed uniform was bespattered and wrinkled and wet,
mud-covered and torn; but he was unhurt save for the track of a Minie
ball under the skin of his left arm. To that he gave no heed. A plaster
of the pottery clay, self-applied, had taken the soreness almost away,
and as Roy stood at the head of his company to-day and took the place of
the captain, who would respond to roll-call no more, he was wondering if
Beverly would be with the troops that would land, and if they would help
save the day. He hoped that Beverly would be there, and yet--after the
sights and experiences of yesterday--_did_ he hope that Beverly would
be there? Beverly might be killed! He had not thought of that the day
before, nor had it troubled him for himself; but as he looked about
him now or bent to see if an old comrade were really dead, or only
unconscious, he somehow felt glad that Beverly had not been there the
day before. Ah, these hearts of ours!--these hearts of ours! What tricks
they play us! What cowards they make of us! What selfishness they breed
in us! For ourselves we can be brave, defiant, even jocose, in the midst
of danger or of sorrow; but for those we love! Ah, for those we love,
our philosophy is scant comfort, our courage is undermined before it
is tested, and we are helpless in the face of Love. We can walk bravely
enough into the mouth of a cannon, but Love disarms us, and we cry for
mercy where we did not shrink from death!
Roy wondered how much Beverly knew of the battle, and if his heart was
anxious, also. He knew Beverly's division was expected, but he thought
as he fought, "I reckon I'd just as lieve Beverly shouldn't be with
them. If he were on sick leave or--or--something." He felt a little
sense of shame for the thought, and fought the more determinedly because
of it. The gallant Confederates were flushed by their gain of the day
before. No one would have dreamed that they were exhausted by a long
march before the surprise. No one would have dreamed that they were
hungry, and that their supply-wagons had not come up until long after
the struggle. No one would have dreamed that they had been kept up all
night by the bombardment from the distant gunboats. No one would have
dreamed that out of that intrepid ------ Louisiana, with its challenge
again on the tree there, would never muster again over three hundred and
twenty-seven of the six hundred merry fellows who flung themselves up
that hill only twelve short hours ago!
"Our side bet is up, boys, by the jumping jingo!" said one of the
relieved pickets the first thing in the morning. "It is written on a
slab this time. I don't know when they got it up. I laid for it all
night, and was going to pick the fellow off who came out to that tree,
but it was darker than a pile of coke last night, and, if hell ever saw
such a rain before, the fires must all be out--soaked through. Don't
believe there is a dry spot in the devil's domain to-day. Whew! Look
at my boots! I had to stop and scrape the mud off every four steps all
night long. My feet were as big as a horse's head--and it's mighty good
Bible mud, too--sticketh closer than a brother."
The boys had laughed and agreed that they would get the new challenge
somehow. The news that it was up again, and on a substantial slab, which
seemed to aggravate the offense in some inexplicable way, spread and
aroused the young fellows anew. They would have that slab or die in the
attempt. The side bet, as they called it, must be won. They were making
straight for it, and the Confederates were holding their position with
grim and dogged determination. A sudden onrush of fresh, eager, rested,
enthusiastic men, yelling as they came from the gunboats, dashed from
the steamboat landing and flung themselves against the lines. The relief
had come! Regiment after regiment dashed past. Every new one was
felt like a blast of cold wind in the face of a belated traveler. The
Confederate lines wavered, broke, rallied, retreated, reformed.
More fresh troops came and swept past like fire in a field of grain.
Discouraged men felt the bracing influence and stimulant on the one
side. On the other, it seemed that at last the billows of the ocean had
broken upon them, and they must yield or be forever overwhelmed. As each
new regiment came up, with its shout and wild, eager dash in the face of
the enemy, the ground was being gathered in like thread on a great
spool as it revolves. Inch by inch the line yielded. The river was left
behind, with its horrible secret, to keep its bloody tryst with the sea;
to carry its drift of gallant men, who would, alas, be gallant no more,
on the infinite wanderings of its waves, as they ran and struggled in
vain to leave behind the memory and the burden of the pitiless struggle
and carnage--the relics of man's power and courage and savagery, to do
and to die by and for his fellow-man, that he may adjust differences he
himself has raised from the infinite depths of his own ignorance--from
the blindness of his benighted past! And still the river ran on in its
hopeless effort, for the human drift kept pace, and the awful battle was
lost and won. Shiloh had passed into history, and Grant was famous! The
country took stock of its loss and its gain. One more milestone in the
devious road was past. One more reef was taken in the irrepressible
conflict. The North rejoiced. The South sorrowed, and mothers, wives,
sisters, and sweethearts stared at the wall and wept and moaned for the
treasure that was lost, for the price that was paid, and took up anew
their stunned and silent part, and waited and hoped and prayed.
One of the first regiments to dash past into the hell of shot and shell
was Beverly's. He had noticed, as people will notice trivial things in
the midst of great crises, a board nailed to a tree. When the battle was
over he had searched for his brother's regiment. At last he had found
it, but Roy was not there. Some one said he had fallen, others said he
had been captured just before the relief came--"Right up there by the
challenge--by the tree." Beverly rode back toward the hill, sick and
faint at heart. He wondered, with a thrill of superstitious fear, if
that board was to be a sort of grave-mark for his brother, and if that
was the reason he had noticed the ridiculous challenge at such a time.
He would go back to the mark and search for his brother. He got down
from his horse and tied him to the tree. The challenge was still there.
He had no heart to read it, but started on his sickening search.
Face after face that he knew--boys from the old college--looked up at
him--some, alas, with stark, unseeing eyes, and others who begged for
help. Boys he had in the old days cared for with youthful fervor, and
yet they seemed as nothing to him now; he must not lose time--he must
find his brother. Again and again he turned a bloody face upward only
to exclaim, "Thank God!" when he did not know the features. Oh, the
infinite selfishness of Love! The toy it makes of our human sympathies!
The contraction it pats upon our generosity of soul! The limitations
it sets upon our helpfulness! When twilight came Beverly was still
searching for his brother, and thanking God, in the face of every
mangled form, that it was the face of some other man's brother--some
other mother's son! He returned to the camp for a light. He could not
wait until morning to be sure that Roy was captured. He hoped and
prayed that it might be so, but he must know. No report had come to the
regiment. Roy had not been found or recognized. Beverly went hastily
through the hospital tents. Roy had not been brought in. The search on
the field began again--the search for his brother. The relief corps were
working heroically. Men with stretchers passed and repassed him,
and still Beverly looked in vain. He turned his dark lantern on the
stretchers as they approached him, and sighed with relief as each
passed on. He came to the spot where the little church had stood, now
dismantled and wrecked by shell.
One after another he turned the faces of prostrate men upward. The night
was wearing on. He was desperate, discouraged, and yet he had begun to
settle into a solid hope that Roy had been captured and taken back into
the Confederate ranks before the relief had come. He was making his way
back to the tree and his impatient horse, when he heard a gurgling
groan in a muddy ravine through which the retreating cannon had gone. He
turned aside and searched with his lantern again. Deep in the stiff mud
lay a young officer. His legs were deeply imbedded. Evidently the wheel
of a cannon-carriage, or some other heavy wheel, had passed over him
and crushed his legs into the soft earth. He had lain directly in the
path of the retreating ordnance. The deep tracks told where the wheels
had been. Beverly turned sick. He stooped to lift the face that lay half
in the mud and water.
"Oh, Roy! Roy! my brother!" he gasped and fell upon his knees. His hand
trembled so that the canteen fell from his grasp. He groped for it as
the lantern lay beside him, and one hand till held the face above the
earth. "Roy! Roy! can you hear me? Can you hear me? It is your brother!
It is Beverly!" he cried out, but for reply there was only that gurgling
groan, followed by another and another--and then silence.
"Oh, my God!" cried Beverly, "What can I do? It will kill him to try to
lift those poor crushed legs and------"
The light fell on the breast, and there, for the first time, Beverly
saw that it was not mud alone that lay there, but that a piece of spent
shell was half crushed into Roy's side. It was plain now. Roy had fallen
with that, and the retreating battery had driven over his helpless form.
Beverly wiped the mud and powder from his brother's face and bent down
and kissed the parted lips.
"Oh, my brother! my brother! I came too late at last! I thought all the
way on the river, and then, as we dashed up that hill, I thought we had
come in time to save you, and I was so glad! Roy, I prayed not to be too
late! Somehow I thought you were up there. And you were here--here, with
this ghastly wound--and they drove over you! O, Roy, Roy, my brother how
can I ever tell mother? How can I?"
The long, gurgling moan came again. Beverly sprang to his feet and
shouted for help. Shout after shout rang out. At last a reply came, and
then men with a stretcher.
"I have found my brother," was all Beverly could say. His own voice
seemed strange and distant to him. The men get about lifting the body
from its bed of clay--the body of this spruce young officer who had
been so eager that his brother should feel proud to see him in his new
uniform with the first-lieutenant's straps! No one could tell what the
uniform was now, and the jaunty cap and polished sword were gone! The
strong young legs and the erect figure could boast of its extra inch no
longer. Beverly breathed hard as the men worked. "I'm afraid he's too
far gone to help now, captain. It------"
"Oh, let _me_ lift his head! I can't pull on those poor crushed legs!
Be so careful! Oh, God! oh, God! how cruel! Be so careful!--oh, Roy!
Roy!--We are trying to be so careful, Roy! We try not to hurt you so! My
God, how cruel! I cannot bear it, brother!"
The body was on the stretcher at last, and Beverly was wiping great
beads of anguish from his own face. One poor leg was crushed near the
hip, and had been hard to manage. The groans had become more distinct
and frequent. Then,"Dr--dr," came from the lips.
"Here, here, give me a canteen! I lost mine down there. Quick, he wants
a drink, I think. Here, brother Roy." Beverly put a hand under his head.
"Here, Roy, dear, can you swallow? Oh, it hurts him so! Here, brother,
_my_ brother! Oh, Roy, I wish it were I! Can you hear me? Can you hear
me, Roy?"
The men with the stretcher turned their faces away and drew their
sleeves across their eyes. Even they who had worked all night with and
for the dead and dying were moved anew by the young officer's sorrow.
Beverly looked up hopefully.
"I think he swallowed just a little. Let us get him to a surgeon, quick.
Perhaps, perhaps--" Beverly looked from one to the other and could not
finish his sentence. The little group moved wearily toward the hospital
tents, and Beverly ran for the surgeon of his own company.
"My God, doctor, he has been driven over, and he is wounded in the
breast besides! Do you think there is any hope? Oh, how I wish it were
I! Oh, doctor, can't you save him? It is my brother--my brother Roy!"
The surgeon was listening as he worked.
"The best thing that could have happened to him is that he was so deep
in that mud. It has kept the fever down. It has saved his leg. It isn't
badly swollen. I can set this bone. I don't think the other one is----"
He was examining and talking slowly. He changed to the wound in the
breast. "This is the most--this is the worst, but I don't think the lung
is badly--this plaster of mud on his breast----"
"I took it nearly all off, doctor. It was very thick when I found
him, and this----" Beverly took a large jagged piece of shell from his
pocket. "This was down in it. I think it must have struck and stunned
him, and while he was helpless those cruel wheels went over him. His
body was as if he had fallen on his back, but the legs were twisted as
if he had been on his side. The mud was nearly two feet deep. It was an
awful place, awful! And to think that they should have driven over Roy!
Do you think----?"
"That was the best place he could have been. That mud has acted like----"
The doctor was taking professional pride in the case. The wounded man
groaned.
"Oh, how it seems to hurt him, doctor! Can't you--can't I---couldn't we
give him something to deaden--? He was never so strong as I. He----"
"You'd better go away, captain. You're brave enough for yourself, but
you'd better go away. I'll do my level best for him. I don't think this
wound is fatal--and the mud poultice was the very best thing that
could have happened to him, really. The wheel that threw that did him a
greater service than it did injury to his leg. I--you had better go and
lie down for a while, captain. I'll do everything possible, and--well,
I hope his lung is not very seriously implicated. I hope we can pull him
through. I feel sure of the leg and--go and lie down. You can't do any
good here, and you mustn't lose your nerve that way. If he--if I--if
he regains consciousness I'll call you, Try to get a little rest for
to-morrow. Try. You may be needed then. You must have your nerve then,
too, if he should open his eyes and----"
"_If_ he should open his eyes!" Beverly turned away and sat with his
face in his hands. "How can I write it to mother," he moaned--"how can
I? How can I? And father may not be there to help her bear it! Oh, Roy,
Roy, my brother!"