That night, or very early next morning, there was pandemonium at the
barracks. It was clear, still, beautiful. A soft April wind was drifting
up from the lower coast, laden with the perfume of sweet olive and
orange blossoms. Mrs. Cram, with one or two lady friends and a party of
officers, had been chatting in low tone upon their gallery until after
eleven, but elsewhere about the moonlit quadrangle all was silence when
the second relief was posted. Far at the rear of the walled enclosure,
where, in deference to the manners and customs of war as observed in the
good old days whereof our seniors tell, the sutler's establishment was
planted within easy hailing-distance of the guard-house, there was still
the sound of modified revelry by night, and poker and whiskey punch had
gathered their devotees in the grimy parlors of Mr. Finkbein, and here
the belated ones tarried until long after midnight, as most of them
were bachelors and had no better halves, as had Doyle, to fetch them
home "out of the wet." Cram and his lieutenants, with the exception of
Doyle, were never known to patronize this establishment, whatsoever they
might do outside. They had separated before midnight, and little Pierce,
after his customary peep into Waring's preserves, had closed the door,
gone to his own room, to bed and to sleep. Ferry, as battery officer of
the day, had made the rounds of the stables and gun-shed about one
o'clock, and had encountered Captain Kinsey, of the infantry, coming in
from his long tramp through the dew-wet field, returning from the
inspection of the sentry-post at the big magazine.
"No news of poor Sam yet, I suppose?" said Kinsey, sadly, as the two
came strolling in together through the rear gate.
"Nothing whatever," was Ferry's answer. "We cannot even form a
conjecture, unless he, too, has been murdered. Think of there being a
warrant out for his arrest,--for him, Sam Waring!"
"Well," said Kinsey, "no other conclusion could he well arrived at,
unless that poor brute Doyle did it in a drunken row. Pills says he
never saw a man so terror-stricken as he seems to be. He's afraid to
leave him, really, and Doyle's afraid to be alone,--thinks the old woman
may get in."
"She has no excuse for coming, captain," said Ferry. "When she told Cram
she must see her husband to-day, that she was out of money and starving,
the captain surprised her by handing her fifty dollars, which is much
more than she'd have got from Doyle. She took it, of course, but that
isn't what she wanted. She wants to get at him. She has money enough."
"Yes, that woman's a terror, Ferry. Old Mrs. Murtagh, wife of my
quartermaster sergeant, has been in the army twenty years, and says she
knew her well,--knew all her people. She comes from a tough lot, and
they had a bad reputation in Texas in the old days. Doyle's a totally
different man since she turned up, Cram tells me. Hello! here's 'Pills
the Less,'" he suddenly exclaimed, as they came opposite the west gate,
leading to the hospital. "How's your patient, Doc?"
"Well, he's sleeping at last. He seems worn out. It's the first time
I've left him, but I'm used up and want a few hours' sleep. There isn't
anything to drink in the room, even if he should wake, and Jim is
sleeping or lying there by him."
"Oh, he'll do all right now, I reckon," said the officer of the day,
cheerfully. "Go and get your sleep. The old woman can't get at him
unless she bribes my sentries or rides the air on a broomstick, like
some other old witches I've read of. Ferry sleeps in the adjoining room,
anyhow, so he can look out for her. Good-night, Doc." And so, on they
went, glancing upward at the dim light just showing through the
window-blinds in the gable end of Doyle's quarters, and halting at the
foot of the stairs.
"Come over and have a pipe with me, Ferry," said the captain. "It's too
beautiful a night to turn in. I want to talk to you about Waring,
anyhow. This thing weighs on my mind."
"Done with you, for an hour, anyhow!" said Ferry. "Just wait a minute
till I run up and get my baccy."
Presently down came the young fellow again, meerschaum in hand, the
moonlight glinting on his slender figure, so trim and jaunty in the
battery dress. Kinsey looked him over with a smile of soldierly
approval and a whimsical comment on the contrast between the appearance
of this young artillery sprig and that of his own stout personality,
clad as he was in a bulging blue flannel sack-coat, only distinguishable
in cut and style from civilian garb by its having brass buttons and a
pair of tarnished old shoulder-straps. Ferry was a swell. His shell
jacket fitted like wax. The Russian shoulder-knots of twisted gold were
of the handsomest make. The riding-breeches, top-boots, and spurs were
such that even Waring could not criticise. His sabre gleamed in the
moonbeams, and Kinsey's old leather-covered sword looked dingy by
contrast. His belt fitted trim and taut, and was polished as his
boot-tops; Kinsey's sank down over the left hip, and was worn brown. The
sash Ferry sported as battery officer of the day was draped, West Point
fashion, over the shoulder and around the waist, and accurately knotted
and looped; Kinsey's old war-worn crimson net was slung
higgledy-piggledy over his broad chest.
"What swells you fellows are, Ferry!" he said, laughingly, as the
youngster came dancing down. "Even old Doyle gets out here in his
scarlet plume occasionally and puts us doughboys to shame. What's the
use in trying to make such a rig as ours look soldierly? If it were not
for the brass buttons our coats would make us look like parsons and our
hats like monkeys. As for this undress, all that can be said in its
favor is, you can't spoil it even by sleeping out on the levee in it, as
I am sometimes tempted to do. Let's go out there now."
It was perhaps quarter of two when they took their seats on the wooden
bench under the trees, and, lighting their pipes, gazed out over the
broad sweeping flood of the Mississippi, gleaming like a silvered shield
in the moonlight. Far across at the opposite shore the low line of
orange-groves and plantation houses and quarters was merged in one long
streak of gloom, relieved only at intervals by twinkling light. Farther
up-stream, like dozing sea-dogs, the fleet of monitors lay moored along
the bank, with the masts and roofs of Algiers dimly outlined against the
crescent sweep of lights that marked the levee of the great Southern
metropolis, still prostrate from the savage buffeting of the war, yet so
soon to rouse from lethargy, resume her sway, and, stretching forth her
arms, to draw once again to her bosom the wealth and tribute, tenfold
augmented, of the very heart of the nation, until, mistress of the
commerce of a score of States, she should rival even New York in the
volume of her trade. Below them, away to the east towards English Turn,
rolled the tawny flood, each ripple and eddy and swirling pool crested
with silver,--the twinkling lights at Chalmette barely distinguishable
from dim, low-hanging stars. Midway the black hulk of some big ocean
voyager was forging slowly, steadily towards them, the red light of the
port side already obscured, the white and green growing with every
minute more and more distinct, and, save the faint rustle of the leaves
overhead, murmuring under the touch of the soft, southerly night wind,
the plash of wavelet against the wooden pier, and the measured footfall
of the sentry on the flagstone walk in front of the sally-port, not a
sound was to be heard.
For a while they smoked in silence, enjoying the beauty of the night,
though each was thinking only of the storm that swept over the scene the
Sunday previous and of the tragedy that was borne upon its wings. At
last Kinsey shook himself together.
"Ferry, sometimes I come out here for a quiet smoke and think. Did it
ever occur to you what a fearful force, what illimitable power, there is
sweeping by us here night after night with never a sound?"
"Oh, you mean the Mississip," said Ferry, flippantly. "It would be a
case of mops and brooms, I fancy, if she were to bust through the bank
and sweep us out into the swamps."
"Exactly! that's in case she broke loose, as you say; but even when in
the shafts, as she is now, between the levees, how long would it take
her to sweep a fellow from here out into the gulf, providing nothing
interposed to stop him?"
"Matter of simple mathematical calculation," said Ferry, practically.
"They say it's an eight-mile current easy out there in the middle where
she's booming. Look at that barrel scooting down yonder. Now, I'd lay a
fiver I could cut loose from here at reveille and shoot the passes
before taps and never pull a stroke. It's less than eighty miles down to
the forts."
"Well, then, a skiff like that that old Anatole's blaspheming about
losing wouldn't take very long to ride over that route, would it?" said
Kinsey, reflectively.
"No, not if allowed to slide. But somebody'd be sure to put out and
haul it in as a prize,--flotsam and what-you-may-call-'em. You see these
old niggers all along here with their skiffs tacking on to every hit of
drift-wood that's worth having."
"But, Ferry, do you think they'd venture out in such a storm as Sunday
last?--think anything could live in it short of a decked ship?"
"No, probably not. Certainly not Anatole's boat."
"Well, that's just what I'm afraid of, and what Cram and Reynolds
dread."
"Do they? Well, so far as that storm's concerned, it would have blown it
down-stream until it came to the big bend below here to the east. Then,
by rights, it ought to have blown against the left bank. But every inch
of it has been scouted all the way to quarantine. The whole river was
filled with drift, though, and it might have been wedged in a lot of
logs and swept out anyhow. Splendid ship, that! Who is she, do you
suppose?"
The great black hull with its lofty tracery of masts and spars was now
just about opposite the barracks, slowly and majestically ascending the
stream.
"One of those big British freight steamers that moor there below the
French Market, I reckon. They seldom come up at night unless it's in the
full of the moon, and even then they move with the utmost caution. See,
she's slowing up now."
"Hello! Listen! What's that?" exclaimed Ferry, starting to his feet.
A distant, muffled cry. A distant shot. The sentry at the sally-port
dashed through the echoing vault, then bang! came the loud roar of his
piece, followed by the yell of--
"Fire! fire! _The guard!_"
With one spring Ferry was down the levee and darted like a deer across
the road, Kinsey lumbering heavily after. Even as he sped through the
stone-flagged way, the hoarse roar of the drum at the guard-house,
followed instantly by the blare of the bugle from the battery quarters,
sounded the stirring alarm. A shrill, agonized female voice was madly
screaming for help. Guards and sentries were rushing to the scene, and
flames were bursting from the front window of Doyle's quarters. Swift
though Ferry ran, others were closer to the spot. Half a dozen active
young soldiers, members of the infantry guard, had sprung to the rescue.
When Ferry dashed up to the gallery he was just in time to stumble over
a writhing and prostrate form, to help extinguish the blazing clothing
of another, to seize his water-bucket and douse its contents over a
third,--one yelling, the others stupefied by smoke--or something. In
less time than it takes to tell it, daring fellows had ripped down the
blazing shades and shutters, tossed them to the parade beneath, dumped a
heap of soaked and smoking bedding out of the rear windows, splashed a
few bucketfuls of water about the reeking room, and the fire was out.
But the doctors were working their best to bring back the spark of life
to two senseless forms, and to still the shrieks of agony that burst
from the seared and blistered lips of Bridget Doyle.
While willing hands bore these scorched semblances of humanity to
neighboring rooms and tender-hearted women hurried to add their
ministering touch, and old Braxton ordered the excited garrison back to
quarters and bed, he, with Cram and Kinsey and Ferry, made prompt
examination of the premises. On the table two whiskey-bottles, one
empty, one nearly full, that Dr. Potts declared were not there when he
left at one. On the mantel a phial of chloroform, which was also not
there before. But a towel soaked with the stifling contents lay on the
floor by Jim's rude pallet, and a handkerchief half soaked, half
consumed, was on the chair which had stood by the bedside, among the
fragments of an overturned kerosene lamp.
A quick examination of the patients showed that Jim, the negro, had been
chloroformed and was not burned at all, that Doyle was severely burned
and had probably inhaled flames, and that the woman was crazed with
drink, terror, and burns combined. It took the efforts of two or three
men and the influence of powerful opiates to quiet her. Taxed with
negligence or complicity on the part of the sentry, the sergeant of the
guard repudiated the idea, and assured Colonel Braxton that it was an
easy matter for any one to get either in or out of the garrison without
encountering the sentry, and, taking his lantern, led the way out to the
hospital grounds by a winding foot-path among the trees to a point in
the high white picket fence where two slats had been shoved aside. Any
one coming along the street without could pass far beyond the ken of the
sentry at the west gate, and slip in with the utmost ease, and once
inside, all that was necessary was to dodge possible reliefs and
patrols. No sentry was posted at the gate through the wall that
separated the garrison proper from the hospital grounds. Asked why he
had not reported this, the sergeant smiled and said there were a dozen
others just as convenient, so what was the use? He did not say, however,
that he and his fellows had recourse to them night after night.
It was three o'clock when the officers' families fairly got settled down
again and back to their beds, and the silence of night once more reigned
over Jackson Barracks. One would suppose that such a scene of terror and
excitement was enough, and that now the trembling, frightened women
might be allowed to sleep in peace; but it was not to be. Hardly had one
of their number closed her eyes, hardly had all the flickering lights,
save those at the hospital and guard-house, been downed again, when the
strained nerves of the occupants of the officers' quadrangle were jumped
into mad jangling once more and all the barracks aroused a second time,
and this, too, by a woman's shriek of horror.
Mrs. Conroy, a delicate, fragile little body, wife of a junior
lieutenant of infantry occupying a set of quarters in the same building
with, but at the opposite end from, Pierce and Waring, was found lying
senseless at the head of the gallery stairs.
When revived, amid tears and tremblings and incoherent exclamations she
declared that she had gone down to the big ice-chest on the ground-floor
to get some milk for her nervous and frightened child and was hurrying
noiselessly up the stairs again,--the only means of communication
between the first and second floors,--when, face to face, in front of
his door, she came upon Mr. Waring, or his ghost; that his eyes were
fixed and glassy; that he did not seem to see her even when he spoke,
for speak he did. His voice sounded like a moan of anguish, she said,
but the words were distinct: "Where is my knife? Who has taken my
knife?"
And then little Pierce, who had helped to raise and carry the stricken
woman to her room, suddenly darted out on the gallery and ran along to
the door he had closed four hours earlier. It was open. Striking a
match, he hurried through into the chamber beyond, and there, face
downward upon the bed, lay his friend and comrade Waring, moaning like
one in the delirium of fever.