A REBEL SOLDIER SPEAKS.
"I just wanted to ask you how and when you got back," said the captain,
holding fast to Marcy's hand. "I see Morris over town yesterday, and
right there he is going to stay till you come to ride the filly home.
How did you like the Yanks, what you seen of 'em?"
"I have no reason to complain of my treatment," replied Marcy. "I had no
idea that you were impressed at the time I was, until I saw you on that
gunboat."
"If I'd knowed that they was going to slap the bracelets onto me, they
never would have took me there alive," said Beardsley in savage tones.
"I'd a fit till I dropped before I would have went a step. Who'd 'a'
thought that me and you would ever seen any of them _Hollins_ fellers on
a war-ship? I'm mighty sorry now that I didn't stick Captain Benton in
irons the same as I done with his men, and it's a lucky thing for him
that he didn't let me have the handling of his ship. I would have run
her so hard aground that she would be there now."
"Then it is a lucky thing for you that you were sent below," added
Marcy. "You would have been hanging at the yard-arm in less than ten
minutes after you ran the ship ashore. Those gunboat fellows don't stand
any nonsense."
"Mebbe that's so," said the captain. "And sense I've got home all right,
I'm kinder glad things happened as they did. The robbers who went to
your house, after the money they didn't get, used me pretty rough,
didn't they?" he added, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the
spot on which his home had once stood. "How do you reckon they happened
to know that I wasn't here to fight 'em that night?"
"That is a question I can't answer," replied Marcy, and then he waited
for Beardsley to say something about the Union men who had rescued him
and his mother, but that seemed to be a matter that the captain did not
care to touch upon.
"Don't it beat you what sort of stories get afloat these times?"
continued the latter. "There's plenty of people about here who believe
you uns have got money in your house."
"I know it. I told the robbers there wasn't a cent outside of the little
there was in mother's purse and mine, and asked them to look around and
see if they could find any more. They preferred to choke a different
story out of me, but they wouldn't have got it if they had choked me to
death. If there is a dollar in the house besides what I offered them, I
don't know it."
"Where's the prize-money I paid you?' asked Beardsley.
"That was safely concealed; but it wasn't what they wanted, and so I
said nothing about it. They were after money which they and some other
lunatics think my mother brought from Wilmington, when she went there to
buy goods."
"Have you any idea who they were?"
"If I had, I would give their names to the Union commander at Plymouth
before I was twenty-four hours older," said Marcy emphatically.
"I don't reckon they'll trouble you any more after the lesson they have
had," said Beardsley; and then he hastened to add: "I mean they won't
dare to pester you, now that the Union soldiers are here. And speaking
of the Yankees reminds me of another thing I wanted to ask you. Do you
reckon--aint I always stood your friend--yourn and your maw's?"
"You need not question me on that point. You know well enough how we
feel over your taking me to sea when you didn't need my services any
more than you need two noses," said Marcy, for once permitting his
indignation to get the better of him. "But I shall not do you any mean,
underhanded tricks, if that is what you mean."
"Why, Marcy, I never done you nary one," began Beardsley.
"Captain, I know you from main-truck to kelson," answered the boy,
gathering up his reins as if about to ride away. "You took me from my
mother for reasons of your own, not because you wanted a pilot; and you
have scarcely made a move since these troubles began that I can't tell
you of. You ought to let up now, and I tell you plainly that you had
better."
Beardsley was astounded. His victim had turned at last, and showed that
he was ready to fight. He spoke so positively, and with such easy
assurance, that the man was afraid of him.
"Why, Marcy, sure, hope to die I never----"
"Yes, you have. You have been persecuting us systematically, and there's
the proof of it right there," exclaimed Marcy, pointing to the ruins of
Beardsley's home. "If you had quit that business two months ago, you
would have a house to live in now, and so would Colonel Shelby. I
believe I could have sent you to prison by telling Captain Benton a few
scraps of your history, but I wasn't mean enough to do it."
"No, you couldn't," declared Beardsley, who had had time to recover a
little of his courage. "I never was in the Confederate service; and even
if I was, I can't be pestered for it now, kase the Yankees done let me
go with the rest of the prisoners."
"You have been a smuggler, haven't you?"
"S'pose I have? I can't be hurt for that now."
"I almost wish I had tested the matter by speaking to Captain Benton
about it. If I had, I don't think you would have been turned over to the
army to be paroled with the other prisoners. I could have told him about
the _Hattie_, couldn't I?"
"Great smoke!" exclaimed Beardsley. "I never thought of her, and there
she is in the creek, where they could have picked her up as easy as you
please. It was good of you not to say anything about her, and if I ever
get a chance I'll show you that you and your maw have been thinking hard
of me without a cause."
Beardsley turned away as if he had nothing further to say to Marcy, and
the latter wheeled his horse and rode on toward Nashville, wondering if
he had made a mistake in talking so plainly to his old commander.
"If I have it is too late to be sorry for it now," was his reflection.
"But I don't think he can say worse things about me now than he could
before. Beardsley is nobody's fool, though he does look like it, and he
has known all along how mother and I feel toward him."
When Marcy reached the village he found the streets almost deserted; but
he knew there was a talkative crowd in the post-office, for every time
the door was opened loud and angry voices came through it. Tom Allison,
Mark Goodwin, and their friends were not at hand to have the first talk
with him, as Marcy thought they would be, but he found them in the
office listening to an excited harangue from a paroled soldier, who had
discarded his coat and hat and pushed up his sleeves, as if he were
prepared to do battle with the first one of his auditors who dared
dispute his words. Marcy saw at a glance that some of the crowd were
very much shocked, while others were grinning broadly, and nodding now
and then as if to say that the speaker was expressing their sentiments
exactly. Marcy knew him well. He lived in the settlement, and had been
one of the first to put on a uniform and hasten to the front; and so
very patriotic was he that he was anxious to fight all his neighbors who
could not be persuaded to go into the army with him. But his experience
at Hatteras and Roanoke Island had somewhat dampened his ardor, and
showed him that there were some things in war that he had never dreamed
of.
"How does it come that you stay-at-homers know so much about this
business, and about my duty as a soldier, that you take it upon
yourselves to tell me what I had oughter do?" shouted the man who had
heard the shrieking of Yankee shells at Fort Bartow. "I see some among
you who are mighty hard on your niggers, but there aint one who is as
hard as our trifling officers were on us. Having no niggers to drive
they took to driving us white men, and they 'bused us like we was dogs.
Many's the time I have seen men tied up by the thumbs and bucked and
gagged for nothing at all; and, Tom Allison, I give you fair warning
that if you say again that I'm a coward kase I don't allow to go back
and be 'bused like I was afore, I'll twist your neck for ye."
This made two things plain to Marcy Gray. One was that the man had had
quite enough of soldiering and that he did not mean to try it again if
he could help it. The other was that his friend Allison had presumed to
speak his mind a little too freely, and that that was what started the
prisoner on his tirade against those whom he called "stay-at-homers."
After some twisting, and turning, and elbowing Marcy succeeded in
obtaining a glance at Tom.
He was leaning against one of the counters, as far away from the speaker
as he could get, and his face was as white as his shirt-front.
"I'm mighty glad to hear that there's Union men among you," continued
the soldier, "and if there's any here in this post-office I want them to
know that there's more of 'em now nor they was a week ago, and that some
of 'em wears gray jackets. And I am glad to hear that them same Union
men have took to burning out them among you who was cowards enough to
persecute women and children on account of their principles. Now,
there's that trifling hound Lon Beardsley. He told me and some others
who come up from the Island the same time he did, that we could make a
pile of money by burning Mrs. Gray's house."
Colonel Shelby was one of those who listened while the angry soldier
talked, but being a "stay-at-homer" he dared not interrupt him. He stood
where he could look over the shoulders of some of the crowd into Marcy's
face; and when the soldier spoke Beardsley's name, and told what the
latter had tried to induce him and some companions to do, the colonel
leaned forward and whispered a few earnest words to him. The man bent
his head to listen, but as soon as the colonel ceased speaking he broke
out again.
"I aint a paroled pris'ner neither," he shouted. "I took my oath that I
wouldn't never fight agin the United States again, and I'm going to
stick to it. I'm a free man now; I am going to stay free, and I won't
shut up till I get ready. When I say that Lon Beardsley tried to get me
to burn Mrs. Gray's house I say the truth, and Beardsley dassent come
afore me and say different. But I told him plain that we uns who had fit
and snuffed powder wouldn't do no dirty work like that. We don't care if
Jack Gray is in the Yankee navy and Marcy was a pilot on a Yankee
gunboat. If they was in that fight I done my level best to sink 'em; but
they whopped us fair and square, and I've had enough of fighting to last
me as long as I live. All the same I aint going to let no little whiffet
like Tom Allison call me a coward."
While the soldier was going on in this way, pounding the air with his
fists and shouting himself hoarse, those of his auditors who could do so
without attracting too much attention, secured their mail and slipped
through the door into the street; and when the crowd became thinned out
so that he could see to the other end of the post-office, Marcy was
surprised to discover that the man was not alone and unsupported, as he
had supposed him to be. Six or eight stalwart fellows in uniform leaned
against the counters; and the fact that they did not interrupt their
comrade, or take him to task for anything he said, was pretty good
evidence that he spoke for them as well as for himself. Among those who
were glad to get away from the sound of his voice were Tom Allison and
Mark Goodwin, who went across the road to the hitching-rack, and had
time to do a little talking between themselves before Marcy came out.
"Did you ever hear a fellow go on as Ben Hawkins did?" whispered Tom,
who had not yet recovered from his fright.
"It's just awful to hear a Confederate soldier talk treason like that,"
replied Mark. "I declare, things are getting worse every day. I thought
that when our soldiers came home they would hunt the Unionists out of
the country, and burn everything they've got; but, by gracious! they are
Unionists themselves, or traitors to the flag, which amounts to the same
thing. I tell you, Tom, you came mighty near getting yourself into
serious trouble by calling Hawkins a coward. If ever fire came from a
man's eyes it came from his. What in the world made you do it?"
"I called him a coward when he declared that he wouldn't fight the
Yankees any more, because I thought he was one," replied Tom. "And I
still think so. There were several other soldiers in there, and I
supposed of course they would stand by me. They all know my father, and
some of them are under obligations to him; but instead of backing me in
my efforts to make Hawkins ashamed of himself, they stood by and let him
talk as he pleased. I was glad to hear him say what he did about
Beardsley."
"Do you think he told the truth?" asked Mark.
"I am sure of it; for if Beardsley didn't say something to him, how
would Hawkins know that there was a big pile of money in Mrs. Gray's
house? I'm free to confess that I am getting scared, and if I knew any
safe place around here I would go to it."
"Here, too," exclaimed Mark. "But, Tom, this state of affairs can't last
long. Unless we are whipped already, and I never will believe that till
I have to, these places will all be taken from the enemy, and then there
can be something done toward driving from the country such fellows as
Hawkins and----"
"And such fellows as this one coming," added Tom, with a slight nod
toward Marcy Gray, who just then came out of the post-office.
"Won't he hold his head in the air now?" exclaimed Mark, in disgust. "If
he doesn't know by this time that he is the biggest toad in this puddle,
it isn't Hawkins's fault. Doesn't it beat the world how some people can
hold their own with a whole settlement against them?"
Marcy Gray did not look as though he thought himself better than anybody
else, but he did look astonished and perplexed. The scene he had just
witnessed, and the words to which he had listened, almost dazed him. If
any one had told him that such sentiments could be littered in a town
like Nashville, nine out of ten of whose citizens were supposed to be
good Confederates, without a tragedy following close upon the heels of
it, he would have thought the statement an absurd one for any sane man
to make. Marcy knew then, as well as he did when he afterward read it in
one of his papers, that the people of North Carolina were not ardently
devoted to the Confederate cause. In fact "they did not care much for
either party; but while a large number of them would have liked to wait
for the issue of the struggle to declare their preferences, those who
remained loyal to the flag of the Union were too much afraid of a turn
of fortune to avow their sentiments openly." But it seemed that Hawkins
was not afraid to say what he thought of the situation, and only one of
the rebels who listened to his speech in the post-office had dared
dissent from his views. That was Tom Allison, who came near having his
neck "twisted" for his impudence.
"You look surprised, old fellow," was the way in which Tom greeted Marcy
when he came up.
"Who wouldn't be?" answered Marcy. "If all the paroled prisoners think
that way the Confederate army must be in bad shape."
"But they don't," said Mark hastily. "If some of those Tom and I talked
with yesterday were here now, they would make Hawkins sing a different
song, I bet you. We found them as strong for the cause, and as spiteful
against all Unionists, North and South, as they were when they first
went into the army. Hawkins is mad because he got whipped; but he will
be all right a week from now. Were you in any battles, Marcy?"
"You can't think how astonished we were when we woke up in the morning
and learned that the Yankee sailors had been through our neighborhood,
and that nobody, except a few niggers, was the wiser for it," said Tom.
"Beardsley says you acted as pilot, but he didn't. He positively refused
to do it, and the Yankees put him in irons. Is that so?"
"It is true that Beardsley was put in irons, but not because he refused
to act as pilot," replied Marcy. "He didn't get a chance to say whether
he would go on the bridge or not, for Captain Benton did not ask him. He
was ironed for the reason that he served the crew of the _Hollins_ that
way when he captured them."
"Did they treat you well?"
"First-rate. They couldn't have done better if I had been one of them."
"And you were one of them. You couldn't have done more to help them win
the fight if you had had a blue shirt on," were the words that trembled
on the point of Tom Allison's tongue. But he did not speak them aloud.
He had received one severe rebuke that morning, and did not think he
could stand another; but Ben Hawkins and his friends, who just then left
the post-office and came across the road to the place where the boys
were standing, did not hesitate to commend Marcy for the course he
pursued while on the gunboat. They came up in time to hear Mark Goodwin
say:
"Why didn't you run that ship aground? That's what I would have done if
I had been in your place, and it is what Captain Beardsley would have
done if he had been allowed the opportunity."
"And been hung up by the neck for his trouble," said Hawkins; and to
Mark's surprise and Tom's, he took Marcy's hand in both his own and
shook it cordially. It would have pleased them better if Hawkins had
knocked Marcy down. That was the way they expected to see Confederate
soldiers treat all Union men and boys, and they would have enjoyed the
spectacle. "You stay-at-homers don't know nothing about war," continued
Hawkins, giving way to his comrades, all of whom shook Marcy's hand one
after the other, "and we uns, who have been there, say Marcy acted just
right in doing as he did. I'd 'a' done the same thing myself, and so
would any other man unless he was plum crazy. Go and get some soldier
clothes and shoulder muskets, you two. We've done our share, and now we
will stand back and give you uns a chance to see how you like it."
"Don't you intend to return to the army, Mr. Hawkins?" inquired Marcy.
"Well, 'cording to the oath I've took I can't," answered the soldier. "I
did promise that I would never fight against the old flag agin, but
that's neither here nor there. My year is pretty nigh up, and I'm going
to stay around home and eat good grub for a while. I don't mean to say
that I won't never 'list again, but it won't be till I've seen some
others whopped like I have been."
He looked fixedly at Tom as he said this, and the boy, believing that he
would feel more at his ease if he were farther out of the soldier's
reach, turned about and went toward the post-office, followed by his
friend Mark.
"Say!" whispered Hawkins, as soon as the two were out of hearing. "I
aint a-going to ask you where you stand, kase that aint none of my
business; but what's this I hear about your maw having a pile of money
in the house, and Beardsley and among 'em be so anxious to get it that
they brought men up from Newbern, to rob her of it?"
Marcy explained in few words; that is to say, he told what Captain
Beardsley thought, but he did not acknowledge that there was money in or
about the house with the exception of the small sum he had offered the
robbers, and which they refused to take. And then he asked Hawkins how
he happened to know anything about it.
"I know pretty much everything that's happened here sense I went into
the army, and what's more, I know _why_ it happened," was the answer.
"My folks told me about it soon's I got home. I know, too, that some of
your friends have gone into the Yankee service; but you've got a few
yet, and you see them right here with gray jackets on. Say nothing to
nobody; but there's skursely a poor man around here who aint beholden to
your folks for something or other, and if you get into trouble we're
bound to help you out."
"I am very grateful to you for the assurance," said Marcy. "But do you
know that if you do not go back to serve your year out, you will be
treated as deserters?"
"We know all that, and we know better'n you do how they treat deserters
in our army; but it's a good plan to catch your rabbit afore you cook
him," said Hawkins, with a grin. "My folks wanted me to stay home the
worst kind and see who was going to whop afore I took sides, and I'm
mighty sorry I didn't listen to 'em. Look out what you're doing, you
babolitionist," exclaimed Hawkins, as old Morris elbowed his way through
the group to Marcy's side. "We rebels will eat you up."
"I don't care what you do to Morris so long's you let Marse Mahcy be,"
said the black man, who was almost ready to cry when he saw the boy
standing before him as sound as he was when he left home. "The Yankees
done kill him--jes' look at that hand of hisn--and now you rebels done
pester him plum to death."
"Go 'long now, Uncle Morris. We aint worrying on him and he will tell
you so," replied Hawkins good-naturedly. "But our critter-fellers are
round picking up all the darkies they can find and making soldiers of
'em, and you had best watch out. Don't go outside the two-mile limit,
or, better yet, don't put your nose out of doors after dark."
Hawkins and his comrades walked away, and old Morris turned a very badly
frightened face toward Marcy.
"Don't mind them," said the latter. "They're soldiers, and of course
they must have their fun. You need not think that the rebels will ever
put faith enough in you black ones to trust you with muskets in your
hands."
"They'd better not," said Morris. "How you come here, Marse Mahcy? I
been waiting two days for you."
The boy explained that Julius had found him in the creek and helped him
home, and the old fellow did not appear to be well pleased with the
news, for he walked off, muttering to himself and shaking his head with
every step he took, to bring up his mule and Marcy's horse. The latter
did not wait for him, but mounted and rode homeward; and he was in so
anxious and unsettled a frame of mind that he could not bring himself to
take his papers from his pocket. The situation was something he had
never dreamed of, and Marcy did not believe it would last for any length
of time. The Confederate authorities would not permit enlisted men to
roam at large through the country, talking as Hawkins had done, but
would soon put a stop to it by some violent measures, and bring their
disaffected soldiers to punishment at the same time. The paroled
prisoner was angry over the result of the battles at Roanoke Island; he
must have been or he would not have expressed himself so freely. And
when Marcy reached home and talked the matter over with his mother, and
became quieted down so that he could read his papers understandingly, he
found that there were some high in authority who were angry over it
also; General Wise for one, who said in his report that "Roanoke Island,
being the key to all the rear defences of Norfolk, ought to have been
defended at the cost of twenty thousand men." But General Wise did not
stop there. He sent a protest to the Confederate Congress, censuring
both the President and Secretary of War, and the upshot of the matter
was that Mr. Benjamin became so unpopular that he was forced to resign.
The general's letter also opened the eyes of the Confederate government
to the fact that the people of North Carolina were not half as loyal to
the cause as they ought to have been, and that something would have to
be done about it. If the Southern men would not enter the army
willingly, they must be compelled to come in; and this the government
straightway proceeded to do. Almost the first move that was made brought
about the thing that Marcy Gray most dreaded, and made a refugee of
him.