A GUNNER OF PELHAM'S
Major John Pelham looked at the clouds boiling up above Bull Run
Mountains.
"Rain, rain go away,
Come again another day!--"
he said. "What's the house they've burned over there?"
"Chantilly, sir."
Ruined wall and chimney, fallen roof-tree, gaping holes where windows
had been, the old mansion stood against the turmoil of the sky. It
looked a desolation, a poignant gloom, an unrelieved sorrow. A courier
appeared. "The enemy's rearguard is near Ox Hill, sir. They've driven in
some of our patrols. The main body is moving steady toward Fairfax Court
House. General Jackson has sent the Light Division forward. General
Stuart's going, too. He says, 'Come on.'"
The clouds mounted high and dark, thunder began to mutter; by the time a
part of the Light Division and a brigade of Ewell's came into touch with
Reno and Kearney, the afternoon, already advanced, was of the hue of
twilight. Presently there set in a violent storm of thunder and
lightning, wind and rain. The trees writhed like wounded soldiers, the
rain came level against the face, stinging and blinding, the artillery
of the skies out-thundered man's inventions. It grew darker and darker,
save for the superb, far-showing lightning flashes. Beneath these the
blue and the grey plunged into an engagement at short range.
What with the howling of the storm, the wind that took voices and
whirled them high and away, the thunder above and the volleying musketry
below, to hear an order was about the most difficult feat imaginable.
Stafford gathered, however, that Lawton, commanding since Ewell's wound,
was sending him to Jackson with a statement as to affairs on this wing.
He went, riding hard against the slanting rain, and found Jackson
standing in the middle of the road, a piece of bronze played round by
lightning. One of the brigadiers was speaking to him. "The cartridges
are soaking wet, sir. I do not know that I can hold my position."
Jackson's voice came deep and curt. "Yes, sir, you can. If your muskets
won't go off, neither will the enemy's. You are to hold it, whether you
can or not. Go and do it."
The brigadier went. Stafford gave his information, and received an
order. "Go back along the road until you find the horse artillery. Tell
Major Pelham to bring his guns to the knoll yonder with the blasted
tree."
Stafford turned his horse and started. The rain and wind were now at his
back--a hundred paces, and the road, lonely save for stragglers, the
grey troops, the battle in front, was all sheeted and shrouded in the
darkly drifting storm. The fitful bursts of musketry were lost beneath
the artillery of the clouds. He travelled a mile, found Pelham and gave
his order, then stood aside under the tossing pines while the horse
artillery went by. It went by in the dusk of the storm, in the long howl
of the wind and the dash of the rain, like the iron chariots of Pluto,
the horses galloping, the gunners clinging wherever they might place
hand or foot, the officers and mounted men spurring alongside. Stafford
let them all turn a bend in the road, then followed.
All this stretch of road and field and wood had been skirmished over,
Stuart and the blue cavalry having been in touch through the earlier
part of the day. The road was level, with the mournful boggy fields,
with the wild bending woods. In the fields and in the woods there were
dark objects, which might be mounds of turf or huge twisted roots, or
which might be dead men and horses. Stafford, riding through wind and
rain, had no sooner thought this than he saw, indeed, what seemed a mere
hummock beneath a clump of cedars undoubtedly move. He looked as closely
as he might for the war of water, air, and fire, and made out a horse
outstretched and stark, and a man pinned beneath. The man spoke. "Hello,
upon the road there! Come and do a Christian turn!"
Stafford left his horse and, stepping through a quagmire of watery turf,
came into the ring of cedars. The man who had called upon him, a tall,
long-moustached person in blue, one arm and booted leg painfully caught
beneath the dead steed, spoke in a voice curt with suffering. "Grey,
aren't you? Don't care. Can't help it. Get this infernal weight off me,
won't you?"
The other bent to the task, and at last managed to free the blue
soldier. "There! That position must have been no joke! How long--"
The blue cavalryman proceeded to feel bone and flesh, slowly and
cautiously to move the imprisoned limbs. He drew a breath of relief.
"Nothing broken!--How long? Well, to reckon by one's feeling I should
say about a week. Say, however, since about noon. We drove against a
party under Stuart. He got the best of us, and poor Caliph got a bullet.
I could see the road. Everything grey--grey as the sea."
"Why didn't you call before? Any one would have helped you."
The other continued to rub his arm and leg. "You haven't got a drop of
brandy--eh?"
"Yes, I have. I should have thought of that before." He gave the other a
small flask. The cavalryman drank. "Ah! in '55, when I was with Walker
in Nicaragua, I got pinned like that beneath a falling cottonwood." He
gave the flask back. "You are the kind of Samaritan I like to meet. I
feel a new man. Thanks awfully."
"It was foolish of you to lie there for hours--"
The other leaned his back against a cedar. "Well, I thought I might hold
out, perhaps, until we beat you and I was again in the house of my
friends. I don't, however, object to acknowledging that you're hard to
beat. Couldn't manage it. Growing cold and faint--head ringing. Waited
as long as I could, then called. They say your prisons are very bad."
"They are no worse than yours."
"That may be. Any of them are bad."
"We are a ravaged and blockaded country. It is with some difficulty that
we feed and clothe our armies in the field. As for medicines with which
to fight disease, you will not let them pass, not for our women and
children and sick at home, and not for your own men in prison. And, for
all our representations, you will not exchange prisoners. If there is
undue suffering, I think you must share the blame."
"Yes, yes, it is all hellish enough!--Well, on one side of the dice,
prisoner of war; on the other, death here under poor Caliph. Might
escape from prison, no escape from death. By Jove, what a thunderclap!
It's Stonewall Jackson pursuing us, eh?"
"Yes. I hear Pelham's guns--You are an Englishman?"
"Yes. Francis Marchmont, at your service; colonel of the Marchmont"--he
laughed--"Invincibles."
"I am Maury Stafford, serving on General Ewell's staff.--Yes, that's
Pelham."
He straightened himself. "I must be getting back to the front. It is
hard to hear for the wind and rain and thunder, but I think the musketry
is recommencing." He looked about him. "We came through these woods
this morning. Stuart has patrols everywhere, but I think that dip
between the hills may be clear. You are pretty pale yet. You had better
keep the brandy flask. Are you sure that you can walk?"
"Walk beside you into your lines, you mean?"
"No. I mean try a way out between the hills."
"I am not your prisoner?"
"No."
Marchmont pulled at his moustaches. "Yes. I think I can walk. I won't
deprive you of your flask--but if I might have another mouthful--Thank
you." He rose stiffly. "If at any time I can serve you, I trust that you
will remember my name--Francis Marchmont, colonel Marchmont Invincibles.
Send me a slip of paper, a word, anything. _Ox Hill_ will do--and you
will find me at your service. Yes, the firing is beginning again--"
Stafford, once more upon the road, travelled northward in an unabated
storm. Tree and bush, weed, flower and grass, writhed and shrank beneath
the anger of the air; the rain hissed and beat, the lightning glared,
the thunder crashed. Between the flashes all was dusk. Before him the
rattle of musketry, the booming of the guns grew louder. He saw to the
right, on a bare rise of ground, Pelham's guns.
There came an attempted flanking movement of the blue--a dash of cavalry
met by Stuart and followed by a movement of two of Hill's brigades. The
action barred the road and fields before Stafford. He watched it a
moment, then turned aside and mounted the rise of ground to Pelham's
guns. A great lightning-flash lit them, ranged above him. All their wet
metal gleamed; about them moved the gunners; a man with a lifted sponge
staff looked an unearthly figure against the fantastic castles and
battlements, the peaks and abysses of the boiling clouds. The light
vanished; Stafford came level with the guns in the dusk.
Pelham welcomed him. "'Trust in God and keep your powder dry,' eh,
major? It's the kind of storm you read about--Hello! they've brought up
another battery--"
Stafford dismounted. One of the guns had the vent so burned and enlarged
that it was useless. It rested cold and silent beside its bellowing
fellows. Stafford seated himself on the limber, and watched the double
storm. It raged above the little hill, with its chain lightnings, with
wind, with reverberations of thunder; and it raged below, between some
thousands of grey and blue figures, small, small, in the dusk, shadowy
manikins sending from metal tubes glow-worm flashes! He sat, with his
chin in his hand, pondering the scene.
Pelham came heavily into action. There was a blue battery on the
opposite hill. The two spoke in whispers beneath the storm. The gunners,
now in darkness, now in the vivid lightning, moved about the guns. Now
they bent low, now they stood upright. The officer gestured to them and
they to each other. Several were killed or wounded; and as now this
section, now that, was more deeply engaged, there was some shifting
among the men, occasional changes of place. The dusk increased; it was
evident that soon night and the storm would put an end to the battle.
Stafford, watching, made out that even now the blue and grey forms in
the tossing woods and boggy meadows were showing less and less their
glow-worm fires, were beginning to move apart. The guns above them
boomed more slowly, with intervals between their speech. The thunder
came now, not in ear-splitting cracks but with long rolling peals, with
spaces between filled only by the wind and the rain. The human voice
might be heard, and the officers shouted, not gestured their orders. The
twilight deepened. The men about the gun nearest Stafford looked but
shadows, bending, leaning across, rising upright. They talked, however,
and the words were now audible. "Yes, if you could handle
lightning--take one of them zigzags and turn it loose on blue
people!"--"That battery is tired; it's going home! Right tired myself.
Reckon we're all tired but Old Jack. He don't never get tired. This is a
pretty behaving gun--" "That's so! and she's got good men. They do
first-rate."--"That's so! Even the new one's good"--"Good! He learned
that gun same as though they _grew_ artillery wherever he came from.
Briery Creek--No, Briony Creek--hey, Deaderick?"
"Briony Creek."
Stafford dropped his hand. "Who spoke?"
The question had been breathed, not loudly uttered. No one answered. The
gunners continued their movements about the guns, stooping, handling,
lifting themselves upright. It was all but night, the lightning less and
less violent, revealing little beyond mere shape and action. Stafford
sank back. "Storm within and storm without. They breed delusions!"
The blue battery opposite limbered up and went away. The musketry fire
in the hollows between the hills grew desultory. A slow crackle of shots
would be followed by silence; then might come with fierce energy a
sudden volley; silence followed it, too,--or what, by comparison, seemed
silence. The thunder rolled more and more distantly, the wind lashed the
trees, the rain beat upon the guns. Officers and men of the horse
artillery were too tired, too wet, and too busy for much conversation,
but still human voices came and went in the lessening blast, in the
semi-darkness and the streaming rain.
There was a gunner near Stafford who worked in silence and rested from
his work in silence. Stafford became conscious of him during one of the
latter periods--a silent man, leaning against his gun. He was not ten
feet away, but the twilight was now deep, and he rested indistinct, a
shadow against a shadow. Once there came a pale lightning flash, but his
arm was raised as if to shield his eyes, and there was seen but a
strongly made gunner with a sponge staff. Darkness came again at once.
The impression that remained with Stafford was that the gunner's face
was turned toward him, that he had, indeed, when the flash came, been
regarding him somewhat closely. That was nothing--a man not of the
battery, a staff officer sitting on a disabled gun, waiting till he
could make his way back to his chief--a moment's curiosity on an
artilleryman's part, exhibited in a lull between fighting. Stafford had
a certain psychic development. A thinker, he was adventurous in that
world; to him, the true world of action. The passion that had seized and
bound him had come with the force of an invader, of a barbaric horde,
from a world that he ordinarily ignored. It held him helpless, an
enslaved spirit, but around it vaguely worked the old habits of mind.
Now it interested him--though only to a certain degree--that, in some
subtle fashion and for some reason which he could not explain, the
gunner with the sponge staff could so make himself felt across space. He
wondered a little about this man; and then, insensibly, he began to
review the past. He had resolution enough, and he did not always choose
to review the past. To-night it was perhaps the atmosphere, the
commotion of the elements, the harp of the wind, the scourging rain--at
any rate, he reviewed it and fully. When the circle was completed and
his attention touched again the storm and the twilight hill near
Chantilly, and he lifted his eyes from the soaked and trodden ground, it
was to find the double shadow still before him. He felt that the eyes
of the gunner with the sponge staff were on him, had been on him for
some time. Quite involuntarily he moved, with a sudden gesture, as
though he evaded a blow. A sergeant's voice came through the twilight,
the wind and the rain. "Deaderick!"
The man by the gun moved, took up the sponge staff that had rested
beside him, turned in the darkness and went away.
A little later Stafford left the hilltop. The cannon had ceased their
booming, except for here and there a fitful burst; the musketry fire had
ceased. Pope's rearguard, Lee's advance, the two drew off and the
engagement rested indecisive. Blue and grey, a thousand or two men
suffered death or wounding. They lay upon the miry earth, beneath the
pelting storm. Among the blue, Kearney and Stevens were killed. Through
the darkness that wrapped the scene, Stafford found at last his way to
his general. He found him with Stuart, who was reporting to Stonewall
Jackson. "They're retreating pretty rapidly, sir. They'll reach Fairfax
Court House presently."
"Yes. They won't stop there. We'll bivouac on the field, general."
"And to-morrow, sir?"
"To-morrow, sir, we will follow them out of Virginia."
September the second dawned bright and clear. From Fairfax Court House
Pope telegraphed to Halleck. "There is undoubted purpose on the part of
the enemy to keep on slowly turning my position so as to come in on the
right. The forces under my command are unable to prevent his doing so.
Telegraph what to do."
Halleck telegraphed to fall back to the fortifications of Alexandria and
Washington.