I returned to where Ned was, and we began retracing our steps.
Although we made frequent attempts to get news, it was not until nearly
morning that I learned that our troops had advanced to a point, nearer
the place where I had made my way into the enemy's camp, and,
consequently, nearer where I was then, but to my left. We immediately
changed our route.
From the moment the order had fallen into my hands, my one desire and
aim was to get it where the information it contained, together with what
other I had gathered, could be put to instant use. Every nerve throbbed
with impatience. Every delay was intolerable. Yet that entire ride back
was a series of vexatious and dangerous delays. I was beset on every
side by dangers, which closed in on me at every point where I tried to
evade them. Every mile counted for four in my eagerness to get on. I was
obliged, time after time, to retrace my steps and make long detours to
avoid running into bodies of skirmishers, to escape the vigilance of
pickets, and to baffle the pursuers on our tracks.
Twice that night we stood with our coats drawn tightly over our horses'
heads to keep them from making a sound to betray our presence to the
enemy, passing so closely below that by stooping, we could have lifted
the hats off of their heads with a ramrod.
Shortly after daybreak, as the first rays of of the sun showed over a
neighboring hill, I lay in a hollow log, while a man from the column of
passing soldiers sat on it to beat the dirt and stones from his remnants
of shoes. The dust from the inside of the log, loosened by his pounding,
choked me, until in my efforts to keep from coughing, I bit through the
sleeve of my coat, and left the print of my teeth on my arm. About six
hundred soldiers marched past me, as I watched them from a crevice in
the log.
Across the road and half way up the hill beyond I could see where Ned
crouched, keeping the horses back in the shelter of a low thicket.
Knowing exactly where to look for him, he stood out with terrible
distinctness to my abnormally keen sight, and I trembled whenever I saw
a soldier turn his head in that direction.
Even now, as I think it over, with all my increased experience and
knowledge of hair-breadth escapes, it seems simply incredible that we
ever got through. But get through we did.
By eight o'clock, exhausted to faintness from hard riding, lack of food
and loss of sleep, and with horses reeling from fatigue, we turned out
onto a road which in a few minutes took us beyond danger. Loyal hands
placed fresh horses at our disposal, and with little loss of time, we
were covering the last ten miles of our ride.
Soon the bit of paper, that "Lost Dispatch," which through all that long
and fearful night had been the elixir that nerved me to my work, was in
the hands of the proper officer, and I had communicated to him the
additional information I had gathered. Both information and dispatch,
without delay, were carried to the Commander in Chief.
I only did my duty. My responsibility ended there. But looking back now,
it seems, as it did then, that better results should have been obtained
through a quick action on the intelligence gathered.
THE END.