too much a gentleman for me to think of such a thing. I accepted his
explanation and respected his wish to be called “Russell” still. He
imposed no pledge of secrecy upon me, but I kept his secret sacredly,
respecting it as a confidential communication from one gentleman to
another.
I had hardly settled it in my own mind that Russell’s connection with
the navy had been in the capacity of a surgeon, when he came one day
with the request that he might be allowed to go to Charleston for the
purpose of standing an examination for admission to the navy as an
officer.
This time, I confess, I was astonished. And so I went with him to
Charleston and before the board. To my surprise, he passed his
examination so brilliantly, that he was commissioned at once and put
in command of a newly built gun-boat. Shortly afterwards he handled
his vessel so well in a fight off the harbor as to secure an official
compliment and a promotion.
About a week after that event I learned that he had deserted the navy
and was among the missing. Apparently the poor fellow was a man running
away from his past, and nothing was so disastrous to him as distinction.
I thus lost sight of Russell, and until August, 1873, I heard no more
of him. I was editing a weekly family newspaper in New York at that
time, and oddly enough I was just beginning to write this sketch of my
singular acquaintance when Russell himself walked into my office at 245
Broadway and asked me if I remembered him. He was well dressed, in a
quiet drab suit, and was scarcely at all changed. He told me that he
was married and was living at a certain number in West 43d Street; that
he was practising law, being senior member of the firm of Wintermute
and Russell, for that his real name was Wintermute, and that his
partner, Russell, was a cousin on the mother’s side.
He gave me the firm’s card, and begged me to call upon him, both at his
house and at his office, which of course I promised to do.
I called first at the house. It was a well-built one of pressed brick,
and seemed to wear something of Russell’s own air of quiet dignity,
standing as it did in a row of more pretentious brown-stone mansions.
The door-plate--for door-plates were then still in use--bore the simple
word, “Wintermute.”
“Is Mr. Wintermute at home?” I asked.
“Commander Wintermute is in his library,” answered the lackey, laying
special stress upon the naval title.
“Ah, certainly, Commander Wintermute,” I answered. “I had forgotten.
Will you give him my card? I am an old friend.”
I was shown into the parlor,--a conspicuously tasteful
apartment,--furnished exactly as I should have expected Russell to
furnish it.
After a little the door opened, and an elderly gentleman, obviously
English, entered, holding my card in a puzzled way before his
spectacled nose.
“Pardon me,” he said. “The servant must have misunderstood you. He
announced you as an old friend.”
“Yes,” I replied, “I asked for Commander Wintermute.”
“I am he,” replied the gentleman. “Though I certainly fail to recognize
either your name or your face. There must be a mistake.”
“There certainly seems to be,” I answered, “unless there is another
gentleman in your family. The one I am seeking is William Wintermute,
whose mother’s name was Russell.”
“Then I am certainly the man,” responded my companion. “My name is
William Wintermute and my mother’s name was Russell. There is no other
gentleman living in the house, and so far as I have ever heard there is
no other William Wintermute anywhere.”
There was nothing to be done except to apologize and take my leave,
which I did as gracefully as I could under the circumstances.
At last I was angry with Russell. I had been puzzled by him often
enough. This time I was filled with resentment.
I at once sought out the law office of Wintermute and Russell. The
card, which I had preserved, gave me all necessary information as to
its whereabouts, and I was not long in finding it. Mr. Wintermute was
there. So was Mr. Russell. But neither was the man for whom I was
looking. Neither had ever heard of him.
I was still left puzzling over these questions:--
Who is Russell?
Is he after all a liar?
Or is he merely a remarkable coincidence?
* * * * *
In June or July, 1874, I published the foregoing sketch in a little
monthly magazine printed in an obscure college town in Illinois, which
had a circulation of only a few hundred copies, and lived just five
months in all.
It was called the _Midland Monthly Magazine_, and was issued by a
student in the college at Monmouth, Illinois.
Everything that related to Russell was sure in some way to blossom
out with all sorts of strange coincidences. This did so. In spite of
the obscure way in which my account of the man was published, I had
no doubt whatever that it would sooner or later result in some new
revelation of or concerning him.
It did so, of course.
The obscure student’s magazine somehow found its way to Bordentown, New
Jersey, and into the hands of an editor there. The editor was impressed
by the story and reprinted it. It thus fell into the hands of the
Reverend Lansing Burroughs, pastor of the First Baptist Church of that
town, and late captain of Confederate States Artillery.
I was not surprised when I received from the Reverend Lansing
Burroughs, etc., the following letter:--
BORDENTOWN, N. J., Sept. 5, 1874.
MY DEAR SIR: I have just finished reading a sketch published over
your name (copied from somewhere, I suppose) in our local paper,
entitled “Who is Russell?” It petrifies me with astonishment. For
thirteen years past the question which has bothered me most seriously
has been, “Who is Russell?” alias “Wallace,” alias “Wintermute,”
for by all these and some other names have I known the mysterious
individual. If you have been writing only a fancy sketch, I must
tackle one of the strangest problems in mental philosophy. If your
story is one of experience, then must I see you and compare notes. I
fancy I can horrify you with the story of what Russell once told me
had been his history....
Yours very truly,
LANSING BURROUGHS,
_Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Bordentown, N. J.
Late captain Confederate States Artillery_.
Now it was just like Russell that an account of him, published in a
short-lived magazine, of a purely local circulation, out in Illinois,
should in some inscrutable way have fallen into the hands of the editor
of a little country paper in New Jersey; that this editor should have
copied it into his paper; and that one of his readers should happen to
be the one other man in existence who was puzzling over the questions
with which the sketch ended.
But this was not all. There was still another coincidence. There was
that in my correspondent’s letter which revealed to me a fact of which
he was apparently unconscious; namely, that this Reverend Lansing
Burroughs was an old college mate of my own, whom I had not seen or
heard from for sixteen years. Such a coincidence was altogether natural
and proper, however, growing as it did out of matters connected with
Russell.
I had some further correspondence with the Reverend Mr. Burroughs, and
finally we met by appointment and went to Mouquin’s for luncheon and
to compare notes. A careful analysis of dates proved beyond doubt that
_his_ Russell was _my_ Russell. But our experiences were of a very
different sort. Mr. Burroughs had never once had a meeting with the
mysterious man which did not bring calamity of some sort upon himself.
So far as I was concerned, no ill beyond annoyance and embarrassment
had ever come of my acquaintance with him.
The Reverend Mr. Burroughs declares to me his firm conviction that the
quiet, singularly shy, well-behaved, modest gentleman, so unusually
gifted, especially in the way of a phenomenal genius for lying, is in
plain terms THE DEVIL.
As to this, Mr. Burroughs is by profession an expert, and I am not.
I therefore venture no opinion. I merely continue to ask, “Who is
Russell?”
“JUANITA”
I was on guard one night in the autumn of 1861.
It was only ordinary camp guard and not picket duty.
We had fallen back from the line of Mason’s and Munson’s hills,
and were camped well in the rear of Fairfax Court House, which now
constituted our most advanced outpost.
The army were fortified at Centreville. We had got tired of waiting for
McClellan to make the advance for which we were so eagerly ready. We
were evidently preparing to go into winter quarters.
We of Stuart’s cavalry were still posted six or eight miles in advance
of the main army; but after our summer, passed twenty miles in front,
we felt snug and comfortable at “Camp Cooper.”
Nevertheless, when I saw three rockets--red, white, and blue--go up far
to the front, it occurred to me that the fact might mean something.
At any rate, I was lonely on post. I had sung “Juanita” under my
breath,--and that it wasn’t permitted to sing out loud on post was
probably a rule not made with any invidious reference to my voice,
though it might well have been,--I say I had sung “Juanita” under my
breath till I had exhausted the capabilities of entertainment that
reside in that tender musical composition.
So, for the sake of diversion, if for nothing else, I called out:
“Corporal of the guard, post number six.”
When the corporal came and I reported what I had seen, he moodily
growled something about there being no orders to “report on Yankee
fireworks.” Nevertheless, he communicated my report to higher authority.
Fifteen minutes later a hurried messenger came, summoning me at once to
General Stuart’s headquarters, half a mile in front.
Mounting, I rode at a gallop. That was the only gait which Stuart
tolerated, except in going _away_ from the enemy.
As I rode out of camp I heard “Boots and Saddles” sounded from all the
bugles of all the regiments.
I knew then that “something was up.” “Boots and Saddles” always meant
something when Stuart gave the order.
When I dismounted at headquarters, Stuart himself was waiting, although
it was three o’clock in the morning. His plume and golden spurs
gleamed through the dark.
“Tell me quick!” was all he had to say. I answered sententiously:
“Three rockets went up: red to right, white to left, and blue in the
middle.”
“You mean _our_ right and left, or the enemy’s?” he asked eagerly.
“Ours,” I answered.
He turned quickly and gave hurried orders to staff-officers, orderlies,
and couriers. Then turning to me, he said: “_You ride with me._” I
appreciated the attention.
Five minutes later a great column of cavalrymen were riding at a gallop
towards the front. And just as daylight dawned we broke into a charge
upon a heavy force of the enemy.
The hostile force was slowly advancing, not expecting us, and we struck
it in flank, taking it completely by surprise.
The demoralization of the Manassas, or Bull Run panic had not even yet
gone out of the Northern troops. We made short work of their advance
and sent them quickly into disorderly retreat.
One of Stuart’s couriers was killed in the charge. I remember, because
he rode beside me, and his head fell clean from his body, and the sight
sickened me, so that I fought harder for the minute than I thought I
could.
As the enemy broke, Stuart stopped his horse, slapped his thigh, and
turning to me laughing, and with that indifference to rank which always
characterized him under excitement, exclaimed: “They haven’t got over
it yet, have they?”
The Manassas panic always did impress Stuart as an irresistible joke.
A moment later he said: “I’m glad you reported those rockets. Always
report whatever you see. Even a shooting star may mean something at
headquarters.”
But I have never ceased to wonder why we guards that night had no
orders to look out for red, white, and blue rockets, since they meant
so much. If they had not been reported by a tired and lonely sentinel,
we should have been run over in our tents by a force of ten thousand
men.
A celebrated writer says: “War is a hazard of possibilities,
probabilities, luck, and ill luck.”
It was luck that night that a sentry was tired of singing “Juanita”
under his breath.
SCRUGGS
Scruggs lived throughout the war in that debatable land between the
lines in Northern Virginia, where it was always a wonder that anybody
could live at all.
And Scruggs lived well, too. He was not able to work, because in order
to keep out of the army he had found or feigned a physical disability
of some kind.
We always knew that we could get accurate information concerning the
enemy by going to Scruggs for it. He frequented their camps as freely
as he did ours. He kept his eyes open. He always knew all the important
facts, and he was always eager to tell them.
When we went after this information Scruggs was sure to be nowhere
visible, and none of his family could ever tell where he might be. But
after he had had opportunity to find out with certainty to which side
we belonged, Scruggs would come out of his hiding-place, and tell us
precisely at what points the enemy was encamped, what his strength was,
and what his disposition to activity appeared to be.
Then he would tell us how nearly his family were starving by reason of
the fact that the enemy had raided his place and carried off all his
supplies. In common gratitude we could do nothing less than replenish
his larder with whatever we might happen to possess.
Scruggs’s information was always accurate, always full, and always
scrupulously truthful.
When a party of the enemy went up to Scruggs’s to inquire about us,
Scruggs pursued precisely the same policy. First making sure to which
side the party belonged, he would come forth and tell all that he knew
with regard to the position and strength of our posts; he would add
that little piece of misinformation,--most precious to him,--that we
had stripped him bare of sustenance, and they would generously relieve
his necessities again.
In all this Scruggs was scrupulously truthful, except for the little
lie about provisions, and it was all absolutely impartial. If such
virtues count for anything in war, Scruggs was entitled to full credit
for them.
But one day our commander grew suspicious of Scruggs. On the same day
the commander of the Federal outposts began also to suspect Scruggs.
After a little investigation our commandant made up his mind to hang
Scruggs for a spy. About the same time the Federal commandant, after
a like investigation, came to a similar determination with regard to
Scruggs.
The two hanging parties met at Scruggs’s house. As usual, Scruggs was
not there. But the two parties engaged each other at once. They were
about of equal numbers, and they fought valiantly for a time, neither
understanding, of course, that they were there on precisely similar
errands.
After a little our party began to doubt whether Scruggs was worth
the contest or not, and retired a little way. The Federals, with a
like contempt for Scruggs, retired about the same distance. After a
few shots at long range both parties went back to their camps, each
commander feeling that, “After all, Scruggs has never failed to give us
all the information he could, and has never yet deceived us on a single
point.”
After both parties had gone Scruggs came out of his hiding-place and
remarked to his eldest daughter: “You see, Prudence, what it is for a
feller to be always truthful.”
And, by the way, Scruggs never did get himself hanged.
JOE ON HORSEBACK
Joe was not quite seventeen years old. He could ride anything that
happened to possess a back. He therefore had a great love for his
horse--the noblest one in the battery.
During the preliminary skirmish in advance of Pocotaligo, on that
terrible 22d of October, 1862, his gun detachment was cut to pieces in
a fearful way, until he had to work his piece with three men, serving
as a cannoneer himself. When we retired from the skirmish line at
Yemassee to Pocotaligo proper, and it was obvious that we must fight
enormous odds in order to prevent the enemy from crossing the causeway
we were defending, I suggested to Joe that he dismount, as the rest of
us had done, and take to a tree.
Joe resented the suggestion with the remark: “My place is on horseback.
I’m a sergeant.”
Two minutes later a cannon-ball carried away his horse’s tail. Five
seconds afterwards another cannon-ball carried off the beast’s left
forefoot. Feeling that the horse was sinking under him, Joe dismounted
to see what the damage had been. As he stooped to look at the
dismembered foot, still another cannon-ball passed just over his head,
split his saddle, and broke the poor animal’s back. Thereupon Joe
turned, presented his pistol at the horse’s head, averted his eyes and
fired.
Then he took a horse out of the battery and mounted him, remarking: “I
still contend that as a sergeant my place is on horseback.”
The boy was crying, but none of us made remark upon the incongruity.
Joe was mentioned in general orders for his gallantry that day, but the
fact had no reference to this matter of the horse.
[Illustration: A GOOD-BYE TO A FRIEND.]
A RATHER BAD NIGHT
We were living in the deserted village. That is to say, our battery of
light artillery was stationed at Bluffton, South Carolina.
At ordinary times Bluffton had a population of about three thousand
souls. At the time of which I write it had no population at all.
It was a town built upon a high bluff overlooking an arm of the sea, or
more properly a great bay, broken by multitudinous islands into various
inlets. Hilton Head lay within sight, twelve miles away, and all the
waters of the great island-studded bay were navigable.
Bluffton never had any business to do. It had no shops, no factories,
no anything but planters’ residences. Its houses were all elegant and
all comfortable. Its streets were shaded by great spreading trees, not
planted in symmetrical rows, but growing wherever they pleased, in the
midst of the thoroughfares.
Bluffton was exposed to the direct assault of gun-boats or expeditions
of any sort. So, early in the war, its entire population left and went
to points in the interior. At the time I write of, in 1863, there
was not a soul in the town except the men of the battery to which I
belonged.
Our captain was commandant of outposts. I was adjutant of the same.
Our support consisted of two or three small troops of cavalry. Their
camps were several miles in rear of our own. These cavalrymen did all
the picketing. In the event of an attack we and they were charged with
the duty of harassing the advance of the enemy and delaying him on his
march to the railroad, seventeen miles away, long enough for troops to
be sent down from Charleston or up from Savannah.
It was a wild, free, gypsy-like life. We lived in the handsomely
furnished houses, made free use of the very rich libraries, fished,
played at chess, shot deer and turkeys in the woods, dozed upon
“joggling boards” in sea-breeze-swept piazzas, and altogether did
nothing most industriously and delightfully.
There was one duty to be done, and that a very important one. It was
necessary for some officer to make the grand rounds of the pickets
every night. This task devolved upon me about once a week. The pickets
were stationed at all available points of observation below, all
points from which the channels could be seen. To visit them required
an all night’s ride, which in that country is by no means an agreeable
undertaking.
The weeds rise above the head of a horseman, and the dew drips as
rain might, from every leaf. The night rider becomes water soaked and
chilled to the very bones, even during the fierce summer weather.
During the autumn and winter a night ride on this subtropical coast
brings with it a degree of suffering from cold which the fiercest
Northern winter never produces.
But it was absolutely necessary to visit the picket posts. Upon their
efficiency depended our safety and that of the railroad we were set
to defend. If a single picket slept, a fleet of gun-boats or ship’s
launches might come to Bluffton wholly unannounced. The battery,
without support at hand, would fall helpless into the enemy’s hands,
and the railroad communication, on which the safety of Charleston and
Savannah depended, would be broken.
It was Christmas Eve, crisp and cool. A heap of fat hard pine was
blazing in the great fireplace in our quarters. The negro servant was
busy in the kitchen without. Our guests, half a dozen officers from the
cavalry companies, were already assembled. We had invited them to dine
with us upon a haunch of venison, a wild turkey, fish, oysters, crabs,
shrimps, etc., all of which, except the first two, could be taken at
any time within a hundred yards of the door. Our little party-giving
promised to be a thoroughly successful bit of hospitality.
Curry, the cook, had just begun to put the dinner on the table when a
messenger came to report that Lieutenant C----, the officer appointed
to make the picket rounds that night, was ill and could not go. It was
my turn next and there was no escape. At the holiday season pickets
especially need watching. I knew very well it would never do to leave
them unvisited that night. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to
turn the guests over to my messmate, the captain, and order my horse.
My guide--for without a guide no one could possibly find his way at
night through parts of that country--was a dull, taciturn fellow, with
whom I found it impossible to maintain a conversation. My twelve miles’
ride to the farthest picket post, which I visited first, was therefore
a very disagreeable substitute for the jovial, social evening I had
planned.
By the time I had reached Bear’s Island, I was wet to the skin with
dew and stiff with cold. It was about ten o’clock when we rode across
the causeway from the mainland to the island, and the first thing I
observed was the utter darkness of the place. Ordinarily the pickets on
this post kept up a little fire behind a screen at which to warm and
dry themselves during the night. Approaching from the rear, I always
saw this fire when I crossed the causeway, the screen standing between
it and the water on the other side. To-night, however, everything was
dark, and it was with some little difficulty that we found our way
across the island to the picket post.
“What’s the matter, sergeant?” I asked. “Where’s your fire to-night?”
“I had to put it out and move away from it,” he replied. “They are
loading up two gun-boats and three transports just across the creek
there, and they threw two or three charges of grape-shot over here an
hour or two ago. They killed one of my men, poor fellow. I’ve been
watching them and was on the point of sending a man up with the alarm.
I’m glad you’ve come to take the responsibility off my shoulders.”
By this time I had brought my glass to bear upon the pier upon the
other side of the inlet, or creek, as it is commonly called, and saw
that the sergeant was right. Three transports were rapidly receiving
troops, cavalry, artillery, and infantry, while two rather formidable
looking gun-boats were sullenly steaming up and down in front.
The inlet was nearly a mile wide, and as the enemy showed few lights
and dim ones, the sergeant without a glass had not been able to
discover the number of troops taken on board. I soon made out that at
least five field batteries had been shipped, and that the transports
were almost full of troops, while a battalion of infantry, a squadron
of cavalry, and two batteries remained on shore, apparently waiting for
those on board to be so disposed as to afford room for them.
I rapidly weighed all the probabilities in my mind. There were two and
only two possible purposes in this embarkation of troops. It was a
formidable expedition against the railroad, via Bluffton, or else it
was merely a removal of troops from one point on the coast to another.
If the first were the object, the vessels would steam up the inlet; if
the other, they would put to sea.
But if it were merely a transfer of troops, why were the transports
crowded in this way, and why were the convoying gun-boats there?
There was no enemy off the coast, except storms; and as storms were
conspicuously disregarded in the overloading of the steamers, it seemed
to me clear that the expedition was bound for Bluffton.
* * * * *
“How many men have you, sergeant?” I asked.
“Two,” he replied.
“Trusty fellows?”
“As good as ever threw a leg over a saddle.”
“Send them to me,” I said.
When they came, I asked: “Are your horses good ones?”
“Pretty good.”