The Iron Game - Henry Francis Keenan
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"Ah, if Dick were only here," Jack groaned, "we could go to the square
and lead away enough staff or orderly horses to serve the purpose. The
little wretch! It would serve him properly to leave him here mooning
over his sweetheart." Then his heart took up a little tremor of protest.
He sighed gently. He, too, had loitered when his heart pleaded. Why
should Dick be firmer than he? It was after midnight when he reached the
sheltering, broken, ground along the river. The provost prison fronted
the water. It had been a tobacco warehouse, built long before, and
hastily transformed into its present military purpose. It was set in
what was called a "cut" in the heavy clay bank, thus bringing the lower
windows below the level of the surrounding land. There were sentries
stationed in front and rear, who walked at regular intervals from corner
to corner. The sentinel on the high level to the rear could not see the
ground along the wall, and it was this fact which Jack calculated upon
to enable him to help the prisoners to remove the _debris_ of the wall
through which they were to presently emerge. The night was pitchy dark.
This had been taken into consideration long before. Heavy clouds hung
over the river, throwing the prison and its environs into still more
security for Jack's purpose. He reconnoitred every available point,
searched every corner of possible danger, and as the time passed he
began to rage with impatience against Dick, whose delay was now periling
the success of the enterprise.
It was twelve o'clock and after. He dared wait no longer. Dick must
shift for himself. Perhaps he had lost his way. In any event it was
safer to set the general prisoners free, as they were only carelessly
guarded. Lamps glimmered fitfully in the guard-room, throwing fantastic
banners of light almost to the water's edge. He made a final tour about
the broken ground, but there was no sound or suspicion of Dick. He knew
every inch of the ground. Dick and he had surveyed and resurveyed it for
days. The coast was clear. No one was on guard at the vital point, but
still he lingered, his breath coming and going painfully, as a break in
the clouds cast a moving shape over the undulating ground. Should he
give the boy another half-hour's grace? He makes a circuit in the
direction Dick must approach by and waits. He will count a hundred very
slowly, then wait no longer. He counts up to fifty, hears a coming step,
and waits alertly. No--it passes on. He begins again--counts one
hundred, two hundred. No sign. "Pah! it is madness to delay for him. The
young poltroon has lost his resolution in his lovesick fever. Very
likely he has been unable to run the risk of Rosa's anger--her mother's
indignation--the possibility of never seeing the girl again." Well, he
had given him ample grace. He had endangered his own and other lives to
humor a boyish whim. Now he must act, and swiftly.
The plan was too far gone in execution to be changed. He must carry out
the final measures alone. Now, one of these details required some one to
slip down on the ground and crawl to the point between the windows where
the prisoners were working and aid them to remove the thin, shell of
brick. If it fell outward, the guard at the corner would hear the noise,
and might come down to see what it was that made it. The removal of this
wall released all confined in the main prison. These he saw stealing out
in groups of ten or more. They had guides waiting on the bank of the
river. Jack gave them final orders. The most difficult work was the
getting out Jones and Barney, for they had special cells. Jack was to
guard Jones's exit and Dick Barney's, but now all the work would devolve
upon him. It was two o'clock, and he dared wait no longer. Raising
himself from the low wall where he had been crouching, he started toward
the corner of the prison farthest from the guard-room. At the wall of
the building he dropped flat on his face and began to crawl forward,
sheltered by the low ground that formed a sort of dry ditch about the
basement of the prison. He had barely stretched himself at full length
when a bright light was flashed on him from a deep doorway just beyond
him, and a voice, mocking and triumphant, exclaimed.
"This is a bad place to swim, my friend! There ain't enough water to
drown you, but if you stir you'll run against a bullet."
Jack lay quite still and raised his eyes. Above him stood a trooper,
with a revolver leveled at and within ten feet of him. Figure to
yourself any predicament in life in which vital stakes hang on the
issue; figure to yourself the shipwrecked seizing ice where he had hoped
for timber; the condemned criminal walking into the jailer's toils where
he had laboriously dug through solid walls; the captain of an army
leaving the field victor, to find his legions rushing upon him in rout;
figure any monstrous overturn in well-laid schemes, and you have but a
faint reflex of poor Jack's heart-breaking anguish when this jocular
fate stood above him, with the five gaping barrels pointed at his
miserable head. Oh, if Dick had only been there! His quick eye and keen
activity would have discovered this lurking devil; perhaps, between
them, they would have averted the disaster. Where could Dick be?
BOOK III
_THE DESERTERS_.
CHAPTER XXIV.
BETWEEN THE LINES.
On quitting Jack, Dick had but one thought in mind--to make his
departure less abrupt for Rosa. If he left her without a word, what
would she think? Then, with an officer's uniform, he could be of much
more help to Jack and the party than in the rough civilian homespun
furnished at the cabin. Besides, he knew of certain blank headquarter
passes lying on Vincent's desk. He would get a few of these; they might
extricate the party in the event of a surprise.
He tore over the solemn roadway, under the spectral foliage, and in
twenty minutes he was in his room in the Atterburys'. Vincent's old
uniform he had often noticed in a spare closet adjoining his own
sleeping-room. In an instant he was in it, and, though it was not a fit,
he soon put it in order to pass casual inspection. The line for Rosa was
the next delay. What should he say? He had had his mind full for days of
the most tender sentiments and prettily turned phrases, but the turmoil
of the last hour, the vital value of every moment to Jack's plans, left
him no time to compose the poem he had meditated so long. Rosa's own
pretty desk was open, and on a sheet of her own paper he wrote, in a
scrawling, school-boy hand:
"DARLING ROSA: You've often said that you would disown Vincent if he
were not true to the South. Think of Vincent in my place--dawdling in
Acredale or Washington while battles were going on. You would not hold
him less contemptible that he was in love; that he let his love, or his
life, for you are both to me, stand as a barrier to his duty. You can't
love where you can't honor, and you can't hate where you know conscience
rules. I go to my duty, that in the end I may come to you without shame.
I ask no pledge other than comes to your heart when you read this; but
whatever you may say, whatever you may decide, I am now and always shall
be your devoted
"RICHARD"
He sighed, casting a woe-begone glance into the mirror, dimly conscious
that he was a very heroic young person. He kissed various objects dear
to the little maid, and then, in lugubrious unrest, sallied out
and mounted.
Again under the calm sky--again the fleet limbs of the horse almost
keeping time to his own inward impatience. He holds to the soft,
unpaved, outlying streets, that his pace may not attract remark. He
passes horsemen, like himself spurring fleetly in the darkness. He is
near the river at last--dismounts and reconnoitres. He easily finds a
place to tie the horse, and, familiar with every inch of the outlying
ground about the prison, crawls close to the wall, listening intently.
He can hear no sound save the weary clank of the sentry on the wooden
walk. He reaches the wall where the prisoners Jones and Barney were to
emerge. There is no sign of a break! Where can Jack be? Some disaster
must have overtaken him, for it is past the hour set and soon it will be
dawn, and then all action will be impossible. Perhaps Jack has been
caught reconnoitring? Perhaps he has gone with the main body, not
venturing to try for Jones and Dick without help? No, that was not like
Jack. This was his special part in the plan--if it were not done, Jack
was still about. He can find out readily--thanks to the countersign. He
steals back over the low hillock, mounts the horse, and by a _detour_
reaches the sentry guarding the river front of the prison. He is
challenged, but, possessed of the countersign, finds no difficulty in
riding up to the guard-room doorway.
"Has Lieutenant Hawkins been here within an hour, sentry?" he asks, in
apparent haste.
"No, sir. I think he has been sent for--leastwise, the sergeant went
away about an hour ago to report the taking of a deserter, found
prowling about the side of the prison."
"A deserter?"
"Yes, sir. He had a brand-new uniform on and no company mark, nor no
equipments."
"What has been done with him?" Dick asked, breathlessly, dismounting. "I
wonder if he isn't one of my company from Fort Lee? He went off on a
drunk yesterday, though he was sent here on a commissary errand."
"I dunno, sir. He's in the lockup there. He was very violent, and the
sergeant bound him with straps."
"I will go in and examine him; he may be one of my men, and, as our
brigade moves in the morning, I should like to know."
"Very well, sir; the officer of the day is asleep in the room beyond the
first door. One of the men will call him."
"Oh, no need to disturb him until I have seen the prisoner.--Here, my
man"--addressing a soldier asleep on a settee--"show me to the deserter
brought in to-night."
"Yes, sir," the man cried, starting up with confused alacrity; then,
noticing the insignia of major on Dick's gray collar, he saluted
respectfully, and, pointing to a double doorway, waited for his superior
to lead the way. Dick, who had been in the prison before, knew his
whereabouts very well, and it was not until the soldier reached the room
in which the deserter was detained that he seemed to remember that there
were no lights.
"Here are the man's quarters, sir; but I'm out of matches. If you'll
wait a minute I'll bring a candle."
"All right," Dick responded, in a loud voice; "I'll stand here until you
come back."
The quest of the candle would take the guide to the closet in the
guard-room, and, risking little to learn much, Dick struck a match and
peered into the stuffy little room, more like a corn-crib than a
prison-cell.
"Hist, Jack! is it you?" he called.
There was an exclamation from the farther end of the room, and then a
fervent--
"Heavens, Dick! is it really you?"
"Sh--sh--!"
The soldier's returning footfalls sounded in the passage-way; but, as he
re-entered the hall where Dick stood shading the flickering light, he
could not see the hastily extinguished match in Dick's hand. As the man
came slowly along the winding passage-way, Dick whispered:
"You are a recruit in Rickett's legion; you were drunk and lost your
way, and I am your major; you are stationed at Fort Lee near
Mechanicsville, and you belong to Company G."
Jack pretended to be sound asleep when the soldier and Dick entered. He
rubbed his eyes sleepily, and looked up in a vacant, tipsy way, leering
knowingly at the soldier, who had caught him by the shoulder.
"What are you doing here, Tarpey? Why aren't you with your company?
You'll get ball and chain for this lark, or my name's not James Braine."
"But, major, it--it wasn't my fault. My cousin, Joe Tarpey, came down
from Staunton with a barrel of so'gum whisky, and--and--"
"You drank too much and was caught where you had no business to be.
However," Dick added, sternly, "the regiment marches in the morning--you
must get out of here. Soldier, show me to Captain Payne's quarters. Say
to him that Major Braine, of Rickett's Legion, desires to speak with him
a moment." But he had no sooner said this than he realized the danger he
was running.
The captain might know Braine, and then how could he extricate himself
from the dilemma? Luckily the captain was not in his quarters, and Dick,
with calm effrontery, sat down and wrote out a statement of the case,
where he was to be found, and his reasons for carrying the
prisoner away.
The sergeant, having read this, made no objection to releasing the
alleged deserter, since there had been no orders concerning him, and,
without more ado, Jack walked away with his captain, the picture of
abashed valor and repentant tipsiness.
"Now, Dick, there's no time to ask the meaning of your miraculous
doings. We've still time to let our friends out and get away before
daylight; but we mustn't lose a second. Sh! stand still, what's that?
Troopers! Good heavens, they can't have found out your trick so soon!
Ah, no! They are floundering about looking for quarters," he added, in
immeasurable relief, as the voices of the riders sounded through the
darkness, cursing luck, the road, and everything else. "O Dick, if we
only had the countersign I could play a brilliant trick on these
greenhorns! Perhaps I can as it is."
"I have the countersign. How do you suppose I could have managed to get
to you if I hadn't? It is 'Lafayette.'"
"Glory! Now make all the clatter you can after I challenge."
They had by this time reached a row of tumble-down stables directly in
the rear of the prison, and shut out from the open ground by a decrepit
fence, broken here and there by negroes too lazy to pass out into the
street to reach the river. The horsemen had turned into this lane-like
highway--evidently misdirected. When within a few feet, Jack gave a
sudden whack on the board and cried, sternly:
"Halt! Who comes there?"
There was a sudden clash of steel as the group halted in a heap, and
then a weary voice replied:
"We have no countersign. We should have been at our destination long
before sundown, but were misdirected ten miles out of our course on the
Manchester pike."
"Very well. Dismount and come forward one man at a time," Jack answered,
briefly. This the spokesman did with some alacrity. As he came up, Dick
took the precaution of getting between him and his three companions, and
then Jack said: "I suppose you are all right; but my orders are to
arrest all mounted men, detain their horses here in these, the provost
stables," and Jack pointed to Dick's horse dimly outlined against the
sky. "I will give you a receipt for him, and you can get him back in the
morning when you state your case to the provost marshal.--Stephen," he
turned to Dick, "take that horse and put him with the others." He then
made out a receipt, handed it to the astonished trooper, and, directing
him where to go, carried out the same short shrift with the other three.
The troopers were glad enough to be relieved of their beasts. This they
did not attempt to deny, for they had seen a public-house in the street
below, where they could procure much-needed refreshment, relieved as
they now were from the necessity of reporting to their commander, whose
whereabouts were far down the Rocett road.
"By George, Jack, what a, crafty plotter you are! Now we have a mount
for the party, and I needn't take poor Warick's crack stallion."
"Yes; we've doubled the chances of escape by this little stratagem; but
we have lost time. Come. Have you tied the horses?"
"Yes. Lead on."
Over the turfy hillside, now moist and sticky with the heavy dew, they
stole, half crouching, half crawling, until they were on a level with
the prison basement. The sentry in front was no longer pacing his beat,
and there was no sign of the man in the rear. In a few minutes the two
crawling figures were at the preconcerted places in the wall. In
response to their light taps, a square of brick-work large enough to
leave a space for a man to crawl through crumbled upon Jack and Dick,
who held their bodies closely pressed against the _debris_ to prevent
too loud a noise. There was no time to wait probabilities of discovery,
and an instant later Barney and Jones emerged, panting and half
smothered.
"I thought it was all up with me hopes, as Glory McNab said when her
sweetheart ran away with the cobbler's daughter." Barney whispered,
hugging Jack rapturously.
"Sh--! Down on your stomachs. Move that way until you see me rise.
Come." And Jack squirmed ahead as if he had been accustomed to the
locomotion of snakes all his life. In ten minutes they were in the
improvised stables. Dick had taken the precaution to place the horses
where they could feed on a heap of fodder stacked in the yard, and when
they mounted the beasts appeared refreshed as well as rested. Dick
loosing Warick's horse so that he might make his way back to his master,
the fugitives rode cautiously out of the lane, into the open fields,
and, though it was not their shortest way, pushed along the river road
to mislead pursuit. Jack's stratagem had resulted in better luck even
than the possession of the horses. It not only secured a mount for the
four, but, what was equally and perhaps, in view of unforeseen
contingencies, more important disguises for the two prisoners.
They found an extra coat strapped to each saddle, and with these Barney
and Jones were easily transformed into something like Confederate
soldiers. Both Jack and Jones knew every inch of the suburbs, having
made the topography a study. They struck for the less traveled
thoroughfares until they reached the northeastern limits, then following
the old Cold Harbor road they pushed decisively toward the Williamsburg
pike. But, instead of following it, they traversed on by lanes and
bridle-paths during the day. This was to divide pursuit, as the larger
party had taken the river route where Butler's troops were waiting in
boats for them. The saddle-bags proved a windfall, for in them were
orders to proceed to Yorktown and report to General Magruder. With these
Jack felt no difficulty in passing several awkward points, where there
was no escaping the cavalry patrols, owing to miles of swamp and
impenetrable forest.
They kept clear, however, of such places as the telegraph reached,
though at one point they found a post in a great state of excitement
over news brought from a neighboring wire, announcing the escape of two
prisoners who had been traced to the York road. But with such papers as
Jack presented and the number of the party double that described in the
dispatch, the adventurers easily evaded suspicion. The great danger,
however, was in quitting the Confederate lines to pass into Butler's.
They chose the night for this, as the camp-fires would warn them of the
vicinity of outposts, Union or rebel. They had purposely avoided
highways and habitations, and, as a result, were limited in food to such
corn-cribs as they found far from human abodes, or the autumn aftermath
of vegetables sometimes found in the shadow of the woods. All were good
shots, however, and a fat rabbit and partridge were cooked by Dick with
such address, that the party were eager to take more time in halting
since they need not starve, no matter how long the journey lasted.
Jack, by tacit consent, was considered commander of the squad, Barney
remarking humorously that they would not ask to see his commission until
they were in a country where a title meant authority. The commander
ordered his small army very judiciously. They were to ride as far apart
as the roads or woods or natural obstructions would admit. They thus
moved forward in the shape of a triangle, the apex to the rear.
Exchanges of position were made every six hours. They were at the end of
the second day, toward sunset, approaching what they supposed was
Warrick Creek, nearly half-way to Fort Monroe, when they suddenly
emerged on an open plateau from which they could see a mile or two
before them a tranquil waste of crimson water.
"Why, this can't be the creek!" exclaimed Jones, excitedly. "The creek
isn't half a mile at its broadest."
"What can it be?" Jack asked, who had been the right wing to Jones's
left. "It's certainly not the James, for the sun is setting at
our back!"
"Blest if I can tell. It looks very much like the Chesapeake, only the
Chesapeake is wider."
By this time Barney and Dick had ridden up, and began to admire the
expanse of water spreading from the land before them to a green
wilderness in the distance.
"I'm afraid we are in a fix," Jones said, resignedly. "If I'm not very
much mistaken, the red line yonder, that looks like a roadway, is a
breastwork, and behind that what looks like a plowed field is
earthworks. My boys, we are before Yorktown and farther from our lines
than we were yesterday. The nigger that showed us the way in the woods
was either ignorant or deceiving us. We are now inside the outposts of
the rebels, and we shall have to crawl on our hands and knees to
escape them."
"I don't see what better off we'll be on our hands and knees than we are
in our saddles," Barney cried, guilelessly. "Sure we can go faster on
the bastes than we can on our hands, and, as for me knees, 'tis only in
prayer that I ever use them."
"Not in love, Barney?" Dick asked, innocently.
"No, me darlin'. The gurls I love think more of me arms than me knees,
and I do all of me pleadin' with me lips."
"I should think they could hold their own," Jones remarked, dryly.
"Indeed, they can that, and a good deal more, as me best gurl'll tell
you if she'll tell the truth, and no fear of her doing that, I'll
go bail."
"Fie! Barney, if she won't tell the truth you should have none of her,"
Dick cried in stage tones.
"Indeed, it's little I have of her, for she's that set on Teddy Redmund
that she leaves me to her mother, when Teddy comes to the porch of
an evening."
"Well, friends, your loves are, no doubt, adorable, and it is a pleasant
thing to talk over, but just now what we want is a way out of this
trap"; and Jack, saying this, slipped from his horse and led him into
the shelter of a thick growth of scrub-pines. The rest followed his
example. They tied their animals and held a council of war. It was
resolved that Jack and Jones should make a reconnaissance to find out
the route toward the Warrick; that Dick and Barney should secrete and
guard the horses and do what they could to obtain some food. This
decision was barely agreed upon, when the shrill call of a bugle sounded
almost among the refugees, and they sprang to their horses, waiting in
silence the next demonstration. Other bugles sounded farther away; a
great cloud of dust arose in the direction of the water, and then Jack
whispered:
"Remain here. I will climb one of these trees and see what it means."
He was in the leafy boughs of a spreading pine in a few minutes, and
could descry a broad plain, with tents scattered here and there; still
farther on the broad uplands frame buildings with a red and white flag
floating to the wind could be seen. Back of all this he could make out a
broad expanse of water and a few ungainly craft, lazily moving to the
current in the Yorktown roadstead.
"Yes. this certainly must be Yorktown. Why have they such a force here?
No one is threatening it," Jack murmured, his eyes arrested by a long
line of cavalry in undress, leading their horses up a circuitous and
hitherto concealed road to the plateau. "Ha! they go down there for
water. Let me see. That is to the southeastward; that is our point of
direction. I think we may venture to push on now." He hastily descended
from his survey, and making known what he had seen, added: "We must
proceed with the greatest caution. There is no time to think of food
until we get away from this dangerous neighborhood. We must keep well
spread out, and move only over turfy ground or in the deep shade of the
wood. In case of disaster, the cry of the night owl, as agreed upon,
will be a warning."
The four had practiced the melancholy cry of the owl, as heard in the
Southern woods both day and night, and they could all imitate it
sufficiently well to pass muster if the hearer were not on guard against
the trick, and yet so clever an imitation that none of the four could
mistake it. So soon as they quit the plateau, seeking a way east by
south, they plunged immediately into a dreary swamp, where progress was
slow and difficult. The mosquitoes beset them in swarms, plaguing even
the poor animals with their lusty sting. Hour after hour, until the
woods became a hideous chaos of darkness and unseemly sounds, the four
panting fugitives pushed on, fainting with hunger, worn out by the
incessant battle with the corded foliage, the dense marshes, and
quagmires through which their path to safety lay. But at midnight Jones
gasped and gave up the fight.
"Go on; leave me here. I am of no use at best. I should only be a drag
on you. Perhaps you may find some darkey and send him back to give me a
mouthful to eat. That would pick me up; nothing else can."