The Iron Game - Henry Francis Keenan
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Glowing, grateful, big with the fate of the battle, Jack had Barney,
Nick, and another, whom he charged with the duty of historian, detailed
for this duty of glory. The group set off with a fervent Godspeed from
the company sheltered among the thick pines and oaks.
"Now, boys," Jack said, every inch the captain, "we must spread out like
skirmishers. Our chief danger will be from the left, as no one will be
likely to be in the water but our own men, and we must look as sharply
for them as for the enemy. I will take the center; you, Barney, the
left, next to me; and you, Nick, four paces farther to the left." Jack
looked at his watch. It was just 9.30, Sunday morning, July 21, 1861.
The crash of musketry ahead now became one unbroken roar, with a
_crescendo_ of artillery that fairly shook the ground the messengers
were darting over, for all were on a dead run. The bushes grew thick on
the hillside and their branches were stubborn as crab thorns. Hell, as
Barney afterward remarked, would have been cool in comparison to the
heat as the adventurers tugged and wrestled forward. Now guns were
roaring on every side save the river. Behind, before, to the left, the
thunders played upon the parched land. At the end of a half-hour the
bullets and shells passed over the group as Jack and his squad pushed
along the hilly way. Twice, commands, and even the clicking, of what
Jack knew must be rebel guns sounded not twenty paces away, but, thanks
to the thick bushes, the scouts passed unseen, and, thanks to the noise
of battle, unheard. But now the danger is from friends, not enemies.
Balls come hurtling through the trees across the stream, and in a low
voice Jack bids Barney summon Nick. Then all slip down to the water's
edge, and make their way painfully through the marshy swamps, the
cane-like rushes that fill the narrow valley. The run has been a fearful
strain upon Nick, and at length he falls, gasping, in a clump of
cat-tails.
"What is it, old fellow?" Jack cries in alarm.
"O Jack! I can't go a step farther. You go on and leave me. I shall
follow when I get breath."
He was white and gasping. Barney filled his canteen from the running
water, and, wetting his handkerchief, laid it on Nick's parboiled head
and temples.
"Best a few minutes," Jack said, soothingly. "I will reconnoitre a bit."
Stripping off his accoutrements, he clasped a tall sycamore growing at
the crest of the ravine, and when far up brought his glass to bear. A
third of a mile to the left and southward, he could see a regiment with
a flag bearing a single star, surrounding a small stone farm-house on
the brow of a gentle hill. They were firing to the west and toward the
north, where the black clouds obscured his view. But the red gleam in
the smoke told of at least a dozen guns, and he knew that the main
battle was there, though the fury of it reached far to the east, near
the stone bridge which he had quit an hour before. Then through the veil
of smoke long, deep masses of blue emerge and make for the rebel front
on the brow of the hill, fairly at Jack's feet; the enemy redoubles the
fire; two guns at their left pour canister into the advancing wall of
blue. It never wavers, but, as a group falls to the earth, the rest
close together and the mass whirls on.
Jack feels like flying. Oh, the grandeur of it, the fearlessness, the
intoxication! He almost falls from the tree in his excitement. But he
takes a last sweep of the belching hill. Hark! Loud cheers in the trees
back of the rebels, far to the southeast, perhaps a mile and a half;
then the flaunting Palmetto flag flying forward in the center of deep
masses of gray. Which will reach the hill first? He can not quit the
deadly sight. Ah! the blue lines are pressing on now; the cannon-shots
pass over their heads into the devoted line of gray, desperately
thinned, but clinging to the key of the battle-field. But, great God!
Perhaps his delay is aiding the enemy. He sees the route now
clear--straight to the west--and no rebels near enough to intervene. He
descends so fast that his hands and legs are blistered, but he is down.
"Look sharp, boys; you must follow me as best you can. I know the
route--there is a forest path directly to our lines, and we shall be
there in twenty minutes--I shall, at least." He doesn't stop to see
whether he is followed or not, but dashes on, and the rest after him. He
is far out of sight in an instant. It is only by the crackling of the
branches that the others keep his course. The way is between steep,
precipitous hills, which explains how they could be so near the battle
and yet not in it, nor harmed by the missiles flying sometimes very near
them. At a deep branch of the stream the three rearmost came in sight of
Jack, up to his armpits in water and pushing for the shore.
While they are hailing him exultantly he sinks out of sight; an awful
anguish almost stops the others, but Barney, flinging his musket and
impediments off as he runs, leaps far into the stream, and when the rest
reach the spot he has Jack by the hair, dragging him to the bank. He is
fairly worn out by the stress, and the others loosen his coat, stretch
him on the brown sward and rub his hands, his body. It is ten minutes,
it seemed an hour, before he is able to get up, and the rest insist on
carrying his accoutrements. Then the wild race is begun again, every
instant bringing them nearer the pandemonium of battle. Suddenly the
sharp commands of officers are heard in front and to the left. Is it the
enemy, or is it friends? The group halts in an agony of doubt. How can
they find out? Barney takes out his handkerchief and puts it on his gun,
which he was careful to go back and recover when Jack was on the bank. A
ray of bright red suddenly flits above the thick tops of the scrub-oaks.
Yes, God be praised, there is the flag of stars, and there are blue
uniforms! With a wild hurrah, drowned in the musketry to the left, they
rush forward, are halted by a picket guard, exhibit Sherman's order, and
are directed to the commanding-officer. That personage has no knowledge
of General Hunter's whereabouts, but Colonel Andrew Porter is just
beyond, commanding the brigade. To him Jack makes known Sherman's
message, and is directed farther to the southwest, the Union right now
facing nearly to the east in the execution of McDowell's admirable flank
manoeuvre.
Now among their own, Sherman's couriers run more peril than when
skirting the edge of the battle, for the shells are directed at the line
they are pursuing. They push to the rear and continue southeastward,
where Hunter's headquarters are supposed to be. But Jack is easy on the
score of his mission, since the general, who is nearest the stone
bridge, has been apprised, and well knows that the fire which has been
coming near his left flank is Sherman's. Until, however, he has executed
his orders literally Jack won't be satisfied, and plunges on, the others
following, nothing loath. But it is a way of pain for the lads now.
Every step they come upon the dead and dying. The air is filled with
moaning men, whinnying horses, the hurried movement of stretchers, the
solemn solicitude of the hospital corps. The line of foremost battle is
less terrifying, less trying than this inner way of Golgotha, and the
four are well-nigh unnerved when they reach a group where the commanding
officer has been pointed out.
"General Hunter?" Jack says, addressing an officer with a star.
"My name is Franklin. General Hunter was wounded an hour ago. What's the
matter?"
Jack gave his message, and Franklin said, cheerfully: "That's good news.
You're a very brave fellow. Go a few yards in the rear yonder and you'll
find General McDowell. He'll enjoy your message."
On the hill they halt electrified.
Thick copses of scrub-pine dot the gently sloping sward. Here and there
clumps of tall pines stand in the bare, brown sod as if to guard the
young outshoots clustering about them in wanton dispersion. Cow-paths,
marked only by the worn edges of the bushes, run in zigzags across the
hillside and up to the plateau. The remnants of rail fences strew the
ground here and there. The low roof of the farm-house can be seen far
back even from the depression, where the lines of blue are now resting a
brief, deadly half-hour.
The sun is now behind the halted line of blue; the bayonets, catching
the light, make a sea of liquid, mirror-like rivulets hovering in the
air, with the bushy branches of pine rising like green isles in the
shimmering tide. The men are filling their cartridge-boxes; new
regiments are gliding into the gaps where death has cut the widest
swath. From the woods, cries, groans, commands, clashing steel as the
men hustle against each other in the rush into line, prelude the Vulcan
clamor soon to begin. Men, bent, sometimes crawling, with stretchers on
their shoulders, glide through the maimed and shrieking fragments of
bodies, picking out here and there those seeming capable of carriage.
Other men, prone on their faces, hold canteens of tepid, muddy
water--but ah! a draught to the feverish lips which seems godlike
nectar. Against the stout bodies of the trees, armless men, legless
trunks, the maimed in every condition of death's fantastic sport, hold
themselves limply erect, to gain succor or save some of the vital stream
pouring from their gaping wounds.
Couriers dash up to the impassive chief, calm-eyed, keen, alert,
surveying the line, dispatching brief commands, receiving reports. It is
Franklin. With the air of a marshal on a civic pageant, perplexed only
by some geometrical problem denying the possibility of two right lines
on the same plane, he glances upward toward the brow of the plateau. The
four flags had been increased by half a dozen. Ah, they have received
aid! A tremendous crash comes from the left. That must be Sherman. He is
on the rebel rear. One strong pull, and the two bodies will be united,
his left arm reaching Sherman's right. The shining mirage of steel above
the green isle sinks. The clash of hurtling accoutrements comes up
musically, tranquilly from the low ground. The blue mass, first
deliberately, then in a quiet, regular run, passes like a moving
barricade up the sloping hillside. Then from one end of the long wall to
the other white puffs as of some monster breathing spasmodically.
The air is a blur of sulphurous blackness. The bullets are as thick as
if a swarm of leaden locusts had been routed from the foliage, and taken
wing hillward. Then behind, through the gaps in the trees, big, whining,
screeching swarms of another caliber shells fly over the wall of blue.
In a moment the ground of the plateau is torn, the red clay flying far
into the air. But now the blue wall is girdling the very crest of the
hill; it stops, shrivels. Long gaps are cut in its broken surface. The
hillside is dotted with sprawling figures. The crest is a ragged edge of
writhing bodies and struggling limbs. Forward! The wall is advancing,
but shorter. It is within reach of the shining guns--spouting flame and
iron in the very face of the dauntless wall. Then there is a pause. The
smoke hides everything but the maimed and quivering heaps that strive to
crawl backward, back to the crest, back to the deeps that are not rest
nor security. The hillside is like a field, covered with sheaved
grain--with a thousand mangled bodies that had been men.
Then to these wrestling specters--for in the dim smoke and Tartarean
atmosphere the actions of loading and aiming take the shape of huge
writhing, convulsing, monstrous, grappling--come quick-moving lines of
help. They rush through them, over them. The thirteen cannon behind the
struggling hydra of gray seem one vortex--sulphurous, flaming, spitting,
as from one vast mouth, scorching fire, huge mouthfuls of granite venom.
Back--back, the gray masses break in sinuous, definite, slow-yielding
disruption.
Then a sudden inrush from the left of the broken gray, where smoke and
space play fantastic tricks with the sunshine. Miraculously a dark mass
is projected on the shimmering spectrum, and a ringing voice is heard:
"We are saved; we are re-enforced. We will die here!" Then high above
the din, in the exultant tumult of the deadly won ground, the nearest in
blue hear a stentorian voice--grim, deliberate, exultant:
"Look where Jackson stands like a stone-wall! At them, men! Let us
determine to die here, and we will conquer."
Die he did, when the yelling horde in the sudden outrush grazed the edge
of the Union besom sweeping over the plain in a rush of death. Then
behind these spectral shapes came others--thousands--with wild, fierce
shouts. The blue mass is thinned to a single line. Men in command look
anxiously to the rear. Where is Burnside? Where are the twelve thousand
men whom Hunter and Heintzelman deployed in these woods two hours since?
Back, slowly, fiercely, but backward, the slender wall of blue is
forced; not defeated, but not victorious. All this Jack sees, and he
turns heartsick from the sight.
When the straggling couriers reached the point designated as McDowell's
headquarters, he had gone to the eastward of the line, and, faithful to
the command given him, Jack set out with Barney, leaving the others to
deliver the message in case he missed the general. They emerged
presently on the edge of a plateau, whence nearly the whole battle could
be seen. Jack climbed a tall oak to reconnoitre the ground for McDowell,
but, as his glass revealed the battling lines, he shouted to Barney to
climb for a moment, to impress the frightful yet grandiose spectacle
upon his mind. Far off toward the stone bridge, now a mile or more
northeast of them, they could see the Union flags waving, and mark the
white puffs of smoke that preceded the booming of the cannon. Every
instant the clouds of smoke came southward, where the rebel lines were
concealed by the thick copses. But they were breaking--always breaking
back anew. In twenty minutes more, at the same rate, the hill upon which
the rebel lines nearest the tree held the Union right at bay would be
surrounded on two sides.
This, for the moment, was a sulphurous crater, the fire-belching demons,
invisible in the smoke. Through the glass Jack could see the lines
clearly--or the smoke arising above them. The enemy had been pushed back
nearly two miles since he had left Colonel Sherman a few rods above the
stone bridge. The Union force, as marked by the veil of smoke, curved,
about the foemen, a vast crescent, seven miles or more from tip to tip.
The bodies opposing were scattered like a gigantic staircase, with the
angles of the steps confronting each other step by step. But now the
Union ranks at Jack's feet rush forward; a group of riders are coming to
the tree, and Jack descends hastily to meet the general. He is again
disappointed. It is not McDowell. At a loss what to do, he salutes one
of the officers and states his case, recognizing, as he turns,
General Franklin.
"I don't see that you can do better than remain where you are, or, still
better, push to the brow of that hill yonder and act as a picket. In
case you see any force approaching from this side, which is not likely,
give warning. Our cavalry ought to be here, but it isn't. If you are
called to account when the battle is done, give me as your authority. I
take it your brigade will be around here pretty soon, if they make as
rapid work all the way as they have made since eleven o'clock. If the
cavalry come, you can report to the nearest officer for assignment."
CHAPTER XI.
THE LEGIONS OF VARUS.
The two free lances set out now, relieved of all responsibility, and
determined to watch the open fields and woods to see that this part of
the field was not surprised. The hill to which the general had directed
them was farther from the battle than they had yet been, but the work
going on to the northeast showed that this would soon be the western
edge of the combat if Sherman continued advancing. They are soon on the
hill, and Jack posts himself in a tree with his glass. There is a lull
in the quarter they have just quit. The smoke rolls away, and now he can
see streams of gray-coats hurrying to the edge of the plateau, where,
two hours before, he had encountered Porter's brigade. Can it be
possible that Porter's troops do not see these on-rushing hordes? They
are moving on the right point of the crescent, and unless the Union
commander is alert they will break in on the back of the point; for
Jack, without knowing it, was virtually in the rebel lines--that is, he
was nearer the rebel left flank, the foot of the long, bow-shaped
staircase, than he was to the tip of the Union crescent.
But no! The Stars and Stripes fly forward; they are on the very crest
whence the defiant guns spat upon them. But now the smoke covers
everything. Then there is a calm. The ground is clear again. The gray
masses are pouring up to the crest in still greater numbers; a large
body of them march down the hill in the rear of the Union line concealed
by the woods; they march right up to the ranks where the red-barred flag
is flying! What can it mean? Neither side fires. There must surely be
some mistake. Hark! now the blue line discovers--too late--that the mass
is the enemy, and half the line withers in the point-blank discharge.
They are swept from the ground. Jack is trembling--demoniac. The gray
mass springs forward; they have seized the guns--four of them--and turn
them upon the disappearing blue. Then a hoarse shout of delirious
triumph. The guns are lost; the day is lost, for now there are no
blue-coats in sight. But no! A still wilder shout--electrifying,
stentorian--comes across the plateau. The blue mass reappears; they come
with a wild rush in well-ordered array; they are the regulars, Jack can
tell by their movements. It must be the famous Rickett's battery he saw
at Centreville in the morning. In five minutes the tale was retold, and
the guns, snatched from the worsted gray-coats, are safe in the hands of
their masters. Again the smoke obscures the picture; again it clears
away, and now the gray are in greater force than before, and the
horseless batteries are again the prize of this rapacious grapple.
Swarming in from three sides, the gray again hold the contested pieces.
The blue vanish into the thick bushes. Another irruption, another pall
of smoke, and Jack's heart bounds in exultant joy, for he sees the New
York flag in the van. Sherman has reached the point of dispute. But
alas! the guns are run back, and as the gray lines sway rearward in
billowy, regular measure, they retain the Titanically contested trophies.
The sun is now far beyond the meridian. The Union lines are closing up
compactly. One more such grapple as the last and the broad plateau where
the rebel artillery is massed, pointing westward, northward, eastward,
will be won. But a palsy seems to have settled on the lines of blue.
They are motionless, while their adversaries are hurrying men from some
secret place, where they seem to be inexhaustible. The whole battle is
now within the compass of a mile. But where can these hordes come from?
Surely, General McDowell has never been mad enough to leave them
disengaged along the fords! No; they do not come from that direction.
They come at the very center of the rebel rear. Can it be that troops
are arriving from Richmond? The Southern lines are longer than the
Northern, but they have been since the first moment Jack got a glimpse
of them. He could see, too, that they were thinner: that on the spur of
the plateau in front of the massed rebel artillery a single brigade was
holding the Union mass at bay. He can almost hear the rebel commands as
the re-enforcements pour in. But now the thunder breaks out anew, rolls
in vengeful fury around the western and northern base of the plateau.
The gray lines stagger; the falling men block the steps of the living.
Surely now McDowell is going to do or die. Yes. The iron game goes on;
the blue lines jostle and crush forward. They are at the last wall of
resistance. But what is the sound at his very feet? As Jack looks down
in the narrow way between the hill he is on and the plateau on the very
edge of the Union line--in fact, behind it now, for it has moved forward
since he took post--a rushing mass of gray-clad soldiery is moving
forward on the dead run. In one instant the head of the column is where
General Franklin rode but an hour or two before. He looks for Barney. He
can see him nowhere. He climbs down in haste and discovers his comrade
soundly sleeping against the base of the tree.
"Barney, the army is ruined!"
"Is the battle over?"
"Oh, no, no, but it will be in a moment. Hark, hear that!"
A roar of musketry--it seemed at their very feet. Then an outbreak of
yells, so sharp, so piercing, so devilish the sound, that the marrow
froze in their veins, arose, as if from the whole thicket about them.
"Is it too late to warn General Franklin?" Barney asked, trembling.
"Ah, Barney, we are as bad as traitors; we ought to have seen these
rebels before they got near. If we had done our duty this would never
have happened. Perhaps it is not too late to get back. Let me go up and
see where we can find a way without running into the enemy."
Reaching his perch again, Jack cast his despairing eyes toward the fatal
hill. It was now clear of smoke, and there wasn't a regiment left on it.
His heart leaped for an instant, the next it was lead, for the ranks
that had disappeared were down on the brow of the hill--in the valley--
rushing forward, unresisted, the red and blue of the Union, mixed with
the stars and bars of the rebellion; but, worse than all, the ranks of
gray were sweeping in overwhelming masses quite behind the lines of
blue, cutting them down as a scythe when near the end of the furrow. To
the eastward Sherman still clung desperately to the crests he had won,
but Jack saw with agony that, slipping between him and the river, a
great wedge of gray was hurrying forward. His last despairing glance
caught a body of jet black horses galloping wildly into the dispersing
ranks of blue. He came down from the tree limp, nerveless, unmanned.
"Well?" Barney asked.
"It's all over--we are ruined!"
"The army, you mean?"
"Ah, yes! the army and we too."
"But what's going to become of us?"
"I don't much care what becomes of us--at least I don't care what
becomes of me!"
"But if we don't get back to our regiment, they'll think we're
deserters."
"Good God, yes! I forgot that; I think I can find the way back. But
we'll have to be careful, the enemy are all around us. I can hear them
plainly, very near. Follow me, and don't speak above a whisper."
Then, with swift movement, always as near the thick bushes as they could
push, they fled faster and faster, as fear fell more and more heavily
upon their quickened fancies. The thought of the repute of deserters
lent them endurance, or they must have broken down before the weary
shiftings of that dreadful flight. They are now near the spot where they
had met Porter's pickets in the morning. The sounds of battle had died
out at intervals, renewed now and again by an outcry of cheers, a quick
fusillade, then more cheers, and then an ominous silence. But now there
is a continuous roll of musketry near the knoll, back of the Warrenton
road. The two wanderers, breathless, with torn uniforms, swollen faces,
halt, gasping, to take their bearings. They can see the turnpike far
beyond the stone bridge half-way to Centreville: they see crowds fleeing
in zigzag lines over the open fields, see horses plunging wildly, laden
down by two and even three men on their backs; they see vehicles
overturned at the roadside, whence the horses have been cut or killed by
the rebel shells; they see an army, in every sense a mob, swarming
behind the deserted rebel forts; they see orderly ranks of shining black
horses this side the stone bridge charging the fleeing lines of blue;
they see shells whirling like huge blackbirds in the sky, suddenly
falling among the skurrying thousands; they see a shell finally burst on
the bridge, shiver a caisson to fragments, and then all sign of
organized flight comes to an end.
But near them, meanwhile, a sullen fire replies with desperate
promptitude to the rebel shots.
"If we can get over to the men fighting at the edge of the woods, we may
be killed or captured, but we won't be disgraced!" Jack cries.
Again they make a wide circuit through the woods, and now the firing is
near at hand, coming slowly toward them. They have only to wait and they
will be among the forlorn hope. Ah, with what fervent joy Jack marks the
Union banner, flapping its twin streamers among the hurtling pines! They
are near it; they are under it! Their own guns are no longer available;
hundreds are lying at hand; they seize them. The line is firing in
retreat. It is a sadly depleted battalion of Keyes's regulars,
steadfast, imperturbable, devoted. A handful of them has been forgotten
or misdirected. The rebels, uncertain whether it was not a trap to snare
them, move with caution, while far to the left a turning column is
hurrying to hem the Union group in on every side. There are hardly three
hundred blue-coats in the mass, but their volleys are so swift, so
regular, so steady, that they make the impression of a thousand. The
enemy felt sure, as was afterward learned, that there was at least
a regiment.