SOMERS IS COMPELLED TO BACK OUT
Very likely the Virginia farmer had some idea of retributive justice when he saw his hopeful son step out of the fire-place into the very jaws of ruin. To say that he was astonished would be expressing his state of mind too tamely; for he was overwhelmed with confusion, fear and mortification. He had expected to find the Yankee asleep on the floor; but, as he was not there, it was sufficiently evident to him that he had again resorted to the chimney for concealment. It had been distinctly arranged beforehand, that Tom, his son, should conceal himself in the cellar; and, of course, he did not expect to find him in the chimney.
In short, all his expectations had been defeated, and he himself had opened the trap for his son to enter. He probably knew how strict was the discipline of the rebel army in respect to deserters. He had frequently heard of executions of persons of this class; and he could hardly expect his son to escape the penalty of his misconduct. He had broken his bargain with the fugitive; and, in attempting to surrender him to his implacable enemies, he had deprived his heir of liberty, if not of life.
“This is your Yankee, is it?” demanded the sergeant, as he gazed at the remnants of the rebel uniform which Tom still wore.
“No, no; this ain’t the Yankee!” stammered the farmer.
“Well, you needn’t tell us who he is; for we know. I was told to keep a sharp lookout for one Tom Rigney, a deserter; and I reckon this is the chap. You are my prisoner, my fine lad.”
“There, now, dad!—d’ye see what ye’ve done?” snarled poor Tom Rigney, as he glanced reproachfully at the patriarch, who had unwittingly sprung the trap upon him.
“I didn’t do it, Tom,” replied Farmer Rigney, appalled at the calamity which had overtaken his house.
“Didn’t you bring me in here to capture this boy?” asked the sergeant, who appeared to be bewildered by the unnatural act of the father.
“I brought yer here to take the Yank, who was as sassy as a four-year-old colt.”
“He promised the Yankee he’d take keer on him till night,” added the vengeful Tom.
“That was only to keep him here till I could fotch somebody to take keer on him,” pleaded the farmer. “The Yank must be up chimley now,” he continued, reminded that his own reputation for loyalty to the great and general Southern Confederacy was now doubly compromised.
“He ain’t up there, dad, nohow,” said Tom.
“Where is he?” demanded the sergeant.
“Dunno.”
“Where did he go?”
“Dunno.”
“Didn’t you see him?”
“I reckon it was too dark, up chimley, to see anything.”
“Haven’t you seen him?”
“I reckon I have. He woked up, and druv me up chimley right smart, with the pistol in his hand; reckon, if I hadn’t gone, I’d been a dead man; I’ll be dog scotched if I shouldn’t.”
“You say he drove you up the chimney?” demanded the sergeant.
“I reckon he did.”
“Where did he go, then?”
“Yes, you do know! If you don’t tell, you’ll get a bayonet through your vitals,” said the soldier sternly, as he demonstrated with the ugly weapon he had fixed on his gun before he began to examine the chimney.
“Dunno,” replied the deserter sulkily.
“Answer, or take the consequences!”
“Dunno. Jes as lief be stuck with a bagonet as shot by a file of soldiers,” answered Tom, to whom the future looked even more dark than the present.
“Tell, Tom,” pleaded his father.
“Dunno, dad; I was up chimley when he left. Dunno no more’n the dead.”
Perhaps the sergeant concluded that Tom’s position was a reasonable one, and that it would not have been possible for him to see, from his dark retreat, where the Yankee had gone. At any rate, he was saved from further persecution; and two of the men were ordered to conduct him to the camp, while the remainder stayed to continue the search for the fugitive. Farmer Rigney protested and pleaded, and even offered to warm the palms of the soldier’s hands with certain pieces of gold which he had in the house; but, unfortunately for the patriotic farmer, the sergeant was above a bribe, and Tom was hurried off to his doom.
A careful search of the house and premises was now instituted; and this time the farmer was a zealous co-operator with the soldiers; for it was necessary for him to establish his own loyalty before he could do anything to save his son from the deserter’s fate. The party proceeded up-stairs first, and carefully examined every closet, and every nook and corner which could by any possibility contain the form of a man. As Somers was not up-stairs, of course they did not find him; and we will not weary our readers by following them in their fruitless search.
Somers went down into the cellar, closing the door after him; and, as he may be lonesome in his gloomy retreat, we will join him there, though it was rather a tight place for more than one person. The cellar was dark when the fugitive made his advent within its somber shades; and, as he was an utter stranger in the place, he was not a little bewildered by the awkwardness of the situation. He was in darkness, and wished for light; at least, for enough to enable him to find the hiding-place of which he had heard the farmer speak.
This snug retreat, where the deserter had balked his pursuers, was undoubtedly the cellar drain; though, to Somers, it appeared to be a Virginia notion to have it long enough to admit the form of a man. Tom Rigney was a larger person than himself; and the case was hopeful enough, if he could only find the opening. The cellar contained various boxes, barrels, firkins and other articles, the mass of which were piled up in one corner.
Somers followed the wall entirely around, from the pile in the corner, till he returned to it, without finding what he desired. It was sufficiently evident, therefore, that the entrance to the drain was under the boxes and barrels, which had probably been placed over it to ward off the over-inquisitive gaze of any visitors who might explore the cellar. Our enterprising hero immediately commenced the work of burrowing beneath the rubbish, and soon had the happiness of discovering the identical road by which the original occupant of the place had entered. Before the opening, he found sufficient space to enable him to readjust the boxes and barrels, so as to hide his den from the observation of any who might be disposed to follow him in his subterranean explorations.
The drain was certainly small enough, even for the genteel form of Captain Thomas Somers; though, as his mustache was quite diminutive in its proportions, he was able to worry himself along several feet into the gloomy hole. It was a miserable place in which to spend the day; but, miserable as it was, he hoped that he should be permitted to remain there. He was fully conscious of the perils of his situation. He knew that Tom, in the chimney, must be captured; and it was not probable that the farmer would let the soldiers depart without examining the house. His retreat was known to him, and there was not one chance in a hundred for the hole to be passed by without an examination.
It would be fatal to remain where he was; and, after resting himself from the fatigue which the exertion of moving in his narrow den induced, he again pushed forward, cheered by the conclusion that a drain would be a useless institution without an opening at each end. Indeed, there was a glimmer of light at some distance before him; and he indulged the hope that he might work his way out to the blue sky.
He had scarcely resumed his progressive movement, which had to be accomplished very much after the fashion of a serpent—for the aperture was too narrow for the regular exercise of his legs and arms—he had scarcely begun to move before voices in the cellar announced the approach of the pursuers. A cold sweat seemed to deluge his frame; for the sounds were like the knell of doom to him. With desperate energy he continued his serpent march; but it was only to butt his head against the stones of the drain, where its size was reduced to less than half its proportions near the cellar.
His farther advance was hopelessly checked; and there was nothing more to be done but to wait patiently the result of the exciting event. He was satisfied that his feet were not within eight or ten feet of the cellar; for, being a progressive young man, he had entered the hole head first. It was possible, but not probable, that he might escape detection, even if the opening was examined; and, with what self-possession he could muster for the occasion, he lay, like the slimy worms beneath him, till ruin or safety should come.
“I reckon he isn’t down here,” said the sergeant, after the party had examined the cellar, and even pulled over some of the boxes and barrels.
“God bless you for a stupid fellow as you are!” thought Somers; for he was prudent enough not audibly to invoke benedictions, even upon the heads of his enemies; but the words of the sergeant afforded him a degree of relief, which no one, who has not burrowed in a drain in the rebel country, can understand or appreciate.
“I reckon there’s a place down in that corner that’s big enough to hold a man; fur my son Tom’s been in there,” added the farmer.
These words gave Somers another cold sweat; and perhaps he thought it was a mistake that he had not put a bullet through the patriarch’s head when he had been tempted to do so in the room above. He was a double traitor; but I think the conscience of our hero was more at rest as it was than it would have been if he had shot down an unarmed man, even to save himself from prospective capture.
“Where is the place?” demanded the sergeant.
“In yonder, under them barrels and boxes. Jest fotch the trumpery out, and you’ll see the hole,” replied Rigney.
Somers heard the rumble of the barrels, as they were rolled out of the way, with very much the same feelings that a conscious man in a trance would listen to the rumbling of the wheels of the hearse which was bearing him to the church-yard, only that he was to come forth from a hopeless grave to the more gloomy light of a rebel dungeon.
“I can’t see anything in that hole,” said the sergeant. “No man could get into such a place as that.”
“Blessed are your eyes; for they see not!” thought Somers. “May your blindness be equal to that of the scribes and Pharisees!”
“But my son Tom has been in there. I reckon a Yankee could crawl inter as small a hole as anybody.”
The sergeant thought this was funny; and he honored the remark with a hearty laugh, in which Somers was disposed to join, though he regretted for the first time in his life that he was unable to “crawl out at the little end of the horn.” He was encouraged by the skepticism of the soldier, and was satisfied, that, if he attempted to demonstrate the proposition experimentally, he would be fully convinced of its difficulty, if not of its impossibility.
“Go and bring another lamp and a pole,” said the sergeant.
One of the party went up the stairs, and Somers gave himself up for lost. The extra lamp would certainly expose him, to say nothing of the pole; and it seemed to be folly to remain there, and be punched with a stick, like a woodchuck in his hole. Besides, there is something in tumbling down gracefully, when one must inevitably tumble; and he was disposed to surrender gracefully, as the coon did when he learned that Colonel Crockett was about to fire and bring him down. There was no hope; and it is bad generalship, as well as inhuman and useless, to fight a battle which is lost before the first shot is fired.
We have before intimated that Captain Somers, besides being a brave and enterprising young man, was a philosopher. He had that happy self-possession which enables one to bear the ills of life, as well as the courage and address to triumph over them. He had done everything which ingenuity, skill, and impudence could accomplish to save himself from the hands of the rebel soldiers; from a rebel prison, if not from a rebel halter. He had failed; and, though it gave him a bitter pang to yield his last hope, he believed that nothing better could be done than to surrender with good grace.
“How are you, sergeant?” shouted he, when he had fully resolved upon his next step.
“Hallo!” replied the sergeant, laughing heartily at the hail from the bowels of the earth. “How are you, Yank?”
“In a tight place, sergeant; and I’ve concluded to back out,” replied Somers.
“Good! That’s what all the Yankees will have to do before they grow much older. Back out, Yank!”
Somers commenced the operation, which was an exceedingly unpleasant necessity to a person of his progressive temperament. It was a slow maneuver; but the sergeant waited patiently till it was accomplished, by which time the extra lamp and the pole had reported for duty.
“How are you, Yank?” said the sergeant, laughing immoderately at the misfortune of his victim.
“That’s the smallest hole I ever attempted to crawl through,” replied Somers, puffing and blowing from the violence of his exertions in releasing himself from his narrow prison-house.
“How came you in such a place?” asked the sergeant as they walked up the stairs.
“Well, my friend, the farmer here, suggested the idea to me. He said his son had crawled in there a great many times.”
“I?” exclaimed Rigney. “I never said a word about the drean.”
“You must be looked after,” added the sergeant, with a menacing look at the discomfited farmer. “You have concealed a deserter in your house for weeks; and now we find that you hide Yankees too.”
“I didn’t hide him!” protested Rigney.
“Didn’t you agree to keep me here till night?” asked Somers, who despised him beyond expression.
“If I did, it was only to have the soldiers ketch yer.”
The sergeant declared that Rigney was a traitor, and that he must go along with him; but Somers, with more magnanimity than many men would have exercised towards such a faithless wretch, told the whole story exactly as it was, thus relieving him of a portion of his infidelity to the Southern Confederacy; and the sergeant was graciously pleased to let him remain at home, while his victim was marched off to the rebel camp.