CHAPTER LXXIV.
If only night would come!
They were pouring down upon us and around us in overwhelming masses. They had turned our left, and were raking Gordon’s flank and rear. It was a question of a few minutes only.
In our front was a narrow field. Beyond that, a wood. Through this the enemy were driving our skirmishers back upon the main line. One by one these brave men emerged from the wood and trotted briskly across the field, targets, every one of them, for a dozen rifles.
There come two more! They are the last. But they do not trot, as the rest did and as skirmishers should.
Upon those two, convergent rifles from all along the line of the wood poured a rain of lead. Still they refused to hurry. And one was tall and bearded, and the other slender, and with a face as smooth as a girl’s. The boy, as fast as he loaded his rifle, wheeled and fired; the man carried a pistol in his hand. Weeds fell about them, mowed down by the bullets; spurts of dust leaped from under their very feet.
The few men left in our line stood, under cover of a thin curtain of trees, fascinated by the sight of these two, leisurely stalking along, under that murderous fire.[[1]]
“Run, run!” we shouted.
“Run!” cried Captain Smith, giving the shoulder of his companion a push.
“And leave my commander!” replied Edmund.
“Stoop, then!”
“Show me how, captain!”
“Obey me!” thundered he.
The boy lowered his head, as he rammed a bullet home; then turned, and, cocking his rifle, scanned the opposite wood narrowly. Presently he raised his rifle; but before he could fire we heard that terrible sound which old soldiers know so well.
“Oh!” cried the boy, falling upon his face.
“My God! my God!” ejaculated the captain of the Myrmidons, with a woman’s tenderness in his voice and the despair of Laocoön in his corrugated brow.
Hearing that cry, the boy turned quickly and smiled in his captain’s face. “It is only a flesh-wound, through the thigh,” said he; “I can walk, I think.”
He was attempting to rise, when his captain, placing his strong arms beneath him, lifted him high in the air. He ran, then; and his face was full of terror, as the thick-flying bullets whistled past him and his burden. The two were within a few paces of where I stood, when again that terrific sound was heard; and they both fell heavily at my very feet.
A bullet, coming from our flank and rear, had struck Captain Smith in the right breast.
It was a wound in front, at any rate.
There was but one ambulance-wagon in sight, and that was retreating. A skirmisher ran to overtake it. Others placed the captain and Edmund on stretchers and hurried after it.
“Jack, old boy; good-by. I am done for; but I particularly desire to get within our lines; so hold them in check as long as you can. Say farewell to Charley.”
A few of his own men held their ground till they saw their captain and Edmund disappear, in the wagon, over the hill, when they fell back, loading and firing as they went. When the wagon reached the bridge beyond Strasburg, it was found broken down; but the men with the stretchers managed to get our two wounded friends across the stream, and to find another wagon; so, the pursuit slackening at this juncture, they were not captured.
Late in the night, I found them by the road-side. Edmund was asleep. The captain lay awake, watched by one of his brave skirmishers. He gave messages to my grandfather, to Charley and Alice, to the Poythresses. “And now, good-night,” said he. “You need rest. Throw yourself down by that fire and go to sleep. Don’t bother about me. I shall set out for Harrisonburg at daybreak.”
“The ride will kill you.”
He smiled faintly. “I must get well within our lines. Remember—Harrisonburg—good-night!” And he closed his eyes and wearily turned his lace away. “Shelton!”
The skirmisher bent tenderly over his captain.
“Lie down by the fire and sleep. You cannot help me. God alone can do that, and he will release me from my sufferings before many days. Shelton, give me your hand. Tell your little boy, when he grows up, that I said you were as brave as a lion in battle; and tell your wife that you could be as gentle as a woman to a suffering comrade. And now lie down and rest. Good-night!”
“Presently, captain.”
“What are you crying about, man? Such things will happen. Good-night!”
| [1] | Meis ipsius vidi oculis. |