"Why, boys, they are trying to get away; we mustn't let them."
The words act like magic as they are borne along the lines. Cartridge boxes are replenished, and the soldiers, who a few moments before were in retreat, are now eager to advance. The lines are re-formed and the army sweeps forward. This time it is the Confederates who are pressed back, and soon the open road is closed. The chance to escape is forever gone; Fort Donelson is doomed.
Darkness once more came, and with it another night of cold and suffering. The early morning light showed a white flag floating from the ramparts of the fort. Donelson had surrendered. Cold and hunger were forgotten, as the soldiers in their joy embraced each other, and their shouts of victory rose and fell like the swells of the ocean. The first great victory of the war had been won.
Fifteen thousand Confederates were prisoners.
CHAPTER XVII. AFTER THE BATTLE.
The sun arose once more on Donelson. The storm of the elements, as well as of battle, had passed away. But the horrors of war remained. On the frozen ground lay the dead with white, pinched faces. Scores of the wounded had perished from cold and exposure. Some who still breathed were frozen to the ground in their own blood. The cold had been more cruel than the bullets.
Fred rode over the battlefield seeking the body of an officer in one of the Kentucky regiments whom he had seen fall. The officer was a friend of his father's. Where the last fierce struggle took place before the brigade fell back, Fred found him. He was half-reclining against a tree, and from its branches the snow had sifted down, as though trying to blot out the crimson with a mantle of white. The officer had not died at once, for the frozen hand held a photograph in its iron grasp—that of a happy, sweet-faced mother holding a cooing babe. It was the photograph of his wife and child.