The Storm Centre: A Novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

"This seemed to me very near, sir," said the soldier, discontentedly. He wished he had fired his piece and called for the corporal of the guard. He had hesitated, for the corporal had scant patience with a military zealot who was forever discovering causes of alarm without foundation, and this exercise of judgment was a strain on a soldier's sense of duty. He had expected the captain to respond to the mere suggestion of a secret approach, remembering the search for the hidden Rebel officer. But Baynell had never heard of that episode!

Suddenly all the camps broke into a turbulence of sound. A hundred drums were beating the tattoo. From down the valley and over the river the bugle iterated the strain. Near the town and along the hills it was duplicated anew, and all the echoes of the crags and the rocks of the river bank repeated it, and called out the mandate, and sang it again in a different key; at last it died into a fitful repetition; silence once more; an absolute hush.

A rocket went up from the fort hard by; another rose, starlike and stately, from unseen regions beyond a hill. Presently the lights were dying out like magic all along the encampments, as if some great cataclysm were among the stellular reflections, blotting them from the sphere of being. The constellations above glowed more brightly as the earth darkened. The wind was gathering force. Baynell listened as the boughs clashed and surged together.

"You doubtless heard the patrol," he said. And again—"The air is dank."

Then he turned and went within; the soldier marched back and forth, as he was destined to do for some time yet, and listened with all the keen intentness of which he was capable. And heard nothing.

The next morning—it was still before dawn—a sudden sharp clamor rose from a redoubt within which was a powder magazine near the main works, lying on the hither side of the river. The mischief which the earlier sentinel at the Roscoe place anticipated had come; how, whence,—the man now on duty hardly knew. He fired his rifle and called for the guard. Then a few sharp reports, and a tumult of shouting sounded from the redoubt. A general alarm ensued. The drums were beating the long roll in the infantry camps,—a nerve-thrilling, terrifying vibration; and the sharp cry, "Fall in!—Fall in!" was like an incident of the keen, rare, matutinal air, the iterative command sounding like an echo from every quarter in which the lines of tents were beginning to glimmer dimly. From where the cavalry horses were picketed in long rows came the clash of accoutrements and the tramp of hoofs as the trumpets sang "Boots and Saddles!" Once a courier—a shadowy, mounted figure, half distinguishable in the gray obscurity, seeming gigantic, like some horseman of a fable—dashed past in the gloom, going or coming none could know whither. The clamors increased, the shots multiplied, then the clear, chill light came gradually over the turmoils of darkness and sudden surprise. The first rays of the sun struck upon the Confederate flag flying from the redoubt, and its paroled garrison were trooping across to the main line of fortifications, bearing the miraculous story that they had awakened to find the work full of Confederate soldiers who seemed to have mined their way into the place from some subterranean access, and who were now in the name of Julius Roscoe, their ranking officer, demanding the surrender of the fort which the redoubt overlooked.

The Federal commander would have shelled them out of their precarious advantage with very hearty good-will, but he feared for the stores of powder, which he really could not spare. Moreover, the explosion of the magazine at such close quarters could but result in the total demolition of the main work and its valuable armament, inflicting also great destruction of life. Thus, although the burly and experienced warrior, Colonel Deltz, was fairly rampant with indignation at the insignificance of this bold enemy both in point of the subordinate rank of the leader and the small number of the force, he was fain to hold parley, instead of opening fire upon the redoubt at once and wiping the raiders, with one hand, as it were, from the face of the earth. It may be doubted if any capable and trusted military expert ever discharged a more distasteful duty. Nevertheless, it was performed secundum artem, with every show of those amenities which of all professional courtesies have the slightest root in truth and real feeling. He invited the surrender of the redoubt, ignoring the demand for the surrender of the fort as a puerile and impudent folly, offering the usual fine and humane suggestions touching the avoidance of the useless effusion of blood, such as often before have been heard when a sophistry must needs fill the breach in lieu of force. When this was declined, Julius Roscoe was reminded, in the most cautious terms, of the personal jeopardy incurred by a commander who undertakes to hold out an untenable position. Julius Roscoe's reply, couched in the same strain of courteous phraseology, such, indeed, as might have been employed by a general of division, deliberating on articles of capitulation involving the well-being of an army, intimated that he was popularly supposed to be able to take care of himself; that so far from being unprepared to hold the redoubt which he had captured, he had means at his disposal to possess himself of the fort itself, and if its garrison would but await his onset, he should be happy to entertain Colonel Deltz in his own quarters at dinner in a campaigner's simple way—say, at one of the clock.

These covert allusions to the signal advantages of his situation showed that Lieutenant Roscoe was fully apprized of the very large quantity of ammunition stored in the magazine, and the tone of his rejoinder intimated that he would avail himself to the uttermost of its efficiency. The works were close enough to render visible the occupations of the Confederates. Though gaunt and half-starved, many ragged and barefoot, they were as merry as grigs and as industrious as beavers, destroying such Federal stores as they could not remove, spiking or otherwise disabling the ordnance that they could not use,—the heavy howitzers at the embrasures,—and briskly preparing to serve the barbette battery, that they had shifted to command the fort and a line of intrenchments taken at a grievous disadvantage in the rear, and some lighter swivel artillery that could sweep all the horizon within range.

It was a sight to stir the gorge of a professed soldier and a martinet. If aught of action could have availed, the colonel would have welcomed a fierce and summary devoir. But the true soldier rarely allows personal antagonism or a sentimental theory to influence the line of conduct to which duty and prudence alike point. He swallowed his fury, and it was a great gulp for a heady and choleric man who had lived by burning gunpowder—lo, these many years. He perceived that his garrison, able to descry the antics of the Confederates in the redoubt, were apprized of their own imminent peril from the magazine in the hands of their enemy—now, practically a mine. There was a doubt among his observant officers as to whether the reckless band were taking any of the usual precautions, requisite in dealing with so extensive a store of explosives, as they joyfully loaded the cannon. Under these circumstances, attack being out of the question, Colonel Deltz could hardly be assured of the efficiency of his force in defence. His garrison were palsied by surprise, the mysterious appearance of the Confederates, and the impunity of their situation. They could only be shelled out of the redoubt by the jeopardy of the powder magazine itself, and its explosion would destroy the lives of the besiegers as well as the besieged. Hence strategy was requisite. The fort was gradually evacuated as a lure to draw the raiders into the main works, where they could be dealt with, thus quitting their post of advantage.

Later in the day from a knob called Sugar Loaf Pinnacle an artillery fire opened, the shells falling at first at uncertain intervals, seeking to ascertain the range; then, in fast and furious succession, hurtling down upon the guns of the masked battery beside the river. The missiles seemed but tiny clouds of white smoke, each with a heart of fire, the fuse redly burning against the densely blue sky, till dropping elastically to the moment of explosion it was resolved into a fiercely white focus with rayonnant fibres and stunning clamors.