"It is so to-day," he said, earnestly; "not from battle as yet; that may or may not happen; but in the pause before the storm there is something grand; and this is the pause."
He took his soft beaver in his hand, and his short red hair stood pugnaciously back from his fine forehead.
"The men that have been here already," he added, "consecrated the place; young McClellan, and bluff, bull-headed Franklin; the one-armed devil, Kearney, and handsome Joe Hooker; gray, gristly Heintzelman; white-bearded, insane Sumner; Stuart, Lee, Johnston, the Hills——"
"Why not," said I, laughingly, "Eric the red,—the redoubtable Heath!"
"Why not?" he said, with a flourish; "Fate may have something in store for me, as well as for these."
I have thought, since, how terribly our light conversation found verification in fact. If I had said to Heath, that, at the very moment, Jefferson Davis and his Commander-in-chief were sitting in the dwelling opposite, reconnoitring and consulting; that, even now, their telescopes were directed upon us; that the effect of their counsel was to be manifest in less than a week; that one of the bloodiest battles of modern times was to be fought beside and around us; that six days of the most terrible fighting known in history were to ensue; that my friend and comrade was standing upon the same clods which would be reddened, at his next coming, with his heart's blood; and that the trenches were to yawn beneath his hoofs, to swallow himself and his steed,—if I had foretold these things as they were to occur, I wonder if the "pause before the storm" would have been less awful, and our ride campward less sedate. Poor Heath! Gallant New Englander! he called at my bedside, the sixth day following, as I lay full of pain, fear, and fever, and after he bade me good by, I heard his horse's hoofs ringing down the lane. Ten minutes afterward he was shot through the head.
When I reached Michie's, at three o'clock, I had to be helped from the saddle, and the fever was raging in my whole body before nightfall. My hands were flushed, my face hot, but my feet were quite cold, and I was seized with chills that seemed to shake my teeth from my head. Mrs. Michie made me a bowl of scorching tea, and one of the black-girls bathed my limbs in boiling water. The fever dreams came to me that night, in snatches of burning sleep, and toward morning I lay restlessly awake, moving from side to side, famishing for drink, but rejecting it, when they brought it to my lips. The next day, my kind hostess gave me some nourishing soup, but after a vain effort to partake of it, I was compelled to put it aside. O'Ganlon procured some pickled fruit and vegetables from a sutler, which I ate voraciously, quaffing the vinegar like wine. Some of my regimental friends heard of my illness, and they sent me quiet luxuries, which gladdened me, though I did not eat. During the day I had some moments of ease, when I tried to read. There was a copy of Wordsworth's poems in the house, and I used to repeat stanzas from "Peter Bell," till they rang, in eddies of rhyme, through my weak brain, and continued to scan and jangle far into the nights. Some of these fever-dreams were like delusions in delirium: peopled with monsters, that grinned and growled. Little black globules used to leer from corners, and after a time they began to revolve toward me, increasing as they came, and at length rolling like mountains of surge. I frequently woke with a scream, and found my body in profuse perspiration. There were fiery snakes, also, that, at first, moved slowly around me, and I followed them with red and terrified eyes. After awhile they flashed in circles of lightning, and hissed showers of sparks, until I became quite crazed with fear. The most horrible apparitions used to come to my bedside, and if I dropped to sleep with any thought half formed or half developed, the odd half of that thought became impregnated, somehow, and straightway loomed up a goblin, or a giant, or a grotesque something, that proceeded to torture me, like a sort of Frankenstein, for having made it. Amid all these ghastly things, there came beautiful glimpses of form, scene, and sensation, that straightway changed to horrors. I remember, for example, that I was gliding down a stream, where the boughs overhead were as shady as the waters, and there were holy eyes that seemed to cool my fever; but suddenly the stream became choked with corpses, that entangled their dead limbs with mine, until I strangled and called aloud,—waking up O'Ganlon and some reporters who proposed to give me morphine, that I might not alarm the house.
How the poor soldiers fared, in the hot hospitals, I shudder to think; but a more merciful decree spared my life, and kind treatment met me at every hand. Otherwise, I believe, I should not be alive to-day to write this story; for the fever had seized me in its severest form, and I had almost tutored myself to look upon my end, far from my home and on the very eve of my manhood.
O'Ganlon, at last, resolved to send me to White House, and started thither one day, to obtain a berth for me upon a Sanitary steamer. The next day an ambulance came to the door. I tried to sit up in bed, and succeeded; I feebly robed myself and staggered to the stairs. I crawled, rather than walked, to the hall below; but when I took a chair, and felt the cool breeze from the oaks fanning my hair, I seemed to know that I should get well.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!" pealed some cannon at the moment, and all the windows shook with the concussion.