Southern Soldier Stories

by George Cary Eggleston

There was one duty to be done, and that a very important one. It was necessary for some officer to make the grand rounds of the pickets every night. This task devolved upon me about once a week. The pickets were stationed at all available points of observation below, all points from which the channels could be seen. To visit them required an all night’s ride, which in that country is by no means an agreeable undertaking.

The weeds rise above the head of a horseman, and the dew drips as rain might, from every leaf. The night rider becomes water soaked and chilled to the very bones, even during the fierce summer weather. During the autumn and winter a night ride on this subtropical coast brings with it a degree of suffering from cold which the fiercest Northern winter never produces.

But it was absolutely necessary to visit the picket posts. Upon their efficiency depended our safety and that of the railroad we were set to defend. If a single picket slept, a fleet of gun-boats or ship’s launches might come to Bluffton wholly unannounced. The battery, without support at hand, would fall helpless into the enemy’s hands, and the railroad communication, on which the safety of Charleston and Savannah depended, would be broken.

It was Christmas Eve, crisp and cool. A heap of fat hard pine was blazing in the great fireplace in our quarters. The negro servant was busy in the kitchen without. Our guests, half a dozen officers from the cavalry companies, were already assembled. We had invited them to dine with us upon a haunch of venison, a wild turkey, fish, oysters, crabs, shrimps, etc., all of which, except the first two, could be taken at any time within a hundred yards of the door. Our little party-giving promised to be a thoroughly successful bit of hospitality.

Curry, the cook, had just begun to put the dinner on the table when a messenger came to report that Lieutenant C——, the officer appointed to make the picket rounds that night, was ill and could not go. It was my turn next and there was no escape. At the holiday season pickets especially need watching. I knew very well it would never do to leave them unvisited that night. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to turn the guests over to my messmate, the captain, and order my horse.

My guide—for without a guide no one could possibly find his way at night through parts of that country—was a dull, taciturn fellow, with whom I found it impossible to maintain a conversation. My twelve miles’ ride to the farthest picket post, which I visited first, was therefore a very disagreeable substitute for the jovial, social evening I had planned.

By the time I had reached Bear’s Island, I was wet to the skin with dew and stiff with cold. It was about ten o’clock when we rode across the causeway from the mainland to the island, and the first thing I observed was the utter darkness of the place. Ordinarily the pickets on this post kept up a little fire behind a screen at which to warm and dry themselves during the night. Approaching from the rear, I always saw this fire when I crossed the causeway, the screen standing between it and the water on the other side. To-night, however, everything was dark, and it was with some little difficulty that we found our way across the island to the picket post.

“What’s the matter, sergeant?” I asked. “Where’s your fire to-night?”

“I had to put it out and move away from it,” he replied. “They are loading up two gun-boats and three transports just across the creek there, and they threw two or three charges of grape-shot over here an hour or two ago. They killed one of my men, poor fellow. I’ve been watching them and was on the point of sending a man up with the alarm. I’m glad you’ve come to take the responsibility off my shoulders.”

By this time I had brought my glass to bear upon the pier upon the other side of the inlet, or creek, as it is commonly called, and saw that the sergeant was right. Three transports were rapidly receiving troops, cavalry, artillery, and infantry, while two rather formidable looking gun-boats were sullenly steaming up and down in front.