Southern Soldier Stories

by George Cary Eggleston

My horse swam pretty well and finally made the edge of the water. But the bottom was a quagmire, and sinking in it he could not extricate himself. To relieve him I slipped off his back and into the water, but it proved too late. With every frantic struggle the poor beast sank deeper, and within a minute he lay lifeless in the water, half buried in the mud of the bottom.

My own situation was a perilous one. My feet sank at once in the slimy ooze. To save myself I threw my body forwards. Succeeding in freeing my feet, I swam until the water was too shallow for swimming. After that, by crawling on my belly, I managed to avoid sinking and smothering in the mud.

It was half an hour, however, before I stood upon firm ground again, and then I did not know which side of the marsh I had reached.

I was covered with slime, stiff with cold, and utterly exhausted by my exertions. Of myself, however, I thought little. I was anxious only about the sleeping battery at Bluffton. If the alarm were not given,—and unless some one or other of our party had succeeded in getting across with his horse, it could not be,—Bluffton would be taken completely by surprise. The battery would be captured. A rapid march would take the enemy to the railroad, either at Grahamville or at Hardeeville, before any force could be sent to oppose. Our defence of an essential line of communication would fail. Even if the two men from the picket post had got out on the other side, they would go not to Bluffton, but to Buckingham Ferry and Hunting Island, as I had ordered. It was not at all certain that the fleet would pass either of those points. It could sail up other creeks quite as easily, particularly on such a tide as that.

With these thoughts in my mind I felt the need of bestirring myself. I was not long in discovering that we were still on the island, and not on the mainland. Following the margin of the water, I presently came to the two men who had been with the sergeant on picket. One of them was stuck in the mud, and the other was trying to draw him out with a pole. Both of them had lost their horses. The sergeant and my guide had escaped with their steeds, and I found both of them on the island, a little further up the shore.

The guide was utterly demoralized with fright, or cold, or both. So I took his horse and ordered him to wait on the island till morning, and then to make his way to whatever point he should find it easiest to reach. The sergeant and I determined to make another effort to get to Bluffton and give the alarm.

“Run back to the other side of the island,” said he to one of his men, “and see if the fleet is still in sight and what it is doing. We must let our horses blow a little, and you can get back by the time we are ready to start.”

The man went, and his comrade, having nothing better to do, went with him. Presently one of them returned, bringing the news that the fleet was making its way up a narrow creek from which, as we knew, neither the Buckingham Ferry nor the Hunting Island picket could see it. As those were the only posts from which after seeing it a man could get to Bluffton in time to give the alarm, the sergeant and I were more than ever determined to make our way thither at all hazards. Luckily the road from Bear’s Island to Bluffton was the easiest one in all that country to find, and the one I happened to know best. So that even if the sergeant should not get across the marsh, I was confident of my ability to make the journey alone.

“Now,” said the sergeant, “if I get across I won’t wait for you, but will go right on; if you succeed, don’t wait for me. It’s no time for ceremony. It’s better one of us should drown than that the other should be delayed.”

“Spoken like a man and a soldier, sergeant,” said I. “Now for it.” And with that we again essayed to follow the submerged track. About midway the sergeant’s horse went down as before; and just as I was about to call out something encouraging to him the guide’s horse, which I was riding, plunged headforemost into the salt water, throwing me completely over his head.