CHAPTER XX.
IN THE FRONT AT PETERSBURG.
"Andy, let's go a-swimming."
"Well, Harry, I don't know about that. I'd like to take a good plunge; but, you see, there's no telling how soon we may move."
It was the afternoon of Tuesday, June 14, 1864. We had been marching and fighting almost continually for five weeks and more, from the Wilderness to Spottsylvania, over the North Anna, in at Cold Harbor, across the Pamunky and over the Chickahominy to the banks of the James River, about a mile and a half from which we were now lying, along a dusty road. We were sunburned, covered with dust, and generally used up, so that a swim in the river would be a refreshment indeed.
Having learned from one of the officers that the intention evidently was to remain where we then were until the entire corps should come up, and that we should probably cross the river at or somewhere near that point, we resolved to risk it.
So, over a cornfield we started at a good pace. We had not gone far, when we discovered a mule tied up in a clump of bushes, with a rope around his neck. And this long-eared animal, as Gothic as Bonaparte in his style of architecture, we decided, after a solemn council of war, to declare contraband, and forthwith we impressed him into service, intending to return him, after our bath, on our way back to camp. Untying Bucephalus from the bush, we mounted, Andy in front and I on behind, each armed with a switch, and we rode along gayly enough, with our feet dangling among the corn-stalks.
For a while all went well. We fell to talking about the direction we had come since leaving the Pamunky; and Andy, who was usually such an authority on matters geographical and astronomical that on the march he was known in the company as "the compass," confessed to me as we rode on that he himself had been somewhat turned about in that march over the Chickahominy swamp.
"And as for me," said I, "I think this is the awfullest country to get turned about in that I ever did see. Why, Andy, while we were lying over there in the road it seemed to me that the sun was going down in the east. Fact! But when I took my canteen and went over a little ridge to the rear to look for water for coffee, I found, on looking up, that on that side of the ridge the sun was all right. Yet when I got back to the road and looked around, judge of my surprise when I found the whole thing had somehow swung around again, and the sun was going down in the east! And you may judge still further of my surprise, Andy, when, on going and walking back and forth across that ridge, I found one particular spot from which, if I looked in one direction, the sun was going down all right in the west; but if in the opposite direction, he was going down all wrong, entirely wrong, in the east!"
"Whoa dar! Whoa dar! Whar you gwine wid dat dar mule o' mine? Whoa, Pete!"
The mule stopped stock-still as we caught sight of the black head and face of a darky boy peering forth from the door of a tobacco-house that we were passing. Possibly, he was the owner of the whole plantation now, and the mule Pete might be his only live-stock.