CHAPTER VII.
A Picket-Station on the Upper Potomac—Fitz John's Rail Order—Rails for Corps Head-Quarters versus Rails for Hospitals—The Western Virginia Captain—Old Rosy, and How to Silence Secesh Women—The Old Woman's Fixin's—The Captain's Orderly.
Picket duty, while in this camp, was light. Even the little tediousness connected with it was relieved by the beautifully romantic character of the scenery. Confined entirely to the river front, the companies detailed were posted upon the three bluffs that extended the length of that front, and on the tow-path of the canal below.
The duty, we have said, was light. It could hardly be considered necessary, in fact, were it not to discipline the troops. The bluffs were almost perpendicular, varying between seventy-five and one hundred feet in height. Immediately at their base was the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, averaging six feet in depth. A narrow towing-path separated it from the Potomac, which, in a broad, placid, but deep stream, broken occasionally by the sharp points of shelving rocks, mostly sunken, that ran in ridges parallel with the river course, flowed languidly; the water being dammed below as before mentioned.
On one of the most inclement nights of the season,
the Company commanded by our Western Virginia captain had been assigned the towing-path as its station. No enemy was in front, nor likely to be, from the manner in which that bank of the river was commanded by our batteries. In consequence, a few fires, screened by the bushes along the river bank, were allowed. Around these, the reserve and officers not on duty gathered.
In a group standing around a smoky fire that struggled for existence with the steadily falling rain, stood our captain. His unusual silence attracted the attention of the crowd, and its cause was inquired into.
"Boys, I'm disgusted; for the first time in my life since I have been in service; teetotally disgusted with the way things are carried on. I'm no greenhorn at this business either," continued the captain, assuming, as he spoke, the position of a soldier, and although somewhat ungainly when off duty, no man in the corps could take that position more correctly, or appear to better advantage. "I served five years as an enlisted man in an artillery regiment in the United States army, and left home in the night when I wasn't over sixteen, to do it; part of that time was in the Mexican war. Yes, sir, I saw nearly the whole of that. Since then, I've been in service nearly ever since this Rebellion broke out, and the hardest kind of service, and under nearly all kinds of officers, and by all that's holy, I never saw anything so mean nor was as much disgusted as I was to-day. Boys! when shoulder-straps with stars on begin to think that we are not human beings, of flesh and blood, liable to get sick, and when sick, needing attention like themselves, it's high time those straps change shoulders. These damp days we, and especially
our sick, ought to be made comfortable. One great and good soldier that I've often heard tell of, wounded, of high rank, and who lived a long time ago, across the ocean, refused, although dying for want of drink, to touch water, until a wounded private near him first had drunk. That's the spirit. A man that'll do that, is right, one hundred chances to one in other respects. We have had such Generals, we have them now, and some may be in this corps, but it don't look like it."
"Well, Captain, what did you see?"