Yet there are exceptional characters for whom the voice of the battle siren possesses irresistible fascination,—men whose overmastering delight in danger seems to scare their very fears and send them slinking away to hide in some obscure corner of their souls. After our days at Marye's Hill and Salem Heights, we began to see such a man in Joe, and from that time onward his career, which was marked by a continued series of daring exploits, confirmed the judgment. Moreover, it was characteristic of the man that his peril-defying deeds were never the result of any rage of battle. They were always either deliberately planned, or else the quick and cool acceptance of some desperate chance.
It was my good fortune to be with him in one of the mildest of these adventures. After the brilliant affair at Franklin's Crossing just before the northward march of the army toward Gettysburg, our regiment was sent out beyond the captured earthworks as skirmishers. Night was coming on by the time our line was established, and we found ourselves in a romantic but risky position.
We were occupying the grounds of the old Bernard House. Across the broad driveways and once pleasant lawns and gardens, now neglected and weed-grown, we Northern invaders had stretched our picket line. Just behind us, its ruined and fire-stained walls touched with the mystery of moonlight, lay all that was left of the once proud mansion. In days not so very long gone by, on just such nights as this, those hospitable halls and the noble grounds had been alive with the festive gathering of Virginia's wit and beauty. Their spirits seemed to haunt the scene, so silent now save for the low-toned orders and warnings of our officers. In front of the ruined mansion stood a grove of ancient and noble oaks. They served to hide us, but they were not to be trusted. They also furnished a dangerous screen through which the enemy might easily come upon us unaware. So the lieutenant-colonel evidently thought, for he came to our company and asked quietly for half-a-dozen volunteers to act as scouts.
I think the colonel came to our company because he knew Joe was there, and he instantly responded. But I have often wondered at the strange impulse which seemed to compel me and the others to step forth by his side. After the men once knew him, Joe never went begging for followers; there was an irresistible infection in his example, and an allurement in his cheerful fearlessness that not only made men forget peril, but made it seem a privilege to go with him. It was so afterward in affairs compared to which our adventure of that night was but a pleasure trip.
The colonel himself led us out to the further edge of the grove, posted us in couples behind trees, and gave us our instructions which were, "Watch carefully for any signs of the enemy. Their picket line is out there somewhere in front of you; if you see any movement do not fire, but come in quietly and report, and in any case come in quietly at daybreak."
He left us; we heard his retreating footsteps until he reached the line, and then we began to realise the situation. We were between two possible and quite probable fires. It was bright moonlight; our regiment as we afterwards discovered, was perilously advanced and isolated; if by any chance the enemy knew our position there would be every temptation to attack, and, if that happened, even if they should advance their skirmishers, we scouts would certainly catch it from both sides, and the worst danger was from our own men. Very few of them would know we were outside the line, and it was wholly unlikely that we could "come in quietly and report" without having a hundred rifles levelled at us. When we did come in at daybreak one of us narrowly escaped death at the hands of a comrade in his own company, who, in the gray light, mistook him for a "Reb" and tried to shoot him. The colonel knew we were likely to be sacrificed, and therefore his call for volunteers.
But Joe was in his element. "This is bully!" he exclaimed, as he surveyed the scene when we were left alone. "No officers will bother us here to-night; they think too much of keeping their precious skins whole to stir outside the line."
The prospect was certainly fascinating. Behind us the giant oaks through whose shadows the moonbeams sifted their uncertain rays; before us a sweet expanse of pale-green meadow, weird with the mingled effect of tenuous curling mists and moonlight, shot across here and there with mysterious hedgerows and indistinct tree clumps, the possible and as we found in the morning, the actual cover of the foeman's skirmishers—a strange combination of peaceful beauty and lurking death.
The sounds too, which came to us through the still and misty air were full of ominous significance. Through the dark of the grove, the anxious but subdued voices of our officers patrolling the line, keeping the wearied pickets awake and watchful; beyond through the moonlight across the meadow the distant rumble from the railroad, the noise of unloading cars and loading wagons and the shouts of teamsters at the station within the enemy's lines perhaps a mile away, warning us that by morning he would be heavily reinforced.
We watched as the night wore away, half-expecting, half-dreading what each moment might spring upon us, but all was as still as death in that pale field, until some time after midnight a strange white Shape came moving through the mists. We watched it anxiously, perhaps at that chill hour a little apprehensively, but as it drew near our fears were banished. It was a poor old worn-out war-horse turned loose to die. We watched him grazing quietly in the meadow, and then Joe's instinct for adventure awoke.