Before the Dawn: A Story of the Fall of Richmond

by Joseph A. Altsheler

The battle again approached the old house, the clouds swept up denser and darker, the tumult of the rifles and the great guns grew louder; the voices, the cries and the commands were heard again, and the human figures, distorted and unreal, reappeared against the black or fiery background. To Helen's mind returned the simile of a huge flaming pit in which multitudes of little imps struggled and fought. She was yet unable to invest them with human attributes like her own, and the mystic and unreal quality in this battle which oppressed her from the first did not depart.

"It is all around us," said Mrs. Markham.

Helen looked up and saw that her words were true. The battle now made a complete circuit of the house, though yet distant, and from every point came the thunder of the cannon and the rifles, the low and almost rhythmic tread of great armies in mortal struggle, and the rising clouds of dust, ashes and smoke shot with the rapid flame of the guns, like incessant sheet-lightning.

The clouds had become so dense that the battle, though nearer, grew dimmer in many of its aspects; but the distorted and unreal human figures moved like shadows on a screen and were yet visible, springing about and crossing and recrossing in an infinite black tracery that the eye could not follow. But to neither of the three did the thought of fear yet come. They were still watchers of the arena, from high seats, and the battle was not to take them in its coils.

The flame, the red light from the guns, grew more vivid, and was so rapid and incessant that it became a steady glare, illuminating the vast scene on which the battle was outspread; the black stems of the oaks and pines, the guns—some wheelless and broken now, the charging lines, fallen horses scattered in the scrub, all the medley and strain of a titanic battle.

The sparks flew in vast showers. Bits of charred wood from the burning forest, caught up by the wind, began to fall on the thin roof of the old house, and kept up a steady, droning patter. The veil of gray ashes upon the floor and on the scanty furniture grew thicker. The coloured woman never ceased for a moment to cry drearily.

"It is still doubtful!" murmured Harley.

His keen, discerning eye began to see a method, an order in all this huge tumult—signs of a design, and of another design to defeat it—the human mind seeking to achieve an end. One side was the North and another the South—but which was his own he could not tell. For the present he knew not where to place his sympathies, and the fortunes of the battle were all unknown to him.

He looked again at his watch. Mid-afternoon. Hours and hours had passed and still the doubtful battle hung on the turning of a hair; but his study of it, his effort to trace its fortune through all the intricate maze of smoke and flame, did not cease. He sought to read the purposes of the two master minds which marshaled their forces against each other, to evolve order from chaos and to read what was written already.

Suddenly he uttered a low cry. He could detect now the colour of the uniforms. There on the right was the gray, his own side, and Harley's soul dropped like lead in water. The gray were yielding slowly, almost imperceptibly, but nevertheless were yielding. The blue masses were pouring upon them continually, heavier and heavier, always coming to the attack.