In Hostile Red

by Joseph A. Altsheler

"See, the fighting must have begun," she said, pointing to a strip of wood barely visible in the night.

Some streaks of flame had leaped up, and we heard a distant rattle which I knew must be the small arms at work. Then there was a lull for a moment, followed by a louder and a longer crackle, and a line of fire, flaming up and then sinking in part, ran along the edge of the woods and across the fields. Through this crackle came a steady rub-a-dub, rub-a-dub.

"That is the beat of the drums," I said to Miss Desmond, who turned an inquiring face to me. "The drum is the soldier's conscience, I suppose, for it is always calling upon him to go forward and fight."

I spoke my thoughts truly, for the drum has always seemed to me to be a more remorseless war-god than the cannon. With its steady and tireless thump, thump, it calls upon you, with a voice that will not be hushed, to devote yourself to death. "Come on! Come on! Up to the cannon! Up to the cannon!" it says. It taunts you and reviles you. Give this drum to a ragamuffin of a little boy, and he catches its spirit, and he goes straight forward with it and commands you to follow him. It was so at Long Island when the Maryland brigade sacrificed itself and held back the immense numbers of the enemy until our own army could escape. A scrap of a boy stood on a hillock and beat a drum as tall as himself, calling upon the Maryland men to stand firm and die, until a British cannon-ball smashed his drum, and a British grenadier hoisted him over his shoulder with one hand and carried him away. There is a league between the drum and the cannon. The drum lures the men up to the cannon, and then the monster devours them.

Above the crackle rose the louder notes of the field-pieces, and then I thought I heard the sound of cheering, but I was not sure. We could see naught of this dim and distant battle but the flame of its gunpowder. The night was too heavy for any human figure to appear in its just outline; and I saw that I would have to judge of its progress by the shifting of the line of fire. The British attack was delivered from the left, and the blaze of the musketry extended along a line about a half-mile in length. Though while the light was leaping high at one place it might be sinking low at another, yet this line was always clearly defined, and we could follow its movements well enough.

The line was stationary for full fifteen minutes, and from that circumstance we could tell that the Americans had profited well by the warning and were ready to receive the attack. Still, the action was sharper and contested with more vigor than I had expected. Having made the attack, the British seemed disposed to persist in it for a while at least. But presently the line of fire began to bend back towards the west at the far end.

"The British are retreating!" exclaimed Miss Desmond.

"At one point, so it would seem," I said.

"Yes, and at other points too," she cried. "See, the centre of the fiery line bends back also."

This was true, for the centre soon bent back so far that the whole line was curved like a bow. Then the eastern end yielded also, and soon was almost hidden in some woods, where it made but a faint quivering among the trees. In truth, along the whole line the fire was dying. The sputter of the musketry was but feeble and scarce heard, and even the drum seemed to lose spirit and call but languidly for slaughter.