"Oh," he growled out in his thick, guttural tones, "the Yankees have opened fire on our fellows from that damned Fort Pickens."
"Is that all," said I, with great a sigh of relief, which he must have noticed had he been sober enough.
"That's enough, ain't it? The President and the Secretary are both disgusted with General Bragg for not capturing the damn place last spring."
"Too bad!" my thoughts were, though I did not dare express them. I had prevented the capture of Fort Pickens in April.
As we rode along in silence for the remainder of the way out to camp, I had the opportunity to recall the Fort Pickens service, and I wondered and planned in my own mind just how that duel would be carried on there. I should have liked so much to have witnessed the booming of guns from Pickens, and the exploding of the great shells over the exact spots in which I had located the masked Rebel batteries down there.
My fears having been relieved by this explanation of the conversation I had overheard, I felt very much as if I'd like to go off by myself and yell for the old flag, just once, but I dare not; I must continue to suffer and enjoy, in the silence, that was becoming almost a second nature to me.
It will be remembered that I had been at Montgomery, Alabama, at about the time the provisional Government of Jeff Davis was being initiated at that place. I was at the same hotel for about a week at which Mr. Davis then occupied rooms. I had several times been close to his person—indeed, so near that I was able to overhear the conversation in which he always seemed to be engaged.
Through the fortunes of war, and an adventurous, reckless disposition, I was again, in the winter of the same year, at the Capitol of the Rebel Government in Richmond, Virginia, in a position to witness the formal inauguration of Mr. Jeff Davis as President of the "permanent" Government of the Confederate States of America, for the term of six years.
I saw Mr. Davis inaugurated, attended his public reception on the same evening, and, with all the rest of the callers, I was introduced to him, shook his hand, looked into his one eye, and passed out into the darkest night that I ever remember to have seen. The inauguration ceremonies were intended to be imposing.
We all know now that, even at the early stage of the war, there was much serious trouble among the Confederate leaders. During my experience among them there was scarcely a day that I did not hear expressions of discontent, and witness other evidences of a bitter feeling between the extreme Southern men and what they termed "Virginia Yankees."