I heard, one night, a soldier down the ravine singing one of the weird, melodious hymns that negroes often sing; and, amid the firing and crashing of projectiles, it floated up to me in soft, musical undertones that were fascinating in the extreme: the wailing of the earthly unrest—the longing for the glorious home that the warm imagery pictures to be glorious in golden lights and silvery radiance—of song and brilliant happiness! The voice was full and triumphant. Then the rapid change, in low and mournful cadence, to the earth, the clay, the mire—to dearth, to suffering, to sin! “I wonder, Lord, will I ever get to heaven—to the New Jerusalem?” came with the ending of every verse. I bowed my face in my hands. Yes! heaven was so far off! Yet—“he that cometh to me, I will in nowise cast out”—our grasp is firm, but our eyes are blind. Some day, after the earthly longings are stilled, we will know the exceeding glory.
Though singing songs of every description, yet how often we are made to feel that any moment the summons may come!
I was sewing, one day, near one side of the cave, where the bank slopes and lights up the room like a window. Near this opening I was sitting, when I suddenly remembered some little article I wished in another part of the room. Crossing to procure it, I was returning, when a Minié ball came whizzing through the opening, passed my chair, and fell beyond it. Had I been still sitting, I should have stopped it. Conceive how speedily I took the chair into another part of the room, and sat in it!
CHAPTER XXII.
A WOUNDED HORSE—SHRAPNELL SHELLS—CHARGE ON THE INTRENCHMENTS—FEARFUL FIRING.
One evening I noticed one of the horses tied in the ravine, acting very strangely—writhing and struggling as if in pain. One of the soldiers went to him and found that he was very badly wounded in the flank by a Minié ball. The poor creature’s agony was dreadful: he would reach his head up as far as possible into the tree to which he was tied, and cling with his mouth, while his neck and body quivered with the pain. Every motion, instead of being violent, as most horses would have been when wounded, had a stately grace of eloquent suffering that is indescribable. How I wanted to go to him and pat and soothe him! The halter was taken off, and he was turned free. Going to a tree, he leaned his body against it, and moaned, with half closed eyes, shivering frequently throughout his huge body, as if the pain were too great to bear.
Then, turning his head entirely around, he would gaze at the group of soldiers that stood pityingly near, as if he was looking for human sympathy. The master refused to have him shot, hoping he would recover; but it must have been evident that this day was the last of his strong, proud life: the noble black was doomed. After the gentle faithfulness of his service, it was cruel to prolong his suffering: after the simple meals of mulberry leaves, with scarcely sustenance enough to maintain life, why should this pain and agony be permitted to rack his already weakened body? These truths were set aside, and the master looked with pity; yet, it seemed, a selfish pity.
Becoming restless with the pain, the poor brute staggered blindly on. And now my eyes fill with tears; for he has fallen, with a weary moan, between the banks of the little rivulet in the ravine, his head thrown on the sod, and the bright, intelligent eye turned still upon the men who have been his comrades in many a battle, standing still near him.