The day declined. The sun went down like a red cannon ball. The cannonading ceased; the minies ceased. Slowly the smoke drifted away and let the stars be seen. The silence after sound oppressed, oppressed! Désirée sat still upon the bench. The moon rose, round and white, mounted and made the world spectral. At last she stood up. She raised and opened her arms, then closed them on each other and wrung her hands. Then she went out of the night without to that within the cave. The moon came strongly in. When, presently, she lay down upon the pallet, she drew her eyes and forehead out of the pool of silver. Edward! Edward!
Between the dead night and the first dawn, an hour before the sharpshooters would begin, she suddenly sat up, then rose to her feet. The moonlight was gone from the floor; there was only the unearthly hush and ebb of the hour. She moved to the entrance, pushed aside the ivy, and stood with held breath. Though she could not see him, she knew when he turned in at the ruined gate. A moment and his voice was in her ears. “Désirée!”—another, and they were clasped in each other’s arms. “I got in an hour ago—with the caps. I have till dawn.”
Throughout the seventh and eighth of June the firing from the mortars was very heavy and the Federal digging, digging continued. The grey private’s device was adopted and a number of sap rollers were set afire and destroyed, exposing the sappers behind and compelling fresh beginnings. On the Jackson road, before Hebert’s lines, the blue were using for screen cotton bales piled high upon a flatcar. This shield also was fired by musket balls wrapped in turpentine and tow. Bales and car went up in flames. The grey began new rifle-pits, and in the redans they collected thundering barrels and loaded shells. There was a feeling of impending assault. Now, too, began night sallies—Federal attacks upon the picket lines, Confederate repulses. Sentinel duty, heavy from the first, grew ever more heavy. Men fought during the day, and the same men watched at night. Day and night the trenches must be manned. The lines were long, and by now there were barely eighteen thousand grey effectives. They lived perforce in the trenches; they had no relief from the narrow ditches. The sun of a Southern June blistered and baked; then came torrential rains and soaked all things; then the sun shone again and the heavens became an inverted bowl of brass. On the twelfth of June the troops were put on half-rations; a little later, these, too, were reduced. The water grew low and very impure. There were so many dead bodies—men and animals. Fever appeared in every main work, and in every trench. Men lifted their muskets with shaking hands.
CHAPTER XIII
ACROSS THE POTOMAC
On the thirteenth of June, Ewell and the Second Corps forded the Potomac.
“Come! ’Tis the red dawn of the day,
Maryland!”
sang the men.
“Come with thy panoplied array,
Maryland!...