“In our opinion this entire night’s a holy terror. Haven’t we met you before? Aren’t you the Botetourt Artillery?”
“Yes. We’ve met a lot of people in this war, some that we liked and some that we didn’t! You look right likable. Where—”
“Going out to Chickasaw Bayou. Pitch black night like this, only it was raining and cold. Your mules couldn’t pull—”
“Oh, now we remember!” said Artillery. “You’re the ——th Virginia that helped us all it could! Glad to meet you again. Glad to meet anything Virginian.”
“You’ve been out of Virginia a long time?”
“Out of it a weary year. Tennessee, Cumberland Gap, Kentucky, and so forth. We sing ’most everything in this army, but the Botetourt Artillery can’t sing ‘Carry me back to Old Virginny’! It chokes up.—What’s your county?”
Company by company, regiment by regiment, Tracy’s brigade got over the Big Black. Foot by foot the troops in the rear came nearer the stream; minute by minute the dragging night went by. Half seated, half lying on the fallen trunk of a gum, Edward Cary watched the snail-like crossing. When one dead tree burned down, they fired another. There was light enough, a red pulsing in the darkness through which the troops moved down the sloping bank to the ferryboat. The bank was all scored and trampled, and crested by palmetto scrub and tall trees draped with vines. The men stumbled as they went, they were so stiff with fatigue. Their feet were sore and torn. There was delay enough. Each man as he passed out of the shadow down to the boat had his moment of red light, a transitory centre of the stage.
Cary watched them broodingly, his elbow on the log, his hand covering his mouth. “A bronze frieze of the Destined. Leaves of the life tree and a high wind and frost at hand.” An old man stood his moment in the light, the hollows in his cheeks plain, plain the thin and whitened hair beneath a torn boy’s cap. He passed. The barrel of his musket gleamed for an instant, then sank like a star below the verge. A young man took his place, gaunt, with deep circles about his eyes. The hand on the musket stock was long and thin and white. “Fever,” thought Edward. “Disease, that walks with War.” The fever-stricken passed, and another took his place. This was a boy, certainly not more than fifteen, and his eyes were dancing. He had had something to eat, Edward thought, perhaps even a mouthful of whiskey, he carried himself with such an impish glee. “Is it such fun? I wonder—I wonder! You represent, I think, the past of the human species. Step aside, honourable young savage, and let the mind of the world grow beyond fifteen!”
On and down went the column, young, old, and in between. Two years earlier a good observer, watching it, would have been able fairly to ascribe to each unit his place in life before the drum beat. “A farmer—another—a great landowner, a planter—surely a blacksmith—a clerk—a town-bred man, perhaps a banker—another farmer—a professional man—a student—Dick from the plough—” and so on. Now it was different. You could have divided the columns, perhaps, into educated men and uneducated men, rough men and refined men, as you could have divided it into young men and old men, tall men and men not so tall. But the old stamp had greatly worn away, and the new had had two years in which to bite deep. It was a column of Confederate soldiers, poorly clad and shod, and, to-night, hungry and very tired. Soldier by soldier, squad, company, regiment, on they stumbled through prickly and matted growth down to the water of the Big Black and the one boat. The night wore on. One and two and three o’clock went by before the last of the ——th Virginia was over. Edward, standing in the end of the boat, marked the Botetourt Artillery move forward and down to the stream. There was a moment when the guns were drawn sharply against the pallor of the morning sky. There came into his mind an awakening at dawn on the battle-field of Frayser’s Farm, and the pale pink heaven behind the guns. But, indeed, he had seen them often, drawn against the sky at daybreak. There was growing in this war, as in all wars, a sense of endless repetition. The gamut was not extensive, the spectrum held but few colours. Over and over and over again sounded the notes, old as the ages, monotonous as the desert wind. War was still war, and all music was military. Edward and his comrades touched the southern shore of the Big Black, and the boat went back for the Botetourt Artillery.
The reinforcements for Bowen made no stop for breakfast for men or for horses, but pushed on toward Grand Gulf. The day was warm, the forest heavily scented, the air languid. All the bourgeoning and blossoming, the running sap, the upward and outward flow, was only for the world of root and stem, leaf and bud. The very riot and life therein seemed to draw and drain the strength from the veins of men. It was as though there were not life enough for both worlds, and the vegetable world was forcing itself uppermost. All day Tracy’s column moved forward in a forced march. The men went hungry and without sleep; all day they broke with a dull impatience thorn and briar and impeding cane, or forded waist-deep and muddy bayous, or sought in swamps for the lost road. They were now in a region of ridge and ravine, waves of land and the trough between, and all covered with a difficult scrub and a maze of vines.