The aide put a chair. The prisoner sank into it and covered his face with his hands. Presently he let them drop. "Hill, we ought not to be enemies! Messmates and tent-mates for a year!... It's ghastly."
"I'll agree with you there, Reynolds. It's ghastlier than ghastly.—You aren't hurt?"
Outside, over the great hilltop upon which Richard Cleave was moving, the darkness might be felt. The air smelled strongly of burned powder, was yet thickened by smoke. Where fires had been kindled, the ruddy light went up like pillars to sustain a cloudy roof. There were treetops, burnished, high in air; then all the land fell to the swampy shores of the creek, and beyond to the vast and sombre battle plain, where the shells had rained. The masses of grey troops upon it, resting on their arms, could be divined by the red points of camp-fires. Lanterns, also, were wandering like marsh lights, up and down and to and fro. Here, on the plateau, it was the same. They danced like giant fireflies. He passed a blazing log about which were gathered a dozen men. Some wag of the mess had said something jocular; to a man they were laughing convulsively. Had they been blamed, they would perhaps have answered that it was better to laugh than to cry. Cleave passed them with no inclination to blame, and came to where, under the trees, the 65th was gathered. Here, too, there were fires; his men were dropped like acorns on the ground, making a little "coosh," frying a little bacon, attending to slight hurts, cognizant of the missing but not referring to them loudly, glad of victory, burying all loss, with a wide swing of courage making the best of it in the darkness. When they saw Cleave they suspended all other operations long enough to cheer him. He smiled, waved his hand, spoke a short word to Hairston Breckinridge, and hurried on. He passed the 2d Virginia, mourning its colonel—Colonel Allen—fallen in the front of the charge. He passed other bivouacs—men of Rodes's, of Garland's, of Trimble's. "Where is General Jackson?"—"Can't tell you, sir—" "Here is General Ewell."
"Old Dick" squatted by a camp-fire, was broiling a bit of bacon, head on one side, as he looked up with bright round eyes at Cleave, whom he liked. "That you, Richard Cleave? By God, sir, if I were as excellent a major-general as I am a cook!—Have a bit?—Well, we wolloped them! They fought like men, and we fought like men, and by God, I can't get the cannon out of my ears! General Jackson?—I thought he was in front with D. H. Hill. Going to do anything more to-night? It's pretty late, but I'm ready."
"Nothing—without General Jackson," said Cleave. "Thank you, general—if I might have a mouthful of coffee? I haven't the least idea when I have eaten."
Ewell handed him the tin cup. He drank hastily and went on. Now it was by a field hospital, ghastly sights and ghastly sounds, pine boughs set for torches. He shut his eyes in a moment's faintness. It looked a demoniac place, a smoke-wreathed platform in some Inferno circle. He met a staff officer coming up from the plain. "General Lee has ridden to the right. He is watching for McClellan's next move. There's a rumour that everything's in motion toward the James. If it's true, there's a chase before us to-morrow, eh?—A. P. Hill suffered dreadfully. 'Prince John' kept McClellan beautifully amused.—General Jackson? On the slope of the hill by the breastworks."
A red light proclaimed the place as Cleave approached it. It seemed a solitary flame, night around it and a sweep of scarped earth. Cleave, coming into the glow, found only the old negro Jim, squat beside it like a gnome, his eyes upon the jewelled hollows, his lips working. Jim rose. "De gineral, sah? De gineral done sont de staff away ter res'. Fo' de Lawd, de gineral bettah follah dat 'zample! Yaas, sah,—ober dar in de big woods."
Cleave descended the embankment and entered a heavy wood. A voice spoke—Jackson's—very curtly. "Who is it, and what is your business?"
"It is the colonel of the 65th Virginia, sir. General Winder sends me, with the approval of General D. H. Hill, from the advance by the McGehee house."
A part of the shadow detached itself and came forward as Jackson. It stalked past Cleave out of the belt of trees and over the bare red earth to the fire. The other man followed, and in the glare faced the general again. The leaping flame showed Jackson's bronzed face, with the brows drawn down, the eyes looking inward, and the lips closed as though no force could part them. Cleave knew the look, and inwardly set his own lips. At last the other spoke. "Well, sir?"