The storm drew nearer, with long lightnings and thunder that crashed and rolled through the swamp. A vivid flash, holding a second or more, showed the stretch of the river, and several hundred yards above Steve's nook a part of a high railroad bridge. The gaunt trestle ran out past midstream, then stopped, all the portion toward the northern shore burned away. It stood against the intensely lit sky and stream like the skeleton of some antediluvian monster, then vanished into Stygian darkness. The thunder crashed at once, an ear-splitting clap followed by long reverberations. As these died, in the span of silence before should come the next flash and crash, Steve became conscious of another sound, dull and distant at first, then nearer and rushingly loud. "Train on the track down there! What in hell—It can't cross!" He stood up, held by a sapling, and craned his neck to look up the river. A great flash showed the bridge again. "Must be Yankees still about here—last of the rearguard we've been fighting. What they doing with the train? They must have burned the bridge themselves! Gawd!"
A wildly vivid orange flash lit water, wood and sky, and the gaunt half of a bridge, stopping dead short in the middle of the Chickahominy. The thunder crashed and rolled, then out of that sound grew another—the noise of a rushing train. Something huge and dark roared from the wooded banks out upon the bridge. It belched black smoke mingled with sparks; behind it were cars, and these were burning. The whole came full upon the broken bridge. It swayed beneath the weight; but before it could fall, and before the roaring engine reached the gap, the flames of the kindled cars touched the huge stores of ammunition sent thus to destruction by the retreating column. In the night, over the Chickahominy, occurred a rending and awful explosion.... Steve, coming to himself, rose to his knees in the black mire. The lightning flashed, and he stared with a contorted face. The bridge, too, was gone. There was only the churned water, filled with scantlings and torn branches of trees. The rain was falling, a great hissing sweep of rain, and the wind howled beneath the thunder. Steve turned blindly; he did not know where he was going, but he had a conviction that the river was rising and would come after him. A hundred yards from the water, in the midnight wood, as he hurried over earth that the rain was fast turning into morass, he stumbled over some obstacle and fell. Putting out his hands, they came flat against a dead man's face. He rose and fled with a screech, southwardly now, in the direction of White Oak Swamp.
CHAPTER XXXV
WHITE OAK SWAMP
The Grapevine Bridge being at last rebuilt, Stonewall Jackson's fourteen brigades crossed the Chickahominy, the movement occupying a great part of the night. Dawn of the thirtieth found the advance at Savage Station.
The storm in the night had swelled the myriad creeks, and extended all morasses. The roads were mud, the wild tangles of underwood held water like a sponge. But the dawn was glorious, with carmine and purple towers and the coolest fresh-washed purity of air and light. Major-General Richard Ewell, riding at the head of his division, opined that it was as clear as the plains. A reconnoitring party brought him news about something or other to the eastward. He jerked his head, swore reflectively, and asked where was "Old Jackson."
"He rode ahead, sir, to speak to General Magruder."
"Well, you go, Nelson, and tell him—No, you go, Major Stafford."