A Lieutenant at Eighteen

by Oliver Optic

"We may as well make way for this rabble," added the lieutenant. "They will shove each other away from the entrance, and when the coast is clear we will take our chance of getting out of the fort."

Life Knox yielded the point; for, if they were not to cut their way through the crowd, this was absolutely the only thing they could do. They were pressed forward into the intrenchment. Deck observed as he gave way to the pressure behind him that the soldiers from the field, or near it,—for not a few had not been in the battle,—hastened from the entrance to the works, towards the middle of it; in fact, they were ordered to do so by the guard in charge of the camp, which extended for over a mile across the tongue of land formed by the Cumberland and the creek that flowed into it near Robertsport.

Lieutenant Lyon did not follow the example of the fugitives, and there was still nothing but a rabble near the entrance; and the guard, with its officers, were a considerable distance from him, and could give his command no orders. Instead of doing as others did, he led his force to the verge of the great river, down to which the high banks, amounting almost to cliffs, descended at an angle of about forty-five degrees.

The lieutenant could do nothing, but he kept up a tremendous thinking all the time. By this time he was conscious that he had been forced into a tight place. He reined in his steed when he had advanced perhaps the third of a mile across the camp, defended by the breastworks, and gave the order for his men to halt; but it was not spoken with his customary vim, for he was somewhat depressed by the situation.

He was in a Confederate camp, and all his powers of mind were directed towards the means of getting out of it; for it would have broken his heart to hand over his fifty men as prisoners to a Southern officer. He looked at the entrance; but that was as crowded as at any time before, and it was impossible for him to march out that way. Then he looked down the steep and lofty banks of the Cumberland. His horses and those of his troopers could swim like fishes; for it had been a part of the drill at Riverlawn to exercise the animals in the water, and they had often crossed Bar Creek with their riders on their backs, and they had even swam them over the Green River, though never in the rapids.

Deck considered a plan for descending the banks to the stream, swimming the horses a mile or two down the river, and then of escaping across the country to the position of the rest of the squadron. He was about to ask Sergeant Knox for his opinion, when the company of Confederate cavalry which had been next to his force outside the works rode over to the side of the camp he had chosen, and halted a few rods from his position.

But this body did not seem to be in a belligerent mood, and did not appear to take much notice of the platoon. Possibly they were ashamed of their conduct on the field; for they had been the first of the enemy's cavalry to arrive at the works, and they must have been among the first to run away. The men did not look like a fair specimen of the cavalry of the other side which the troopers had seen.

"We must get out of this place somehow," said Deck to the orderly sergeant, who had brought up a little behind him.

"I don't believe there is many more outside who want to get into this place," replied Life; "and I reckon the major will be looking this way for us, for he couldn't help seeing that we had been crowded in here."

"I don't see that he can do anything for us, unless he fights the whole force of the enemy outside; and I know they are not all cowards, like some of these fellers what worked harder to get into this fort than they would to git inter the kingdom o' heaven," answered Life.