“After you pass the bridge you will be perfectly safe on that score,” he said heartily. “Anything more I can do for any of you?”
“How many of us are there?” asked some one faintly from out the darkness.
“Oh, yes,” returned Mosby, with a laugh, “I forgot; you will want to know each other. There are three of you—Colonel Colby of North Carolina, Major Wilkins of Thome's Battery, and Captain Wayne, ——th Virginia. Let that answer for an introduction, gentlemen, and now good-night. We shall guard you as long as necessary, and then must leave you to the kindly ministrations of the driver.”
He reached in, leaning down from his saddle to do so, drew the blanket somewhat closer about me, and was gone. I caught the words of a sharp, short order, and the heavy wagon lurched forward, its wheels bumping over the irregularities in the road, each jolt sending a fresh spasm of pain through my tortured body.
May the merciful God ever protect me from such a ride again! It seemed interminable, while each long mile we travelled brought with it new and greater agony of mind and body. That I did not suffer alone was early evident from the low moans borne to me from out the darkness. Once a weak, trembling voice prayed for release,—a short, fervent prayer, which so impressed me in the weakness of my own anguish that I added to it “Amen,” spoken unconsciously aloud.
“Who spoke?” asked the same voice, faintly.
“I am Captain Wayne,” I answered, almost glad to break the terrible silence by speech of any kind; “and I merely echoed your prayer. Death would indeed prove a welcome relief from such intensity of suffering.”
“Yes,” he acquiesced gently. “I fear I have not sufficient strength to bear mine for long; yet I am a Christian, and there are wife and child waiting for me at home. God knows I am ready when He calls, but my duty is to live, if possible, for their sake. They will have nothing left if I pass on.”
“The road must grow smoother as we come down into the valley. Are your wounds serious?”
“I was struck by fragments of a shell,” he answered, and I could tell he spoke the words through his clinched teeth, “and am wounded in the head as well as the body—oh, my God!” The cry was wrung from him by a sudden tilting of the wagon, and for a moment my own pain prevented utterance.