Idyl was in truth listening to voices—voices new, strange, and solemn—voices of heavy, distant cannon.
It was the 23d of April, 1862. A few miles below Bijou Plantation Farragut's fleet was storming the blockade at Fort Jackson. All along the lower Mississippi it was a time of dread and terror.
The negroes, for the most part awed and terror-stricken, muttered prayers as they went about, and all night long sang mournfully and shouted and prayed in the churches or in groups in their cabins, or even in the road.
The war had come at last. Its glare was upon the sky at night, and all day long reiterated its persistent staccato menace:
"Boom-m-m! Gloom-m-m! Tomb-b-b! Doom-m-m!"
The air had never seemed to lose the vibratory tremor, "M-m-m!" since the first gun, nearly six days ago.
It was as if the lips of the land were trembling. And the trembling lips of the black mothers, as they pressed their babes to their bosoms, echoed the wordless terror.
Death was in the air. Had they doubted it? In a field near by a shell had fallen, burying itself in the earth, and, exploding, had sent two men into the air, killing one and returning the other unhurt.
Now the survivor, saved as by a miracle, was preaching "The Wrath to Come."
To quote from himself, he had "been up to heaven long enough to get 'ligion." He had "gone up a lost sinner and come down a saved soul. Bless Gord!"