"Were you ever a prisoner, Sergeant?" I asked, always careful to bestow his title.
"Once," he said, laconically.
"Well! it's all one in the end," I said, carelessly turning from him, to show that I had no desire for the conversation, if he did not relish it. "You have a chance now to give me the devil of a time, in revenge for your treatment among my friends. 'T is an ill wind that blows nobody good."
My sang-froid had the savor of a good pickle. It was a very peculiar turn to give the affair, I must own; but I saw that the Sergeant was struck by it. Possibly, that one was my best stroke of the day. I have, at any rate, ever since deemed it so.
I walked along as before, speculating, not lightly, upon the dejected beings about me, who marched, spectre-fashion, in the dust, like the unhappy (would-be) crew on the shores of the Styx, trying to appease Charon. They never would be at rest till he ferried them over to the shades of the world of death,—or (what to them seemed impossible) till they were remanded back to life among the loved ones of their race. I remember particularly one trifle of this momentous march, that threatened towards night to gnaw into my very brain-tissues. Soldiers, it is known, are not over-careful in their dress, when in daily action in the field, nor have they time to grow fastidious during the fighting summer months. They then, perforce, disregard tapes with a loftier indifference to appearances than that which distinguishes the noble cynic of the world. But officers generally use tapes about their ankles (perhaps to keep some garment in place immediately upon the stocking); and I have known them myself, for prudence' sake, to tie them in hard knots. A poor limping lieutenant, a little to the left, and some ten feet in advance of me, had not adopted this precaution, and now, consequently, more as a punishment to me than to him, one of his nursery ties had come undone, and was trailing after his foot in shadow-like persistency. I had here a world of torture in a nutshell. When, unluckily, my eyes fastened upon this appendage, I could not keep them from it. It fascinated me with more than the juggler's success upon the serpent. I fell to conjecturing how long the affair might be,—if four inches or five; and pondered the allowance to be made in the calculation by reason of the man's distance; merging this view of the matter in another, as I watched his heel touch the ground, and noted the time which elapsed between that and the jumping forward of the foot, with the string, ever faithful, behind it. I conjectured how much dust the tape took up at each step, and wondered, if, in a long march, merely by accretion thereof, the end of it would not be a sort of dirt-coil, perhaps a tenth of an inch in diameter,—soaring higher, too, in my delirium of nervousness, till I could imagine the incalculable increase in size which would be insured, should the lieutenant step into a puddle, and get the thing all wet: he would wear a sand rope for ankle-fetter, upon entering Richmond.
But the most provoking of all the phases to which my humor was reduced, and which my dilapidated body had to submit to, by means of this tape, was the almost irresistible desire to spring lightly forward, and to catch the thing beneath my toe. It invoked me to all sorts of gymnastic efforts. The impulse racked my breast, and set up an argument against every reason in favor of a jog-trotting march for the balance of the daylight. I surveyed the poor lieutenant from head to foot, and pictured to myself his surprise, should he find himself hitched to the ground. He would turn, I thought, with open, questioning eyes, and perhaps look flushed by the accident. He might only hop a step farther on, and trust to my not again overreaching him. He might, impelled by the influence that tormented me, fall behind me. I had an unwavering conviction that that tape would never be removed,—and that, consequently, in some way, the lieutenant, who played guide to it, would be my haunting demon all the weary hours of my march.
Soon after I had conferred my tart speech upon the Sergeant, and had so sealed my failure to gain his grace in behalf of my friend and myself, the Adjutant was at my side. A hale, hearty, well-made man, unperturbed usually, he was now almost another person than himself. I thought I knew what causes produced the pallor on his face and the quiver about the loose-hanging under-lip. The good fellow had had in his jacket (before it was stolen) the leave-of-absence which was to have carried him home to be married, and he was to have availed himself of it in a week. Perhaps the thought of his lady gave him the woebegone expression. All sorts of sweet dreams, that had illumined his life for months, and filled up the wide chinks of camp monotony, were now quite bitterly ended,—capped by the reality worse than the dream which is called nightmare. His smiling eyes were hooded only a little sooner than were those milder ones at home, no doubt under traced eyebrows and with far finer lashes. The marriage, perforce, was put off. The view of home was put off. Perhaps the Adjutant's solemn quietus, like an extinguisher of the light of his and his sweetheart's hopes, would drop upon him in loathsome Libby, and cancel the leave forever. This, being the weightier thought, was evidently bearing upon his mind.
I had resolved, in a business way, upon two points,—perchance brought to my decision through some such tender passage as the above: first, that, as we could not escape from the lines together, he must take the earlier, because, as in mortgages, the better risk; and second, that if he did not answer in a satisfactory manner the one question that I had kept for some time uppermost in my brain to propound to him, he must pocket my North Star.
"Have you a compass?" I muttered, as he edged by me.
"No," he replied.