Then, as though there were a ring in the words that might mean something to coming generations, he repeated softly: “We saved the Union, now save the race.”
So, his heart still bursting with bitter sadness, he walked out in the cool air toward the Battery. It was the night Fort Sumter was to be evacuated, and he could see the lights of the transports bearing the heavy-hearted garrison to the mainland. Surely the end had come at last. Then he looked toward the west. Was the sun rising again as though he would come back to watch what men would do that night? Then why was that glow, deep, red, sullen in the land of the sunset, and this full ten o’clock in the night? Then suddenly, as if a poisoned arrow had pierced his bosom, his heart quivered with pain.
“Camellia!”
The great flames were leaping upward toward the sky. The marble Artemis would lift her snowy white arms to hide her face from the sight. The little wet violets at her feet would droop in prayer. The olive tree by the window, the little orange grove of which Mrs. Corbin was so proud, the well appointed premises filled with slaves and buildings, all of these were gone forever. And the black faces of slaves were peering in terror from the darkness. Camellia-on-the-Ashley had perished as the horse of the Indian is slain when his master dies.
Then to the right and west there was another glow, but that he knew well. It was the bridge of the Charleston and Savannah Railway over the Ashley.
And lo, in the very harbor itself a bright light began to glow! The gunboats were burning!
Then he turned, sick at heart, and walked back through the deserted city, back to the office; this sad-hearted man whose dearest friend had perished in the blowing up of the Housatonic.
“Ah, McArthur, I loved you,” the old man said, as the tears sprang to his eyes.
Then, ringing weirdly through the streets, he heard a cry:
“We slew them, we conquered them! Brave men! Five hundred thousand men died in five minutes. Hurrah!”