by Oliver Optic
CHAPTER V
ON THE SKIRMISH LINE
In the morning our travelers resumed their journey, more refreshed and inbetter condition for service than if they had spent the evening inchasing the "elephant" from one to another of the gilded dens ofdissipation with which the metropolis abounds. In spite of his errors andsins, Somers could not help liking his dashing companion. He was adangerous person; but his enthusiasm was so captivating, that he couldnot close his heart against him. But, while he liked the captain, hehated his vices.
They stopped in Philadelphia only long enough to dine, and in Baltimoreonly long enough for supper; arriving at Washington in the evening.Captain de Banyan again proposed to "go round;" which, rendered intounmistakable English, meant to visit the drinking-houses andgambling-saloons of the city, to say nothing of worse places. LieutenantSomers had grown wise by experience; and no amount of persuasion couldinduce him to leave the hotel. It was horrible to him to think ofspending even his leisure time in the haunts of dissipation, when hiscountry was bleeding from a thousand wounds; when his gallant comrades inthe Army of the Potomac were enduring peril and hardship in front of theenemy. He had no taste for carousing at any time, and every fiber of hismoral nature was firmly set against the vices which lured on his recklesscompanion.
Lieutenant Somers stayed at the hotel that evening, listening to theconversation of the officers who had been at the front within a few days.The great battle of Fair Oaks had been fought during his absence, andthere was every prospect that the most tremendous operations of the warwould soon commence. He listened with the deepest interest to theaccounts from the army, and needed none of the stimulus of the bar-roomor the gambling-saloon to furnish him with excitement. He was soon to bean actor in the momentous events of the campaign; and the thought wasfull of inspiration, and lifted him up from the gross and vulgar tastesof his companion.
Before noon the next day, somewhat against the inclination of Captain deBanyan, the two officers were on board a steamer bound down the river.After some delays, they arrived at White House, on the Pamunkey River;and then proceeded by railroad nearly to the camp of the regiment, atPoplar Hill, in the very depths of White Oak Swamp.
"My blessed boy!" shouted Sergeant Hapgood when Lieutenant Somersappeared in the camp.
The veteran rushed upon him, and, not content to shake his hand heproceeded to hug him in the most extraordinary manner.
"I am glad to see you, Hapgood! How have you been since I left?" saidSomers.
"First-rate! Bless my withered old carcass, Tom, but I thought I nevershould see you again. Why, Tom, how handsome you've grown! Well, you'llbe a brigadier one of these days, and there won't be a better-lookingofficer on the field. Dear me, Tom---- Beg pardon; I forgot that you arean officer; and I mustn't call you Tom any more."
"Never mind that, uncle," added Somers, laughing. "It would hardly begood discipline for a sergeant to call an officer by a nickname; but wewill compromise, and you shall call me Tom when we are not on duty, andthere is no one within hearing."
"Compromise! Don't never use that word to me. After we fit the battle ofBull Run, I gouged that word out of my dictionary. No, sir! You are aleftenant now; and I shall allus call you Leftenant Somers, even if thereain't nobody within ten mile of us."
"Just as you please, uncle; but, whatever you call me, we shall be justas good friends as we ever were."
"That's so, Leftenant Somers."
"Precisely, Sergeant Hapgood."
"Now, what's the news in Pinchbrook?" asked the veteran.
But, before Somers had a chance to tell the news from home, he waswelcomed to the camp, and cheered, by officers and men; and his accountof what had transpired in Pinchbrook during his thirty days' furlough waseagerly listened to by a large and attentive audience. He received inreturn a full history of the regiment during his absence. Though thenarrative of sundry exciting events, such as forays upon pig-sties,poultry-yards, and kitchen-gardens, was highly amusing, there was a taleof sadness to tell--of deaths by disease and on the battlefield.
Many cheerful hearts that were beating with life and hope a few weeksbefore, were now silent in the grave--the soldier's mausoleum in astrange land. But soldiers have no time to weep over a dead past; theymust live in the hope of a glorious future; and when they had dropped atear to the memory of the noble and the true who had fallen on the fieldor died in the hospital, victims of the pestilential airs of the swamp,they laughed as merrily as ever, careless of Death's poised arrows whichwere always aimed at them.
Captain de Banyan took his place in the regiment, where Somers found thathe was prodigiously popular, even after a few hours' acquaintance withhis new command; but who he was, where he came from, and how he hadprocured his commission, was a mystery to officers and men. He toldtremendous stories about the Crimea and the Italian war; and now for thefirst time intimated that he was the only survivor of the company whichled the advance at the storming of Chapultepec, in the Mexican war.However much the officers enjoyed his stories, it is not probable thatall of them believed what they heard.
Lieutenant Somers was perfectly familiar with the company and battaliondrill; and, having quick perception and abundant self-possession, he wascompetent at once to perform his duties as an officer. He had no vices tobe criticized by the men, who respected him not only for his bravery onthe battlefield, but for his good moral character; for even the viciousrespect the virtues which they practically contemn. Being neitherarbitrary nor tyrannical, he was cheerfully obeyed; and his company neverappeared better than when, by the temporary absence of his superior, itwas under his command.
He was, however, allowed but a short time to become acquainted with theroutine of the new duty before he was summoned to participate in thosetremendous events which have passed into history as at once the mostbrilliant and disastrous operations of the war; brilliant in that ourgallant army was almost invariably victorious, disastrous in that theywere the forerunners of the ultimate failure of a hopeful campaign. Thevictory at Fair Oaks had raised the hopes of that brave, thinking army.
The picket-lines were within a few miles of Richmond, and the soldierswere burning with enthusiasm to be led against the enemy in front ofthem. They were ready to lay down their lives on the altar of theirbleeding country, if the survivors could grasp the boon of peace withinthe buttressed walls of the rebel capital--peace that would hurl to theground the defiant traitors, and insure the safety and perpetuity of freeinstitutions. The notes of victory, those thinking soldiers believed,would reverberate through the coming ages, and point an epoch from whichAmerica would date her grandest and most sublime triumphs.
But not then was the great rebellion to be overthrown; for not yet hadthe leaven of Liberty leavened the whole lump; not yet had the purposesof a mysterious Providence been accomplished; and the brave men whosighed for victory and peace in the swamps of the Chickahominy weredoomed to years of blood and toil, of victory and defeat, as they marchedon, alike through both, to the consummation of a nation's glorioustriumph, not over paltry armies of arrogant traitors, but over theincarnation of Evil, over Heaven-defying institutions, whose downfallestablished forever principles as eternal as God Himself.
Lieutenant Somers was filled with the spirit of the army. He felt thatthe salvation of his country depended upon the valor of that army; and,impressed with the magnitude of the interests at stake, he was resolvedto do his whole duty. With cheerful alacrity he obeyed the summons whichbrought Grover's brigade into line of battle on the morning of theeventful 25th of June. What was to be accomplished was not for him toknow; but forward moved the line through the swamp, through the woods,through the pools of stagnant waters up to the hips of the soldiers.
Impressed by the responsibility of his position, Lieutenant Somersencouraged the weak as they struggled through the mire on their tryingmarch, and with fit words stimulated the enthusiasm of all. After a marchof about a mile, a heavy skirmish line was thrown out, which soonconfronted that of the rebels.
"Now, Somers, my dear fellow, the concert is about to open," said Captainde Banyan. "By the way, my boy, this reminds me of Magenta, where----"
"Oh, confound Magenta!" exclaimed Somers.
"Why, my dear fellow, you are as petulant as a belle that has lost herbeau."
"You don't propose to tell us a story about Magenta at such a time asthis, do you?"
"Well, I confess I have a weakness in that direction. Magenta was a greatbattle. But I'm afraid you are a little nervous," laughed the captain.
"Nervous? Do you think I'm a coward?" demanded Somers.
"I know you are not; but you might be a little nervous for all that."
At that instant, the sharp crack of a single rifle was heard, and Somersobserved a slight jerk in the brim of the captain's felt hat.
"Bravo!" exclaimed Captain de Banyan as he took off his hat, and pointedto a hole through which the rifle-ball had sped its way. "I'll bet amonth's pay that fellow couldn't do that again without making a holethrough my head. But that's a singular coincidence. That's precisely theplace where the first bullet went through my hat at Solferino. AtMagenta--ah! I see him," added the captain, as he took a musket from thehands of one of his men. "I'll bet another month's pay that reb has firedhis last shot."
As he spoke, he raised the gun to his shoulder, and fired up into one ofthe trees. A crashing of boughs, a rattling of leaves followed; and aheavy body was heard to strike the ground.
"You owe me a month's pay, Somers," continued Captain de Banyan, as hehanded the musket back to the soldier.
"I think not," replied the lieutenant, trying to be as cool as hiscompanion. "I never bet."
"Just so. I forgot that you were an exceedingly proper young man."
The skirmish-line, which had paused a moment for an observation to betaken, now moved forward again. The rebel skirmishers were discovered,and the order was given to fire at will. The enemy's sharpshooters wereposted in the trees, and they began to pour in a galling fire upon aportion of the line.
"Steady, my men!" said Somers, when the firing commenced. "Gunpowder'sexpensive; don't waste it."
"Not a single grain of it, Leftenant Somers," added Sergeant Hapgood.
"There, uncle!--up in that tree!" said Somers, pointing to a grayback,who was loading his rifle, about twenty feet from the ground.
"I see him!" replied the sergeant as he leveled his piece, and fired.
The rebel was wounded, but he did not come down; and the captain of thecompany ordered his men to move forward. From the thunder of theartillery and the rattle of musketry, it was evident that heavy work wasin progress on the right and left.
"Forward, men!" said Somers, repeating the order of Captain Benson.
The men were scattered along an irregular line, and firing into thebushes, which partially concealed the rebel skirmishers. Somers's platoonadvanced a little more rapidly than the rest of the line, being favoredwith a few rods of dry ground. He had urged them forward for the purposeof dislodging three sharpshooters perched in a large tree.
"Come down, rebs!" shouted Somers, as he reached the foot of the tree,and told half a dozen of his men to point their guns towards them.
"What d'ye say, Yank?" demanded one of them.
"Will you come down head first, or feet first? Take your choice quick!"replied the lieutenant.
"As you seem to be in arnest, we'll come down the nateral way."
They did come down without a more pressing invitation, and were disarmed,ready to be sent to the rear.