A frenzy of eagerness seized upon the tired feet, and they pressedupward, lightly, like dancers' feet. Straps creaked upon strainingbreasts, and sweat ran in bubbles. Then the head of the column reachedthe ridge of a hill, and its leaders saw through smarting eyes a greathorseshoe of sudden death.
XXXII
That morning Peter Manners had received a letter, but he had not had achance to open and read it. It was a letter that belonged next to hisheart, as he judged by the writing, and next to his heart, in a securepocket, he placed it, there to lie and give him strength and courage forthe cruel day's work, and something besides the coming of night to lookforward to. For the rest, he went among the lines, and smiled like a boyreleased from school to see how silently and savagely they fought.
The Sixth Corps rested wherever there was shade along the banks of RockCreek, and gathered strength and breath for whatever work should beassigned to it.
Aladdin, sharing a cherry-pie with a friend, shivered with excitement,for there was a terrific and ever-increasing discharge of cannons andmuskets on the left, and it seemed that the time to go forward again andwin glory was at hand. Presently one came riding back from the battle.His face was shining with delight, and, sitting like a centaur tothe fiery plunges of his horse, he swung his hat and shouted. It wasSedgwick's chief of staff, McMahon, and he brought glorious news, forhe said that the corps was to move toward the heavy firing, where thefighting was most severe.
Then the whole corps sprang to its feet and went forward, tearing downthe fences in its path and trampling the long grass in the fields. Amile away the long, flowery slopes ended in a knobbed hill revealedthrough smoke. That was Little Round Top, and its possession meantvictory or defeat. The corps was halted and two regiments were sentforward up the long slope. To them the minutes seemed moments. They wentlike a wave over the crest to the right of the hill, and poured downinto the valley beyond. Here the blue flood of men banked against astone wall, spreading to right and left, as the waters of a streamspread the length of a dam. Then they began to fire dreadfully into thefaces of their enemy, and to curse terribly, as is proper in battle.Bullets stung the long line like wasps, and men bit the sod.
Aladdin was ordered to ride up Little Round Top for information.Half-way up he left his horse among the boulders and finished thelaborious ascent on foot. At the summit he came upon a leaderlessbattery loading and firing like clockwork, and he saw that the rockswere strewn with dead men in light-blue Zouave uniforms, who looked asif they had fallen in a shower from the clouds. Many had their facescaved in with stones, and terrible rents showed where the bayonethad been at work, for in this battle men had fought hand to hand likecave-dwellers. Bullets hit the rocks with stinging blows, and roundshot screamed in the air. Sometimes a dead man would be lifted fromwhere he lay and hurled backward, while every instant men cried hoarselyand joined the dead. In the midst of this thunder and carnage, Aladdincame suddenly upon Peter, smiling like a favorite at a dance, andshouted to him. They grinned at each other, and as Aladdin grinned helooked about to see where he could be of use, and sprang toward a gunhalf of whose crew had been blasted to death by a bursting shell. Thesweat ran down his face, and already it was black with burning powder.The flash of the guns set fire to the clothing of the dead and woundedwho lay in front, and on the recoil the iron-shod wheels broke thebones of those lying behind. It was impossible to know how the fight wasgoing. It was only possible to go on fighting.
There was a voice in front of the battery that kept calling so terriblyfor water that it turned cold the stomachs of those that heard. Itcame from a Confederate, a general officer, who had been wounded inthe spine. Occasionally it was possible to see him through the smoke.Sometimes a convulsion seized him, and he beat the ground with his wholebody, as a great fish that has been drawn from the water beats the deckof a vessel. It was terrible to look at and hear. Bullets and shot torethe ground about the man and showered him with dust and stones. Aladdinshook his canteen and heard the swish of water. It seemed to him, andhis knees turned to water at the thought, that he must go out into thatplace swept by the fire of both sides, and give relief to his enemy.He did not want to go, and fear shook him; but he threw down the rammerwhich he had been serving, and drawing breath in long gasps, took a stepforward. His resolve came too late. A blue figure slipped by him andwent down the slope at a run. It was Manners. They saw him kneel by thedying Confederate in the bright sunlight, and then smoke swept betweenlike a wave of fog. The red flashes of the guns went crashing into thesmoke, and on all sides men fell. But presently there came a star-shapedexplosion in the midst of the smoke, hurling it back, and they sawManners again. He was staggering about with his hands over his eyes,and blood was running through his fingers. Even as they looked, a shotstruck him in the back, and he came down. They saw his splendid squarechest heaving, and knew that he was not yet dead. Then the smoke closedin, but this time another figure was hidden by the smoke. For no soonerdid Aladdin see Peter fall than he sprang forward like a hound from theleash. Aladdin kneeled by Manners, and as he kneeled a bullet struck hishat from his head, and a round shot, smashing into the rocky grounda dozen feet away, filled his eyes with dirt and sparks. There was apungent smell of brimstone from the furious concussions of iron againstrock. A bullet struck the handle of Aladdin's sword and broke it. Heunstopped his canteen and pressed the nozzle to Manners' lips. Mannerssucked eagerly, like an infant at its mother's breast. A bullet struckthe canteen and dashed it to pieces. The crashing of the cannon was likeclose thunder, and the air sang like the strings of an instrument. ButAladdin, so cool and collected he was, might have been the target forpraises and roses flung by beauties. He put his lips close to Peter'sear, and spoke loudly, for the noise of battle was deafening.
"Is it much, darlint?"
Manners turned his bleeding eyes toward Aladdin.
"Go back, you damn little fool!" he said.
"Peter, Peter," said Aladdin, "can't you see?"
"No, I can't. I'm no use now. Go back; go back and give 'em hell!"
Aladdin endeavored to raise Peter in his arms, but was not strongenough.
"I can't lift you, I can't lift you," he said.
"You can't," said Peter. "Bless you for coming, and go back."
"Shut up, will you?" cried Aladdin, savagely. "Where are you hit?"
"In the back," said Peter, "and I'm done for."
"The hell you are!" said Aladdin. Tears hotter than blood were runningout of his eyes. "What can I do for you, Peter?" he said in a huskyvoice.
Manners' blackened fingers fumbled at the buttons of his coat, but hehad not the strength to undo them.
"It's there, 'Laddin," he said.
"What's there?" said Aladdin. He undid the coat with swift, cleverfingers.
"Let me hold it in my hands," said Peter.
"Is it this--this letter--this letter from Margaret?" asked Aladdin,chokingly, for he saw that the letter had not been opened.
A shower of dirt and stones fell upon them, and a shell burst with asharp crash above their heads.
"Yes," said Peter. "Give it to me. I can't ever read it now."
"I can read it for you," said Aladdin. He was struggling with a sob thatwanted to tear his throat.
"Will you? Will you?" cried Peter, and he smiled like a beautiful child.
"Sure I will," said Aladdin.
With the palm of his hand he pressed back the streaming sweat from hisforehead twice and three times. Then, having wiped his hands upon hisknees, he drew the battered fragment of his sword, and using it as apaper-knife, opened the letter carefully, as a man opens letters whichare not to be destroyed. Then his stomach turned cold and his tonguegrew thick and burred. For the letter which Margaret had written to herlover was more cruel than the shell which had blinded his eyes and thebullet which was taking his life.
"'Laddin--" this in a fearful voice.
"Yes."
"Thank God. I thought you'd been hit. Why don't you read?"
Aladdin's eyes, used to reading in blocks of lines rather than a word ata time, had at one glance taken in the purport of Margaret's letter,and his wits had gone from him. She called herself every base and cruelname, and she prayed her lover to forgive her, but she had never had theright to tell him that she would marry him, for she had never loved himin that way. She said that, God forgive her, she could not keep up thefalse position any longer, and she wished she was dead.
"There's a man at the bottom of this," thought Aladdin. He caught aglimpse of Peter's poor, bloody face and choked.
"I--it--the sheets are mixed," he said presently. "I'm trying to findthe beginning. There are eight pages," he went on, "fighting for time,"and they 're folded all wrong, and they're not numbered or anything."
Peter waited patiently while Aladdin fumbled with the sheets and tried,to the cracking-point, to master the confusion in his mind.
Suddenly God sent light, and he could have laughed aloud. Not in vainhad he pursued the muse and sought after the true romance in the farcountry where she sweeps her skirts beyond the fingers of men. Not invain had he rolled the arduous ink-pots and striven manfully for theright word and the telling phrase. The chance had come, and the years ofpreparation had not been thrown away. He knew that he was going tomake good at last. His throat cleared of itself, and the choking phlegmdisappeared as if before a hot flame of joy. His voice came from betweenhis trembling lips clear as a bell, and the thunder of battle rolledback from the plain of his consciousness, as, slowly, tenderly, andhelped by God, he began to speak those eight closely lined pages whichshe should have written.
"My Heart's Darling--" he began, and there followed a molten stream ofgolden and sacred words.
And the very soul of Manners shouted aloud, for the girl was speaking tohim as she had never spoken before.
XXXIII
When the fighting was over for that day, Aladdin wrote as follows toMargaret:
MARGARET DEAR: Peter was shot down to-day, while doing more than hisduty by his enemies and by his country and by himself, which was alwayshis way. He will not live very long, and you must come to him if itis in any way possible. His love for you makes other loves seem verylittle, and I think it would be better that you should walk the streetsthan that you should refuse to come to him now. He had a letter fromyou, which God, knowing about, blinded him so that he could not read it,and he believes that you love him and are faithful to him. It is verymerciful of God to let him believe that. He must not be undeceived now,and you must come and be lovely to him and pretend and pretend, and makehis dying beautiful. I have the right to ask this of you, for, next toPeter, I was the one that loved you most. And when I made you think Ididn't I lied. I lied because I felt that I was not worthy, and I lovedyou enough to want you to belong to the best man God ever made, and Iloved him too. And that was why it was. I tell you because I think youmust have wondered about it sometimes. But it was very hard to do, andbecause I did it, and because Peter is what he is, you must come to himnow. If God will continue to be merciful, you will get here in time. Ihope I may be on hand to see you, but I do not know. Hamilton is gone,and Peter is going, and there will be a terrible battle to-morrow, andthousands of poor lads will lie on this field forever. And here, one wayor another, the war will be decided. I have not the heart to write toyou any more, my darling. You will come to Peter, I know, and all willbe as well as it can be. I pray to God that I too shall live to see youagain, and I ask him to bless you and keep you for ever and ever. AlwaysI see your dear face before me in the battle, and sometimes at nightGod lets me dream of you. I am without dogma, sweetest of all possiblesweethearts, but this creed I say over and over, and this creed Ibelieve: I believe in one God, Maker of heaven and Margaret.
Angels guard you, darling.
ALADDIN.GETTYSBURG, July 2, 1863.
XXXIV
On the morning of the third day of July, young Hannibal St. John shavedhis face clean and put himself into a new uniform. The old nth Maine wasno longer a regiment, but a name of sufficient glory. On three occasionsit had been shot to pieces, and after the third the remaining tens wereabsorbed by other regiments. Hannibal's father had obtained for hima lieutenancy in the United States artillery, Beau Larch was secondlieutenant in another Maine regiment, and John, the old and honoredcolonel of the nth, was now, like Aladdin, serving on a staff.
The battle began with a movement against Johnson on the Confederateleft, and one against Longstreet on their right.
That against Longstreet became known in history as Farnsworth's charge,and Aladdin saw it from the signal-station on Little Round Top.
It was a series of blue lines, whose relations to one another could notbe justly estimated, because of the wooded nature of the ground, whichran out into open places before fences and woods that spat red fire, andbecame thinner and of less extension, as if they had been made ofwax and were melting under the blaze of the July sun. In that chargeFarnsworth fell and achieved glory.
Aladdin held a field-glass to his eyes with trembling hands, and watchedthe cruel mowing of the blue flowers. Sometimes he recognized a man thathe knew, and saw him die for his country. Three times he saw John St.John in the forefront of the battle. The first time he was riding aglorious black horse, of spirit and proportions to correspond with thoseof the hero himself. The second time he was on foot, running forwardwith a-halt in his stride, hatless, and carrying a great battle-flag.Upon the top of it gleamed a gold eagle, that nodded toward the enemy.A dozen blue-coated soldiers, straggling like the finishers in along-distance race, followed him with bayonets fixed. The little looseknot of men ran across a field toward a stone wall that bounded it uponthe other side. Then white smoke burst from the wall, and they werecut down to the last man. The smoke cleared, and Aladdin saw John lyingabove the great flag which he had carried. A figure in gray leaped thestone wall and ran out to him, stooped, and seizing the staff of theflag in both hands, braced his hands and endeavored to draw it frombeneath the great body of the hero. But it would not come, and as hebent closer to obtain a better hold, the back of a great clenched handstruck him across the jaw, and he fell like a log. Other men in grayleaped the wall and ran out. The flag came easily now, for St. John wasdead; but so was the gray brother, for his comrades raised him, and hishead hung back over his left shoulder, and they saw that his neck hadbeen broken like a dry stick.
Aladdin had not been sent to that place to mourn, but to gaininformation. Twice and three times he wiped his eyes clear of tears, andthen he swept his faltering glass along the lines of the enemy, until,ranged in their center, he beheld a great semicircle of a hundred andmore iron and brass cannons, and movements of troops. Then Aladdinscrambled down from Little Round Top to report what he had seen in thecenter of the Confederate lines.
At one o'clock the Confederate batteries, one hundred and fifteen piecesin all, opened their tremendous fire upon the center of the Union lines.Eighty cannons roared back at them with defiant thunder, and the bluesky became hidden by smoke. Among the Union batteries horses began torun loose, cannons to be splintered like fire-wood, and caissons toexplode. At these moments men, horses, fragments of men and horses,stones, earth, and things living and things dead were hurled high intothe air with great blasts of flame and smoke, and it was possible tohear miles of exultant yells from the hills opposite. But fresh cannonwere brought lumbering up at the gallop and rolled into the places ofthose dismantled, shot and shell and canister and powder were rushedforward from the reserve, and the grim, silent infantry, the greatlumbermen of Maine and Vermont, the shrill-voiced regiments from NewYork, the shrewd farmers of Ohio and Massachusetts, the deliberatePennsylvanians, and the rest, lay closely, wherever there was shelter,and moistened their lips, and gripped their rifles, and waited--waited.
For two hours that terrible cannonading was maintained. The men whoserved the guns looked like stokers of ships, for, such was the heat,many of them, casting away first one piece of clothing and then a
nother,were half naked, and black sweat glistened in streams on their chestsand backs. As sight-seers crowd in eagerly by one door of a buildingwhere there is an exhibition, and come reluctantly out by another and gotheir ways, so the reserves kept pressing to the front, and the woundedmaintained an unceasing reluctant stream to the rear.
A little before three o'clock Hannibal St. John had his right kneesmashed by the exploding of a caisson, and fell behind one of the gunsof his battery. He was so sure that he was to be killed on this daythat it had never occurred to him that he might be trivially wounded andcarried to the rear in safety. An expression of almost comical chagrincame over his face, for life was nothing to him, and somewhere far abovethe smoke a goodly welcome awaited him: that he knew. Men came with astretcher to carry him off, but he cursed them roundly and struggledto his well knee. The cannon behind which he had fallen was about to bedischarged.
"Give 'em hell!" cried Hannibal.
As he spoke, the piece was fired, and leaping back on the recoil, as afrenzied horse that breaks its halter, one of the wheels struck hima terrible blow on the body, breaking all the ribs on that side andkilling him instantly. His face wore a glad smile, and afterward, whenAladdin found him and took the gold locket from his pocket, and read theinscription written, a great wonder seized men:
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