Altsheler, Joseph - [Novel 05]

by A Herald Of The West (lit)

  " Boom! "

  A cannon shot, so close by that it made me jump, rang and echoed through the night, a broad flash of light shooting out at the same instant and quivering on our faces. It came from my right, and I knew in an instant what it was, that the Carolina was beside us in the river and had opened fire on the enemy's position, shown by his watch fires.

  A cannon flashed again, and the report was doubled by the silence of the night. By the vivid blaze I could see the schooner in the river, the black figures of men on her deck, and the muddy Mississippi gleaming for an in stant like gold in the cannon flare. I moved a little nearer that I might see better, and then the whole ship seemed to break into flames as the fire of gun followed gun, while her spare men aided with a steady discharge of rifles. The blaze never ceased now, and the schooner, with the men working at the guns, and the sharpshooters, rifle at shoulder, were always visible to us.

  From the British camp came the answering fire, a mingled discharge of cannon, Congreve rockets, and mus kets, all aimed at the little ship, and the air was filled with the red and blue fire of the rockets and the whizzing of missiles. We expected then the word to advance, but it did not come. I saw again, by the light of the cannon ade, our stern old general walking up and down the line, but he did not say a word. So we looked and listened, and in distant New Orleans a great crowd of old men, women, and children, gathered in the square before the Statehouse, were listening as we listened, though they could not know what we knew, and could onl}' guess in

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  their suspense. They had heard the first shot and seen the far flash of the powder, and there they stood, an ever- increasing crowd, filled with dread.

  We shuffled about in our impatience. It was a hard thing to remain motionless and behold that flashing tem pest, two streams of fire which met halfway and blended and passed almost in front of our faces, though we were out of its course and were yet in the dark. The shouting of men rose and mingled with the crash and rattle of the cannon and rifles, the rockets whizzed and hissed, and the air was full of flame. The ship in the river was a huge core of light, for her crew loaded and fired her guns so fast that their number seemed to double or triple. The rising fog from the river and the smoke of the cannonade added to the night, and made it pitchy dark.

  But through this obscurity the fire of the schooner and the British army cut a road, the rival flames meeting and blending halfway. We shuffled about, impatient at mere looking on, and the army began to talk, but we kept our lines and watched the combat, which was waxing in strength and volume.

  I lost my anxiety for a while in the grandeur of the sight. The men on the boat were no longer our friends human beings but machines working those other machines, the guns. I could see them by the light of the cannon fire, mere shadows of men, a black tracery, Sometimes a few seconds would come between a volley, and the boat would disappear in the darkness, as if the river had swallowed it up; then the cannon would fire and it came back in the centre of the blaze of light as busy and terrible as ever, a live thing that was stinging the British army. There was a great shouting in the British ranks, but on the boat they fought in silence, save the roar of their guns.

  " Forward! "

  It was our general's command, and with a sigh of relief we left the mire and poured into the road which

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  ran along the river bank, right under the fire of our own schooner, which flamed and blazed as it passed over our heads.

  On we went, with only the light of the cannonade to guide us. Suddenly, before us, I saw the dim outline of the fence and something dark in front of it which looked like a ditch. We checked ourselves with involun tary motion, and at the same instant a blinding stream of light flamed in our faces, followed by the rattle of mus kets. Men fell dead in our ranks and others cried aloud in the sudden pain of a wound. By the flash of the musketry I could see the red coats of the English beyond the ditch and fence. We felt that shiver and tremble which comes of a night surprise, and paused a moment be fore the shock of the volley. Then one of our men, a colonel, ran forward and shouted to the enemy:

  " Come out on the open ground and fight like men! "

  Whether any one replied I know not, for we began to fire in our turn, and we poured in a discharge so fast and hot that by its light we saw the English leave their post and run. Then we scrambled over the ditch and fence into their place and found ourselves attacked by a strong force of the enemy, coming to the relief of their beaten comrades. The blackness in front of us seemed to burst into a continuous blaze as hundreds of muskets were fired on us at close range, and the deadly showers of lead beat down our lines. A terrible tumult arose. The death cries, the moans of the wounded, mingled with the com mands of our officers and confused us all. The mus kets continued to flash in our faces and behind us, before us and over us roared the cannonade of the ship and the British camp. We were enveloped in the smoke of our fire and that of our enemies.

  " Confound such night fighting! " shouted Mercer in my ear. " The military treatises ought not to allow it. I may get killed here in the dark and never know it."

  The battle grew hotter and our lines thinner, for our

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  men were falling, but we held our ground. The Ten- nesseeans are a fighting stock, and personal courage and tenacity, not any ordered plan, kept them there, for the rapid fire of our enemies, the shots which seemed to come from every point of the compass, the incessant crackling of the rifles and muskets, the roar of the cannon battle which was going on between the ship and the British, the blackness of the night broken in irregular streaks by the blaze of the firing, made a melee so confused and terrible that one knew nothing but to stand where he was and shoot straight before him at what he saw or did not see.

  My nerves began to quiver. I could not help it, with the roaring and crackling all around me, the alternate blaze of light and the returning darkness, the cries and shouts of which I understood nothing, the thick drifting smoke which stung our eyes and nostrils, and the fall of some dead man against me. Above it all thundered the unceasing cannonade, and looking once at the river I saw that the ship was a tower of light as if she were on fire, though I knew that it was not that, but the unbroken flash of her guns.

  Some one raised a cry that the cannon were coming; the fence was dashed down and over it the gunners rushed with two little field pieces which they brought up with a jerk and turned on the column before us. Glorious little cannon they were! I don't know who made them, and I don't know where they are now, but they were thrice wel come comrades in our little band that night, for when they began to talk with the loud emphatic boom! boom! that a cannon uses when it is angry, the hostile column in front of us began to melt away, their line of fire retreated and sank, and in the alternate light and darkness we told each other how brave we were, and asked who were dead, questions soon interrupted by the tramp of many men and horses and the rolling of cannon. A broad red flare, marking the advance of the red-coated English, appeared through the darkness.

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  " The whole English army's on us! " shouted some one, and it looked as if the truth had been spoken, for they opened such a heavy fire that we were thrown into disorder again and our ranks were riddled. The gunners were shot at the guns, and the long British line, spread ing around our Hanks, beat upon us from three sides. But the men, though confused and unable to hear the orders in the tumult, again showed their courage and constancy and stood firm upon the ground which they had won. The horses attached to our cannon were wounded, and screaming aloud in fright and pain with a scream far wilder and more terrible than that of man, reared and plunged about in the darkness, tearing up the soft earth with their feet. They overturned one of the cannon and it rolled down into the ditch, sinking deep in the mud. The confusion increased, and we knew nothing amid the shouting. A heavy column of the enemy charged down on our flank straight toward the remaining cannon, ben
t upon capturing it. Men knew not what to do, and each began to ask his neighbour evidence of a coming panic. Suddenly the general himself dashed among us, his seamed brown face showing in the battle flare, while he shouted in a voice like the roar of a tempest:

  " Save the guns! Save the guns, my boys! " The men at the guns were marines, trained to fight, and they did not flinch. They leaped down in the ditch, and with brute strength dragged out the cannon and turned it again on the enemy, its comrade assisting. All of us rallied around the general, while re-enforce ments came down the road, rushing to our help; greater re-enforcements arrived for the enemy, though we did not know it then; off from the left came the rolling crash of another battle, as Coffee and his Indian fighters Dirty Shirts we called them because they tramped so far to New Orleans through the mud had opened fire there, and the strong British force was replying. On the horizon

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  we could see the flash of their guns, and the tumult swelled and rolled steadily to our ears. Encouraged, we rushed forward upon the enemy, and they came to meet us. Along a long vague line, winding in the darkness through wood and swamp and over canal, the two armies met and mingled in a battle that was without form or order, man against man, weapon against weapon, the Brit ish with their bayonets, we with clubbed rifles, and many of the Tennesseeans with their long hunting knives. All the wild beast in a man comes out in such a battle as this in the darkness, in the swamp, showers of the slime kicked up by the trampling feet falling back upon you, no orders but to fight and to strike at the man in front of you. Two blind armies locked and writhed in the mud. Sometimes I could see the hot eyes of an enemy gleaming in front of me, but when I struck, the man was gone; again the edge of my sword would meet something, but if I had slain I did not know, and was glad of if. I heard death cries around me, but whether those of friend or enemy no one knew. Bayonet and knife edge flashed in the light of the firing, and steel rang against steel.

  Our stubborn line had met another stubborn line; we refused to give backward, so did they, and through all the tumult we could hear our own officers shouting at us, and theirs to them, to destroy the enemy.

  Thus in the blur of the night and darkness the battle raged back and forth on the moist plain of the delta. I began to laugh, why I knew not, but I felt a wild ex ultation; the British boast might be true that theirs were the best troops in Europe, but we would show them, un trained and half-armed backwoodsmen though we were, that they were not the best troops out of Europe, and maybe not so good.

  I stumbled into the edge of a cypress swamp and fell my full length. I rose covered with the black slime, and as I dabbed at my eyes to clear them some one shouted in my ear:

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  " Give it to the Yankee dogs, comrade! "

  A half dozen British soldiers were around me, and I blessed the black mud which had disfigured me and made them think me one of them. So I, too, shouted with loudness and vigour to give it to the Yankee dogs, and in my zeal to obey my own command I rushed away from them and in a moment was with my rightful comrades again.

  Along our own part of the line the firing had sunk to an intermittent crackle, for it was hand to hand now, and we had no time to reload our pieces. I could hear the dull crash of rifle stock upon human skull and flesh; once something warm and moist flew in my face, and with a shudder of repulsion I wiped it off. The soft mud squirted up under the trampling of heavy feet, the wound ed groaned or cried out, and the men who fought swore and yelled, but above all their voices roared the steady thunder of the cannon.

  There was a sweep in the wild night battle, something that set the blood tingling, though it made one shudder at the same time, t hat carried me on with it. But that great crowd back yonder in New Orleans, in the square before the Statehouse old men, women, and children could feel none of the feeling that swayed us. Theirs was the painful task of waiting, to stand there through the hours and listen to the thunder of the distant battle and watch its blaze, and not know whether friends were losing or winning.

  The battle deepened, and with it the confusion. We made prisoners of our own men, and the British did the like with theirs; in the darkness friend and enemy fought side by side against they knew not whom. The cannon eers, theirs and ours alike, fired in whatever direction the mouths of the guns had been turned when the battle began.

  All this time the fog from the river had been rolling up in dense heavy columns, and now it was banked so 22

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  thickly over the plain on which we fought that the flash of the guns could scarcely clear a way through it. The ship suddenly ceased her fire, and the great core of light that she had made on the river went out. The smoke and fog hung heavier and heavier, and the cry ran along our line to cease firing. It seemed to come from British and American officers both, and like two well-proved an tagonists we fell apart, each seeking his own ground again. It was time to stop, since in the darkness and the min gling of our lines friend was as likely to fight friend as foe, and for that reason the ship had ceased firing, not knowing now whether she was throwing her halls into their army or ours.

  We fell back to our lines, ignorant how many among us had fallen, but elated and full of zeal for the future, for in the wild battle of the night we had fought three times our number of the English and had held them fast; they had not been able to gain an inch; the triumphant parade into New Orleans, of which they had spoken so sanguinely in London, was stopped, and the ready-made and ticketed new government aboard their ships would have to wait a while for something to govern. And the results were even greater than we supposed, for the Brit ish, sanguine at first, victories won before the battle, warned by such a reception, rushed now to the other ex treme, grew cautious, even timid, magnified our forces tenfold, saw armies that did not exist, earthworks that had not been built, and ditches that had not been dug, all of which gave precious time to us, as the Kentuckians long hoped for, almost despaired of, would soon be at hand to swell our numbers.

  I found Mercer and Courtenay, unwounded both, and we threw ourselves upon the muddy ground and sought sleep. The night was cold and a sharp frost formed, but hot with excited blood we did not feel it and slept heavily until awakened to take our turn at the watch. The fires had been lighted and they flared over the plain, across

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  which the fog-banks still rolled. Beside one of the lar gest, with its smoke enveloping them at times, sat Jack son, Carroll, Coffee, and other high officers planning for the morrow. By some lay the wounded, over whom sur geons were working, and by others lay the dead, for whom the grave was waiting. Afar the enemy's camp fires too twinkled through the darkness, but no sounds were heard on the plain save the flowing of the river and the occa sional cry of a wounded man. Later on shots were fired and alarms were sounded, but it was only those restless fellows, the -skirmishers, and the armies settled back and lay still.

  Day came at last, with a sharp white frost covering the ground, and then it was wheelbarrows and shovels; we would intrench where we stood, with the shallow old canal, dug long ago by one Rodriguez, across the plain as our front line, and the enemy should not come a foot nearer the city. Then we went to work digging as we had fought the night before, while another schooner that we had, the Louisiana, came down the river to help her sister, the Carolina, which had done such splendid work already.

  The fog lifted slowly from the plain and revealed the British camp in our front, and" with the light, too, came the people from New Orleans, exulting over the stopping of the enemy, and toiling in the mud with us, even the women handling the shovel and the spade.

  " If they only knew how small our army is they could sweep us out of their way with a well-sustained charge," said Courtenay to me.

  But they did not know, and General Keane, their com mander, was afraid to attack; he was waiting for Paken- ham and re-enforcements who were due now, and we looked hourly for the Kentuckians, who were due too, but d
id not come.

  Shovels and wheelbarrows, wheelbarrows and shovels it was throughout the day, and then some one proposed

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  cotton bales, and these, too, were soon brought and placed in line. Across the plain our intrenchments ran for a mile, and before us the British also were intrenching, placing hogsheads of sugar against our bales of cotton. They were receiving re-enforcements, too, from their ships and were dragging heavy cannon across the delta to reach the Carolina and the Louisiana in the river, which hung on their flank and scorched them with an incessant fire. Not a column could be formed upon the plain in the face of the fire of these terrible schooners, and not a man who worked on their intrenchments was safe for a mo ment from their balls. An entire army of many thousands was besieged by two little schooners carrying scarcely two hundred men. Behind the protecting veil of their fire we worked at our defences and prayed for time, that the Kentuckians might come to our help.

  Those were days of danger, excitement, and, for me, a certain exhilaration too. I had witnessed the great dis grace of Washington, and the spirit here was so different that I thrilled with enthusiasm. I toiled at ditch and breastwork with the rest, and ate with sharp appetite the food which the people of New Orleans brought to us. God bless their Creole souls! We must never forget that in all this time they were among the bravest and most faithful.

  In the British camp they toiled too, tried to devise some shelter from the scorching fire of the schooners, and hastened forward the heavy cannon with which they in tended to destroy them. Christmas morning came, clear, bright, frosty, but not like our snowy holidays of the North, where, even in Kentucky, zero often comes knock ing at your door, and you can draw close to the glowing coals as you drink your eggnog. On that morning some of us scouting and skirmishing heard a great shouting in the British camp, and we thought they must be taking their Christmas very well indeed, but they were rejoicing over the arrival of their commander in chief, General Sir Ed-