 CHAPTER V. OUT ON PICKET. One can hardly imagine a body of men more disconcilate than a regiment suddenly transferred from an adventurous life in the enemy's country to the quiet of a sheltered camp on safe and familiar ground. The men under my command were deeply dejected when on a most appropriate day, the first of April 1863, they found themselves unaccountably recalled from Florida, that region of delights which had seen theirs by right of conquest. My dusky soldiers who based their whole walk and conversations strictly on the ancient Israelites found that the prophecies were all set at naught, and that they were on the wrong side of the Red Sea. Indeed, I fear they regarded even me as a sort of reversed Moses, whose Pizga are fronted in the wrong direction. Had they foreseen how the next occupation of the Promised Land was destined to result, they might have acquiesced with more than their wounded cheerfulness. As it was, we were very glad to receive after a few days of discontented repose on the very ground where we had once been so happy, an order to go out on picket at Port Royal Ferry with the understanding that we might remain there for some time. This picket station was regarded as a sort of military picnic by the regiment stationed at Beaufort, South Carolina. It meant blackberries and oysters, wild roses and magnolias, flowery lanes instead of sandy marins, and a sort of guerrilla existence in place of the camp routine. To the coloured soldiers especially with their love of the country life, and their extensive personal acquaintance on the plantations, it seemed quite like a Christmas festival. Besides, they would be in sight of the enemy, and who knew but their might by the blessing of Providence be a raid or a skirmish. If they could not remain on the St. John's River it was something to dwell on the Cousor. In the end they enjoyed it as much as they expected, and though we went out several times subsequently until it became an old story, the enjoyment never waned. And as even the march from the camp to the picket lines was something that could not possibly have been the same for any white regiment in the service, it is worthwhile to begin at the beginning and to describe it. A regiment ordered on picket was expected to have a rebellion at daybreak, and to be in line for departure by sunrise. This delighted our men, who always took a childlike pleasure in being out of bed at any unreasonable hour, and by the time I had emerged the tents were nearly all struck and the great wagons were lumbering into camp to receive them, with whatever else was to be transported. The first rays of the sun must fall upon the line of these wagons moving away across the wide parade-ground, followed by the column of men who would soon outstrip them. But on the occasion which I especially describe, the sun was shrouded, and when once upon the sandy plain neither camp nor town nor river could be seen in the dimness, and when I rode forward and looked back there was only visible the long moving shadow column, seeming rather awful in its snake-like advance. There was a swaying of flags and multitudinous weapons that might have been camel's necks for all one could see, and the whole thing might have been a caravan upon the desert. Soon we debouched upon the shell road, and the wagon train drew on one side into the fog, and by the time the sun appeared the music ceased and the men took up the root step, and the fun began. The root step is an abandonment of all military strictness, and nothing is required of the men but to keep fore abreast and not lag behind. They are not required to keep step though with the rhythmical ear of our soldiers they almost always instinctively did so. Talking and singing are allowed, and of this privilege at least they eagerly availed themselves. On this day they were at the top of their exhilaration. There was one broad grin from one end of the column to the other. It might have been a caravan of elephants instead of camels, for the ivory and the blackness, the chatter and the laugh to almost drown the tramp of feet, and the clatter of equipments. At crossroads and plantation gates the colored people thronged to see as pass, everyone found a friend and a greeting. How do you do, auntie? How do you find yourself this morning, Titiwissa? Such salutations rang out to everybody, known or unknown. In return, venerable, kerchiefed matrons, curtsied laboriously to everyone, with an unfailing, breasty lord-brother, grave little boys blacker than ink shook hands with our laughing and utterly unimaginable drummers who greeted them with the sure word of prophecy. Pretty mulatto girls, ogled and coquetted, and made eyes, as Thackeray would say, at half the young fellows in the battalion. Meantime the singing was brisk along the whole column, and when I sometimes reigned up to see them pass, the chant of each company entering my ear drove out from the other the ear and strain of the proceeding. Such an odd mixture of things, military and missionary, as the successive waves of song drifted by, first John Brown, of course, then what makes old Satan for follow me so, then marching along, then hold your light on Cain and Shaw, then, when this cruel war is over, a new favourite sung by a few, yielding presently to a grand burst of the favourite marching song among them all, and the one which at every step instinctively quickened so light and jubilant its rhythm. All true children, guine in de-wilderness, guine in de-wilderness, guine in de-wilderness, true believers, guine in de-wilderness, to take de-sins ob-de-world. Ending in a hoi, after each verse, a sort of Irish yell, for all the songs but especially for their own wild hymns, they constantly improvise simple verses with the same odd mingling, the odd little facts of today's march being interwoven with the depths of theological gloom, and the same jubilant chorus annexed all thus. We're gwin to de-ferry, de-bell done ring in, guine to de-landing, de-bell done ring in, trust believer, o de-bell done ring in, Satan's behind me, de-bell done ring in, it is a misty morning, de-bell done ring in, on de-road and sandy, de-bell done ring in, hell bin open, de-bell done ring in, and so on indefinitely. The little drum-core kept in advance, a jolly crew, their drums slung on their backs, and the drumsticks perhaps balanced on their heads. With them went the officer's servant-boys, more uproarious still, always ready to lend their shrill treble to any song. At the head of the whole force they walked by some self-imposed preeminence, a respectable, elderly female, one of the company landrises, who vigorous stride we never could quite overtake, and who had an enormous bundle balanced on her head, while she waved in her hand like a sword, a long-handled tin-dipper. Such a picturesque medley of fun, war, and music, I believe, no white regiment in the service could have shown, and yet there was no straggling, and a single tap of the drum would at any moment bring order out of this seeming chaos. So we marched our seven miles out upon the smooth and shaded road, beneath jasmine clusters, and great pine cones dropping, and great bunches of mistletoes still in bloom among the branches. Arrived at the station, the scene soon became busy and more confused. Wagons were being unloaded, tents pitched, water brought, wood cut, fires made, while the field and staff could take possession of the abandoned quarters of their predecessors, and we could look round in the lovely summer morning to survey our empire and behold our home. The only throughfare by land between Beaufort and Charleston is the Shell Road, a beautiful avenue, which about nine miles from Beaufort strikes a ferry across the Cusaw River. War abolished the ferry, and made the river the permanent barrier between the opposing picket lines. For ten miles right and left these lines extended, marks by well-worn footpaths following the endless windings of the stream, and they never varied until nearly the end of the war. Upon their maintenance depended our whole foothold in the sea islands, and upon that again finally depended the whole campaign of Sherman. But for the services of the Colour Troops, which finally formed the main garrison of the Department of the South, the Great March would never have been performed. There was thus a region ten or twelve miles square of which I had exclusive military command. It was level, but otherwise broken and bewildering to the last degree. No road traversed it, probably speaking, but the Shell Road. All the rest was a wild medley of cypress swamp, pine bar and muddy creek and cultivated plantation, intersected by intermediate lanes and bridal paths, through which we must ride day and night, and which our horses soon knew better than ourselves. The regiment was distributed at different stations, the main force being under my immediate command, at a plantation close by the Shell Road, two miles from the ferry, and seven miles from Beaufort. Our first picket duty was just at that time of the first attack on Charleston, under Du Pont on Hunter, and it was generally supposed that the Confederates would make an effort to recapture the sea islands. My orders were to watch the enemy closely, keep informed as to his position and movements, attempt no advance, and, in case they were attempted from the other side, to delay it as long as possible, sending instant notice to headquarters. As to the delay, that could easily be a guaranteed. There were causeways on the Shell Road, which a single battery could hold against a large force, and the plantations were everywhere so intersected by hedges and dykes that they seemed expressly planned for defense. Although creeks wound in and out everywhere, yet these were only navigable at high tide, and at all times were impassable marshes. There were but a few posts where the enemy were within rifle range, and their occasional attacks at those points were soon stopped by our enforcement of a pithy order from General Hunter. Give them as good as they send. So that with every opportunity for being kept on the alert, there was small prospect of serious danger, and all promised an easy life, with only enough of care to make it pleasant. The picket station was therefore always a coveted post among the regiments, combining some undeniable importance with a kind of relaxation, and as we were there three months on our first tour of duty, and returned there several times afterwards, we got well acquainted with it. The whole region always reminded me of the descriptions of Levennes, and I always expected to meet Henry LaRosch-Jackalyn riding in the woods. How can I ever describe the charm and picturesqueness of that summer life? Our house possessed four spacious rooms and a piazza. Around it were groups sheds and tents. The camp was a little way off on one side, the negro quarters of the plantation on the other, and all was immersed in a dense mass of waving and murmuring locust blossoms. The spring days were always lovely, while the evenings were always conveniently damp, so that we never shut the windows by day, nor emitted our cheerful fire by night. Indoors the main headquarters seemed like a camp of some party of young engineers in time of peace, only with a little female society added, and a good many martial associations thrown in. A large, low, dilapidated room, with an immense fireplace, and with window-panes chiefly broken, so that the sashes were still open even when closed, such was our home. The walls were scratched with capital charcoal sketches by Ar of the fourth New Hampshire, and with a good map of the island and its wood paths by sea of the first Massachusetts cavalry. The room had the picturesqueness which comes everywhere from the natural grouping of articles of daily use, swords, belts, pistols, rifles, field glasses, spurs, canteens, gauntlets. While wreaths of gray moss above the windows, and a pelican's wing three feet long over the high mantle piece, indicated more deliberate decoration. This and the whole atmosphere of the place spoke of the refining presence of agreeable women, and it was pleasant when they held their little court in the evening, and pleasant all day with the different visitors who were always streaming in and out. Officers and soldiers on various business turbaned women from the plantations, coming with complaints or questionings, fugitives from the mainland to be interrogated, visitors riding up on horseback, their hands full of jasmine and wild roses, and the sweet sunny air all perfumed with magnolias and the southern pine. From the neighbouring camp there was a perpetual low hum, louder voices and laughter re-echoed amid the sharp sounds of the axe from the pine woods, and sometimes when the relieved pickets were discharging their pieces, there came the hollow sound of dropping rifle shots as in skirmishing, perhaps the most unmistakable and fascinating association that wore bequeaths to the memory of the year. And domestic arrangements were of the oddest description. From the time when we began housekeeping by taking down the front door to complete herewith a little office for the surgeon on the piazza, everything seemed upside down. I slept on a shelf in the corner of the parlour, bequeathed me by a major F, my jovial predecessor, and if I waked at any time, could put my head through the broken window, arouse my orderly, and ride off to see if I could catch a picket to sleep. We used to spell the word P-I-C-Q-U-E-T, because that was understood to be the correct thing in that department at least, and they used to say at the post headquarters that as soon as the officer in command of the outpost grew negligent and was guilty of a K, he was ordered in immediately. Then the arrangements for the ablution were peculiar. We fitted up a bathing place in a brook, which somehow got appropriated at once by the company Laundresses, but I had my revenge, for I took to bathing in the family wash tub. After all, however the kitchen department had their advantage for they used my solitary napkin to wipe the mess table. As for food, we found it impossible to get chickens, save in the immature shape of eggs. Fresh pork was prohibited by the surgeon, and other fresh meat came rarely. We could indeed hunt for wild turkeys and even deer, but such hunting was found only to increase the appetite without corresponding supply. Still we had our luxuries, large delicious drumfish and alligator steaks, like a more substantial fried halibut, which might have afforded the theme for Charles Lamb's dissertation on roast pig, and by whose aid, for the first time in our lives, we tasted crackling. The post-bakery yielded amourable red, and for vegetables and fruit we had a very poor sweet potatoes, and in their season an unlimited supply of the largest blackberries. For beverage we had the vapid milk of that region, in which if you let it stand the water sinks instead of the cream rising, and the delicious sugar cane syrup, which we had brought from Florida, and which we drank at all hours. Old Floridoreans say that no one is justified in drinking whiskey, while he can get cane juice. It is sweet and spirited, without cloying, foams like ale, and they were little spots on the ceiling of the dining room where our lively beverage had popped out its cork. We kept it in a whiskey bottle, and as whiskey itself was absolutely prohibited among us, it was amusing to see the surprise of our military visitors when this innocent substitute was brought in. They usually liked it in the end, but like the old French woman over a glass of water wished that it were a sin to give it a relish. As the foaming beakers of molasses and water were handed round, the guests would make with them the courteous little gestures of polite imbibing, and would then quaff the beverage, some with gusto, others with the slight afterlook of dismay, but it was a delicious and cooling drink while it lasted, and at all events was the best and the worst we had. We used to have rivelli at six, and breakfast about seven. Then the mounted couriers began to arrive from a dozen different locations with written reports of what had happened during the night. A boat scene, a picket fired upon, a battery erecting. These must be consolidated and forwarded to the headquarters with the daily report of the command. So many sick, so many detached service, and all the rest. This was our morning newspaper, our Herald and Tribune. I never got tired of it. Then the couriers must be furnished with counter-sign and instructions and sent off again. Then we scattered to our various rides, all disguised as duty, one to inspect the pickets, one to visit a sick soldier, one to build a bridge or clear a road, and still another to headquarters for ammunition or commissary stores. Galloping through green lanes, miles of triumphal arches of wild roses, roses pale and large and fragrant, mingled with great boughs of the white Cornell, fantastic masses of showy surprises. Such were our rides, ranging from eight to fifteen and even twenty miles. Back to a late dinner with our various experiences, and perhaps specimens to match. A thundersnake, eight feet long, a live opossum, with a young clinging to it a natural pouch, an armful of great white, centeless pond lilies. After dinner to the tangled garden for the rose buds or early magnolias whose clawing fragrance will always bring back to me the full zest of those summer days. Then dress parade, and a little drill as the day grew cool. In the evening tea and then the piazza or the fireside, as the case might be, chess, cards, perhaps a little music by aid of the assistant surgeon's melodian, a few pages of Jean-Paul's Titan, almost my only book, and carefully husband it, perhaps a male with its infinite felicities. Such was our day. Night brought its own fascinations, more solitary and profound. The darker they were, the more clearly it was our duty to visit the pickets. The paths that had grown so familiar by day seemed a wholly new labyrinth by night, and every added shade of darkness seemed to shift and complicate them all anew, till at last man's skill grew utterly baffled, and the clue must be left to the instinct of the horse. Riding beneath the solemn starlight, or by soft gray mist, or dense his blackness, the frogs croaking, the strange Chukwat's widow droning his ominous note above my head, the mockingbird dreaming in music, the great southern fireflies rising to the treetops, or hovering close to the ground like glowworms, till the horse raised his hooves to avoid them, then pine woods and cypress swamps, or past solemn brooks, or white tents, or the dimly seen huts of sleeping negroes, down to the glimmering shore where black statues leaned against trees or stood alert in the pathways. Never, in all the days of my life, shall I forget the magic of those haunted nights. We had nocturnal boat service, too, for it was a part of our instructions to obtain all possible information about the enemy's position, and we accordingly, as usually in such cases, incurred a great many risks that harmed nobody and picked up much information, which did nobody any good. The center of these nightly reconnaissance is for a long time was the wreck of the George Washington, the story of whose disaster is perhaps worth telling. Tell about the time when we went on picket, it had been the occasional habit of the smaller gunboats to make the circuit of Port Royal Island, a practice which seemed very essential to the safety of our position, but which the rebels effectively stopped a few days after our arrival by destroying the army gunboat George Washington with a single shot from a light battery. I was roused soon after daybreak by the firing, and a courier soon came dashing in with the particulars. Forwarding these hastily to Beaufort, for we had then no telegraph, I was soon at the scene of action five miles away. Approaching, I met on the picket paths man after man who had escaped from the wreck across half a mile of almost impassable marsh. Never did I see such objects, some stripped to their shirts, some fully clothed, but all having every garment literally pasted to their bodies with mud. Across the river the rebels were retiring having done their work, but were still shelling from greater and greater distances the wood through which I rode. I arrived at the spot near as the wreck, a point opposite to what we called the brickyard station. I saw the burning vessel aground beyond a long stretch of marsh, out of which the forlorn creatures were still flandering. Here and there in the mud and reeds we could see the laboring heads slowly advancing, and could hear excruciating cries from the wounded men in the more distant depths. It was the strangest mixture of war and dante and romids and cruso. Our energetic chaplain coming up, I sent him with four men under a flag of truce to the place whence the worst cries proceeded, while I went to another part of the marsh. During that morning we got them all out, our last achievement being the rescue of the pilot, an immense negro with a wooden leg, an article so particularly unavailable for mud travelling that it would have almost seen better as one of the men suggested to cut the traces and leave it behind. A naval gunboat too, which had originally accompanied this vessel and should never have left it, now came back and took off the survivors, though there had been several deaths from the scouting and shell. It proved that the wreck was not aground after all, but to anchor, having foolishly lingered till after daybreak and having thus given time for the enemy to bring down their guns. The first shot had struck the boiler and set the vessel on fire, after which the officer in command had raised the white flag and then escaped with his men to our shore, and it was for this flight in the wrong direction that they were shelled in the marshes by the rebels. The case furnished in this respect some parallel to that of the Chrissage in Alabama, where it was afterwards cited, I believe, officially or unofficially, to show that the rebels had claimed the right to punish, in this case, the course of action which they approved in the SEMS. I know that they always asserted henceforward that the detachment on board the George Washington had become rightful prisoners of war and were justly fired upon when they tried to escape. This was at the time of the first attack on Charleston, and the noise of this cannonading spread rapidly thither, and brought four regiments to reinforce Beaufort in a hurry, under the impression that the town was already taken, and that they must save what remnants they could. General Saxton, too, had made such capital plans for defending the post that he could not bear to have it attacked, so while the rebels brought down a force to keep us from taking the guns off the wreck, I was also supplied with the section or two of regular artillery and some additional infantry, with which to keep them from it, and we tried to make believe very hard and rival the Charleston expedition on our own island. Indeed, our affair came to about as much, nearly nothing, and lasted decidedly longer, for both sides nibbled away at the guns by night for weeks afterwards, though I believe the mud finally got them, at least we did not. We tried in vain to get the use of a steamboat or floating derrick of any kind, for it needed more mechanical ingenuity than we possessed to transfer anything so heavy to our small boats by night, while by day we did not go near the wreck in anything larger than a dugout. One of these nocturnal visits to the wreck I recall with particular gusto, because it brought back that contest with guitar and coughing among my own warriors, which had so ludicrously beset me in Florida. It was always fascinating to be on those forbidden waters by night, stealing out with muffled oars through the creeks and reeds, our eyes always strained for other voyages, areas listening breathlessly to all the marsh sounds, blackfish splashing, and little wakened reed birds that fled wailing away over the dim river, equally safe on either side. But it always appeared to the watchful senses that we were making noise enough to be heard at formed Sumter, and somehow the victims of guitar seemed always the most eager for any enterprise requiring peculiar caution. In this case I thought I had sifted them beforehand, but as soon as we were afloat one poor boy near me began to wheeze, and I turned upon him in exasperation. He saw his danger and meekly said, I won't cough, Gunnell, and he kept his word. For two mortal hours he sat grasping his gun with never a chirrup, but two unfortunates in the bow of the boat developed symptoms which I could not suppress. So, putting in at a picket station with some risk, I dumped them in mud knee deep and embarked to substitute, who after the first five minutes absolutely coughed louder than both of the others united. Hankerchiefs, blankets, overcoats, suffocation in its diarist forms, we tried in vain, but apparently the rebel pickets slept through it all, and we explored the wreck in safety. I think they were asleep, for certainly across the level marshes there came a nasal sound, as of the confifery in its slumbers. It may have been a bullfrog, but it sounded like a human snore. Picket life was, of course, the place to fill the charm of natural beauty on the sea islands. We had a world of profuse entangled vegetation around us, such as would have been a dream of delight to me, but for the constant sense of responsibility and care which came between. Amid this preoccupation, nature seemed but a mirage, and not the close and intimate associate I had known before. I pressed no flowers, collected no insects or birds eggs, made no notes on natural objects, reversing in these respects all previous habits. Yet now, in the retrospect, there seems to have been infused into me through every pore the voluptuous charm of the season and the place, and the slightest corresponding sound or odour now calls back the memory of those delicious days. Before being on picket, at almost every season, I tasted the sensations of all, and though I hardly then thought of such a result, the associations of beauty will remain forever. In February, for instance, though this was during a later period of picket service, the woods were usually draped with that net of shining haze which marks our northern may, and the house was embelloured in wild plum blossoms, small, white, profuse and tenanted by murmuring bees. There were peach blossoms too, and the yellow jasmine was opening its multitudinous buds, climbing all over the trees and waving from bow to bow. There were fresh young ferns and white blood root in the edges of the woods, matched by snow drops in the garden, beneath budded myrtle and petysporum. In the wilderness the birds were busy, the two main songsters being the mockingbird and the cardinal grosspeak, which monopolised all the parts of our more varied northern orchestra save the tender and liquid notes which in South Carolina seemed unattempted except by some stray bluebird. Jays were as loud and busy as at the North in autumn. There were sparrows and wrens, and sometimes I noticed the shy and Windsor-Bagel chewing. From this early spring time onward there seemed no great difference in atmospheric sensations and only a succession of bloom. After two months one's notions of the season grew bewildered, just as at the very early rising bewildered is the day. In the army one is perhaps roused after a bivouac, marches before daybreak, halts, fights, somebody's killed, a long day's life has been lived, and after all it is not seven o'clock and breakfast is not ready. So when we had lived in summer so long as hardly to remember winter it suddenly occurred to us that it was not yet June. One escapes at the south that mixture of hunger and avarice which is felt in the northern summer counting each hour's joy with the sad consciousness that an hour is gone. The compensating loss is in missing those soft sweet liquid sensations of the northern spring that burst of life and joy, those days of heaven that even April brings. And this absence of childhood in the year creates a feeling of hardness in the season, like that I have suggested in the melody of the southern birds. It seemed to me also that the woods had not those pure, clean, innocent odours which so abound in the New England forest in early spring, but there was something luscious, voluptuous, almost oppressively fragrant about the magnolias as if they belong not to heebie but to magnolin. Such immense and lustrous butterflies I had never seen but in my dreams and not even dreams have prepared me for the sandflies. Almost too small to be seen they inflicted a bite which appeared larger than themselves, a positive wound, more torturing than that of a mosquito and leaving more annoyance behind. These tormentors elevated dress parade into the dignity of a military engagement. I had to stand motionless with my head a mere nebula of winged atoms while tears rolled profusely down my face from mere muscular irritation. Had I stirred a finger the whole battalion would have been slapping its cheek. Such enemies were, however, a valuable aid to discipline on the whole as they abounded in the guardhouse and made that institution an object of unusual abhorrence among the men. The presence of ladies and the home-like air of everything made the picket station a very popular resort while we were there. It was the one agreeable ride from Beaufort and we often had a dozen people unexpectedly to dinner. On such occasions there was sometimes mounting in hot haste and in eager search among the outlying plantations for additional chickens and eggs or through the company kitchens for some of those villainous tin cans which everywhere marked the progress of our army. In those cans, so far as my observation went, all fruit relapsed into a common ass-sidulation and all meats into a similarity of tastelessness while the condensed milk was best described by the men who often unconsciously stumbled on a better joke than they knew and always spoke of it as condemned milk. We had our own excursions, too, to the Barnwell Plantations with their beautiful avenues and great live oaks. The perfection of Southern Muti to Hawes Island, debatable ground, close to the enemy's fire, where half-wild cattle were to be shot under military precautions like Scottish moss-trooping or to the ferry where it was fascinating to the female mind to scan the rebel pickets through a field-glass. Our horses liked the by-ways far better than the level hardness of the shell-road, especially those we had brought from Florida which enjoyed the wildness as they had belonged to Marion's men. They delighted to feel the long-sedge brush their flanks or to gallop down the narrow wood paths leaping the fallen trees and scaring the bright little lizards which shot across our track like live rays broken from the sunbeams. We had an abundance of horses, mostly captured, and left in our hands by some convenient delay of the post-Quartermaster. We had also two side-saddles, which, not being munitions of war, could not properly, as we explained, be transferred like other captured articles to the General's stock, otherwise the PQM, a married man, would have showed no unnecessary delay in their case. For miscellaneous accommodation there was not an ambulance that most in the esteemable of army conveniences equally ready to carry the merry to a feast or the wounded from a fray. Ambulance was one of those words rather numerous which Ethiopian lips were not framed by nature to articulate. Only the highest stages of coloured culture could compass it. On the tongue of many it was transformed mystically as amulet or ambitiously as epulet, or in culinary fashion as omelet. But it was our experience that an ambulance under any name jolted equally hard. Besides these diversements we had more laborious vocations, a good deal of fatigue and genuine through small alarms. The men went on duty every third day at furthest and the officers nearly as often, most of the tours of duty lasting 24 hours, though the stream was considered to watch itself tolerably well by daylight. This kind of responsibility suited the men and we had already found as the whole army afterwards acknowledged that the constitutional watchfulness and distrustfulness of the coloured race made them admirable sentinels. Soon after we went on picket the commanding general sent an aide with a cavalry escort to visit all the stations without my knowledge. They spent the whole night and the officer reported that he could not get within 30 yards of any post without a challenge. This was a pleasant assurance for me since our position seemed so secure compared with Jacksonville and that I had feared some relaxation of vigilance, while yet the safety of all depended on our thorough discharge of duty. Jacksonville had also seasoned the men so well that they were no longer nervous and did not waste much powder on false alarms. The rebels made no formal attacks and rarely attempted to capture pickets. Sometimes they came stealing through the creeks in dugouts as we did on their side of the water and occasionally an officer of ours was fired upon while making his rounds by night. Often some boat or scrowl would go adrift and sometimes a mere dark mass of riverweed would be floated by the tide past the successive stations eliciting a challenge and perhaps a shot from each. I remember the vivid way in which one of the men stated to his officer the manner in which a faithful picket should do his duty after challenging in case a boat came in sight. First thing I shoot and then I shoot and then I shoot again then I creep creep up near deep sea near de boat and see who day him in them and suppose anybody pop up to head then I shoot again. Suppose I fire my 40 rounds I think he here at de camp and send more mans. Which seemed a reasonable presumption. The soldier's name was Paul Jones a daring fellow quite worthy of his namesake. In time however they learned quieter methods and would wade out far in the water. They are standing motionless at last hoping to surround and capture these floating boats. Though to their great disappointment the prize usually proved empty. On one occasion they tried a still profounder strategy for an officer visiting the pickets after midnight and hearing in the stillness a potential snore from the end of the causeway our most important station straight away hurried to the point of danger with wrath in his soul. But the sergeant of the squad came out to meet him imploring silence and explaining that they had seen or suspected about hovering near and were feigning sleep in order to lure and capture those who would entrap them. The one military performance of the picket station of which my men were utterly intolerant was an occasional flag of truce for which this was appointed locality. These farces for which it was our duty to furnish the stock actors always struck them as being utterly despicable and unworthy the serious business of war. They felt I suppose what Mr Pickwick felt when he heard that his council remarked to the council for the plaintiff that it was a very fine morning. It goaded their souls to see the young officers from the two opposing armies salute each other courteously and interchange cigars. They despised the object of such negotiations which was usually to send over to the enemy some family of rebel women who had made themselves quite intolerable on our side but were not above collecting a subscription among the union officers before departure to replenish their wardrobes. The men never showed disrespect to these women by word or deed but they hated them from the bottom of their souls. Besides there was a grievance behind all this. The rebel order remained unrevoked which consigned the new coloured troops and their officers to a felons death if captured and we all felt that we fought with ropes around our necks. There's no flags or truce for us the men would contemptuously say When Desercese fight defer south for South Carolina he fight in earnest. Indeed I myself took it as rather a compliment when the commander on the other side though an old acquaintance of mine in Massachusetts and in Kansas at first refused to negotiate through me or my officers. A refusal which was kept up greatly to the enemy's inconvenience until our men finally captured some of the opposing pickets and their friends had to wave all scruples in order to send them supplies. After this there was no trouble and I think that the first rebel officer in South Carolina who officially met any officer of coloured troops under a flag of truce was Captain John C. Calhoun. In Florida we had been so recognised long before but that was when they wished to frighten us out of Jacksonville. Such was our life on picket at Port Royal a thing whose memory is now fast melting into such stuff as dreams are made of. We stayed there more than two months at that time the first attack on Charleston exploded with one path and had its end. General Hunter was ordered north and the busy Gilmore reigned in his stead. And in June when the Blackberries were all eaten we were summoned. Nothing loathed to other scenes and encampments new. Yes. That was a pleasant life on picket. In the delicious early summer of the south and among the endless flowery forests of that blossoming isle. In retrospect I seemed to see myself adrift on a horse's back amid a sea of roses. The various outposts were within a six mile radius and it was a long delightful gallop day and night. I found a faint impression that the moon shone steadily every night for two months and yet I remember certain periods of such dense darkness that in riding through the wood paths it was really unsafe to go beyond a walk for a fear of branches above and roots below. And one of my officers was once shot at by a rebel scout who stood unperceived at his horse's bridle. To those doing outpost duty on an island however large the mainland has all the fascination of forbidden fruit and on a scale bounded only by the horizon. Emerson says that every house looks ideal until we enter it and it is certainly so if it be just the other side of those hostile lines. Every grove in that blue distance appears enchanted ground and yonder loitering grey-black leading his horse to water in the furthest distance makes one thrill with a desire to hail him, to shoot at him, to capture him, to do anything to bridge this inexorable dumb space that lies between. A boyish feeling no doubt and one that time diminishes without a facing yet it is a feeling which lies at the bottom of many rash actions in war and of some brilliant ones. For one I could never quite outgrow it though restricted by duty from doing many foolish things in consequence and also restrained by reverence for certain confidential advisors whom I had always at hand and who considered it their mission to keep me always on short rations of personal adventure. Indeed most of that part of entertainment in the army devolves upon scouts detailed for the purpose, volunteer aged to camp and newspaper reporters, other officers being expected to be about business more prosaic. All of the excitement of war are quadrupled by darkness and as I rode along our outer lines at night and watched the glimmering flames which at regular intervals starred the opposite river shore the longing was irresistible to cross the barrier of dusk and see whether it were men or ghosts who hovered round those dying embers. I had yielded to these impulses in boat adventures by night for it was a part of my instructions to obtain all possible information about the rebel outposts and fascinating indeed it was to glide along noiselessly paddling with a dusky guide through the endless intricacies of those southern marshes scaring the reed birds which wailed and fled away into the darkness and penetrating several miles into the ulterior between hostile fires where discovery might be death. Yet there were drawbacks as to these enterprises since it is not easy for a boat to cross still water even on the darkest night without being seen by watchful eyes and moreover the extremes of high and low tide transform so completely the whole condition of those rivers that it seems very nice calculation to do one's work at precisely the right tune. To vary the experiment I had often thought of trying a personal reconnaissance by swimming at a certain point whenever circumstances whenever circumstances should make it an object. The opportunity at last arrived and I shall never forget the glee with which after several postponements I finally rode forth a little before midnight on a night which seemed made for the purpose. I had of course kept my own secret and was entirely alone. The great southern fireflies were out not haunting the low ground merely like ours but rising to the loftiest treetops with weird illumination and a non-hovering solo that my horse often stepped higher to avoid them. The dewy Cherokee roses brushed my face, the solemn Chuck Will's widow croaked her in countation and the rabbits raised phantom-like across the shadowy road. Slowly in the darkness I followed the well-known path to the spot where our most advanced outposts were stationed holding a causeway which thrust itself out far across the separating river thus fronting a similar causeway on the other side while a channel of perhaps three hundred yards once traversed by a ferryboat rolled between. At low tide this channel was the whole river and the broad oozy marshes on each side at high tide the marshes were submerged and the stream was a mile wide. This was the point which I had selected. To ascertain the numbers and position of the picket on the opposite causeway was my first object as it was a matter on which no two of our officers agreed. To this point therefore I rode and dismounting after being duly challenged by the sentinel at the causeway head walked down the long and lonely path. The tide was well up, though still on the flood as I desired and each visible tuft of marsh grass might but for its motionless have been a prowling boat. Dark as the night had appeared the water was pale smooth and phosphorescent and I remember that the phrase wan water so familiar in the Scottish ballads struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate though its real meaning is quite different. A gentle breeze for which I had hoped for a ripple had utterly died away and it was a warm breathless southern night. There was no sound but for the faint swash of the coming tide the noises of the reed birds in the marshes and the occasional leap of a fish and it seemed to my overstrained ears as if every footstep of my own must be heard for miles. However I could have no more postponements and the thing must be tried now or never. Reaching the farther end of the causeway I found my men couched like black statues behind the slight earthwork they had constructed. I expected that my proposed immersion would rather bewilder them but knew that they would say nothing as usual. As for the lieutenant on that post he was a steady matter of fact perfectly disciplined Englishman who wore a Crimean medal and never asked a superfluous question in his life. If I had casually remarked to him Mr Hooper the general has ordered me on a brief personal reconnaissance to the planet Jupiter and I wish you to take care of my watch lest it should be damaged by the procession of the equinoxes. He would have responded with a brief. All right sir and a quick military gesture and have put the thing in his pocket. As it was I simply gave him the watch and remarked that I was going for a swim. I do not remember ever to have experienced a greater sense of exhilaration than when I slipped noiselessly into that placid water and struck out on the smooth eddy incurrent for the opposite shore. The night was so still and lovely my black statues look so dreamlike at their posts behind the low earthwork the opposite arm of the causeway stretched so invitingly from the rebel main the horizon glimmered so low around me for it always appears lower to a swimmer than even to an oarsman but I seemed floating in such concave globe some magical crystal of which I was in the enchanted center. With each little ripple of my steady progress all things hovered and changed the stars danced and knotted above where the stars ended the great southern fireflies began and closer than the fireflies they clung round me a halo of phosphorescent sparkles from the soft salt water. Had I told any one of my purpose I should have had warnings and remonstrances enough. The few Negroes who did not believe in alligators believed in sharks. The skeptics as to sharks were orthodox in respect to alligators while those who rejected both had private prejudices as to snapping turtles. The surgeon would have threatened intermittent fever the first assistant rheumatism and the second assistant congestive chills non-swimmers would have predicted exhaustion and swimmers cramp and all of this before coming within bullet range of any hostilities on the other shore. As I knew the folly of most alarms about reptiles and fishes man's imagination peoples the water with many things which do not belong there or prefer to keep out of his way if they do fevers and congestions were the surgeon's business and I always kept people to their own department cramp and exhaustion were dangers I could measure as I had often done bullets were a more substantial danger and I must take the chance if a loon could dive at the flash why not I if I will once assure I should have to cope with the rebels on their own ground which they knew better than I but the water was my ground where I too had been at home from boyhood I swam as swiftly and softly as I could although it seemed as if the water never had been so still before it appeared impossible that anything uncanny should hide beneath that lovely mirror and yet when some floating wisp of reed suddenly called itself around my neck or some unknown thing drifting deeper coldly touch my foot it caused that undefinable shudder which every swimmer knows and which especially comes over one at night sometimes a slight sip of brackish water would enter my lips for I naturally tried to swim as low as possible and then would follow a slight gasping and contest against choking that seemed to me a perfect convulsion for I suppose the tendency to choke and sneeze is always enhanced by the circumstances that one's life may depend on keeping still just as yawning becomes irresistible where to yawn would be social ruin and just as one is sure to sleep in a church if one sits in a conspicuous spew at other times my unguarded motion would create a splashing which seemed in the tension of my senses to be loud enough to be heard at Richmond although it really mattered not since there are fishes in those rivers which make as much noise on special occasions as if they were misguided young whales as I drew near the opposite shore the dark causeway projected more and more distinctly to my fancy at least and I swam more softly still utterly uncertain as to how far in the stillness of air and water my phosphorescent course could be traced by eye or ear a slight ripple would have saved me from observation I was more than ever sure and I would have whistled for a fair wind as eagerly as any sailor but that my breath was worth to me more than anything it was likely to bring the water became smoother and smoother and nothing broke the dim surface except a few clumps of rushes and my unfortunate head the outside of this member gradually assumed to its inside a gigantic magnitude it had always annoyed me at the Hatter's from a merely animal's bigness with no consummate contents to show for it and now I detested it more than ever a physical feeling of turgisance and congestion in that region such as swimmers often feel probably increased the impression I thought with envy of the Aztec children of the headless horsemen of sleepy hollow of saint somebody with his head tucked under his arm Plotinus was less ashamed of his whole body than I of this inconsiderate and stupid appendage to be sure I might swim for a certain distance underwater but that accomplishment I'd reserved for a retreat for I knew that the longer I stayed down the more surely I should have to snort like a walrus when I came up again and to approach an enemy with such a demonstration was not to be thought of suddenly a dog barked we had certain information that a pack of hounds was kept at a rebel station a few miles off on purpose to hunt runaways and I had heard from the negro's almost fabulous accounts of the instinct of these animals I knew that although water baffled their scent they yet could recognize in some manner the approach of any person across the water as readily as by land and the vigilance of all dogs by night every traveler among southern plantations has ample demonstration I was now so near that I could dimly see the figures of men moving to and fro upon the end of the causeway and could hear the dull knock when one struck his foot against a piece of limba as my first object was to ascertain whether there were sentinels at that time at that precise point I saw that I was approaching the end of my experiment could I have once reached the causeway unnoticed I could have lurked in the water beneath its projecting timbers and perhaps made my way along the main shore as I had known fugitive slaves to do while coming from that side or had there been any ripple on the water to confuse the aroused and watchful eyes I could have made a circuit and approach the causeway at another point though I had already satisfied myself that there was only a narrow channel on each side of it even at high tide and not as on our side a broad expanse of water indeed this knowledge alone was worth all the trouble I had taken and to attempt much more than this in the face of a curiosity already roused would have been a waste of future opportunities I could try again with the benefit of this new knowledge on a point where the statements of the negroes had always been contradictory resolving however to continue the observation a little longer since the water felt much warmer than I had expected and there was no sense of chill or fatigue I grasped at some wisps of straw or rushes that floated nearby gathering them around my face a little and then drifting nearer the wharf in what seemed a sort of eddy was able without creating further alarm to make some additional observations on points which it is not best now to particularize then turning my back upon the mysterious shore which had thus far lured me I sank slowly below the surface and swam as far as I could underwater during this unseen retreat I heard of course all manner of gurglings and hollow reverberations that could fancy as many rifle shots as I pleased but on rising to the surface all seemed quiet and even I did not create as much noise as I should have expected I was now at a safe distance since the enemy were always cheery of showing their boats and always tried to convince us they had none what with the absorbed attention first and this submersion afterwards I'd lost all my bearings but the stars having been long out of sight of my original point of departure however the difficulties of the return were nothing making a slight allowance for the flood tide which could not yet have turned I should soon regain the place I had left so I struck out freshly against the smooth water feeling just a little stiffened by the exertion and with the occasional chill running up the back of my neck but with no nips from sharks no nudges from alligators and not a symptom of the fever and arg time I could not of course measure one never can in a novel position but after a reasonable amount of swimming I began to look with a natural interest for the pier which I had quitted I noticed with some solicitude that the woods along the friendly shore made one continuous shadow and that the line of low bushes on the long causeway could scarcely be relieved against them yet I knew where they ought to be and the more doubtful I felt about it the more I put down my doubts as if they were unreasonable children one can scarcely conceive of the alteration made in familiar objects by bringing the eyes low as the horizon especially by night to distinguish the foreshortening is impossible and every low near object is equivalent to one higher and more remote still I had the stars and soon my eye more practiced was enabled to select one precise line of bushes as that which marked the causeway and for which I must direct my course as I swam steadily but with some sense of fatigue towards this phantom line I found it difficult to keep my faith steady and my progress true everything appeared to shift and waver in the uncertain light the distant trees seemed not trees but bushes and the bushes seem not exactly bushes but might after all be distant trees could I be so confident that out of all this low stretch of shore I could select the one precise point where the friendly causeway stretched its long arm to receive me from the water how easily some tempter whispered at my ear might once swerve a little on either side and be compelled to flounder over half a mile of oozy marsh on a nebbing tide before reaching our own shore and that hospitable volley of bullets with which it would probably greet me had I not already thus the tempter continued been swimming rather unaccountably far supposing me on a straight track for that inviting spot where my sentinels and my drapery were awaiting my return suddenly I felt a sensation of fine ribbons drawn softly across my person and I found myself among some rushes but what business had rushes there or I among them I knew that there was not a solitary spot of shoal in the deep channel where I suppose myself swimming and it was plain in an instant that I had somehow missed my course I must be getting among the marshes I felt confident to be sure that I could not have widely aired but was guiding my course for the proper side of the river but whether I drifted above or below the causeway I had not the slightest clue to tell I pushed steadily forward with some increasing sense of lassitude passing one marshy islet after another all seeming strangely out of place and sometimes just reaching out with my foot a soft tremulous shoal which gave scarce the shadow of a support though even that shadow rested my feet at one of these moments of stillness it suddenly occurred to my perception what nothing but this slight contact could have assured me in the darkness but I was in a powerful current and that this current set the wrong way instantly a flood of new intelligence came either I had unconsciously turned and was rapidly nearing the rebel shore a suspicion which with a glance at the stars corrected or else it was the tide itself which had turned and which was sweeping me down the river with all its force and was also sucking away at every moment the narrowing water from that treacherous expanse of mud out of whose horrible my re-embrace I had lately helped to rescue a shipwrecked crew either alternative was rather formidable I can distinctly remember that for about one half minute the whole vast universe appeared to swim in the same watery uncertainty in which I floated I began to doubt everything to distrust the stars the line of low bushes for which I was weirdly striving the very land on which they grew if such visionary things could be rooted anywhere doubts trembled in my mind like the water and that awful sensation of having one's feet unsupported which benumbs the spent swimmer's heart seemed to clutch at mine though not yet to enter it I was more absorbed in that singular sensation of nightmare such as the one may feel equally when one lost by land or by water as if one's own position were all right but the place looked for had been somehow preternaturally abolished out of the universe at best might not a man in the water lose all his power of direction and so move in an endless circle until he sank exhausted it required a deliberate and conscious effort to keep my brain quite cool I had not the reputation of being of an excitable temperament but the contrary yet I could at that moment see my way to a condition in which one might become insane in an instant it was as if a fissure opened somewhere and I saw my way into a madhouse then it closed and everything went on as before once in my life I had obtained a slight glimpse of the same sensation and then too strangely enough while swimming in the mightiest ocean surging to which I had ever dared plunge my mortal body Keats hints at the same sudden emotion in a wild poem written among the Scottish mountains it was not the distinctive sensation which drowning men are said to have that spasmodic passing in review of one's whole personal history I had no well-defined anxiety felt no fear was moved to no prayer did not give a thought to home or friends only it swept over me as with the sudden tempest that if I meant to get back to my own camp I must keep my wits about me I must not dwell on any other alternative any more than a boy who climbs a precipice must look down imagination had no business here that way madness lay there was a shore somewhere before me and I must get to it by the ordinary means before the ebb laid bare the flats or swept me below the lower bends of the stream that was all suddenly a light gleamed for an instant before me as if from a house in a grove of great trees upon a bank and I knew that it must come from the window of a ruined plantation building where our most advanced outposts had their headquarters the flash revealed to me every point of the situation I saw it once where I was and how I got there and the tide had turned while I was swimming and with a much briefer interval of slack water than I had been led to suppose that I'd been swept a good way downstream and was far beyond all possibility of regaining the point I had left could I however retain my strength to swim one or 200 yards further of which I had no doubt and if the water did not ebb too rapidly of which I had more fear then I was quite safe every stroke took me more and more out of the power of the current and there might be an eddy to aid me I could not afford to be carried much further for there the channel made a sweep towards the wrong side of the river and there was now no reason why I should not reach land I could dismiss all fear indeed except for that of being fired upon by our own sentinels many of whom were then new recruits and with the usual disposition to shoot first and investigate afterwards I found myself swimming in shallow and shallower water and the flat seemed almost bare where I neared the shore where the great gnarled branches of the live oaks hung over the muddy bank floating on my back for noiselessness I paddled rapidly with my hands expecting momentarily to hear the challenge of the picket and the ominous click so likely to follow I knew that someone should be pacing to and fro along that beat but could not tell at what point he might be at that precise moment besides there was the faint possibility that some chatty corporal might have carried the news of my bath thus far along the line and they might be partially prepared for this unexpected visitor suddenly like another flash came the quick quaint challenge halt who go dar friend with the counter sign I retorted with chilly but conciliatory energy rising at full length out of the shallow water to show myself a man and a brother advance friend and give decounter sign responded the literal soldier who at such a tune would have accosted a spirit of light or goblin damned with no other formula I advanced and gave it he recognized my voice at once and then and there as I stood a dripping ghost beneath the trees before him the unconscionable fellow wishing to exhaust upon me the utmost resources of military hospitality deliberately presented arms now a soldier on picket or at night usually presents arms to nobody but a sentinel on camp guard by day is expected to perform that ceremony to anything in human shape that has two rows of buttons here was a human shape but so utterly buttonless that it exhibited not even a rag to which a button could buy any earthly possibility be appended buttonless even potentially and my blameless Ethiopian presented arms to even this where then are the theories of Carlisle the axioms of Satoraceus the inability of humanity to conceive a naked duke of windel straw addressing a naked house of lords cautioning my adherent however as to do propriety is suitable for such occasion thanks forward I left him watching the river with renewed vigilance and awaiting the next merman who should report himself finding my way to the building I hunted up a sergeant and a blanket got a fire kindled in the dismantled chimney and sat before it in my single garment like a moist but undismayed chalk tour until horse and clothing could be brought round from the causeway it seems strange that the morning had not yet dawned after the uncounted periods that must have elapsed but when the wardrobe arrived I looked at my watch and found that my night in the water had lasted precisely one hour galloping home I turned in with the clarity and without a drop of whiskey and wait a few hours after in excellent condition the rapid changes of which that department has seen so many and perhaps to so little purpose soon transferred us to a different scene I have been on other scouts since then and by various processes but never with a zest so novel as was afforded by that night's experience the thing got wind in the regiment and led to only one ill consequence so far as I know it rather suppressed a way I had of lecturing the officers on the importance of reducing their personal baggage to a minimum they got a trick of congratulating me very respectfully on the thoroughness with which I had conformed my practice to my precepts end of chapter six recording by fnh visit www.bookranger.co.uk chapter seven of army life in a black regiment this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by FNH army life in a black regiment by Thomas Wentworth Higginson chapter seven Up the Yiddisto in reading military history one finds the main interest to lie undoubtedly in the great campaigns where a man a regiment a brigade is but a pawn in the game but there is a charm also in the more free and adventurous life of partisan warfare where if the total sphere be humbler yet the individual has more relative importance and the scene of action is more personal and keen this is the reason given by the eccentric revolutionary biographer weems for writing the life of washington first and then that of marion and there were certainly high in the early adventures of the color troops of the department of the south some of the same elements of picturesqueness that belong to marion's band on the same soil with the added feature that the blacks were fighting for their personal liberties of which marion had helped to deprive them it is stated by major general gilmore in his siege of charleston as one of the three points of his preliminary strategy that an expedition was sent up by the Yiddisto river to destroy a bridge on the charleston and savannah railway as one of the early raids of the color troops this expedition may deserve narration though it was in a strategic point of view a disappointment it has already been told briefly and on the hull with truth by greenlee and others but i will venture on a more complete account the project dated back earlier than general gilmore's siege and had originally no connection with that movement it had been formed by captain trailbridge and myself in camp and was based on the facts learned from the men general saxton and colonel wwh davis the successive post commanders had both favored it it had been also approved by general hunter before his sudden removal though he regarded the bridge as secondary affair because there was another railway communication between the two cities but as the main object was to obtain permission to go i tried to make the most of all results which might follow while it was very clear that the raid would harass and confuse the enemy and be the means of bringing away many of the slaves general hunter had therefore accepted the project mainly as a stroke for freedom and black recruits and general gilmore because anything that looked towards action found favor in his eyes and because it would be convenient to him at that time to affect a diversion if nothing more it must be remembered that after the first capture of port royal the outlying plantations along the whole southern coast were abandoned and the slaves we've drawn into the interior it was necessary to ascend some river for 30 miles in order to reach the black population at all this ascent could only be made by night and it was slow process and the smoke of a steamboat could be seen for a great distance the streams were usually shallow winding and muddy and the difficulties of navigation were such as to require a full moon and a flooded tide it was really no easy matter to bring everything to bear especially as every projected raid must be kept a secret so far as possible however we were now somewhat familiar with such undertakings half military half naval and the thing to be done on the edisto was precisely what would been proved to be practicable on the st. mary's and the st. john's to drop anchor before the enemy's door some morning at daybreak without his having dreamed of our approach since a raid made by colonel mont comery up the kumbai two months before the vigilance of the rebels had increased but we had information that upon the south edisto or pompon river the rice plantations were still being actively worked by a large number of negroes in reliance on obstructions placed at the mouth of that narrow stream where it joins the main river some 20 miles from the coast this point was known to be further protected by a battery of unknown strength at wilktown bluff a commanding and defensible position the obstructions consisted of a row of strong wooden piles across the river but we convinced ourselves that these must now be much decayed and that captain trawbridge an excellent engineer officer could remove them by the proper apparatus our proposition was to man the john adams an armed ferry boat which had before done us much service and which had now reverted to the pursuits of peace it is said on the east boston line to ascend in this to wilktown bluff silence the battery and clear the passage through the obstructions leaving the john adams to protect this point we could then ascend the smaller stream with two light draft boats and perhaps burn the bridge which was 10 miles higher before the enemy could bring sufficient force to make our position at wilton bluff untenable the expedition was organized essentially upon this plan the smaller boats were the enok dean a river steamboat which carried a 10 pound parrot gun and a small howitzer and a little mosquito of a tug the governor millton upon which with the greatest difficulty we found room for two 12 pound armstrong guns with their gunners forming a section of the first connecticut battery under left hand and clinton aided by a squad from my own regiment under captain james the john adams carried if i remember rightly two parrot guns of 20 and 10 pounds caliber and a howitzer or two the whole force of men did not exceed 250 we left bowfort sc on the afternoon of july 9th 1863 in former narrations i have sufficiently described the charm of a moonlight ascent into a hostile country upon an unknown stream the dark and silent banks the rippling water the whale of the reed birds the anxious watch the breathless listening the veiled lights the whispered orders to this was now to be added the vexation of insufficient pilotage for a negro guide knew only of the upper river and as it finally proved not even that while to take us over the bar which obstructed the mainstream we must borrow a pilot from captain dutch whose gunboat blockaded that point this active naval officer however whose boat expeditions had penetrated all the lower branches of those streams could not supply our want and we borrowed from him not only a pilot but a surgeon to replace our own who had been prevented by an accident from coming with us thus accompanied we steamed over the bar in safety and had a peaceful ascent past the island of jihosi the finest state of governor aiken then left undisturbed by both sides and fired our first shell into the camp at wilton bluff at four o'clock in the morning the battery whether fixed or moveable we knew not met us with a promptness that proved very short lived after three shots it was silent but we could not tell why the bluff was wooded and we could see but little the only course was to land under cover of the guns as the firing ceased and the smoke cleared away i looked across the rice fields which lay beneath the bluff the first sunbeams glowed upon their emerald leaves and on the blossoming hedges along the rectangular dykes what were those black dots which everywhere appeared those moist meadows had become alive with human heads and along each narrow path came a straggling file of men and women all on a run for the river i went ashore with a boatload of troops at once the landing was difficult and marshy the astonished negroes tugged us up the bank and gazed at us as if we had been cortez or columbus they kept arriving by land much faster than we could come by water every moment increased the crowd the jostling the mutual clinging on that miry foothold what a scene it was with the wild faces eager figures strange garments it seemed as if one of the poor things revenantly suggested like nothing but judgment day presently they began to come from the houses also with their little bundles on their heads then with larger bundles old women trotting on the narrow paths would kneel to pray a little prayer still balancing the bundle and then would suddenly spring up urged by the accumulation of procession from behind and would move on till irresistibly compelled by the thankfulness to dip down for another invocation reaching us every human being must grasp our hands and amid exclamations of breast you masa and breast the lord at the rate of four of the latter descriptions to one of the former women brought children on their shoulders small black boys leaned on their black little brothers easily inky and greatly depositing them shook hands never had i seen human beings so clad or rather so unclad in such amazing squalidness and destitution of garments i recall one small urchin without a rag of clothing saved the basque waste of a lady's dress bristling with whale bones and worn wrong side before beneath which his smooth ebony legs emerged like those of an ostrich from its plumage how weak his imagination how cold is memory that i ever cease for a day in my life to see before me the picture of that astounding scene yet at the time we were perforce a little impatient of all this piety protestation and hand-pressing for the vital thing was to ascertain what force had been stationed at the bluff and whether it was yet withdrawn the slaves on the other hand were too much absorbed by their prospective freedom to aid us in taking any further steps to secure it captain trawbridge who had by this time landed at a different point got quite into despair over the seeming deafness of the people to all questions how many soldiers were there on the bluff he asked of the first-comer masa the man said stunning terribly i k k k tell me how many soldiers are there raw trawbridge in his mighty voice and all but shaking the poor old thing in his thirst for information oh masa recommends in terror the incapacitated witness i could carpenter holding up eagerly a little stump of a hatchet his sole treasure as if his profession ought to excuse from all military opinions i wish that it were possible to present all this scene from the point of view of the slaves themselves it can be most nearly done perhaps by quoting the description given by a similar scene on the kumbahi river by a very aged man who had been brought down on the previous raid already mentioned i wrote it down in the tent long after while the old man recited his tale with much gesticulation at the door and it is by far the best glimpse i've ever had through a negro's eyes at these wonderful birthdays of freedom the people was all hoeing masa said the old man they was a hoeing in the rice fields when de gumboats come then every man dropped them ho and he left the rice the masa he stand and call run to the woods for hide yankee come sell you to cuba run for hide every man he run and my god run all tudd away masa stand in the wood peep peep fade for trust afraid to trust he say run to the wood and every man run by him straight to the boat the brak soldier so presumptuous they come right ashore hold up their head fussing i know dare a barn ten thousand bushel rough rice all in a blaze dem masa's great house all crackling up deroof didn't i care for seam blaze law masa didn't care nothing at all was going to devote doors donkyote could not surpass the sublime absorption to which the old gaunt man with arm uplifted described this stage of affairs till he ended in a shrewd chuckle worthy of sancho panza then he resumed de brak soldier so presumptuous this he repeated three times slowly shaking his head in an ecstasy of admiration it flashed upon me that the apparition of a black soldier must amaze those still in bondage much as a butterfly just from the chrysalis might astound his fellow grubs i inwardly vowed that my soldiers at least should be as presumptuous as i can make them then he went on old woman and i go down to the boat then they say behind us rebels coming rebels coming old woman say come ahead come plenty ahead i have nothing on but my shirt and pantaloon old woman one single frock he had on and one handkerchief on his head i left all two of my blankie and run for the rebel come and then they didn't come didn't trust for come i's 88 year old massa my old massa lounges kept all the ages in a big book and when we come to age of sense we mark them down every year so i know too old for come massa joking never too old for deliver the land of bondage i old but great food for children give thousand tank every day young people can go through massa but the old folk must go slow such emotions as these no doubt were inspired by our arrival but we could only hear their hasty utterance in passing our duty being with the small force already landed to take possession of the bluff ascending with proper precautions the wooded hill we soon found ourselves in the deserted camp of a light battery amid scattered remaining equipments and suggestions of a very unattractive breakfast as soon as possible skirmishers were thrown out through the woods to the farther edge of the bluff while a party searched the houses finding the usual large supply of furniture and pictures brought up for safety from below but no soldiers captain trawbridge had then got the john adams beside the row of piles and went to work for their removal again i had the exciting sensation of being within the hostile lines the eager explorations the doubts the watchfulness the listening for every sound of coming hooves presently a horse's tread was heard in earnest but it was a squad of our own men bringing in two captured cavalry soldiers one of these a sturdy fellow submitted quietly to his lot only begging that whenever he should be evacuated from the bluff a note should be left behind stating that he was a prisoner the other a very young man and a member of the rebel troop a sort of cadet corpse among the charleston youths came to me in great wrath complaining that the corporal of our squad had kicked him after he had surrendered his era of offended prize was very rueful and it did indeed seem a pathetic reversal of fortunes for the two races to be sure the youth was a scion from one of the foremost families of the south carolina and when i considered the wrongs which the black race had encountered from those of his blood first and last it seemed as if the most scrupulous recording angel might tolerate one final kick to square the account but i reproved the corporal who respectfully disclaim the charge and said the kick was an incident of the scuffle it certainly was not their habit to show such poor malice they thought too well of themselves his demeanor seemed less lofty but perhaps piteous when he implored me not to put him on board any vessel which was to ascend the upper stream and hinted by awful implications the danger of such ascent this meant torpedoes a peril which we treated in those days with rather mistaken contempt but we found none on the addisto and it may be that it was only a foolish attempt to alarm us meanwhile trawbridge was toiling away at the row of piles which proved easier to draw out than to saw asunder either work being hard enough it took far longer than we had hoped and we saw noon approach and the tide fall rapidly taking with it inch by inch our hopes of affecting a surprise at the bridge during this time and indeed all day the detachments on shore under captains whitney and samson were having occasional skirmishes with the enemy while the colored people were swarming to the shore or running to and fro like ants with the poor treasures of their houses our busy quartermaster mr bingham who died afterwards from the overwork of that sultry day was transporting the refugees on board the steamer or hunting up bails of cotton or directing the burning of rice houses in accordance with our orders no dwelling houses were destroyed or plundered by our men sherman's bummers not having yet arrived although i asked no questions as to what the plantation negroes might bring in their great bundles one piece of property i must admit seemed a lawful capture a united states dress sword of the old pattern which belonged to the rebel general who afterwards gave the order to bury colonel shore with his niggers that i have retained not without some satisfaction to this day a passage having been cleared at last and the tide having turned by noon we lost no time in attempting the ascent leaving the bluff to be held by the john adams and by a small force on shore we were scarcely above the obstructions however when the little tug went aground and the inocdean ascending a mile further had an encounter with a battery on the right perhaps her old enemy and drove it back soon after she also ran aground a misfortune of which our opponents strangely took no advantage and on getting off i thought it best to drop down to the bluff again as the tide was still hopelessly low none can tell save those who have tried them the vexations of those muddy southern streams navigable only during a few hours of flood tide after waiting an hour the two small vessels again tried the ascent the enemy on the right had disappeared but we could now see far off on our left another light battery moving parallel with the river apparently to meet us at some upper bend but for the present we were safe and the low rice fields on each side of us and the scene was so peaceful it seemed as if all danger were done for the first time we saw in south carolina blossoming river banks and low emerald meadows that seemed like new england everywhere there were the same rectangular fields smooth canals and bushy dykes a few negroes stole out to us in dugouts and breathlessly told us how others had been hurried away by the overseers we glided safely on mile after mile the day was unutterably hot and all else seemed propertitious the men had their combustibles already to fire the bridge and our hopes were unbounded but by degrees the channel grew more tortuous and difficult and while the little milton glided smoothly over everything the inocdean my own boat repeatedly grounded on every occasion of a special need too something went wrong in a machinery her engine had been constructed on some wholly new patent of which i should hope this trial would prove entirely sufficient the black pilot who was not a soldier grew more and more bewildered and declared that it was the channel and not his brain which had gone wrong the captain a little elderly man sat wringing his hands in the pilot box and the engineer appeared to be mingling his groans with those of the deceased engine meanwhile i in equal ignorance of machinery and channel had to give orders only justified by my new acquaintance with both so i navigated on general principles until they grounded us on a mud bank just below a wooded point and some two miles from the bridge of our destination it was with a pang that i waved to major strong who was on the other side of the channel in a tug not to risk approaching us but to steam on and finish the work if he could short was his triumph gliding round the point he found himself instantly engaged with a light battery of four or six guns doubtless the same we had seen in the distance the Milton was within 250 yards the Connecticut men fought their guns well aided by the blacks and it was exasperating for us to hear the shots while we could see nothing and do nothing the scanty ammunition on our bow gun was exhausted and the gun in the stern was useless from that position in which we lay in vain we moved the men from side to side rocking the vessel to dislodge it the heat was terrific that august afternoon i remember i found myself constantly changing places on the scorched deck to keep my feet from being blistered at last the officer in charge of the gun a hardy lumberman from Maine got the stern of the vessel so far round that he obtained the range of the battery through the cabin windows but it would be necessary he coolly added on reporting that to me the fact to shoot away the corner of the cabin i knew that this apartment was newly painted and gilded and the idol of the poor captain's heart but it was plain that even the thought of his own upholstery could not make the poor soul more wretched than he was so i bade captain dolly blaze away and thus we took our hand in that little game though at her sacrifice it was of no use down drifted our little consort round the point her engine disabled and her engineer killed as we afterwards found though then we could only look on wonder still pluckly firing she floated by upon the tide which had now turned and when with the last desperate effort we got off our engine had one of its impractical fits and we could only follow her the day was waning and all its range of possibility had lain within the limits of that one tide our previous expeditions had been so successful it now seemed hard to turn back the river banks and rice fields so beautiful before seemed only a vexation now but the swift current bore us on and after our pathian shots had died away a new discharge of artillery opened upon us from our first antagonist of the morning which still kept the other side of the stream it had taken up a strong position on another bluff almost out of range of the john adams but within easy range of us the sharpest contest of the day was before us happily the engine and the engineer were now behaving well and we were steering in a channel already traversed and of which the dangerous points were known but we had a long straight reach of river before us heading directly toward the battery which having once got our range had only to keep it while we could do nothing in return the rebels certainly served their guns well for the first time i discovered that there were certain compensating advantages in a slightly built craft as compared with one more substantial the missiles never lodged in the vessel but crashed through some thin partition as if it were paper to explode beyond us or fall harmlessly in the water splintering the chief source of wounds and death in wooden ships was thus entirely avoided the danger was that our machinery might be disabled or that shots might strike below the waterline and sink us this however did not happen 15 projectiles as we afterwards computed passed through the vessel or cut the rigging yet few casualties occurred and those instantly fatal as my orderly stood leaning on a comrade shoulder the head of the latter was shot off at last i myself felt a sudden blow in the side as if from some prize fighter doubling me up for a moment while i sank upon a seat it proved afterwards to have been produced by the grazing of a bore which without tearing a garment had yet made a large part of my side black and blue leaving a sensation of paralysis which made it difficult to stand supporting myself on captain rogers i tried to comprehend what had happened and i can remember being impressed by an odd feeling that i'd now got my share and should henceforth be a great deal safer than any of the rest i am told that this often follows one's first experience of a wound but this immediate contest sharp as it was proved brief a turn in the river enabled us to use our own stern gun and we soon glided into the comparative shelter of wilttown bluff there however we were to encounter the danger of shipwreck super added to that of fight when the passage through the piles was first cleared it had been marked by stakes lest the rising tide should cover the remaining piles and make it difficult to run the passage but when we again reached it the stakes had somehow been knocked away the piles were just covered by the swift current and the little tugboat was aground upon them she came off easily however with our aid and when we in turn essayed the passage we grounded also but more firmly we getting off at last and making the passage the tug again became lodged when nearly past danger and all our efforts proved powerless to pull her through i therefore dropped down below and sent the john adams to her aid while i super intended the final recall of the pickets and the embarkaging of the remaining refugees while thus engaged i felt little solicitude about the boats above it was certain that the john adams could safely go close to the piles on the lower side that she was very strong and that the other was very light still it was natural to cast some anxious glances up the river and it was with surprise that i presently saw a canoe descending which contained major strong coming on board he told me with some excitement that the tug could not possibly be got off and he wished for orders it was no time to consider whether it was not his place to have given orders instead of going half a mile to seek them i was by this time so far exhausted that everything seemed to pass me by as one in a dream but i got into a boat pushed upstream met presently the john adams returning and was informed by the officer in charge of the connecticut battery that he had abandoned the tug and worse news yet that his guns had been thrown overboard it seemed to me then and as always seemed that this sacrifice was utterly needless because although the captain of the john adams had refused to risk his vessel by going near enough to receive the guns he should have been compelled to do so though the thing was done without my knowledge and beyond my reach yet as commander of the expedition i was technically responsible it was hard to blame a lieutenant when his senior had shrunk from a decision and left him alone nor was it easy to blame major strong whom i knew to be a man of personal courage though without much decision of character he was subsequently tried by court marshall and acquitted after which he resigned and was lost at sea on his way home the tug being thus abandoned must of course be burned to prevent her falling into the enemy's hands major strong went with prompt fearlessness to do this at my order after which he remained on the enock dean and i went on board the john adams being compelled to succumb at last and transfer all remaining responsibility to captain trawbridge exhausted as i was i could still observe in a vague way the scene around me every available corner of the boat seemed like some vast auction room of second hand goods great piles of bedding and bundles lay on every side with black heads emerging and black forms reclining in every stage of squalidness some seemed ill or wounded or asleep others were chattering eagerly among themselves singing praying or soliloquizing on joys to come resty lord i heard one woman say i spec i got salt victual now nothing but fresh victual d six months but i's get salt victual now thus reversing under pressure of the salt embargo the usual anticipation of voyages trawbridge told me long after that on seeking a fan for my benefit he could find but one on board that this was in the hands of a fat old auntie who had just embarked and sat on an enormous bundle of her goods in everybody's way fanning herself vehemently and ejaculating as her gasping breath would permit oh do jesus oh do jesus when the captain abruptly disarmed her of her fan and left her continuing her pious exercises thus we glided down the river in the waning light once more we encountered a battery making five in all i could hear the guns of the assailants and could not distinguish the explosion of their shells and the answering throb of our own guns the kind quartermaster kept bringing me news of what occurred like rebecca in front dbcuf's castle but discreetly withholding any actual casualties then all faded into safety and sleep and we reached the bow fort in the morning after 36 hours of absence a kind friend who acted in south carolina a nobler part amid tragedies than in any other early stage of triumphs met us with an ambulance at the wharf and the prisoners the wounded and the dead were duly attended the reader will not care for any personal record of convalescence though among the general military laudations of whiskey it is worthwhile to say that one life was saved in the opinion of my surgeons by the habitual absence from it leaving no food for peritoneal inflammation to feed upon the able-bodied men who had joined us were sent to a general gilmore in the trenches while their families were established in the huts and tents on st helena island a year after greatly to the delight of the regiment in taking possession of a battery which they had helped to capture on james island they found in their hands the self-same guns which they had seen thrown overboard from the governor milton they then felt that their account with the enemy was squared and could proceed to further operations before the war how greater things seemed the rescue of even one man from slavery and since the war has emancipated all how little seems the liberation of two hundred but no one then knew how the contest might end and when i think of that morning sunlight those emerald fields those strong in numbers the old women and their prayers and the little boys with them living burdens i know that the day was worth all it cost and more end of chapter seven recording by f nh visit www.bookranger.co.uk chapter eight of army life in a black regiment this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org recording by f nh army life in a black regiment by thomas wentworth higginson chapter eight the baby of the regiment we were in our winter camp on port royal island it was a lovely november morning soft and springlike the mockingbirds were singing and the cotton fields still white with fleecy pods morning drill was over the men were cleaning their guns and singing very happily the officers were in their tents reading still more happily the letters arrived from home suddenly i heard a knock at my tent door and the latch clicked it was the only latch in the camp and i was very proud of it and the officers always clicked it as loudly as possible in order to gratify my feelings the door opened and the quartermaster thrust in the most beaming face i ever saw colonel said he there are great news for the regiment my wife and baby are coming by the next steamer baby said i in amazement qm you are beside yourself we always called the quartermaster qm for shortness there was a pass sent to your wife but nothing was ever said about a baby baby indeed but the baby was included in the pass replied the triumphant father of a family you don't suppose my wife would come down here without her baby besides the pass itself permits her to bring necessary baggage and is not a baby six months old necessary baggage but my dear fellow said i rather anxiously how can you make a little thing comfortable in a tent amidst these rigors of a south carolina winter when it is uncomfortably hot for drill at noon and ice forms in your bedside at night trust me for that said the delighted papa and went off whistling i could hear him telling the same news to three others at least before he got to his own tent that day the preparations began and soon his abode was a wonderful comfort there were posts and rafters and a raised floor and a great chimney and a door with hinges every luxury except a latch and that he could not have for mine was the last that could be purchased one of the regimental carpenters was employed to make a cradle and another to make a bedstead high enough for the cradle to go under then there must be a bit of red carpet beside the bedstead and thus the progress of splendor went on the wife of one of the coloured sergeants was engaged to act as a nursery maid she was a very respectable young woman the only objection to her being that she smoked a pipe but we thought perhaps a baby might not dislike tobacco and if she did she would have excellent opportunities to break the pipe in pieces in due time the steamer arrived and baby and her mother were among the passengers the little recruit was soon settled in a new cradle and slept in it as if she had never known any other the sergeant's wife soon had her on exhibition through the neighborhood and from that time forward she was quite a queen among us she had sweet blue eyes and pretty brown hair with round dimpled cheeks and that perfect dignity which is so beautiful in a baby she hardly ever cried and was not at all timid she would go to anybody and yet did not encourage any romping from any but the most intimate friends she always wore a warm long-sleeve scarlet cloak with a hood and in this costume was carried or toted as the soldier said all about the camp at guard mounting in the morning when the men who were to go on guard duty for the day are drawn up to be inspected baby was always there to help inspect them she did not say much but she eyed them very closely and seemed fully to appreciate their bright buttons then the officer of the day who appears at guard mounting with his sword and sash and comes afterwards to the colonel's tent for orders would come and speak to baby on his way and receive her orders first when the time came for drill she was usually present to watch the troops and when the drum beat for dinner she liked to see the long row of men in each company march up to the cookhouse in single file each with a tin cup and plate during the day in pleasant weather she might be seen in her nurse's arms about the company streets and center of an admiring circle her scarlet costume looking very pretty amidst the shining black cheeks and neat blue uniforms of the soldiers a dress parade just before sunset she was always an attendant as i stood before the regiment i could see the little spots of red out of the corner of my eye at one end of the long line of men and i looked with so much interest for her small person that instead of saying at the proper time attention battalion shoulder arms it is a wonder that i did not say shoulder babies our little lady was very impartial and distributed her kind looks to everybody she had not the slightest prejudice against color and did not care in the least whether her particular friends were black or white her special friends i think were the drummer boys who were not my favorites by any means for they were a roguish set of scamps and gave more trouble than all the grown men in the regiment i think any like them because they were small and made a noise and had red caps like a hood and red facings on their jackets and also because they occasionally stood on their heads for her amusement after dress parade the whole drunk corps would march to the great flag staff and wait till just sunset time when they would beat the retreat and then the flag would be hauled down a great festival for annie sometimes the sergeant major would wrap her in the great folds of the flag after it was taken down and she would peep out very prettily from amidst the stars and stripes like a newborn goddess of liberty about once a month some inspecting officer was sent to the camp by the general in command to see the condition of everything in the regiment from bayonets to buttons it was usually a long and tiresome process and when everything was done i used to tell the officer that i had one more thing for him to inspect which was peculiar to our regiment then i would send for baby to be exhibited and i never saw an inspecting officer old or young who did not look pleased at the sudden appearance of the little fresh smiling creature a flower in the midst of war and annie in her turn would look at them with the true baby dignity la her face that deep earnest look which babies often have and which people think so wonderful when rafael paints it although they might often see just the same expression in the faces of their own darlings at home meanwhile annie seemed to like the camp style of housekeeping very much her father's tent was double and he used the front apartment for his office and the inner room for parlor and bedroom while the nurse had a separate tent and washroom behind all i remember that for the first time i went there in the evening it was to borrow some writing paper and while baby's mother was hunting for as in the front tent i heard a great cooing and murmuring in the inner room i asked if annie was still awake and a mother told me to go in and see pushing aside the canvas door i entered no sign of anybody was to be seen but a variety of soft little happy noises seemed to come from some unseen corner mrs c came quietly in pulled away the counterpane of her own bed and drew out the rough cradle where lay the little damsel perfectly happy and wider awake than anything but a baby possibly can be she looked as if the seclusion of a dozen family bedsteads would not be enough to discourage her spirits and i saw that camp life was likely to suit her very well a tent can be kept very warm for it is merely a house with a thinner wall than usual and i do not think that baby felt the cold much more than if she had been at home that winter the great trouble is that a tent chimney not being built very high is apt to smoke when the wind is in a certain direction and when that happens it is hardly possible to stay inside so we used to build the chimneys of some tents on the east side and those of others on the west and thus some of the tents were always comfortable i've seen baby's mother running in a hard rain with little red riding hood in her arms to take refuge with the adjutant's wife when every other abode was full of smoke and i must admit that there was one or two windy days that season when nobody could really keep warm and Annie had to remain ignomiously in her cradle with as many clothes on as possible for almost the whole time the quartermaster's tent was very attractive to us in the evening i remember that once on passing near it after nightfall i heard our mage's fine voice singing Methodist hymns within a missy sea sweet tones chiming in so i peeped through the outer door the fire was burning very pleasantly in the inner tent and the scrap of new red carpet made the floor look quite magnificent the major sat on a box as surgeon on a stall QM and his wife's and the adjutant's wife and one of the captains were all sitting on the bed singing as well as they knew how and the baby was under the bed baby had retired for the night was overshadowed suppressed sat upon and the singing went on and she had wandered away in her own land of dreams nearer to heaven perhaps than any pitch their voices could attain i went in and joined the party presently the music stopped and another officer was sent for to sing some particular song at this pause the invisible innocent waked a little and began to cluck and coo it's the kitten exclaimed somebody it's my baby exclaimed mrs c triumphantly in that tone unfailing personal pride which belongs to young mothers the people all got up from the bed for a moment while Annie was pulled from beneath wide awake and placid as usual she sat in one lap after another during the rest of the concert sometimes winking at the candle but usually listening to the songs with a calm and critical expression as if she could make as much noise as any of them whenever she saw fit to try not a sound did she make however except one little soft sneeze which led to an immediate flood tide of red shawl covering every part of her but her forehead but i soon hinted that the concert had better be ended because i knew from observation that the small damsel had carefully watched a regimental inspection and a brigade gill on that day and that an interval of repose was certainly necessary Annie did not long remain the only baby in camp one day on going out to the stables to look at a horse i heard a sound of baby talk addressed by some man to a child nearby and looking around the corner of a tent i saw that one of the hustlers had something black and round lying in the sloping side of a tent with which he was playing very eagerly it proved to be his baby a plump shiny thing younger than Annie and i never saw a merrier picture than the happy father frolicking with his child while the mother stood quietly by this was baby number two and she stayed in camp several weeks the two innocents meeting each other every day in the placid indifference that belonged to their years both were happy little healthy things and it never seemed to cross their minds that there was any difference in their complexions as i said before Annie was not troubled by any prejudice in regard to color nor do i suppose that the other little maiden was Annie enjoyed the tent life very much but when we were sent out on picket soon after she enjoyed it still more our headquarters was at a deserted plantation house with one large parlor a dining room and a few bedrooms baby's father and mother had a room upstairs with a stove whose pipe went straight out at the window this was quite comfortable though half the windows were broken and there was no glass and no glacier to mend them the windows of the large parlor were in much the same condition though we had an immense fireplace where we had a bright fire whenever it was cold and always in the evening the walls of this room were very dirty and it took our ladies several days to cover all the unsightly places with wreaths and hangings of evergreen in the performance baby took an active part her duties consisted in sitting in a great nest of evergreen pulling and fingering the fragrant leaves and occasionally giving a little cry of glee when she had accomplished some piece of decided mischief there was less entertainment to be found in the camp itself at this time but we the household at headquarters was larger than baby had been accustomed to we had a great deal of company moreover and she had quite a gay life of it she usually made her appearance in the large parlor soon after breakfast and to dance her for a few moments in our arms was one of the first daily duties of each one then the morning reports began to arrive from different outposts a mounted officer or courier coming in from each place dismounting at the door and clattering in with jingling arms and spurs each a new excitement for Annie she usually got some attention from any officer who came receiving with her wanted dignity any daring caress when the messengers had ceased to be interesting there was always the horses to look at held or tethered under the trees beside the sunny piazza after the various couriers had been received other messengers would be dispatched to the town several miles away and baby had full of excitement of the mounting and departure her father was often one of the riders and would sometimes see Zanny for a goodbye kiss place her on the saddle before him gallop her around the house once or twice and then give her back to the nurses arms again she was perfectly fearless and such boisterous attention never frightened her nor did they ever interfere with her sweet infantines self-possession after the riding parties had gone there was the piazza still for entertainment with a sentinel pacing up and down before it but Annie did not enjoy the sentinel though his breastplate and button shone like gold so much as the hammock which always hung swinging between the pillars it was a pretty hammock with great open meshes and she delighted to lie in it and have the netting closed above her so that she could only be seen through the apertures i can see her now the fresh little rosy thing in her blue and scarlet wrappings with one round and dimpled arm thrust four through the netting and the other grasping an armful of blushing roses and fragrant magnolias she looked like those pretty french bass reliefs of cupids imprisoned in baskets and peeping through that hammock was a very useful appendage it was a couch for us a cradle for baby a nest for the kittens and we had more over a little hen which liked to roost there every night when the mornings were colder and the stove upstairs smoked the wrong way baby was brought down in a very incomplete state of toilet and finished her dressing by the great fire we found her bare shoulders very becoming and she was still very much interested in her own pink toes after a very slow dressing she had still a slower breakfast out of a tin cup of warm milk of which she generally spilled a good deal as she had much to do in watching everybody who came into the room and seeing that there was no mischief done then she would be placed on the floor on our only piece of carpet and the kittens would be brought in for her to play with we had at different times a variety of pets of whom Annie did not take much notice sometimes we had young partridges caught by the drummer boys in trapped cages the children called them Bob and Chloe because the first notes of the male and female sounded like those names one day I brought home an opossum with a blind bear young still clinging to the droll pouch where their mothers keep them sometimes we had pretty green lizards their color darkening or deepening like that of chameleons in light or shade but the only pets that took babies fancy were the kittens they perfectly delighted her from the first moment she saw them and they were the only things younger than herself that she had ever beheld and the only things softer than themselves that her small hands had grasped it was astonishing to see how much the kittens would endure from her they could scarcely be touched by anyone else without mewing but when Annie seized one by the head and the other by the tail and rubbed them violently together they did not make a sound I suppose that the baby's grass is really soft even if it seems ferocious and so it gives less pain than one would think at any rate the little animals had the best of it very soon for they entirely outstripped Annie in learning to walk and they could soon scramble away beyond her reach while she sat in a soft dumb despair unable to comprehend why anything so much smaller than herself could be so much more nimble meanwhile the kittens would sit up look at her with the most provoking indifference just out of her arm's length until some of us would take pity on the young lady and toss her furry play things back to her again little baby she learned to call them and these were the very first words she spoke baby had evidently a natural turn for war further cultivated by an intimate knowledge of drills and parades the nearer she came to actual conflict the better she seemed to like it peaceful as her own little ways might be twice at least while she was with us on picket we had alarms from the rebel troops who would bring down cannon to the opposite side of the ferry about two miles beyond us and throw shot and shell over our side then the officer at the ferry would think that there was to be an attack made and couriers would be sent riding to and fro and the men would all be called to arms in a hurry and the ladies at headquarters would all put on their best bonnets and come down the stairs and the ambulance would be made ready to carry them to a place of safety before the expected fight on such occasions baby was all in her glory she shouted with delight at being suddenly uncribbed and thrust into a little scarlet cloak and brought downstairs at an utterly unusual and improper hour to a piazza with lights and people and horses and general excitement she crowed and gurgled and made gestures with her little fists and screamed out what seemed to be her advice on the military situation as freely as if she had been a newspaper editor except that it was rather difficult to understand her precise direction i do not know but the whole rebel force might have been captured through her plans but at any rate i should much rather obey her orders than those of some generals whom i have known for she at least meant no harm and would lead one into no mischief however at last the danger such as it was would all be over and the ladies would be induced to go peacefully to bed again and annie would retreat with them to her ignoble cradle very much disappointed and looking vainly back to the more martial scene below the next morning she would seem to have forgotten all about it and would spill her bread and milk by the fire as if nothing had happened i suppose we hardly knew at the time how larger part of the sunshine of our daily lives was contributed by dear little annie yet when i look back on that pleasant southern home she seems as essential a part of it as the mockingbirds or the magnolias and i cannot convince myself that in returning to it i should not find her there but annie went back with the spring to a northern birthplace and then passed away from this earth before a little feat had fairly learned to tread its paths and when i meet her next it must be in some world where there is triumph without armies and where innocence is trained in scenes of peace i know however that a little life short as it seemed was a blessing to us all giving us a perpetual image of serenity and sweetness recalling the lovely atmosphere of far-off homes and holding us by unsuspected ties to whatever things were pure end of chapter 8 recording by fnh visit www.bookranger.co.uk