The Star of Gettysburg: A Story of Southern High Tide by Joseph A. Altsheler (book club reads .TXT) 📖

Those dark hours seemed an eternity to Harry. The floating fog seemed to grow thicker and to enter his very bones. He shivered and drew the blanket close. Now, with his ears close to the earth, he was sure that he could hear the axes and the saws and the hammers beating on steel rivets on the other side of the Rappahannock.

The Confederate cannon still fired the signals of alarm at regular intervals, but the night and the fog always closed in again quickly over the flash that the discharge had made. After a while a murmur came from the long Southern line along the heights and on the ridges. Horses stirred here and there, cannon, moved to new positions, made sighing sounds as their wheels sank in the mud; sabres and bayonets clanked, thousands of men whispered to one another. All these varying sounds united into one great soft voice which was like the murmur of a wind through the summer night.

Toward five o'clock in the morning, when the darkness had not diminished a whit, a messenger from General Lee rode up with a note for General Jackson. It merely stated that all was ready and to hold the positions that he had taken up the night before. Jackson wrote a brief reply by the light of a lantern that an orderly held, and the messenger galloped away with it. It was the only incident that had occurred in a long time.

"They're not using many lights on the other side of the river," said Harry, although he noted an occasional flame in the darkness. "Of course, they want to hide their bridge building, but you'd think they'd have fires burning elsewhere."

"They've learned the value of caution," said Dalton. "I'm bound to say they're going about the first part of their work with skill."

He spoke with the calm superiority of a young Officer.

Harry took out his own watch, and by holding it close to his eyes was able to read its face.

"A quarter to six," he said. "According to the watch it is less than three hours since we first heard those alarm guns, but my five known senses and all the unknown tell me that it has been at least a week."

"In an hour we should see something," said Dalton. "Confound this fog. If it weren't so thick we could see now."

Harry's pulses began to beat hard again in the next hour. He strove with glasses even for a glimpse of the winter sun which he knew would come so late, but as yet the fog showed nothing save a faint luminous tinge low down in the east. An orderly brought food to them, and while they ate they saw the luminous tinge broaden and deepen.

"The sun's rising behind that fog," said Dalton, "but here comes a little wind that will drive away the fog or thin it out so we can see."

"Yes, I feel it," said Harry, "and you can see the dull, somber red of the sun trying to break through. Look, George, unless I'm mistaken the fog's moving down the river!"

"So it is, there's the flash of the stream, the color of steel, and by all the stars, there's their bridge two-thirds of the way across!"

Heavier puffs of wind came and the fog billowed off down the river. The whole gigantic theater of action sprang at once into the light. There were the two great armies clustered on opposing ridges, there was the deserted town, there was the deep river, the color of lead, flowing between the foes, two-thirds of its width already spanned by the Union bridge, the bridge itself covered with workmen, and boats swarming by its side.

Harry felt a thrill and a shudder which were almost simultaneous. Then came a deep muffled roar from the two armies on the ridges looking at each other. But as the roar died it was succeeded by the rapid, stinging fire of rifles. The Mississippians in their pits and cellars near the bank of the river were sending a hail of bullets upon the bridge builders.

The rest of the Southern army stood by and watched. Harry knew that Lee and Jackson would make their chief defense on the ridges, but the Mississippians were there to keep the enemy from being too forward. So deadly were their rifles that every workman fled off the bridge to the Union shore, save those who were struck down upon it, falling into the water.

Then came a pause, a period of intense waiting, short, but seemingly long, even to the veteran generals, after which the gallant builders, who truly deserved the name of the bravest of the brave, ventured again upon the bridge in the face of those terrible Mississippi rifles. A blast of death again blew upon them. Bullets in hundreds struck upon bodies or rattled on timbers. The workmen could not live in the face of such a fire, and those who had not been slain retreated again to their own side of the stream. A third time the heroic bridge builders returned to their work, and a third time they were driven back by the deadly Mississippi hail. Harry felt pity for them.

"I never saw anything braver," he said to Dalton.

"Nor did I, Harry, nor anything more useless. The bridge builders never had a chance before the rifles. But now their supports, which should have been there all the time, are coming up."

Heavy columns of Union riflemen moved forward to the edge of the river and replied to the Mississippians. But the Southerners, in the shelter of the cellars and pits, held their ground. But few of them were hit and they kept up that deadly hail which swept the uncompleted bridge clear of every workman who attempted to go upon it.

The rapid fire of the rifles crashed up and down both sides of the river, two sheets of flame seeming to reach out as if they would meet each other. The wind that had driven away the fog also carried off the smoke, and the river still gleamed like steel between. Then, as the rifle fire died again, there was another silence for a while.

"It will take more than rifles," said Harry, "to drive out those intrenched Mississippians."

"So it will, Harry," said Dalton, who was watching through glasses, "and here it comes. Their great batteries are about to open."

The next instant the whole earth seemed to be shaken by the roar of heavy cannon. The opposing hills and ridges fairly poured forth flame, and shells and solid shot crashed upon the whole devoted town. Nor did this tremendous fire from a hundred and fifty great guns cease for an instant. The roar and crash were appalling. Harry saw houses crumbling in Fredericksburg, with flames leaping up from others.

The artillery of Longstreet immediately facing the Union batteries was too light and weak to reply, and the gunners remained quiet in their trenches while the storm rained its showers of steel upon the town. Yet the Mississippians in the rifle pits held fast, their earthen shelters protecting them. While the bombardment was at its very height workmen ran out on the bridge for the fourth time to complete it, and while the shells and solid shot were whistling over their heads, the rifles of the Mississippians once more swept it clean. Harry groaned. He could not help it at the sight of men so brave who were cut down like grass by the scythe. Then his attention turned away from the bridge to the mighty cannonade which seemed to be growing in volume. The wind took much of the smoke across the river and it floated in a great cloud over Fredericksburg, through which shot the flames of the burning buildings.

But the main army of the South, stretched along a front of six miles, remained silent. Jackson on the right scarcely moved, but all the while he attentively watched through his glasses the great cannonade. Nearly all the soldiers were lying down, and to most of them the earth seemed to heave with the shock of all those blazing cannon.

Harry and Dalton walked once to the point where the Invincibles lay. That is, all but Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire were lying down. They stood rigidly erect, their eyes on the great cannonade, and as Harry approached they were exchanging brief comments with each other.

"What harm does that cannonade do, Hector?" asked Colonel Talbot.

"Much to the town, little to us."

"What a pity we don't have an artillery equal to theirs."

"A great pity, Leonidas."

"They will presently move forward in much greater force to finish the bridge."

"Undoubtedly, Leonidas. They have shown folly, wasting the lives of such brave men in small efforts one after another. They will try something else."

"I see a great many boats against the bank on their side of the river. I fancy they will use them in their next attempt, whatever it may be."

"I agree with you. Good morning, Lieutenant Kenton. A mighty and appalling sight."

"Truly it is, sir," said Harry, saluting the two officers.

"The Yankees will force the passage," said Colonel Talbot. "Our artillery is not strong enough to reply to their covering cannonade. We are glad to see you safe and whole, Harry. You'll find your friends lying in that ravine just behind us."

It was a rather deep ravine, and when Harry looked over its edge, St. Clair and Langdon greeted him gladly.

"Come down, Harry," said Langdon, "and be joyful. This gully is pretty well dried out and you can rest. We've got a West Point fellow here and he's humming one of his old songs to about the biggest chorus a song ever had. Captain Swayne, Lieutenant Kenton, once of the Invincibles, but now of General Jackson's personal staff. Swayne's from Tennessee, Harry, and you two are well met. Swayne belongs to a regiment a few yards beyond the gully. He was at the Seven Days and the Second Manassas. We three thought we won those battles ourselves, but it seems that Swayne was at both all the time, helping us. Take off your cap, Harry, and thank the gentleman."

Swayne, a slender, fair man, not over twenty-three, smiled and extended a hearty hand, which Harry received with equal heartiness. The smile turned into a slight twinkle.

"I've been glad to meet your friends here, Mr. Kenton," he said, "but the meeting has brought a disappointment with it."

"How's that?"

"Until we began talking I thought I had won the Seven Days and the Second Manassas all by myself. Now, it seems that I have to share the honors with you fellows."

"So you do," said Langdon, and then he sang:

"There comes a voice from Florida,
     From Tampa's lonely shore,
It speaks of one we've lost,
     O'Brien is no more.
In the land of sun and flowers,
     His head lies pillowed low,
No more he'll drink the gin cocktail,
     At Benjamin Haven's, Oh!
     At Benny Haven's, Oh!
     At Benny Haven's, Oh!"

"Do I get it right, Swayne? Remember that I heard you sing it only three times."

"Fine! Fine!" said Swayne with enthusiasm. "You have it right, or as near right as need be, and you're using it in a much better voice than I can."

"I'm a great soldier, but my true place is on the operatic stage," said Langdon modestly.

"It's an old West Point song of ours, Kenton," said Swayne. "While I was lying here listening to the continued roar of all those great guns, I couldn't keep from humming it as a sort of undernote."

"This gully has a queer effect," said St. Clair, who, lying on a blanket, was dusting every minute particle of dried mud from his uniform. "It seems to soften the sounds of all those guns—and they must be a couple of hundred at least. It produces a kind of harmony."

"It's the old god Vulcan and a thousand assistants of his hammering away on their anvils," said Harry, "and they hammer out a regular tune."

"Besides hammering out