16 The Night Between

The most solemn night yet known by the New World began. The killed were strewn far through the dim forest, lying as they had fallen, untouched by friendly or unfriendly hands; and, with the dead, between the lines of the two hostile armies which expected to fight again on the morrow, lay ten thousand wounded.

The night was close, hot, and sticky, full of the damp heat that gathers sometimes in the Mississippi Valley and hangs like vapours over the earth, clogging the throats of those who try to breathe. It rolled up in wet coils from the south, and lay heavy in the lungs of the men. No wind stirred the forest, the branches of the trees hanging dead and motionless in the air. Clouds gathered over all the skies, increasing the heat of the night. Not a single star came out. The forest, set on fire by the shells, burned slowly here and there, but the flames were hidden or obscured by the columns of smoke that still rose from the thickets, and the sparks gave forth no cheerful twinkle. The gunboats in the river fired a shell every ten minutes toward the Southern army, and the heavy note echoed like the slow tolling of a funeral bell. The fires of the hostile armies rose within sight of one another, but the rifles were silent. The men had no strength left, and what would come they must guard for the morrow.

When the last shot was fired, I leaned against a cannon wheel and looked at the forest in which the Southern army lay. It had been ten or twelve hours since that army sprang out of the woods and threw itself upon us, but I felt that I had lived a second life in the brief space. Some one dropped a hand upon my shoulder.

“Food! Henry, food!” said Shaftoe cheerfully. “Now is the time to eat. In fact, it came some time ago; but those impolite rebels insisted on taking supper with us, and we had to put them out of the house.”

“I don’t want to eat. I want to sleep.”

“Maybe you don’t want to eat, but food will be good for you, and the Government demands that you eat. When you enlisted you entered into a contract that contains only one provision, namely, that you do, at any and all times, and under any and all circumstances, whatever your officer, who is the representative of the Government, no matter how great a fool he may be, orders you to do. The Government now tells you to eat, not because food will taste good to the hungry, but because it will need your strength for the battle to-morrow. I have spent thirty years learning this, and I know. Come on, and don’t be a fool.”

I followed without another word, knowing that Shaftoe was right. We went but a few steps. Soldiers were lighting the supper fires on the hills overlooking the river, the hills to which Sherman and some others had clung so tightly, and which were all that was left to us. The Southern army held the rest of the field, and lay coiled before us.

The fires burned slowly, the flames rising straight up and showing the utter deadness of the air. The clouds grew thicker and settled lower, giving a ghostly effect to the dim forest in which the flames quivered like phantom lights. The air was a dull, sodden gray, and the river showed a sombre yellow, winding in a broad band among the hills and woods. I shivered, though not with cold, and looked again at the Southern camp fires.

“Why is there no fighting?” I asked. “We are within gunshot of each other.”

“Because it is not necessary,” replied Shaftoe. “It is another of the Government stipulations that you do not fight when it is not needed, as thereby you would waste your strength and ammunition, and both are expensive—especially the latter. Those men over there are doing us no harm, why should we shoot at them?”

Shaftoe had become a cook, turning himself with ready skill to the new need. A rich and accessible North always gave plenty of food to its armies, and the stores were hurried up from the steamers and across the river. The odour made me hungry and I ate.

The fires blazed up on either side of the river, casting long gleams of light over the dusky stream, and faintly touching the still forests. The steamers and tugs were bringing across the troops, and the air was filled with their puffing and panting. Innumerable columns of smoke added to the closeness of the sultry night.

The lights on the Tennessee seemed to me, lying on a hilltop among the trees, so many quivering stars. Their glare was shaded and softened by the distance, and they appeared, twinkled, and went out, and then appeared again. The water near them gleamed in spots of silver and gold as the flames fell, and sometimes when the flash was brightest I saw the faces of the men on the boats, pale, lips compressed, and always looking anxiously toward the shore that had been the battle shore. There was the same absence of talk that had marked the passage of the first detachment, only the clashing of arms, the puffing of the steamers, the rattle of their machinery, and occasionally the voice of an officer—the whole a picture of solemn majesty.

The presence of the river and its great winding column of water had no effect upon the closeness of the night. The heat seemed to pile in clouds of vapour upon the stream. The battle smoke was still hanging over the forests, and wisps of it floated off toward the skies.

Physical exhaustion and the terrible excitement and strain of the day put me in an unreal mental state, in which distorted and fantastic images danced before my eyes. I stared at the forest, the yellow river with its twinkling lights, and then at the pale faces of soldiers appearing and reappearing. But all were phantoms. The figures on the boats were no more than the ghosts of men, the river took some strange new colour, and the lights passing and repassing became so faint at times that I could not tell whether I saw them or they were mere fancy. I tried to count them, but they danced about in the weirdest fashion; and losing myself in a maze, I turned my eyes back to the forest in front. The fires there were sinking. The Southern army, exhausted by its tremendous march and equally tremendous battle, was overpowered by lethargy.

I watched the Southern fires die, one by one, and then listened, ear to the earth, for the unheard plaints of the wounded. I could not take my mind from them. I wondered that they did not cry out. I strained my eyes into the darkness, but I could not see the fallen men, only the last feeble lights of the Southern camp fires and the torn and trampled forest. It looked as if a succession of fierce storms had swept over it. In one place an entire group of trees had been cut down by cannon balls and lay in a tangled mass. Everywhere boughs were scattered, and the thickets had been torn alike by the sweep of shells and bullets and the passing of men. Near me were the remains of a cannon, both wheels shot off and the barrel split at its muzzle, looking, with its empty mouth and torn body, like an emblem of death and decay. I did not know to which army the gun had belonged. The trees, set on fire by the exploding shells, still burned languidly in patches, emitting few sparks, and the smoke floated off to join the canopy that had formed during the battle.

I could not sleep, yet the night became dimmer. Everything was in wavy lines. The hum of the crossing troops reached me. Now and then a word floated up to my ears, but my senses while willing to be benumbed, refused to be lulled.

“Why don’t you sleep?” asked Shaftoe.

“I can not fight all day for the first time and then sleep as if I were at home in my bed. You’ll have to wait until I form the habit,” I replied. And then I added, “Why don’t you go to sleep yourself?”

Shaftoe did not reply, because his unconcern was not as great as his pretence. His eyes were sad when they strained into the dimness where the wounded lay. My own closed by and bye, and then I heard shots. The Southern army again sprang from the brushwood and the battle raged as before through the forest to the roar of artillery, the crash of eighty thousand rifles, the shouts of charging men, and with all the real force and fury of a great struggle. I opened my eyes and found that I had fallen into an uneasy sleep and still more troubled dream, repeating the history of the day.

“I heard the thunder of the charge again,” I said, with a mirthless laugh, to Shaftoe, who was sitting up and wide-awake.

“You heard thunder, but it was the thunder of God,” replied the regular, with a sententiousness rare in him. “Listen to it!”

The thunder in fact was grumbling in the southwest, and I saw that while I slept the heavens had become darker. Not a shred of blue showed. A flash of lightning curved across the sky, the air stirred, and the flames of the trees that yet burned quivered before it.

“A storm is coming,” I said. “A fresh horror.”

“Not a horror at all,” replied the regular. “Think what a blessing the cool rain will be on the hot faces of the wounded lying among all those trees and thickets. Let it come.”

A gust of wind swept over us. The close damp clouds of heat were lifted, the coils of smoke and vapour were driven away over the trees. The thunder cracked directly overhead, a flash of lightning split the entire sky, and the rain, driven on in torrents by the wind, rushed upon us. The camp was drenched in a moment, the earth ran water. The flames in the trees and the smouldering camp fires were alike put out, and the embers steaming in their place cast out smoke until the sweep of the rain extinguished them too. The air was filled with twigs and the fragments of boughs, picked up by the gusts, but the wind soon passed on and left only the rain, now pouring steadily out of one vast cloud that covered all the sky. The lightning ceased, only the thunder grumbled distinctly, and all other sounds were subdued by the regular beat of the rain.

The battlefield then sank into unbroken darkness, the Southern lines became invisible, but the passage of the Army of the Ohio over the river, boat by boat, continued as steadily as ever. That was a matter which could not halt for weather. The rain ceased by and bye, the blue crept into the sky, the stars came out, and I fell asleep again on the soaking earth.

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