The Sword of Antietam: A Story of the Nation's Crisis Part 15

"Get up, Frank," he said. "You're not dead."

"No, I'm not, but I'm as good as dead. You just let me finish dying in peace."

d.i.c.k shoved him again and Pennington sat up. When he saw the food and coffee he suddenly remembered to be hungry. Warner was already eating and drinking. Off to the left they still heard cannon and rifles, although the sound was sinking. Occasionally flashes from the mouths of the great guns illumined the darkness.

d.i.c.k did not know what time it was. He had no idea how long he had been lying upon the ground panting, the air surcharged with menace and suspense. The vast clouds of dust, impregnated with burned gunpowder still floated about, and it scorched his mouth and throat as he breathed it.

The boys, after eating and drinking lay down again. They still heard the firing of pickets, but it was no more than the buzzing of bees to them, and after a while they fell into the sleep of nervous and physical exhaustion. But while many of the soldiers slept all of the generals were awake.

It was a singular fact but in the night that divided the great battle of the Second Mana.s.sas into two days both sides were full of confidence.

Jackson's men, who had borne the brunt of the first day, rested upon their arms and awaited the dawn with implicit confidence in their leader. On the other flank Lee and Longstreet were ma.s.sing their men for a fresh attack.

The losses within the Union lines were replaced by reinforcements. Pope rode among them, sanguine, full of hope, telegraphing to Was.h.i.+ngton that the enemy had lost two to his one, and that Lee was retreating toward the mountains.

d.i.c.k slept uneasily through the night, and rose to another hot August sun. Then the two armies looked at each other and it seemed that each was waiting for the other to begin, as the morning hours dragged on and only the skirmishers were busy. During this comparative peace, the heavy clouds of dust were not floating about, and d.i.c.k whose body had come to life again walked back and forth with his colonel, gazing through their gla.s.ses at the enemy. He scarcely noticed it, but Colonel Winchester's manner toward him had become paternal. The boy merely ascribed it to the friendly feeling an officer would feel for a faithful aide, but he knew that he had in his colonel one to whom he could speak both as a friend and a protector. Walking together they talked freely of the enemy who stood before them in such an imposing array.

"Colonel," said d.i.c.k, "do you think General Pope is correct in stating that one wing of the Southern army is already retreating through Thoroughfare Gap?"

"I don't, d.i.c.k. I don't think it is even remotely probable. I'm quite sure, too, that we have the whole Confederate army in front of us. We'll have to beat both Lee and Jackson, if we can."

"Where do you think the main attack will be?"

"On Jackson, who is still in front of us. But we have waited a long time. It must be full noon now."

"It is past noon, sir, but I hear the trumpets, calling up our men."

"They are calling to us, too."

The regiment s.h.i.+fted a little to the right, where a great column was forming for a direct attack upon the Confederate lines. Twenty thousand men stood in a vast line and forty thousand were behind them to march in support.

d.i.c.k had thought that he would be insensible to emotions, but his heart began to throb again. The spectacle thrilled and awed him--the great army marching to the attack and the resolute army awaiting it. Soon he heard behind him the firing of the artillery which sent shot and sh.e.l.l over their heads at the enemy. A dozen cannon came into action, then twenty, fifty, a hundred and more, and the earth trembled with the mighty concussion.

d.i.c.k felt the surge of triumph. They had yet met no answering fire.

Perhaps General Pope and not Colonel Winchester had been right after all, and the Confederates were crushed. Awaiting them was only a rear guard which would flee at the first flash of the bayonets in the wood.

The great line marched steadily onward, and the cannon thundered and roared over the heads of the men raking the wood with steel. Still no reply. Surely the sixty thousand Union men would now march over everything. They were driving in the swarms of skirmishers. d.i.c.k could see them retreating everywhere, in the wood over the hills and along an embankment.

Warner was on his right and Pennington on his left. d.i.c.k glanced at them and he saw the belief in speedy victory expressed on the faces of both.

It seemed to him, too, that nothing could now stop the ma.s.sive columns that Pope was sending forward against the thinned ranks of the Confederates.

They were much nearer and he saw gray lines along an embankment and in a wood. Then above the crash and thunder of their covering artillery he heard another sound. It was the Southern bugles calling with a piercing note to their own men just as the Northern trumpets had called.

d.i.c.k saw a great gray mult.i.tude suddenly pour forward. It looked to him in the blur and the smoke like an avalanche, and in truth it was a human avalanche, a far greater force of the South than they expected to meet there. Directly in front of the Union column stood the Stonewall Brigade, and all the chosen veterans of Stonewall Jackson's army.

"It's a fight, face to face," d.i.c.k heard Colonel Winchester say.

Then he saw a Union officer, whose name he did not know suddenly gallop out in front of the division, wave his saber over his head and shout the charge. A tremendous rolling cry came from the blue ranks and d.i.c.k physically felt the whole division leap forward and rush at the enemy.

d.i.c.k saw the officer who had made himself the leader of the charge gallop straight at a breastwork that the Southerners had built, reach and stand, horse and rider, a moment at the top, then both fall in a limp heap. The next instant the officer, not dead but wounded, was dragged a prisoner behind the embankment by generous foes who had refused to shoot at him until compelled to do so.

The Union men, with a roar, followed their champion, and d.i.c.k felt a very storm burst upon them. The Southerners had thrown up earthworks at midnight and thousands of riflemen lying behind them sent in a fire at short range that caused the first Union line to go down like falling grain. Cannon from the wood and elsewhere raked them through and through.

It was a vortex of fire and death. The Confederates themselves were losing heavily, but taught by the stern Jackson and knowing that his eye was upon them they refused to yield. The Northern charge broke on their front, but the men did not retreat far. The shrill trumpet called them back to the charge, and once more the blue ma.s.ses hurled themselves upon the barrier of fire and steel, to break again, and to come yet a third time at the trumpet's call. Often the combatants were within ten yards of one another, but strive as they would the Union columns could not break through the Confederate defense.

Elsewhere the men of Hill and Longstreet showed a sternness and valor equal to that of Jackson's. Their ranks held firm everywhere, and now, as the long afternoon drew on, the eye of Lee, watching every rising and falling wave of the battle, saw his chance. He drew his batteries together in great ma.s.ses and as the last charge broke on Jackson's lines the trumpets sounded the charge for the Southern troops who hitherto had stood on the defensive.

d.i.c.k heard a tremendous shout, the great rebel yell, that he had heard so often before, and that he was destined to hear so often again.

Through the clouds of smoke and dust he saw the long lines of Southern bayonets advancing swiftly. His regiment, which had already lost more than half its numbers, was borne back by an appalling weight.

Then hope deserted the boy for the first time. The Union was not to be saved here on this field. It was instead another lost Mana.s.sas, but far greater than the first. The genius of Lee and Jackson which bore up the Confederacy was triumphing once again. d.i.c.k shut his teeth in grim despair. He heard the triumphant shouts of the advancing enemy, and he saw that not only his own regiment, but the whole Northern line, was being driven back, slowly it is true, but they were going.

Now at the critical moment, Lee was hurling forward every man and gun.

Although his army was inferior in numbers he was always superior at the point of contact, and his exultant veterans pressed harder and harder upon their weakening foes. Only the artillery behind them now protected d.i.c.k and his comrades. But the Confederates still came with a rush.

Jackson was leading on his own men who had stood so long on the defensive. The retreating Union line was broken, guns were lost, and there was a vast turmoil and confusion. Yet out of it some order finally emerged, and although the Union army was now driven back at every point it inflicted heavy losses upon its foe, and under the lead of brave commanders great ma.s.ses gathered upon the famous Henry Hill, resolved, although they could not prevent defeat, to save the army from destruction.

Night was coming down for the second time upon the field of battle, lost to the North, although the North was ready to fight again.

Lee and Jackson looked upon the heavy Union ma.s.ses gathered at the Henry Hill, and then looking at the coming darkness they stopped the attack.

Night heavier than usual came down over the field, covering with its friendly veil those who had lost and those who had won, and the twenty-five thousand who had fallen.

CHAPTER VI. THE MOURNFUL FOREST

As the night settled down, heavy and dark, and the sounds of firing died away along the great line, d.i.c.k again sank to the ground exhausted.

Although the battle itself had ceased, it seemed to him that the drums of his ears still reproduced its thunder and roar, or at least the echo of it was left upon the brain.

He lay upon the dry gra.s.s, and although the night was again hot and breathless, surcharged with smoke and dust and fire, he felt a chill that went to the bone, and he trembled all over. Then a cold perspiration broke out upon him. It was the collapse after two days of tremendous exertion, excitement and anxiety. He did not move for eight or ten minutes, blind to everything that was going on about him, and then through the darkness he saw Colonel Winchester standing by and looking down at him.

"Are you all right, d.i.c.k, my boy?" the colonel asked.

"Yes, sir," replied d.i.c.k, as his pride made him drag himself to his feet. "I'm not wounded at all. I was just clean played out."

"You're lucky to get off so well," said the colonel, smiling sadly.

"We've lost many thousands and we've lost the battle, too. The killed or wounded in my regiment number more than two-thirds."

"Have you seen anything of Warner and Pennington, sir? I lost sight of them in that last terrible attack."

"Pennington is here. He has had a bullet through the fleshy part of his left arm, but he's so healthy it won't take him long to get well. I'm sorry to say that Warner is missing."

"Missing, sir? You don't say that George has been killed?"

"I don't say it. I'm hoping instead that he's been captured."

d.i.c.k knew what the colonel meant. In Colonel Winchester's opinion only two things, death or capture, could keep Warner from being with them.