University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.
CAPTAIN COLBURNE COVERS THE RETREAT OF THE SOUTHERN
LABOR ORGANIZATION.

Colburne soon discovered the Ravenels and their retainers
bivouacked in an angle of the fortification. The
Doctor actually embraced him in delight at his escape;
and Mrs. Carter seized both his hands in hers, exclaiming,
“Oh, I am so happy!”

She was full of gayety. She had had a splendid nap;
had actually slept out of doors. Did he see that tent made
out of a blanket? She had slept in that. She could bivouac
as well as you, Captain Colburne; she was as good a soldier
as you, Captain Colburne. She liked it, of all things
in the world. She never would sleep in the house again
till she was fif— sixty.

It was curious to note how she checked herself upon the
point of mentioning fifty as the era of first decrepitude.
Her father was over fifty, and therefore fifty could not be
old age, notwithstanding her preconceived opinions on the
subject.

“But oh, how obliged we are to you!” she added, changing
suddenly to a serious view. “How kind and noble
and brave you are! We owe you so much!—Isn't it
strange that I should be saying such things to you? I
never thought that I should ever say anything of the kind to
any man but my father and my husband. I am indeed grateful
to you, and thankful that you have escaped.”

As she spoke, her eyes filled with tears. There was a
singular changeableness about her of late; she shifted
rapidly and without warning, almost without cause, from
one emotion to another; she felt and expressed all emotions
with more than usual fervor. She was sadder at times
and gayer at times than circumstances seemed to justify.
An ordinary observer, a man especially, would have been

apt to consider some of her conduct odd, if not irrational.
The truth is that she had been living a new life for the
past two months, and that her being, physical and moral,
had not yet been able to settle into a tranquil unity of
function and feeling. Many women and a few men will
understand me here. Colburne was too merely a young
man to comprehend anything; but he could stand a little
way off and worship. He thought, as she faced him with
her cheeks flushed and her eyes the brighter for tears, that
she was very near in guise and nature to an angel. It
may be a paradox; it may be a dangerous fact to make
public; but he certainly was loving another man's wife
with perfect innocence.

“What is the matter with Mauma Major?” asked the
Doctor.

Colburne briefly related the martyrdom of Scott; and
father and daughter hurried to console the weeping black
woman.

Then the young soldier bethought himself that he ought
to report his knowledge of the rebels to the commandant
of the garrison. “You 'll find the cuss in there,” said a
devil-may-care lieutenant, pointing to a brick structure in
the centre of the fort. Colburne entered, saw an officer
sleeping on a pile of blankets, and to his astonishment
recognized him as Major Gazaway. In slumber this remarkable
poltroon looked respectably formidable. He
was six feet in height and nearly two hundred pounds in
weight, large-limbed, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, dark
in complexion, aquiline in feature, masculine and even
stern in expression. He had begun life as a prize fighter,
but had failed in that career, not because he lacked
strength or skill, but from want of pluck to stand the hammering.
Nevertheless he was a tolerable hand at a rough-and-tumble
fight, and still more efficient in election-day
bullying and browbeating. For the last ten years he had
kept a billiard saloon, had held various small public offices,
and had been the Isaiah Rynders of his little city. On the

stump he had a low kind of popular eloquence made up of
coarse denunciation, slanderous lying, bar-room slang,
smutty stories, and profanity. The Rebellion broke out;
the Rebel cannon aimed at Fort Sumter knocked the breath
out of the Democratic party; and Gazaway turned Republican,
bringing over two hundred fighting voters, and
changing the political complexion of his district. Consequently
he easily got a commission as captain in the three
months' campaign, and subsequently as major in the Tenth,
much to the disgust of its commandant. He had expected
and demanded a colonelcy; he thought that the Governor,
in not granting it, had treated him with ingratitude and
black injustice; he honestly believed this, and was naively
sore and angry on the subject. It needed this trait of born
impudence to render his character altogether contemptible;
for had he been a conscious, humble coward, he would
have merited a pity not altogether disunited from respect.
From the day of receiving his commission Gazaway had
not ceased to intrigue and bully for promotion in a long
series of blotted and ill-spelled letters. How could a mere
Major ever hope to go before the people successfully as a
candidate for Congress? That distinction was the aim of
Gazaway, as of many another more or less successful blackguard.
It is true that these horrid battles occasionally
shook his ambition and his confidence in his own merits.
Under fire he was a meek man, much given to lying low,
to praying fervently, to thinking that a whole skin was
better than laurels. But in a few hours after the danger
was past, his elastic vanity and selfishness rose to the occasion,
and he was as pompous in air, as dogmatical in
speech, as impudently greedy in his demands for advancement
as ever. Such was one of Colburne's superior officers;
such was the dastard to whom the wounded hero reported
for duty. Colburne, by the way, had never asked
for promotion, believing, with the faith of chivalrous youth,
that merit would be sure of undemanded recognition.

After several calls of “Major!” the slumberer came to

his consciousness; he used it by rolling over on his side,
and endeavoring to resume his dozings. He had not been
able to sleep till late the night before on account of his
terrors, and now he was reposing like an animal, anxious
chiefly to be let alone.

“Major—excuse me—I have something of importance to
report,” insisted the Captain.

“Well; what is it?” snarled Gazaway. Then, catching
sight of Colburne, “Oh! that you, Cap? Where you
from?”

“From a plantation five miles below, on the bayou. I
was followed in closely by the rebel cavalry. Their
pickets are less than half a mile from the fort.”

“My God!” exclaimed Gazaway, sitting up and throwing
off his musquito-net. “What do you think? They
ain't going to attack the fort, be they?” Then calling his
homespun pomposity to his aid, he added, with a show of
bravado, “I can't see it. They know better. We can
knock spots out of 'em.”

“Of course we can,” coincided the Captain. “I don't
believe they have any siege artillery; and if we can't beat
off an assault we ought to be cat-o'-nine-tailed.”

“Cap, I vow I wish I had your health,” said the Major,
gazing shamelessly at Colburne's thin and pale face. “You
can stand anything. I used to think I could, but this
cussed climate fetches me. I swear I hain't been myself
since I come to Louisianny.”

It is true that the Major had not been in field service
what he once honestly thought he was. He had supposed
himself to be a brave man; he was never disenchanted of
this belief except while on the battle-field; and after he
had run away he always said and tried to believe that it
was because he was sick.

“I was took sick with my old trouble, he continued;
“same as I had at New Orleans, you know—the very day
that we attacked Port Hudson.”

By the way, he had not had it at New Orleans; he had

had it at Georgia Landing and Camp Beasland; but Colburne
did not correct him.

“By George! what a day that was!” he exclaimed, referring
to the assault of the 27th of May. “I'll bet more'n
a hundred shots come within five feet of me. If I could a
kep' up with the regiment, I'd a done it. But I couldn't.
I had to go straight to the hospital. I tell you I suffered
there. I couldn't get no kind of attention, there was so
many wounded there. After a few days I set out for the
regiment, and found it in a holler where the rebel bullets
was skipping about like parched peas in a skillet. But I
was too sick to stand it. I had to put back to the hospital.
Finally the Doctor he sent me to New Orleans.
Well, I was just gettin' a little flesh on my bones when
General Emory ordered every man that could walk to be
put to duty. Nothing would do but I must take command
of this fort. I got here yesterday morning, and the
boat went back in the afternoon, and here we be in a hell
of a muss. I brought twenty such invalids along—men
no more fit for duty than I be. I swear it's a shame.”

Colburne did not utter the disgust and contempt which
he felt; he turned away in silence, intending to look up
dressings for his arm, which had become dry and feverish.
The Major called him back.

“I say, Cap, if the enemy are in force, what are we to
do?”

“Why, we shall fight, of course.”

“But we ha'n't got men enough to stand an assault.”

“How many?”

“One little comp'ny Louisianny men, two comp'nies
nine months' men, and a few invalids.”

“That's enough. Have you any spare arms?”

“I d'no. I reckon so,” said the Major, in a peevish tone.
“I reckon you'd better hunt up the Quartermaster, if
there is one. I s'pose he has 'em.”

“A friend of mine has brought fifteen able-bodied negroes
into the fort. I want guns for them.”

“Niggers!” sneered the Major. “What good be they?”

Losing all patience, Colburne disrespectfully turned his
back without answering, and left the room.

“I say, Cap, if we let them niggers fight we'll be all
massacred,” were the last words that he heard from Gazaway.

Having got his arm bound anew with wet dressings, he
sought out the Quartermaster, and proceeded to accouter
the Ravenel negroes, meanwhile chewing a breakfast of
hard crackers. Then, meeting the Lieutenant who had directed
him to Gazaway's quarters, and who proved to be
the commandant of the Louisiana company, they made a
tour of the ramparts together, doing their volunteer best
to take in the military features of the flat surrounding
landscape, and to decide upon the line of approach which
the rebels would probably select in case of an assault.
There was no cover except two or three wooden houses of
such slight texture that they would afford no protection
against shell or grape. The levee on the opposite side of
the bayou might shelter sharpshooters, but not a column.
They trained a twenty-four-pounder iron gun in that direction,
and pointed the rest of the artillery so as to
sweep the plain between the fort and a wood half a mile
distant. The ditch was deep and wide, and well filled
with water, but there was no abattis or other obstruction
outside of it. The weakest front was toward the Mississippi,
on which side the rampart was a mere bank not five
feet in hight, scarcely dominating the slope of twenty-five
or thirty yards which stretched between it and the water.

“I wish the river was higher—smack up to the fortifications,”
said the Louisiana lieutenant. “They can wade
around them fences,” he added, pointing to the palisades
which connected the work with the river.

This officer was not a Louisianian by birth, any more
than the men whom he commanded. They were a medley
of all nations, principally Irish and Germans, and he had
begun his martial career as a volunteer in an Indiana regiment.

He was chock full of fight and confidence; this
was the only fort he had ever garrisoned, and he considered
it almost impregnable; his single doubt was lest the
assailants “might wade in around them fences.” Colburne,
remembering how Banks had been repulsed twice
from inferior works at Port Hudson, also thought the
chances good for a defence. Indeed, he looked forward
to the combat with something like a vindictive satisfaction.
Heretofore he had always attacked; and he wanted to
fight the rebels once from behind a rampart; he wanted to
teach them what it was to storm fortifications. If he had
been better educated in his profession he would have
found the fort alarmingly small and open, destitute as it
was of bomb-proofs, casemates and traverses. The river
showed no promise of succor; not a gunboat or transport
appeared on its broad, slow, yellow current; not a friendly
smoke could be seen across the flat distances. The little
garrison, it seemed, must rely upon its own strength and
courage. But, after taking a deliberate view of all the
circumstances, Colburne felt justified in reporting to Major
Gazaway that the fort could beat off as many Texans as
could stand between it and the woods, which was the same
as to say a matter of one or two hundred thousand. Leaving
his superior officer in a state of spasmodic and short-lived
courage, he spread his rubber blanket in a shady
corner, rolled up his coat for a pillow, laid himself down,
and slept till nearly noon. When he awoke, the Doctor
was holding an umbrella over him.

“I am ever so much obliged to you,” said Colburne, sitting
up.

“Not at all. I was afraid you might get the fever.
Our Louisiana sun, you know, doesn't dispense beneficence
alone. I saw that it had found you out, and I rushed to
the rescue.”

“Is Mrs. Carter sheltered?” asked the Captain.

“She is very comfortably off, considering the circumstances.”

He was twiddling and twirling his umbrella as though
he had something on his mind.

“I want you to do me a favor,” he said, after a moment.
“I should really like a gun, if it is not too much trouble.”

The idea of the Doctor, with his fifty-five years, his
peaceful habits, and his spectacles, rushing to battle made
Colburne smile. Another imaginary picture, the image of
Lillie weeping over her father's body, restored his seriousness.

“What would Mrs. Carter say to it?” he asked.

“I should be obliged if you would not mention it to
her,” answered the Doctor. “I think the matter can be
managed without her knowledge.”

Accordingly Colburne fitted out this unexpected recruit
with a rifle-musket, and showed him how to load it, and
how to put on his accoutrements. This done, he reverted
to the subject which most interested his mind just at
present.

“Mrs. Carter must be better sheltered than she is,” he
said. “In case of an assault, she would be in the way
where she is, and, moreover, she might get hit by a chance
bullet. I will tell the Major that his Colonel's wife is here,
and that he must turn out for her.”

“Do you think it best?” questioned the Doctor.
“Really, I hate to disturb the commandant of the fort.”

But Colburne did think it best, and Gazaway was not
hard to convince. He hated to lose his shelter, poor as it
was, but he had a salutary dread of his absent Colonel,
and remembering how dubious had been his own record
in field service, he thought it wise to secure the favor of
Mrs. Carter. Accordingly Lillie, accompanied by Black
Julia, moved into the brick building, notwithstanding her
late declarations that she liked nothing so well as sleeping
in the open air.

“Premature old age,” laughed Colburne. “Sixty
already.”

“It is the African Dahomey, and not the American,
which produces the Amazons,” observed the Doctor.

“If you don't stop I shall be severe,” threatened Lillie.
“I have a door now to turn people out of.”

“Just as though that was a punishment,” said Colburne.
“I thought out-of-doors was the place to live.”

As is usual with people in circumstances of romance
which are not instantly and overpoweringly alarming,
there was an exhilaration in their spirits which tended towards
gayety. While Mrs. Carter and Colburne were
thus jesting, the Doctor shyly introduced his martial
equipments into the house, and concealed them under a
blanket in one corner. Presently the two men adjourned
to the ramparts, to learn the cause of a commotion which
was visible among the garrison. Far up the bayou road
thin yellow clouds of dust could be seen rising above the
trees, no doubt indicating a movement of troops in considerable
force. From that quarter no advance of friends,
but only to Texan cavalry and Louisianian infantry, could
be expected. Nearly all the soldiers had left their shelters
of boards and rubber blankets, and were watching the
threatening phenomenon with a grave fixedness of expression
which showed that they fully appreciated its deadly
significance. Sand-columns of the desert, water-spouts of
the ocean, are a less impressive spectacle than the approaching
dust of a hostile army. The old and tried soldier
knows all that it means; he knows how tremendous
will be the screech of the shells and the ghastliness of the
wounds; he faces it with an inward shrinking, although
with a calm determination to do his duty; his time for
elation will not come until his blood is heated by fighting,
and he joins in the yell of the charge. The recruit, deeply
moved by the novelty of the sight, and the unknown
grandeur of horror or of glory which it presages, is either
vaguely terrified or full of excitement. Calm as is the exterior
of most men in view of approaching battle, not one
of them looks upon it with entire indifference. But let the

eyes on the fortifications strain as they might, no lines of
troops could be distinguished, and there was little, if any,
increase in the number of the rebel pickets who sat sentinel
in their saddles under the shade of scattered trees
and houses. Presently the murmur “A flag of truce!” ran
along the line of spectators. Down the road which skirted
the northern bank of the bayou rode slowly, amidst a little
cloud of dust, a party of four horsemen, one of whom
carried a white flag.

“What does that mean,” asked Gazaway. “Do you
think peace is proclaimed?”

“It means that they want this fort,” said Colburne.
“They are going to commit the impertinence of asking us
to surrender.”

The Major's aquiline visage was very pale, and his outstretched
hand shook visibly; he was evidently seized by
the complaint which had so troubled him at Port Hudson.

“Cap, what shall I do?” he inquired in a confidential
whisper, twisting one of his tremulous fingers into Colburne's
buttonhole, and drawing him aside.

“Tell them to go to —, and then send them there,”
said the Captain, angrily, perceiving that Gazaway's feelings
inclined toward a capitulation. “Send out an officer
and escort to meet the fellows and bring in their message.
They mustn't be allowed to come inside.”

“No, no; of course not. We couldn't git very good
terms if they should see how few we be,” returned the
Major, unable to see the matter in any other light than
that of his own terrors. “Well, Cap, you go and meet the
feller. No, you stay here; I want to talk to you. Here,
where's that Louisianny Lieutenant? Oh, Lieutenant, you
go out to that feller with jest as many men 's he's got;
stop him 's soon 's you git to him, and send in his business.
Send it in by one of your men, you know; and take a
white flag, or han'kerch'f, or suthin'.”

When Gazaway was in a perturbed state of mind, his
conversation had an unusual twang of the provincialisms

of tone and grammar amidst which he had been educated,
or rather had grown up without an education.

At sight of the Union flag of truce, the rebel one,
now only a quarter of a mile from the fort, halted under
the shadow of an evergreen oak by the roadside. After a
parley of a few minutes, the Louisiana Lieutenant returned,
beaded with perspiration, and delivered to Gazaway
a sealed envelope. The latter opened it with fingers
which worked as awkwardly as a worn-out pair of tongs,
read the enclosed note with evident difficulty, cast a
troubled eye up and down the river, as if looking in vain
for help, beckoned Colburne to follow him, and led the
way to a deserted angle of the fort.

“I say, Cap,” he whispered, “we've got to surrender.”

Colburne looked him sternly in the face, but could not
catch his cowardly eye.

“Take care, Major,” he said.

Gazaway started as if he had been threatened with personal
violence.

“You are a ruined man if you surrender this fort,” pursued
Colburne.

The Major writhed his Herculean form, and looked all
the anguish which so mean a nature was capable of feeling;
for it suddenly occurred to him that if he capitulated
he might never be promoted, and never go to Congress.

“What in God's name shall I do?” he implored.
“They've got six thous'n' men.”

“Call the officers together, and put it to vote.”

“Well, you fetch 'em, Cap. I swear I'm too sick to
stan' up.”

Down he sat in the dust, resting his elbows on his knees,
and his head between his hands. Colburne sought out
the officers, seven in number, besides himself, and all, as it
chanced, Lieutenants.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “we are dishonored cowards if
we surrender this fort without fighting.”

“Dam'd if we don't have the biggest kind of a scrimmage
first,” returned the Louisianian.

The afflicted Gazaway rose to receive them, opened the
communication of the rebel general, dropped it, picked
it up, and handed it to Colburne, saying, “Cap, you
read it.”

It was a polite summons to surrender, stating the investing
force at six thousand men, declaring that the success
of an assault was certain, offering to send the garrison
on parole to New Orleans, and closing with the hope that
the commandant of the fort would avoid a useless effusion
of blood.

“Now them's what I call han'some terms,” broke in
Gazaway eagerly. “We can't git no better if we fight a
week. And we can't fight a day. We hain't got the men
to whip six thous'n' Texans. I go for takin' terms while
we can git 'em.”

“Gentlemen, I go for fighting,” said Colburne.

“That's me,” responded the Louisiana lieutenant; and
there was an approving murmur from the other officers.

“This fort,” continued our Captain, “is an absolute necessity
to the prosecution of the siege of Port Hudson. If it
is lost, the navigation of the river is interrupted, and our
army is cut off from its supplies. If we surrender, we
make the whole campaign a failure. We must not do it.
We never shall be able to face our comrades after it; we
never shall be able to look loyal man or rebel in the eye.
We can defend ourselves. General Banks has been repulsed
twice from inferior works. It is an easy chance to
do a great deed—to deserve the thanks of the army and the
whole country. Just consider, too, that if we don't hold
the fort, we may be called on some day to storm it. Which
is the easiest? Gentlemen, I say, No surrender!”

Every officer but Gazaway answered, “That's my vote.”
The Louisiana Lieutenant fingered his revolver threateningly,
and swore by all that was holy or infernal that he
would shoot the first man who talked of capitulating.

Gazaway's mouth had opened to gurgle a remonstrance,
but at this threat he remained silent and gasping like a
stranded fish.

“Well, Cap, you write an answer to the cuss, and the
Major 'll sign it,” said the Louisianian to Colburne, with a
grin of humorous malignity. Our friend ran to the office
of the Quartermaster, and returned in a minute with the
following epistle:

“Sir: It is my duty to defend Fort Winthrop to the
last extremity, and I shall do it.”

The signature which the Major appended to this heroic
document was so tremulous and illegible that the rebel
general must have thought that the commandant was
either very illiterate or else a very old gentleman afflicted
with the palsy.

Thus did the unhappy Gazaway have greatness thrust
upon him. He would have been indignant had he not been
so terrified; he thought of court-martialing Colburne some
day for insubordination, but said nothing of it at present;
he was fully occupied with searching the fort for a place
which promised shelter from shell and bullet. The rest
of the day he spent chiefly on the river front, looking up
and down the stream in vain for the friendly smoke of
gunboats, and careful all the while to keep his head below
the level of the ramparts. His trepidation was so apparent
that the common soldiers discovered it, and amused themselves
by slyly jerking bullets at him, in order to see him
jump, fall down and clap his hand to the part hit by the
harmless missile. He must have suspected the trick; but
he did not threaten vengeance nor even try to discover
the jokers: every feeble source of manliness in him had
been dried up by his terrors, He gave no orders, exacted
no obedience, and would have received none had he demanded
it. Late in the afternoon, half a dozen veritable
rebel balls whistling over the fort sent him cowering into
the room occupied by Mrs. Carter, where he appropriated
a blanket and stretched himself at full length on the floor,

fairly grovelling and flattening in search of safety. It was
a case of cowardice which bordered upon mania or physical
disease. He had just manliness enough to feel a little
ashamed of himself, and mutter to Mrs. Carter that he was
“too sick to stan' up.” Even she, novel as she was to the
situation, understood him, after a little study; and the
sight of his degrading alarm, instead of striking her with
a panic, roused her pride and her courage. With what an
admiring contrast of feeling she looked at the brave Colburne
and thought of her brave husband!

The last rays of the setting sun showed no sign of an
enemy except the wide thin semicircle of rebel pickets,
quiet but watchful, which stretched across the bayou from
the river above to the river below. As night deepened,
the vigilance of the garrison increased, and not only the
sentinels but every soldier was behind the ramparts, each
officer remaining in rear of his own company or platoon,
ready to direct it and lead it at the first alarm. Colburne,
who was tacitly recognized as commander-in-chief, made
the rounds every hour. About midnight a murmur of
joy ran from bastion to bastion as the news spread that
two steamers were close at hand, coming up the river.
Presently every one could see their engine-fires glowing
like fireflies in the distant, and hear through the breathless
night the sighing of the steam, the moaning of the machinery,
and at last the swash of water against the bows.
The low, black hulks, and short, delicate masts, distinctly
visible on the gleaming groundwork of the river, and
against the faintly lighted horizon, showed that they were
gunboats; and the metallic rattle of their cables, as they
came to anchor opposite the fort, proved that they had arrived
to take part in the approaching struggle. Even
Gazaway crawled out of his asylum to look at the cheering
reinforcement, and assumed something of his native pomposity
as he observed to Colburne, “Cap, they won't dare
to pitch into us, with them fellers alongside.”

A bullet or two from the rebel sharpshooters posted on

the southern side of the bayou sent him back to his house
of refuge. He thought the assault was about to commence,
and was entirely absorbed in hearkening for its opening
clamor. When Mrs. Carter asked him what was going
on, he made her no answer. He was listening with all his
pores; his very hair stood on end to listen. Presently he
stretched himself upon the floor in an instinctive effort to
escape a spattering of musketry which broke through the
sultry stillness of the night. A black speck had slid around
the stern of one of the gunboats, and was making for the
bank, saluted by quick spittings of fire from the levee
above and below the junction of the bayou with the river.
In reply, similar fiery spittings scintillated from the dark
mass of the fort, and there was a rapid whit-whit of invisible
missiles. A cutter was coming ashore; the rebel
pickets were firing upon it; the garrison was firing upon
the pickets; the pickets upon the garrison. The red flashes
and irregular rattle lasted until the cutter had completed
its return voyage. There was an understanding now between
the little navy and the little army; the gunboats
knew where to direct their cannonade so as best to support
the garrison; and the soldiers were full of confidence,
although they did not relax their vigilance. Doctor Ravenel
and Mrs. Carter supposed in their civilian inexperience
that all danger was over, and by two o'clock in the morning
were fast asleep.