 | CHAPTER XXIV.
A DESPERATE ATTACK AND A SUCCESSFUL DEFENCE. Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty |  |
24. CHAPTER XXIV.
A DESPERATE ATTACK AND A SUCCESSFUL DEFENCE.
While it was still darkness Lillie was awakened
from her sleep by an all-pervading, startling, savage uproar.
Through the hot night came tramplings and yellings
of a rebel brigade; roaring of twenty-four-pounders
and whirring of grape from the bastions of the fort; roaring
of hundred-pounders and flight of shrieking, cracking,
and fiery spitting of musketry, with whistling and humming
of bullets; and, constant through all, the demoniac
yell advancing like the howl of an infernal tide. Bedlam,
pandemonium, all the maniacs of earth and all the fiends
of hell, seemed to have combined in riot amidst the crashings
of storm and volcano. The clamor came with the
suddenness and continued with more than the rage of a
tornado. Lillie had never imagined anything so unearthly
and horrible. She called loudly for her father, and was
positively astonished to hear his voice close at her side, so
strangely did the familiar tones sound in that brutal uproar.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It must be the assault,” he replied, astonished into
telling the alarming truth. “I will step out and take a
look.”
“You shall not,” she exclaimed, clutching him. “What
if you should be hit!”
“My dear, don't be childish,” remonstrated the Doctor.
“It is my duty to attend to the wounded. I am the only
surgeon in the fort. Just consider the ingratitude of
neglecting these brave fellows who are fighting for our
safety.”
“Will you promise not to get hurt?”
“Certainly, my dear.”
“Will you come back every five minutes and let me
see you?”
“Yes, my dear. I'll keep you informed of everything
that happens.”
She thought a few moments, and gradually loosened her
hold on him. Her curiosity, her anxiety to know how
this terrible drama went on, helped her to be brave and
to spare him. As soon as her fingers had unclosed from
his sleeve he crept to where his rifle stood and softly,
siezed it; and in so doing he stepped on the recumbent
Gazaway, who groaned, whereupon the Doctor politely
Colburne's voice on the river front, shouting,
“This way, men!” In that direction ran the Doctor, holding
his rifle in both hands, at something like the position
of a charge bayonet, with his thumb on the trigger so as
to be ready for immediate conflict. Suddenly bang! went
the piece at an angle of forty-five degrees, sending its ball
clean across the Mississippi, and causing a veteran sergeant
near him to inquire “what the hell he was about.”
“Really, that explosion was quite extraordinary,” said
the surprised Doctor. “I had not the least intention of
firing. Would you, sir, have the goodness to load it for
me?”
But the sergeant was in a hurry, and ran on without
answering. The Doctor began to finger his cartridge-box
in a wild way, intending to get out a cartridge if he could,
when a faint voice near him said, “I'll load your gun for
you, sir.”
“Would you be so kind?” replied the Doctor, delighted.
“I am so dreadfully inexperienced in these operations!
I am quite sorry to trouble you.”
The sick man—one of the invalids whom Gazaway had
brought from New Orleans—loaded the piece, capped it,
and added some brief instructions in the mysteries of half-cock
and full-cock.
“Really you are very good. I am quite obliged,” said
the Doctor, and hurried on to the river front, guided by
the voice of Colburne. At the rampart he tried to shoot
one of our men who was coming up wounded from the
palisade, and would probably have succeeded, but that
the lock of his gun would not work. Colburne stopped
him in this well-intentioned but mistaken labor, saying,
“Those are our people.” Then, “Your gun is at half-cock.
—There.—Now keep your finger off the trigger until you
see a rebel.”
Then shouting, “Forward, men!” he ran down to the
the Doctor.
The assailing brigade, debouching from the woods half
a mile away from the front, had advanced in a wide front
across the flat, losing scarcely any men by the fire of the
artillery, although many, shaken by the horrible screeching
of the hundred-pound shells, threw themselves on the
ground in the darkness or sought the frail shelter of the
scattered dwellings. Thus diminished in numbers and
broken up by night and obstacles and the differing speed
of running men, the brigade reached the fort, not an organization,
but a confused swarm, flowing along the edge
of the ditch to right and left in search of an entrance.
There was a constant spattering of flushes, as individuals
returned the steady fire of the garrision; and the sharp
clean whistle of round bullets and buckshot mingled in the
thick warm air with the hoarse whiz of Minies. Now and
then an angry shout or wailing scream indicated that some
one had been hit and mangled. The exhortations and
oaths of the rebel officers could be distinctly heard, as they
endeavored to restore order, to drive up stragglers, and to
urge the mass forward. A few jumped or fell into the
ditch and floundered there, unable to climb up the smooth
facings of brickwork. Two or three hundred collected
around the palisade which connected the northern front with
the river, some lying down and waiting, and others firing
at the woodwork or the neighboring ramparts, while a few
determined ones tried to burst open the gate by main
strength.
The Doctor put the whole length of his barrel through
one of the narrow port holes of the palisade and immediately
became aware that some on the outside had seized it and
was pulling downwards. “Let go of my gun!” he shouted
instinctively, without considering the unreasonable nature
of the request. “Let go yourself, you son of a bitch!”
returned the outsider, not a whit more rational. The Doctor
pulled trigger with a sense of just indignation, and
bursted. Whether he had injured the rebel or only startled
him into letting go his hold, he never knew and did
not then pause to consider. He felt his ruined weapon
all over with his hands, tried in vain to draw the ramrod,
and, after bringing all his philosophical acumen to bear on
the subject, gave up the idea of reloading. Casting about
for a new armament, he observed behind him a man lying
in one of the many little gullies which seemed to slope between
the fort and the river, his eyes wide open and fixed
upon the palisade, and his right hand loosely holding a rifle.
The Doctor concluded that he was sick, or tired, or seeking
shelter from the bullets.
“Would you be good enough to lend me your gun for
a few moments?” he inquired.
The man made no reply; he was perfectly dead. The
Doctor being short-sighted and without his spectacles, and
not accustomed, as yet, to appreciating the effects of musketry,
did not suspect this until he bent over him, and saw
that his woolen shirt was soaked with blood. He picked
up the rifle, guessed that it was loaded, stumbled back to
the palisade, insinuated the mere muzzle into a port-hole,
and fired, with splintering effect on the woodwork. The
explosion was followed by a howl of anguish from the exterior,
which gave him a mighty throb, partly of horror
and partly of loyal satisfaction. “After all, it is only a
species of surgical operation,” he thought, and proceeded
to reload, according to the best of his speed and knowledge.
Suddenly he staggered under a violent impulse,
precisely as if a strong man had jerked him by the coat-collar,
and putting his hand to the spot, he found that a
bullet (nearly spent in penetrating the palisades) had
punched its way through the cloth. This was the nearest
approach to a wound that he received during the engagement.
Meantime things were going badly with the assailants.
Disorganized by the night, cut up by the musketry, demoralized
one-hundred-pound shells, unable to force the palisade or
cross the ditch, they rapidly lost heart, threw themselves
on the earth, took refuge behind the levees, dropped away
in squads through the covering gloom, and were, in short,
repulsed. In the course of thirty minutes, all that yelling
swarm had disappeared, except the thickly scattered dead
and wounded, and a few well-covered stragglers, who continued
to fire as sharpshooters.
“We have whipped them!” shouted Colburne. “Hurrah
for the old flag!”
The garrison caught the impulse of enthusiasm, and
raised yell on yell of triumph. Even the wounded ceased
to feel their anguish for a moment, and uttered a feeble
shout or exclamation of gladness. The Doctor bethought
himself of his daughter, and hurried back to the brick
building to inform her of the victory. She threw herself
into his arms with a shriek of delight, and almost in the
same breath reproached him sharply for leaving her so long.
“My dear, it can't be more than five minutes,” said the
Doctor, fully believing what he said, so rapidly does time
pass in the excitement of successful battle.
“Is it really over?” she asked.
“Quite so. They are rushing for the woods like pelted
frogs for a puddle. They are going in all directions, as
though they were bound for Cowes and a market. I don't
believe they will ever get together again. We have
gained a magnificent victory. It is the grandest moment
of my life.”
“Is Captain Colburne unhurt?” was Lillie's next question.
“Perfectly. We haven't lost a man—except one,” he
added, bethinking himself of the poor fellow whose gun he
had borrowed.
“Oh!” she sighed, with a long inspiration of relief, for
the life of her brave defender had become precious in her
eyes.
The Doctor had absent-mindedly brought his rifle into
the room, and was much troubled with it, not caring to
shock Lillie with the fact that he had been personally engaged.
He held it behind his back with one hand, after
the manner of a naughty boy who has been nearly detected
in breaking windows, and who still has a brickbat
in his fist which he dares not show, and cannot find a
chance to hide. He was slyly setting it against the wall
when she discovered it.
“What!” she exclaimed. “Have you been fighting,
too? You dear, darling, wicked papa!”
She kissed him violently, and then laughed hysterically.
“I thought you were up to some mischief all the while,”
she added. “You were gone a dreadful time, and I
screaming and looking out for you. Papa, you ought to
be ashamed of yourself.”
“I have reason to be. I am the most disgraceful ignoramus.
I don't know how to load my gun. I think I
must have put the bullet in wrong end first. The ramrod
won't go down.”
“Well, put it away now. You don't want it any more.
You must take care of the wounded.”
“Wounded!” exclaimed the Doctor. “Are there any
wounded?”
“Oh dear! several of them. I forgot to tell you. They
are to bring them in here. I am going to our trunks to
get some linen.”
The Doctor was quite astonished to find that there were
a number of wounded; for having escaped unhurt himself,
he concluded that every one else had been equally lucky,
excepting, of course, the man who lay dead in the gulley.
As he laid down his gun he heard a groaning in one
corner, and went softly towards it, expecting to find one
of the victims of the conflict. Lifting up one end of a
blanket, and lighting a match to dispel the dimness, he beheld
the prostrate Gazaway, his face beaded with the perspiration
of heat and terror.
“Oh!” said the Doctor, with perhaps the merest twang
of contempt in the exclamation.
“My God, Doctor!” groaned the Major. “I tell you
I'm a sick man. I've got the most awful bilious colic that
ever a feller had. If you can give me something, do, for
God's sake!”
“Presently,” answered Ravenel, and paid no more attention
to him.
“If I could have discharged my gun,” he afterwards
said, in relating the circumstance, “I should have been
tempted to rid him of his bilious colic by a surgical operation.”
The floor of the little building was soon cumbered with
half a dozen injured men, and dampened with their blood.
The Doctor had no instruments, but he could probe with
his finger and dress with wet bandages. Lillie aided him,
pale at the sight of blood and suffering, but resolute to do
what she could. When Colburne looked in for a moment,
she nodded to him with a sweet smile, which was meant
to thank him for having defended her.
“I am glad to see you at this work,” he said. “There
will be more of it.”
“What! More fighting!” exclaimed the Doctor, looking
up from a shattered finger.
“Oh yes. We mustn't hope that they will be satisfied
with one assault. There is a supporting column, of course;
and it will come on soon. But do you stay here, whatever
happens. You will be of most use here.”
He had scarcely disappeared when the whole air became
horribly vocal, as, with a long-drawn, screaming battle-yell,
the second brigade of Texans moved to the assault,
and the “thunders of fort and fleet” replied. Taking the
same direction as before, but pushing forward with superior
solidity and energy, the living wave swept up to the fortifications,
howled along the course of the ditch, and surged
clamorously against the palisade. Colburne was there
with half the other officers and half the strength of the
Suddenly there was a shout of, “Back! back! They are
coming round the palisade.”
There was a stumbling rush for the cover of the fortification
proper; and there the last possible line of defence was
established instinctively and in a moment. Officers and
men dropped on their knees behind the low bank of earth,
and continued an irregular, deliberate fire, each discharging
his piece as fast as he could load and aim. The garrison
was not sufficient to form a continuous rank along
even this single front, and on such portions of the works
as were protected by the ditch, the soldiers were scattered
almost as sparsely as sentinels. Nothing saved the place
from being carried by assault except the fact that the assailants
were unprovided with scaling ladders. The adventurous
fellows who had flanked the palisade, rushed to
the gate, and gave entrance to a torrent of tall, lank men
in butternut or dirty grey clothing, their bronzed faces
flushed with the excitement of supposed victory, and their
yells of exultation drowning for a minute the sharp outcries
of the wounded, and the rattle of the musketry. But
the human billow was met by such a fatal discharge that
it could not come over the rampart. The foremost dead
fell across it, and the mass reeled backward. Unfortunately
for the attack, the exterior slope was full of small knolls
and gullies, beside being cumbered with rude shanties, of
four or five feet in height made of bits of board, and shelter
tents, which had served as the quarters of the garrison.
Behind these covers scores if not hundreds sought refuge,
and could not be induced to leave them for a second
charge. They commenced with musketry, and from that
moment the great peril was over. The men behind the
rampart had only to lie quiet, to shoot every one who
approached or rose at full length, and to wait till daylight
should enable the gunboats to open with grape. In vain
the rebel officers, foreseeing this danger, strove with voice
and example to raise a yell and a rush. The impetuosity
life.
“They don't like the way it works,” laughed the Louisiana
lieutenant in high glee. “They ain't on it so much as
they was.”
For an hour the exchange of close musketry continued,
the strength of the assailants steadily decreasing, as some
fell wounded or dead, and others stole out of the fatal enclosure.
Daylight showed more than a hundred fallen
and nearly two hundred unharmed men; all lying or
crouching among the irregularities of that bloody and bullet-torn
glacis. Several voices cried out, “Stop firing. We
surrender.”
An officer in a lieutenant-colonel's uniform repeated these
words, waving a white handkerchief. Then rising from
his refuge he walked up to the rampart, leaped upon it,
and stared in amazement at the thin line of defenders,
soldiers and negroes intermingled.
“By —! I won't surrender to such a handful,” he
exclaimed. “Come on, boys!”
A sergeant immediately shot him through the breast,
and his body fell inside of the works. Not a man of those
whom he had appealed to followed him; and only a few
rose from their covers, to crouch again as soon as they
witnessed his fate. The fire of the garrison reopened with
violence, and soon there were new cries of, “We surrender,”
with a waving of hats and handkerchiefs.
“What shall we do?” asked the Louisiana lieutenant.
“They are three to our one. If we let the d—n scoundrels
in, they will knock us down and take our guns away
from us.”
Colburne rose and called out, “Do you surrender?”
“Yes, yes,” from many voices, and a frantic agitation of
broadbrims.
“Then throw your arms into the river.”
First one, then another, then several together obeyed
this order, until there was a general rush to the bank, and
in the yellow water.
“Now sit down and keep quiet,” was Colburne's next
command.
They obeyed with the utmost composure. Some filled
their pipes and fell to smoking; others produced corn-cake
from their havresacks and breakfasted; others busied themselves
with propping the wounded and bringing them
water. Quite a number crawled into the deserted shanties
and went to sleep, apparently worn out with the night's
work and watching. A low murmur of conversation,
chiefly concerning the events of the assault, and not specially
gloomy in its tenor, gradually mingled with the
groans of the wounded. When the gate of the palisade
was closed upon them and refastened, they laughed a
little at the idea of being shut up in a pen like so many
chickens.
“Trapped, by Jiminy!” said one. “You must excuse
me if I don't know how to behave myself. I never was
cotched before. I'm a wild man of the pararies, I am.”
On all sides the attack had failed, with heavy loss to
the assailants. The heroic little garrison, scarcely one
hundred and fifty strong, including officers, camp-followers
and negroes (all of whom had fought), had captured more
than its own numbers, and killed and wounded twice
its own numbers. The fragments of the repulsed brigades
had fallen back beyond the range of fire, and even the
semicircle of pickets had almost disappeared in the
woods. The prisoners and wounded were taken on board
the gunboats, and forwarded to New Orleans by the first
transport down the river. As the last of the unfortunates
left the shore Colburne remarked. “I wonder if those poor
fellows will ever get tired of fighting for an institution
which only prolongs their own inferiority.”
“I am afraid not—I am afraid not,” said the Doctor.
“Not, at least, until they are whipped into reason. They
have been educated under an awful tyranny of prejudice,
their own true interests than so many brutes. I
have had the honor to be acquainted with dogs who were
their superiors in that respect. In Tennessee, on one of
my excursions, I stopped over night in the log-cabin of a
farmer. It was rather chilly, and I wanted to poke the
fire. There was no poker. `Ah,' said the farmer, `Bose
has run off with the poker again.' He went out for a moment,
and came in with the article. I asked him if his dog
had a fancy for pokers. `No,' said he; `but one of my
boys once burnt the critter's nose with a hot poker; and
ever since then he hides it every time that he comes across
it. We know whar to find it. He allays puts it under
the house and kivers it up with leaves. It's curous,' said
he, `to watch him go at it, snuffing to see if it is hot, and
picking it up and sidling off as sly as a horse-thief. He
has an awful bad conscience about it. Perhaps you noticed
that when you asked for the poker, Bose he got up and
travelled.'—Now, you see, the dog knew what had burned
him. But these poor besotted creatures don't know that
it is slavery which has scorched their stupid noses. They
have no idea of getting rid of their hot poker. They are
fighting to keep it.”
When it had become certain that the fighting was quite
over, Major Gazaway reappeared in public, complaining
much of internal pains, but able to dictate and sigh a pompous
official report of his victory, in which he forgot to
mention the colic or the name of Captain Colburne. During
the following night the flare of widespread fires against
the sky showed that the enemy were still in the neighborhood;
and negroes who stole in from the swamps reported
that the country was “cram full o' rebs, way up beyon'
Mars Ravenel's plantashum.”
“You won't be able to reoccupy your house for a long
time, I fear,” said Colburne.
“No,” sighed the Doctor. “My experiment is over. I
must get back to New Orleans.”
“And I must go to Port Hudson. I shall be forgiven,
I presume, for not reporting back to the hospital.”
Such was the defence of Fort Winthrop, one of the most
gallant feats of the war. Those days are gone by, and
there will be no more like them forever, at least, not in our
forever. Not very long ago, not more than two hours
before this ink dried upon the paper, the author of the present
history was sitting on the edge of a basaltic cliff which
overlooked a wide expanse of fertile earth, flourishing
villages, the spires of a city, and, beyond, a shining sea
flecked with the full-blown sails of peace and prosperity.
From the face of another basaltic cliff two miles distant,
he saw a white globule of smoke dart a little way upward,
and a minute afterwards heard a dull, deep pum! of exploding
gunpowder. Quarrymen there were blasting out
rocks from which to build hives of industry and happy
family homes. But the sound reminded him of the roar
of artillery; of the thunder of those signal guns which used
to presage battle; of the alarums which only a few months
previous were a command to him to mount and ride into
the combat. Then he thought, almost with a feeling of
sadness, so strange is the human heart, that he had probably
heard those clamors, uttered in mortal earnest, for
the last time. Never again, perhaps, even should he live
to the age of threescore and ten, would the shriek of grapeshot,
and the crash of shell, and the multitudinous whiz
of musketry be a part of his life. Nevermore would he
hearken to that charging yell which once had stirred his
blood more fiercely than the sound of trumpets: the Southern
battle-yell, full of howls and yelpings as of brute
beasts rushing hilariously to the fray: the long-sustained
Northern yell, all human, but none the less relentless and
stern; nevermore the one nor the other. No more charges
of cavalry, rushing through the dust of the distance; no
more answering smoke of musketry, veiling unshaken
lines and squares; no more columns of smoke, piling high
above deafening batteries. No more groans of wounded,
captured, nor reports of triumphs which saved a nation
from disappearing off the face of the earth. After thinking
of these things for an hour together, almost sadly, as I
have said, he walked back to his home; and read with interest
a paper which prattled of town elections, and advertised
corner-lots for sale; and decided to make a kid-gloved
call in the evening, and to go to church on the morrow.
| CHAPTER XXIV.
A DESPERATE ATTACK AND A SUCCESSFUL DEFENCE. Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty | |