University of Virginia Library

31. On the Way to War
By JAMES KENDALL HOSMER (1832)

CAMP down, soldiers, where you can! This cabin is stripped of furniture and carpet: a mirror and the white paint are the only things to remind one of the old elegance of the packet. I glance at the glass as we crowd in. Which am I among the bearded, blue-coated, hustling men ? I hardly know myself, sunburnt and muddied; the "52,"on the cap top, shows out in the lantern light. Sergeant Warriner, of Company A, a gentlemanly fellow, left guide, whose elbow rubs mine at battalion-drill, offers me a place in a bunk he has found empty in one of the staterooms. Bias Dickinson, my wise and jovial file-leader, bunks over me. There is room for another: so I go out to where McGill is wedged into the crowing mass, and extract him as I would a tooth. Gradually the hubbub is quelled. The mass of men, like a river seeking its level, flows into bunk and stateroom, cabin and galley. Then 'the floors are covered, and a few miserable ones hold on to banisters and table-legs, and at last the regiment drops into an uncomfortable sleep.

We woke up the morning after we came aboard,

Warriner, Bias, and I. Company D woke up generally on the cabin-floor. Poor Companies H and F woke up down in the hold. What were we to do for breakfast ? Through the hatchway opposite our stateroom-door, we could see the waiters in the lower cabin setting tables for the commissioned officers. Presently there was a steam of coffee and steaks ; then a long row of shoulder-straps, and a clatter of knives and

forks; we, meanwhile, breakfastless, were undergoing the torments of Tantalus.

But we cannot make out a very strong case of hardship. Beef, hard-bread, and coffee were soon ready. Bill Hilson, in a marvellous cap of pink and blue, cut up the big joints on a gun-box. The non-coms, whose chevrons take them past the guard amidships, went out loaded with the tin cups of the men to Henry Hilson,-out through cabin-door, through greasy, crowded passage-way, behind the wheel, to the galley, where, over a mammoth, steaming caldron, Henry, through the vapor, pours out coffee by the pailful. He looks like a beneficent genius.

I have been down the brass-plated staircase, into the splendors of the commissioned-officers' cabin,—really nothing great at all, but luxurious as compared with our quarters, already greasy from rations, and stained with tobacco-juice, and sumptuous beyond words, as compared with the unplaned boards and tarry odors of the quarters of the privates. Have I mentioned that now our places are assigned? The non-coms— that is non-commissioned, have assigned to them an upper cabin, with staterooms, over the quarters of the officers, in the after-part of the ship. The privates are in front, on the lower decks, and in the hold. Now I speak of the cabin of the officers. The hatches are open above and below, to the upper deck and into the hold. Down the hatch goes a dirty stream of commissary-stores, gun-carriages, rifled-cannon, and pressed hay, within an inch or two of cut-glass, gilt-mouldings, and mahogany. The third mate, with voice coarse and deep as the grating of heavy packages along the skids, orders this and that, or bays inarticulately in a growl at a shirking sailor.

Five sergeants of our company, and two corporals of us, have a stateroom together,— perhaps six feet by eight. Besides us, two officers' servants consider that they have a right here.

Each man now has his place for the voyage assigned him: so, if you can climb well, let us go down, and see the men below. It is right through the damp, crowded passage at the side of the paddle-wheel first. Here is a fence and a gate, impervious to the private; but in his badge the corporal possesses the potent golden bough which gains him ingress through here into Hades. just amidships, we go in through a door from the upper deck. This first large space is the hospital ; already with thirty or forty in its rough, unplaned bunks. From this, what is half-stairway and half-ladder leads down the hatch. A lantern is burning here; and we see that the whole space between decks, not very great, is filled with bunks,—three rows of them between floor and ceiling,—stretching away into darkness on every hand, with two-feet passages winding among them.

I hear the salutes of men, but cannot see their f aces for it is beyond the utmost efforts of the little lantern to show them up. Presently I go on through the narrow passage, with populous bunks, humming with men, on each side,—three layers between deck and deck. I can only hear them, and once in a while dimly see a face. At length we come to a railing, over which we climb, and descend another ladder, into regions still darker,— submarine, I believe, or, at any rate, on a level with the sea. Here swings another lantern. Up overhead, through deck after deck, is a skylight, which admits light, and wet too, from above. It is like looking from the bottom of a well.

As above, so here again, there are three tiers of bunks, with the narrow passages among them. The men lie side by side, with but two feet or so of space; but are in good spirits, though sepulchred after this fashion. The air seems not bad. It is dark in the day-time, except right under the skylight. A fortnight or so from now, a poor, emaciated crowd, I fear, it will be proceeding from these lower deeps of the Illinois. I go back with an uneasy conscience to our six feet by eight up above, so infinitely preferable to these quarters of the privates, though five big sergeants with their luggage share it with me, and two waiters have no other home; so that we overflow through door and window, on to the deck and floor outside.

Ed and I turn in at half-past eight, lying on our sides, and interrupting one another's sleep with, "Look out for your elbow !""I am going over the edge!

"You will press me through into the Company C bunks!"This morning I took breakfast in the berth,

dining-room, study, and parlor, as well. There is room enough, sitting Turk-fashion, and bending over.

"Sail to-day! "That has been the morning song aboard the Illinois ever since the Fifty-second piled itself into its darknesses. It was so Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. We came to believe it did not mean any thing: so, Tuesday morning being fair, Buffum and I got permission to go ashore, smiling at the superb joke of the officer when he warned us to be back in a couple of hours, for we surely sail to-day. But when we come aboard again, the anchor was really up; and the Illinois, no longer twirled by the tide about its thumbs, began to show a will of its own, and was soon moving seaward with its deeply burdened bosom

and swarming decks. Our orders were sealed, and the colonel could not open them until twenty-four hours after sailing. We could not know, then, until the morrow, whither the wheels, the tide, and the strong stern-wind, were bearing us; but the prow was southward, and the Fifty-second was content. Distance washes the spire of Trinity out of the northern sky; the Narrows, grim with forts and prisons, now grow narrower; and soon Sandy Hook, the beckoning finger which the old Navesink hills fling out for ever to invite inbound ships, lets us slide past its curving knuckle fairly out to sea. All goes well, with no motion but the throb of the engine. They light the lanterns on the wheel-house and in the fore-top ; they light them between-decks, swinging gently while a soldier reads his Testament, or a party play cards.

I resolve I will try a night with the men in the hold. Elnathan Gunn, the old soldier, invites me to share his bed and board. Life on a transport becomes so simplified, that bed and board become one; the soldier softening his plank with his haversack of beef and biscuit for a mattress and pillow.

'Tis half-past eight at night as I climb down in night rig,—blouse and knit cap, with round button at the top, like Charles Lamb's great Panjandrum himself. It is comfortable ; but Ed's fraternal partiality turns to disgust whenever I put it on. I stoop low,— it is the lowest tier of bunks,— climb over two prostrate men, then lie down sandwiched helplessly between two slices of timber above and below, where I go to sleep among the raw-head and bloody-bone stories of Elnathan Gunn. I wake up at midnight hot and stifled, as if I were in a mine caved in. "Gunn, give me my boots! "Gunn fishes them out of some hole in the

dark. I tug at the straps, half stifled, bump my head as I rise, grovel on my stomach out over two or three snorers, and hurry through the dark for the upper deck, thankful that, being corporal, I can have quarters where I can see and breathe; through the cabin, over slumbering drums and drummers,— for the music, too, is privileged to remain above,— then in by the side of Ed. We heard, at noon, we were bound for Ship Island; and, while I am hoping for plenty of air and good weather the rest of the voyage, down shut the eyelids, and consciousness is guillotined for the night.