Chapter XXXI: Between the Lines

Louis felt he was in one of the most trying situations of his life. The Confederate picket had drawn a bead upon him, and unless he answered promptly he would undoubtedly be shot and killed.

“Stop! do yer hear?” came the voice again. Louis put down his oar and found the river less than a foot and a half deep. The blade was sunk into the mud and the headway of the craft checked.

“We are friends,” shouted the young Union soldier. “You have no right to detain us.”

“Who are yer?”

Louis leaned down. “Tell them who you are and say I am detailed to take you to a farmhouse below here,” he whispered to his prisoner. “If you don’t help me out of this scrape I’ll shoot you!” and he shoved the pistol forth suggestively.

“Don’t--don’t shoot me!” pleaded the wounded one.

“Then do as I ordered,” returned Louis, as cautiously as before, but his tone was cold and told that he meant what he said.

“Air yer goin’ ter answer?” came from the shore.

“It’s--it’s all right, men,” answered the prisoner, raising himself with an effort. “I’m Captain Garrison, of the Fourth Infantry. I’ve been wounded and my man is taking me down to a farmhouse below here, where I have friends.”

“Humph.” There was a pause. “Got the countersign, cap’n?”

“Alabama.”

“Thet’s all right, cap’n; pass on, ef yer want to.”

“Are we in danger from the Yanks?” asked Louis, as he pulled on the oar with all possible haste.

“Ain’t no Yanks inside o’ half a mile, to my way o’ reckonin’,” answered the Confederate picket, and then the boat drifted onward, and Louis breathed a great sigh of relief. The talking had almost exhausted the prisoner, and he lay motionless, with his eyes closed, in too much pain to even speculate over the outcome of his unfortunate adventure.

Another half-mile was covered without further interruption. It was now beginning to grow light in the east and Louis cast an anxious eye from shore to shore. Had the river at this point been deserted? It would certainly seem so.

Crash! The flat-bottom boat struck a half-submerged log, end on end. The shock was strong enough to rip open the bow, and the water poured in with great rapidity. The collision threw Louis, who was standing up with the oar, overboard, and so unexpected was the happening that he could do nothing but struggle to save himself. Down he went until his arms struck the soft bottom. Then he arose and struck out for the nearest shore. In the meantime, the boat swung around, cleared itself of the log that had done all the damage, and went on its way, half-submerged, with Captain Garrison clinging fast for his life. Soon wreck and prisoner were out of sight. Louis fancied the captain had been drowned, but such was not a fact. He survived, to fall, later on, into the hands of his friends.

Dripping with mud and water, Louis crawled up the bank of the Chickahominy and into a tangle of bushes. Was he any better off than he had been? was the question he asked himself.

“I ought to be nearer the Union lines,” he muttered. “If I could only climb some hill and then a tall tree I might--Ha! what’s that?”

A peculiar odor, as of cooking meat, had reached his nose. He sniffed it and found the odor coming stronger. Then he heard low negro voices.

“Ain’t dat fowl most done, Henry Harrison Dundell?”

“It am, Uncle Ike.”

“Den let us eat um up, afore some o’ dem sodgers cum fo’ to take it away from us.”

“De taters am dun, too, Uncle Ike.”

“Dat’s good, boy, dat’s good. Come an’ stow um away now.”

A rattle of tin plates and a couple of knives followed. Crawling forward, Louis soon beheld a wretched negro hut, half-tumbled-down, on the edge of a clearing. In front of the hut an aged negro and a darkey boy were enjoying a feast of chicken meat and baked potatoes.

Making certain that no others were around, Louis advanced, pistol in hand. At the sight of the young soldier, both colored ones started to run, the uncle with the chicken and the boy with his arms full of smoking hot potatoes, which burnt him and caused him to dance a lively jig.

“Stop, both of you!”

“Fo’ de lan’ sake, officer, doan you shoot us!” moaned the aged negro.

“I won’t uncle; but come back with that chicken. I want a drumstick, and I want a couple of those potatoes; they smell good.”

Much relieved in mind, the two colored ones returned and gladly divided their morning meal with Louis. As he ate, the young soldier questioned the aged darkey, as to the camp of the Army of the Potomac.

“Da is right ober yander, sah,” was the reply, and the colored man pointed with his long, bony hand. “But, bless you, sah, General Lee an’ General Jackson am all aroun’ yeah wid thousands an’ thousands ob troops ready fo’ to swallow yo’ up, moah de pity!”

“They won’t swallow us up so easily,” smiled Louis. He sat with his back to the fire, drying himself. In an hour he was ready to go on, and the aged colored man gave him minute directions as to the best trail to follow.

Morning had now come, and once again the sun shone hotly. Not a cannon boomed in the distance, for the battle of Gaines’s Mill did not really open in earnest until some time after noon. With the pistol of the Confederate captain stuck in his belt, Louis trudged on and on. At noon he stopped, wondering where he was. He had taken a wrong turn and now found himself in a thicket. He tried to take a cross cut, and became hopelessly lost, and thus the best part of the day slipped by.

He was lost in the swamps of the Chickahominy!

Only the old veterans who went through our great war can realize the full meaning of those words. “Lost in the swamps” was the fate of many a straggling soldier who never turned up to tell his story of starvation. With such a jungle about him that he could not see twenty feet ahead, and with mud and water up to his ankles, Louis stopped short, and a chill shot through him.

“I’m in for it,” he murmured, dismally. “I took the wrong road, or else that negro led me astray purposely. How in the world am I to get out?”

It would not do to remain long in one spot--he was sinking deeper and deeper in that ooze, which stuck like so much glue. He staggered forward until a low-branched tree was reached, and into this he climbed to rest.

From afar now came the sounds of battle, as the Confederate General A. P. Hill sent his corps to the attack, with Longstreet following. How bravely the small division of Porter’s troops resisted, history has told, and it has also told how the Union troops were finally forced back and two of their best regiments were taken prisoners.

But Louis thought of none of these things, as slowly and painfully he climbed to the top of the tree. The survey from this spot was disappointing. He was in a hollow and on every side the distant woods cut off a further view. Yet he managed to locate the sounds of battle, and that was one point gained.

By the time he descended to the lower branches of the tree it was dark. To think of going on was out of the question. He got down for a drink, then returned to the tree limbs, to pass an almost sleepless night among the birds and frogs.

Daybreak found him hungry and cold. He now felt he must go on or face starvation. He had noted the location of the nearest high ground, and struck out for this, leaping from one tuft of swamp grass to another, as best he could. The bushes scratched his hands and face and tore his clothing, but to this he paid no attention. He progressed until nearly noon, when he reached firm ground and a well-defined trail, and threw himself down to rest.

He was between his own line and that of the enemy, he felt tolerably certain of that. But how should he move to join the Union army? The trail might lead him directly into the Confederate camp.

“I don’t care--I’ll risk it,” he muttered at last. “I can keep my eyes open and I guess I can run as fast as any of them if it comes to the pinch.”

Yet his progress along the trail was slow, for fallen trees were numerous, and once he encountered a nest of snakes, just emerging after an unusually long winter’s nap. His scramble to get away from the reptiles was lively enough, for he imagined the snakes poisonous.

Nightfall brought him out upon a highway leading southward. The ground was cut up by many wheels, showing that artillery had passed that way but a short while before. Presently he came up to three soldiers wearing Union uniforms.

“Hello there, comrades!” he shouted, joyfully. “I’m lost. Can’t some of you find me?”

“We’re lost, too,” was the reply from the evident leader of the trio. The three men belonged to a New Jersey command which had been captured. They had had a tough struggle and each was wounded, although not seriously. With this trio Louis proceeded upon his way feeling much lighter at heart.

That night the four lost ones encamped in the woods close to the road. A haversack filled with two days’ rations had been picked up, and although the eatables were stale, the quartet fell to with avidity and did not allow a mouthful to escape them. The march forward was resumed before the sun came up and at nine o’clock the pickets of the Union army on guard near the railroad at Savage Station were encountered. Nobody had the password, but their story was soon told and they hurried to the rear.

The battles so far upon the withdrawal to the James River had not been particularly severe upon the Goreville Volunteers. Out of a total of seventy men, eight had been killed and twelve wounded. To be sure, many had been “scratched,” but in the grimness of war such trifles do not count.

Louis did not run across his command until the next day, for now the fighting was general along the whole line, the Union troops protecting not only their own retreat, but also the passage of the vast stores moving from White House across the peninsula to the James River. Finding him unemployed, he was asked to act as an orderly, and mounting a stray horse, he carried several orders from one part of the field to another for those in charge of the baggage train. Thus the day slipped by in work that was hard but not particularly dangerous.

“Louis!” cried Harry, when at last the Goreville boys were found. “By jinks! I ’most feel like hugging you! I thought you were dead sure!”

“I’m a long way from that,” laughed the youth. “But I’ve had a rough experience, nevertheless.”

And he told his friend of all he had gone through. There was no time to say much, for the regiment had been ordered to the rear, to protect the baggage wagons. Louis and Harry were both afraid they would not have much to do, but in this they were greatly mistaken. The train was attacked by a large company of Confederate cavalry, and a hot skirmish kept up until long after nightfall. And so the days slipped by until the great body of the army of the Potomac reached Malvern Hill. Hotly pursued by the Confederates, General McClellan here took a stand, resulting in the greatest battle of the peninsula campaign, and one that Louis and Andy will not forget if they each live to be a hundred years old.