MISSISSIPPI RIVER GUNBOATSMISSISSIPPI RIVER GUNBOATS
A Western gunboat was an odd thing. James B. Eads, an eminent engineer, who after the war built the St. Louis bridge and the New Orleans jetties, which keep the mouth of the Mississippi open, had launched a flotilla of gunboats for the government within four months of the time when the trees which went to their making were growing in the forests. On a flat-boat of the ordinary Western-river type, Mr. Eads put a long cabin, framed of stout timbers, cut portholes in the sides, front and rear of it, mounted cannon inside it, covered it with rails outside (later armor-plate was used), and behold, a gunboat.The one which sped swiftly with Tom down the Mississippi and waddled slowly with him up the Tennessee, against the current of the Spring freshets, finally landed him at Grant's headquarters.
Tom approached the tent over which headquarters' flag was flying with a beating heart. It beat against the long envelope that lay in the inner pocket of his waistcoat. He was about to finish his task and he was about to see the one successful soldier of the Union, up to that time. The Northern armies had not done well in the East—the defeat had been disgraceful and the panic sickening with the raw troops at Bull Run, Virginia, and little had been gained elsewhere—but in the West Grant was hammering out success. All eyes turned to him.
Upon the top of a low knoll, half a dozen packing-boxes were grouped in front of the tent. Two or three officers, most of them spick and span, sat upon each box except one. Upon that one there lounged a man, thick-set,bearded, his faded blue trousers thrust into the tops of dusty boots, his blue flannel shirt open at the throat, his worn blue coat carrying on each shoulder the single star of a brigadier-general.
It was General Grant, Hiram Ulysses Grant, now known as U. S. Grant. When the Confederate commander of Fort Donelson had asked him for terms of surrender, he had answered practically in two words: "unconditional surrender." The curt phrase caught the public fancy, and gave his initials a new meaning. He was long known as "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.
Born in Ohio, he had been educated at West Point, had fought well in our unjust war against Mexico, had resigned in the piping times of peace that followed, had been a commercial failure, and was running an insignificant business as a farmer in Galena, Illinois, an obscure and unimportant citizen of that unimportant town, when the Civil War began. Eight years afterwards, he became President of the United States and served as such for eightyears, doing his dogged best, but far less successful as a statesman than he had been as a soldier. He was a patriot and a good man. In the last years of his life, ruined financially by a wicked partner and tortured by the cancer that finally killed him, he wrote his famous memoirs, which netted his family a fortune after the grave had closed upon this great American. He ran a race with Death to write his life. And he won the grim race.
The young second-lieutenant saluted and explained his mission. The long envelope, deeply dented with the mark of Wilkes Booth's dirty thumb and finger, had reached its destination at last. Grant took it, opened it, read it without even a slight change of expression, though it contained not only orders for the future, but Lincoln's warm-hearted thanks for the past and the news of his own promotion to be major-general. Not only Tom, but every member of his staff was watching him. The saturnine face told no one anything. The little he said at the moment was said to Tom.
"The President tells me he would like to have you given a glimpse of the front. Have you had any experience?"
"No, sir."
"When were you commissioned?"
"A week ago, sir."
"Are all the Eastern boys of your age in the army?"
"They would like to be, sir."
"Well," said Grant, with a kindly smile, "perhaps a little experience at the front may make up for the years you lack. Send him to General Mitchell, Captain," he added, turning to a spruce aide who rose from his packing-box seat to acknowledge the command.
"Pray come with me, Mr. Strong," said the captain.
Tom saluted, turned, and followed his guide. A backward glance showed him the general, his eyes now bent sternly upon Lincoln's letter, his staff eyeing him, a group of quiet, silent figures. And that was all that Tom saw, at that time, of the greatest general of our Civil War.
Inside the Confederate Lines—"Sairey" Warns Tom—Old Man Tomblin's "Settlemint"—Stealing a Locomotive—Wilkes Booth Gives the Alarm—A Wild Dash for the Union Lines.
Inside the Confederate Lines—"Sairey" Warns Tom—Old Man Tomblin's "Settlemint"—Stealing a Locomotive—Wilkes Booth Gives the Alarm—A Wild Dash for the Union Lines.
Three days afterwards, Tom found himself "on special service," on the staff of Gen. O. M. Mitchell, whose troops were pushing towards Huntsville, Alabama. They occupied that delightfully sleepy old town, the center of a group of rich plantations, April 12, 1862, but Tom was not then with the column. Five days before, with Mitchell's permission, he had volunteered for a gallant foray into the enemy's country. He had taken prompt advantage of Lincoln's hint that he might fight a bit if he wanted to do so. He was to have his fill of fighting now.
Tom was one of twenty-two volunteers who left camp before dawn on April 7, under the command of James J. Andrews, a daredevil of a man, who had persuaded General Mitchell to let him try to slip across the lines with a handful of soldiers disguised as Confederates in order to steal a locomotive and rush it back to the Union front, burning all the railroad bridges it passed. The railroads to be crippled were those which ran from the South to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and from the East through Chattanooga and Huntsville to Memphis. A few miles from camp, Andrews gave his men their orders. They were to separate and singly or in groups of two or three were to make their way to the station of Big Shanty, Georgia, where they were to meet on the morning of Saturday, April 12. Andrews took Tom with him. For two days they hid in the wooded hills by day and traveled by night, guided by a compass and by the stars. Then their scanty supply of food was exhausted and they had to take to the open. Their rough clothing, stained a dusty yellowwith the oil of the butternut, the chief dye-stuff the South then had, their belts with "C.S.A."—"Confederate States of America"—upon them, their Confederate rifles (part of the spoils of Fort Donelson), and their gray slouched hats made them look like the Confederate scouts they had to pretend to be.
Danger lurked about them and detection meant death. They did their best to talk in the soft Southern drawl when they stopped at huts in the hills and asked for food, but the drawl was hard for a Northern tongue to master and more than one bent old woman or shy and smiling girl started with suspicion at the strange accents of these "furriners." The men of the hills were all in the army or all in hiding. On the fourth day they reached a log-hut or rather a home made of two log-huts, with a floored and roofed space between them, a sort of open-air room where all the household life went on when good weather permitted. An old, old woman sat in the sunshine, her hands busy witha rag quilt, her toothless gums busy with holding her blackened clay pipe. Behind her sat her granddaughter, busy too with her spinning wheel. The two women with their home as a background made a pleasing and a peaceful picture.
"Howdy," said Andrews.
The wheel stopped. The quilt lay untouched upon the old woman's lap. She took her pipe from her mouth.
"Howdy," said she.
The conversation stopped. The hill-folk are not quick of speech.
"Please, ma'am, may I have a drink of milk?" asked Tom.
"Sairey," called the old dame, "you git sum milk."
Sairey started up from her spinning wheel, trying to hide her bare feet with her short skirt and not succeeding, and walked back of the house to the "spring-house," a square cupboard built over a neighboring spring. It was dark and cool and was the only refrigerator the hill-folkknew. While she was away, her grandmother began to talk. The man and boy would much rather she had kept still. For she peered at them suspiciously, and said:
"How duz I know you uns ain't Yankees? I hearn thar wuz a right smart heap o' Yankee sojers not fur off'n hereabouts."
At this moment Sairey fortunately returned. She brought in her brown hand an old glass goblet, without a standard, but filled to the brim with a foaming mixture that looked like delicious milk. Alas! Tom, who loathed buttermilk, was now to learn that in the hills "milk" meant "buttermilk." He should have asked for "sweet milk." Sairey handed him the goblet with a shy grace, blushing a little as the boy's hand touched hers. He lifted it eagerly to his thirsty lips, took a long draught, and sputtered and gagged. But the mistake was in his asking and the girl had gone a hundred yards to get him what she thought he wanted. He was a boy, but he was a gentleman. He swallowed the nauseous stuff to the last drop, and made hisbest bow as he thanked her. Suddenly the old woman said to him:
"Where wuz you born, bub?"
"New—New——" stammered Tom. His tongue did not lend itself readily to a lie, even in his country's cause. When he was still too young to understand what the words meant, his mother had told him: "A lie soils a boy's mouth." As he grew older, she had dinned that big truth into his small mind. Now, taken by surprise, the habit of his young life asserted itself and the tell-tale truth that he had been born in New York was on his unsoiled lips, when Andrews finished the sentence for him.
"New Orleans," said Andrews, coolly.
"He don't talk that-a-way," grumbled the old beldam.
"He was raised up No'th," Andrews explained, "but soon as this yer onpleasantness began, he cum Souf to fight for we-uns."
Andrews had overdone his dialect.
"Sairey," commanded the old woman, "put up the flag."
"Why, granma," pleaded Sairey from where she had taken refuge behind her grandmother's chair, "what's the use?"
"Chile, you hear me? You put up the flag."
From her refuge, Sairey held out her hands in a warning gesture, and then, before she entered one of the log-houses, she pointed to a cart-track that wound up the hill before the hut. She came out with a Confederate flag, made of part of an old red petticoat with white stripes sewn across it. It was fastened upon a long sapling. She put the staff into a rude socket in front of the platform. As she passed Tom in order to do this, she whispered to him: "You-uns run!"
"What wuz you sayin' to Bub, thar?" her grandmother asked in anger.
"I wuzn't sayin' nuthin' to nobuddy," Sarah replied.
But Andrews' ears, sharper than the old woman's, sharpened by fear, had caught the words.
"We-uns'll haf to go," he remarked. "You-unshaz bin right down good to us. Thanky, ma'am."
"Jes' wait a minute," the old woman answered. "I'll give you somethin' fer yer to eat as ye mosey 'long."
She walked slowly, apparently with pain, into the dark log-room. Sairey wrung her hand and whispered: "Run, run. Take the cart-track." Instantly the grandmother appeared on the threshold, her old eyes flashing, a double-barreled shot-gun in her shaking hands. She tried to cover both man and boy, as she screamed at them:
"You-uns stay in yer tracks, you Yankees! My man'll know what to do with you-uns."
Their guns were at her feet. There was no way to get them, even if they would have used them against a woman.
"Run!" shouted Andrews and bounded towards the cart-track.
Tom sprang after him, but not in time to escape a few birdshot which the old woman's gun sent flying after him. The sharp sting ofthem redoubled his speed. The second barrel sent its load far astray. They had run just in time, for from another hilltop behind the hut a dozen armed men came plunging down to the house, shouting after the scared fugitives. The raising of the flag had been the agreed-upon signal for their coming. Sairey's father and several other men had taken to the nearby hills to avoid being impressed into the Confederate army, but they adored the Confederacy, up to the point of fighting for it, and they would have rejoiced to capture Andrews and Tom. The old woman's eyes and ears had pierced the thin disguise of the raiders. So she had forced her granddaughter to fly the flag and the girl, afraid to disobey her fierce old grandmother but loath to see the boy she had liked at first sight captured, had warned him to flee. Man and boy were out of gunshot, but still in sight, when their pursuers reached the house, yelled with joy to see the abandoned guns, and ran up the cart-track like hounds hot upon the scent. As Tom and Andrews panted to the hilltop, theysaw why Sairey had bidden them take the cart-track. At the summit, it branched into half a dozen lanes which wound through a pine forest. Lanes and woodlands were covered with pineneedles, the deposit of years, which rose elastic under their flying feet and left no marks by which they could be tracked. And beyond the forest was a vast laurel-brake in which a regiment could have hidden, screened from discovery save by chance. It gave the fugitives shelter and safety. Once they heard the far-off voices of their pursuers, but only once. Ere many hours they had the added security of the night.
When they found a hiding-place, beside a tiny brook that flowed at the roots of the laurel-bushes, Tom found that his wound, forgotten in the fierce excitement of the flight, had begun to pain him. His left shoulder grew stiff. When Andrews examined it, all it needed was a little care. Three or four birdshot had gone through clothing and skin, but they lay close beneath the skin, little blue lumps, with tiny smears of red blood in the skin's smooth whiteness. Theywere picked out with the point of a knife. The cool water of the brook washed away the blood and stopped the bleeding. Andrews tore off a bit of his own shirt, soaked it in the brook, and bandaged the shoulder in quite a good first-aid-to-the-injured way. Tom and he were none the worse, except for the loss of their guns. And that was the less serious because both knives and pistols were still in their belts.
They slept that night in the laurel-brake, forgetting their hunger in the soundness of their sleep. Just after dawn, they were startled to hear a human voice. But it was the voice of a gentle girl. It kept calling aloud "Coo, boss, coo, boss," while every now and then it said in lower tones: "Is you Yanks hyar? Hyar's suthin' to eat." At first they thought it was a trap and lay still. Finally, however, spurred by hunger, they crept out of their hiding-place and found it was Sairey who was calling them. When she saw them, she ran towards them, while the cows she had collected from their pasture stared with dull amazement.
"Is you-uns hurt?" she asked, clasping her hands in anxiety.
Reassured as to this, she produced the cold cornbread and bacon she had taken from the spring-house when she left home that morning for her daily task of gathering the family cows. Man and boy bolted down the food.
"You're good to us, Sairey," said Tom.
"Dunno as I ought to help you-uns," the girl replied, peering slyly out of her big sunbonnet and digging her brown toes into the earth, "but I dun it, kase—kase—I jes' had to. Kin you get away today?"
"We'll try."
"Whar be you goin'?"
Should they tell her where they were going? It was a risk, but they took it. They were glad they did, for Sairey was not only eager to help them on their way, but could be of real aid. Once in her life she had been at Big Shanty. She told them of a short cut through the hills, by which they would pass only one "settlemint,"as the infrequent clearings in the hills were called.
"When you-uns git to Old Man Tomblin's settlemint," said Sairey, "I 'low you-uns better stand at the fence corner and holler. Old Man Tomblin's spry with his gun sometimes, when furriners don't do no hollerin'. But when he comes out, you-uns tell him Old Man Gernt's Sairey told you he'd take care of you-uns. 'N he will. 'N you kin tell Bud Tomblin—no, you-uns needn't tell Bud nothin'. Good-by."
The hill-girl held out her hand. She looked up to Andrews and smiled as she shook hands. She looked down at Tom—she was half a head taller than he—and smiled again as she shook hands. Then suddenly she stooped and kissed the startled boy. Then she fled back along the lane by which she had come, leaving the placid cows and the thankful man and boy behind her. With a flutter of butternut skirt and a twinkle of bare, brown feet, she vanished from their sight.
Thanks to her directions, they found Old Man Tomblin's settlemintwithout difficulty. Theyduly stood at the corner of the sagging rail fence and there duly "hollered." Old Man Tomblin and Bud Tomblin came out of the cabin, each with a gun, and were proceeding to study the "furriners" before letting them come in, when Andrews repeated what Old Man Gernt's Sairey had told them to say. There was an instant welcome. Bud Tomblin was even more anxious than his father to do anything Sairey Gernt wanted done. The fugitives' story that they had been scouting near General Mitchell's line of march and had lost their guns and nearly lost themselves in a raid by Northern cavalry was accepted without demur. Old Mrs. Tomblin, decrepit with the early decrepitude of the hill-folk, whose hard living conditions make women old at forty and venerable at fifty, cackled a welcome to them from the corner of the fireplace where she sat "dipping" snuff. "Lidy" Tomblin, the eldest daughter, helped and hindered by the rest of a brood of children, took care of their comfort. They feasted on the best the humble household had to offer. They sleptsoundly, albeit eight other people, including Mr. and Mrs. Tomblin and Lidy, slept in the same room. In the morning they were given a bountiful breakfast and were bidden good-by as old friends.
"I hate to deceive good people like the Tomblins," said Tom, when they were out of earshot.
"Sometimes the truth is too precious to be told," laughed Andrews.
But Tom continued to be troubled in mind as he tramped along. He made up his mind to fight for his country, the next time he had a chance, in some other way. Telling a lie and living a lie were hateful to him.
The next morning found them at Big Shanty, a tiny Georgia village, which the war had made a great Confederate camp. It was the appointed day, Saturday, April 12, 1862. Of the twenty-two men who had started with Andrews, eighteen met that morning at Big Shanty. The train for Chattanooga stopped there for breakfast on those infrequent days when it did notarrive so late that its stop was for dinner. It was what is called a "mixed" train, both freight and passenger, with many freight cars following the engine and a tail of a couple of shabby passenger cars. On this particular morning it surprised everybody, including its own train-crew, by being on time. Passengers and crew swarmed in to breakfast. The train was deserted. The time for the great adventure had come.
Before the train was seized, one thing must be done. The telegraph wire between Big Shanty and Chattanooga must be cut. If this were left intact, their flight, sure to be discovered as soon as the train-crew finished their brief breakfast, would end at the next station, put on guard by a telegram. To Tom, as the youngest and most agile of the party, the task of cutting the wire had been assigned. He was already at the spot selected for the attempt, a clump of trees a hundred yards from the station, where the wire was screened from sight by the foliage. As soon as the train came in, Tom started toclimb the telegraph-pole. He had just started when he heard a most unwelcome sound.
"Hey, thar! What's you doin'?"
He turned his head and saw a Confederate sentry close beside him. He recognized him as a man with whom he had been chatting around a camp-fire early that morning. His name was Bill Coombs. Tom's ready wit stood by him.
"Why, Bill," he said, "glad to see you. Somethin's wrong with the wire. The Cunnel's sent me to fix it. Give me a boost, will ye?"
The unsuspicious Bill gave him a boost and watched him without a thought of his doing anything wrong while Tom climbed to the top of the rickety pole, cut the one wire it carried, fastened the ends to the pole so that from the ground nobody could tell it was cut, and climbed down. Bill urged him to stay and talk awhile, but Tom reminded him that sentries mustn't talk, then he strolled at first and soon ran towards the station. He had to run to catch the train. The instant Andrews saw him returning, he sprang into the cab of the locomotive.
The locomotive Tom helped to stealThe Locomotive Tom Helped to Steal
One of his men had already uncoupled the first three freight cars from the rest of the train. All the men jumped into the cab or the tender or swarmed up the freight-car ladders. Andrews jerked the throttle wide open. The engine jumped forward, the tender and the three cars bounding after it. The crowd upon the platform gaped after the retreating train, without the slightest idea of what was happening under their very noses. A boy came running like an antelope from the end of the platform. He jumped for the iron step of the locomotive, was clutched by a half-dozen hands and drawn aboard. But as he jumped, he heard a voice he had reason to remember call out:
"They're Yanks. That's Lieutenant Strong, a Yankee! Stop 'em! Shoot 'em!"
Livid with rage, his long black hair streaming in the wind as he ran after them, Wilkes Booth fired his pistol at them, while the motley crowd his cry had aroused sent a scattering volley after the train. Nobody was hurt then, but the danger to everybody had just begun.
There was instant pursuit. The train-crew, startled by the sound of the departing train, came running from the station. They actually started to run along the track after the flying locomotive. They jerked a hand-car off a siding and chased the fugitives with that. At a station not far off, they found a locomotive lying with steam up. They seized that and thundered ahead. Now hunters and hunted were on more even terms. The hunters reached Kingston, Georgia, within four minutes after the hunted had left. The latter had had to make frequent stops, to cut the wires, to take on fuel, to bundle into the freight cars ties that could be used to start fires for the burning of bridges, and to tear up an occasional rail. This last expedient delayed their pursuers but little. When a missing rail was sighted, the Confederates stopped, tore up a rail behind them, slipped it into the vacant place, and rushed ahead again.
Andrews was running the captured train on its regular time schedule, so he could not exceed a certain speed. From Kingston, however,where the only other train of the day met this one, he expected a free road and plenty of time to burn every bridge he passed. He did meet the regular train at Kingston, but alas! it carried on its engine a red flag. That meant that a second section of the same train was coming behind it. There was nothing to do but to wait for this second section. The railroad was single-track, so trains could pass only where there was a siding. But in every moment of waiting there lurked the danger of detection. Southerners, soldiers, and civilians, crowded about the locomotive as she lay helplessly still on the Kingston sidetrack, puffing away precious steam and precious time.
"Whar's yer passengers?" asked one man. "I cum hyar to meet up with Cunnel Tompkins. Whar's he'n the rest of 'em?"
"We were ordered to drop everything at Big Shanty," explained Andrews, "except these three cars. They're full of powder. I'm on General Beauregard's staff and am taking the stuff to him at Corinth. Jove, there's thewhistle of the second section. I'm glad to hear it."
He was indeed glad. At one of his stops, he had bundled most of his men into the freight cars. The cars were battered old things without any locks. If a carelessly curious hand were to slide back one of the doors and reveal within, not powder, but armed men, all their lives would pay the forfeit. Andrews was in the cab with engineer, fireman, and Tom, who had been helping the fireman feed wood into the maw of the furnace on every mile of the run. His young back ached with the strain of the unaccustomed toil. His young neck felt the touch of the noose that threatened them all.
"Tom, you run ahead and throw that switch for us as soon as the other train pulls in," said Andrews. "We mustn't keep General Beauregard waiting for this powder a minute longer than we can help. He needs it to blow the Yankees to smithereens."
So Tom ran ahead, stood by the switch as the second section came in, and promptly threwthe switch as it passed. But his train did not move and a brakeman jumped off the rear platform of the caboose of the second section, as it slowed down, told Tom he was an ass and a fool, pushed him out of the way and reset the switch.
"You plum fool," shouted the brakeman, after much stronger expressions, "didn't ye see the flag fur section three?"
Tom had not seen it, had not looked for it, but it was too true that the engine of section two also bore the red flag that meant that section three was coming behind it.
Again there was a long wait, again the sense of danger closing in upon them, again the thought of scaffold and rope, again the necessity of playing their parts with laughter and good-natured chaff amid the foes who thought them friends. The slow minutes ticked themselves away. At last the third section came whistling and lumbering in. Thank fortune, it bore no red flag. This time Tom threw the switch unchecked and then jumped on the puffing engineas she reached the main-track and sped onwards.
"Free, by Jove!" said Andrews, with a deep breath of deep relief. "Now we can burn Johnny Reb's bridges for him!"
Four minutes later, while section three of the train that had so long delayed them was still at Kingston, a shrieking locomotive rushed into the station. Its occupants, shouting a story of explanation that put Kingston into a frenzy, ran from it to an engine that lay upon a second sidetrack, steam up and ready to start. They had reached Kingston so speedily by using their last pint of water and their last stick of wood. They saved precious minutes by changing engines.
Five seconds after their arrival, the station-agent had been at the telegraph-key, frantically pounding out the call of a station beyond Andrews's fleeing train. There was no reply.
"Wire cut!" he shouted, running out of the station. Of course that had been done by thefugitives just out of sight of Kingston. "Wire cut! I kain't git no message through."
"We'll take the message!" answered the Confederate commander, from the cab of the locomotive that was already swaying with her speed, as she darted ahead.
They came near delivering the message within four miles of Kingston. Andrews's men, with a most comforting sense of safety had stopped and were pulling up a rail, when they heard the whistle of their avenging pursuer.
"Quick, boys, all aboard," Andrews called. "They're closer'n I like to have 'em."
Quickly replacing the rail, the Confederates came closer still. Around the next curve, quite hidden from sight until close upon it, the fugitives had put a rail across the track. It delayed the pursuit not one second. Whether the cowcatcher of the engine thrust it aside or broke it or whether the engine actually jumped it, nobody knew then in the wild excitement of the chase and nobody knows now. The one thing certain is that there was no delay. Very likelythe rail broke. Rails of those days were of iron, not steel, and throughout the South they were in such condition that at the close of the Civil War one of the chief Southern railroads was said to consist of "a right-of-way and two streaks of rust." The locomotive whistled triumphantly and sped on.
On the Union train, Tom had crept back to the rear car along the rolling, jumping carroofs, with orders to set it on fire and stand ready to cut it off. The men inside arranged a pile of ties, thrust fat pine kindling among them, and touched the mass with a match. It burst into flame as they scuttled to the roof and passed to the car ahead. A long covered wooden bridge loomed up before them. Halfway across it, Andrews stopped, dropped the flaming car, and started ahead again. In a very few minutes the bridge would have been a burning mass, but the few minutes were not to be had. The Confederate locomotive was now close upon them. It dashed upon the bridge, drove the burning car across the bridge beforeit, pushed it upon a neighboring sidetrack and again whistled triumphantly as it took up the fierce chase. The two remaining cars were detached, one by one, but in vain. The game was up.
"Guess we're gone," said Andrews, tranquilly, as he looked back over the tender, now almost empty of wood, to the smokestack that was belching sooty vapor within a mile of them. "By this time, they've got a telegram ahead of us. Stop 'round that next curve in those woods. We must take to the woods. Don't try to keep together. Scatter. Steer by the North Star. Make the Union lines if you can. We've done our best."
The engine checked its mad pace, slowed, stopped.
"Good-by, boys," shouted Andrews, as he sprang from the engine and disappeared in the forest that there bordered the track. "We'll meet again."
Seven of them did meet him again. It was upon a Confederate scaffold, where he and theywere hung. The other six of the fourteen who were captured were exchanged, a few months later. Three others reached the Union lines within a fortnight, unhurt. But where was Tom Strong?
Tom up a Tree—Did the Confederate Officer See Him?—A Fugitive Slave Guides Him—Buying a Boat in the Dark—Adrift in the Enemy's Country.
Tom up a Tree—Did the Confederate Officer See Him?—A Fugitive Slave Guides Him—Buying a Boat in the Dark—Adrift in the Enemy's Country.
At first, Tom was up a tree. When he jumped from the abandoned locomotive, his mind was working as quickly as his body. He reasoned that the Confederates would expect them all to run as fast and as far away as they could; that they would run after them; that they would very probably catch him, utterly tired out as he was, so tired that even fear could not lend wings to his leaden feet; that the pursuit, however, would not last long, because the Confederates would wish to reach a station soon, in order both to report their success and to send out a general alarm and so start a generalsearch for the fugitives; and that he would best hide as near at hand as might be. In other words, he thought, quite correctly, that the best thing to do is exactly what your enemy does not expect you to do. He picked out a big oak tree quite close to the track, its top a mass of thick-set leaves such as a Southern April brings to a Southern oak. He climbed it, nestled into a sheltered crotch high above the ground, and waited. He did not have to wait long. He could still hear the noise of his comrades plunging through the woods when the Confederate engine drew up beneath his feet. Before it stopped, the armed men who clustered thick upon locomotive and tender were on the ground and running into the woods. A gallant figure in Confederate gray led them. He heard the rush of them, then a shot or two, exultant yells, and ere long the tramp of returning feet. They came back in half a dozen groups, bringing with them three of his comrades in flight, less fortunate than he, at least less fortunate up to that time. Andrews was one of the prisoners. Hehad slipped and fallen, had strained a sinew, and had lain helpless until his pursuers reached him. Tom, peering cautiously through his leafy shelter, saw that his late leader was limping and was held upright by a kindly Confederate, who had passed his arm about him.
"'Tain't fur," said his captor, cheerily, "hyar's the injine."
"The Yank's goin' fur," sneered a soldier of another kind, "he's goin' to Kingdom Cum, blast him!" He lifted his fist to strike the helpless man, but the young officer in command caught the upraised arm.
"None of that," he said, sternly. "Americans don't treat prisoners that way. You're under arrest. Put down your gun and climb into the tender. Do it now and do it quick." Sulkily the brute obeyed. "Lift him in," went on the officer to the man who was supporting Andrews. This was gently done. The other two captives climbed in. So did the Confederates. Their officer turned to them.
"You've done your duty well," he said."You've been chasing brave men. They've done their duty well too.
"'For such a gallant feat of armsWas never seen before.'"
"'For such a gallant feat of armsWas never seen before.'"
Tom started with surprise. The young officer was quoting from Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome." The boy had stood beside his mother's knee when she read him the "Lays" and had often since read them himself.
That start of surprise had almost been Tom's undoing. He had rustled the leaves about him. A tiny shower of pale green things fell to the ground.
"Captain, there's somebody up that tree," said a soldier, pointing straight at the point where Tom sat. "I heard him rustle."
The captain looked up. The boy always thought the officer saw him and spared him, partly because of his youth—he knew the fate the prisoners faced—and partly because of his admiration for "the gallant feat of arms." Be that as it may, he certainly took no step just then to make another prisoner. Instead he laughed and answered:
"That's a 'possum. We haven't time for a coon-hunt just now. Get ahead. We'll send an alarm from the next station and so bag all the Yankees."
The engine, pushing the recaptured one before it, started and disappeared around the end of the short curve upon which Andrews had made his final stop. For the moment at least, Tom was safe. But he knew the hue-and-cry would sweep the country. Everybody would be on the lookout for stray Yankees. And as everybody would think the estrays were all going North, Tom decided to go South. He slid down the tree, looked at his watch, studied the sunlight to learn the points of the compass, drew his belt tighter to master the hunger that now assailed him, and so began his southward tramp, a boy, alone, in the enemy's country.
That part of Georgia is a beautiful country and Tom loved beauty, but it did not appeal to him that afternoon. He was hungry; he was tired; the excitement that had upheld him through the hours of flight on the capturedengine was over. He plodded through a little belt of forest and found himself in a broad valley, with a ribbon of water flowing through it. He stumbled across plowed fields to the little river. A dusty road, with few marks of travel, meandered beside the stream. He was evidently near no main highway. Not far away a planter's home, with a stately portico, gleamed in the sunlight through its screen of trees. In the distance lay a little village. There was food in both places and he must have food. To which should he go? It was decided for him that he was to go to neither. As he slipped down the river bank, to quench his burning thirst and to wash his dusty face and hands, he almost stepped upon a negro who lay full length at the foot of the bank, hidden behind a tree that had been uprooted by the last flood and left stranded there. The boy was scared by the unexpected meeting, but not half as much as the negro.
"Oh, Massa," said the negro, on his knees with outstretched hands, "don' tell on me,Massa. I'll be your slabe, Massa. Jes' take me with you. Please don't tell on me. You kin make a lot o' money sellin' me, Massa. Please lemme go wid you."
"What is your name?" asked Tom.
"Morris, Massa."
"Where did you come from?"
"From dat house, Massa." He pointed to the big house nearby.
"And what are you doing here?"
Little by little, Morris (reassured when he found Tom was a Northern soldier and like himself a fugitive) told his story. He had been born on this plantation. Reared as a house-servant, he could read a little. He had learned from the newspapers his master took that a Northern army was not far away. He made up his mind to try for freedom. His master kept dogs to track runaways, but no dog can track a scent in running water. It was not probable his flight would be discovered until after nightfall. So he had stolen to his hiding-place in the afternoon, intending to wade down the tinystream as soon as darkness came. Two miles below, the stream merged itself into a larger one. There he hoped to steal a boat, hide by day and paddle by night until he reached the Tennessee. "Dat ribber's plum full o' Massa Lincum's gunboats," he assured Tom.
"How are you going to live on the journey?" asked the boy.
"I spec' dey's hen-roosts about," quoth Morris with a chuckle, "and I'se got a-plenty to eat to start wid. Dis darkey don' reckon to starve none."
"Give me something to eat, quick!"
Morris willingly produced cornpone and bacon from a sack beside him. Tom wanted to eat it all, but he knew these precious supplies must be kept as long as possible, so he did not eat more than half of them. The two agreed to keep together in their flight for freedom. As soon as it was dark, they began their wading. The two miles seemed an endless distance. The noises of the night kept their senses on the jump. Once a distant bloodhound's bay scaredMorris so much that his white teeth clattered like castanets. Once the "too-whit-too" of a nearby owl sent Tom into an ecstasy of terror. He fairly clung to Morris, who, just ahead of him, was guiding his steps through the shallow water. When he found he had been scared by an owl, he was so ashamed that he forced himself to be braver thereafter. At last they reached their first goal, the larger river. Here Morris's knowledge of the ground made him the temporary commander of the expedition. He knew of a little house nearby, the home of a "poor white," who earned part of his precarious livelihood by fishing. Morris knew just where he kept his boat. There was no light in the little house and no sound from it as they crept stealthily along the bank to the tree where the boat was tied. Tom drew his knife to cut the rope.
"No, Massa," whispered Morris. "Not dat-a-way. Ef it's cut, dey'll know it's bin tuck and dey'll s'picion us. Lemme untie it. Den dey'll t'ink it's cum loose and floated away. 'N dey'llnot hurry after it. Dey'll t'ink dey kin fin' it in some cove any time tomorrer."
Morris was right. It did not take him long to untie the clumsy knot. Three oars and some fishing-tackle lay in the flat-bottomed boat. They got into it, pushed off, and floated down the current without a sound. Morris steered with an oar at the stern. Once out of earshot, they rowed as fast as the darkness, intensified by the shadows of the overhanging trees, permitted.
Just before they had pushed off, Tom had asked:
"What is this boat worth, Morris?"
"Old Massa paid five dollars fer a new one jest like it, dis lastest week."
Tom's conscience had told him that even though a fugitive for his life in the enemy's country he ought not to take the "poor white's" boat without paying for it. He unbuttoned an inside pocket in his shirt and drew out a precious store of five-dollar gold pieces. There were twenty of them, each wrapped intissue-paper and the whole then bound together in a rouleau, wrapped in water-proofed silk, so that there would be no sound of clinking gold as he walked. He figured that the three oars and the sorry fishing tackle could not be worth more than the boat was, so he took out two coins and put them in a battered old pan that lay beside the stump to which the boat was tied. There the "cracker"—another name for the "poor white"—would be sure to see them in the morning. As a matter of fact he did. And they were worth so much more than his vanished property that he was inclined to think an angel, rather than a thief, had passed that way. Tom's conscientiousness spoiled Morris's plan of having the owner think the boat had floated away, but the "cracker" was glad to clutch the gold and start no hue-and-cry. He was afraid that if he recovered his boat, he would have to give up the gold. It was much cheaper to make another. So he kept still.
And still, very still, the fugitives kept as they paddled slowly down the stream until the firstsigns of dawn sent them into hiding. They hid the boat in the tall reeds that fringed the mouth of a tiny creek and they themselves crept a few yards into the forest, ate very much less than they wanted to eat of what was left of Morris's scanty store of food, and went to sleep. They slept until—but that is another story.
Towser Finds the Fugitives—Towser Brings Uncle Moses—Mr. Izzard and His Yankee Overseer, Jake Johnson—Tom is Pulled Down the Chimney—How Uncle Moses Choked the Overseer—The Flight of the Four.
Towser Finds the Fugitives—Towser Brings Uncle Moses—Mr. Izzard and His Yankee Overseer, Jake Johnson—Tom is Pulled Down the Chimney—How Uncle Moses Choked the Overseer—The Flight of the Four.
They slept until late in the afternoon.
Then Morris woke up with a yell. A dog's cold nose was thrusting itself against his cheek. He thought his master's bloodhounds were upon him and that the whipping-post was the least he had to fear. As Tom, startled from sound sleep by the negro's scream of terror, sprang to his feet, he saw Morris crouching upon the ground, babbling "Sabe me, good Lord, sabe old Morris!" The dog, a big black-and-yellow mongrel, a very distant cousin of the bloodhound the scared darkey imagined him to be, was looking with a grieved surprise at the cowering man.He was a most good-natured beast, accustomed to few caresses and many kicks, and he had never before seen a man who was afraid of him. As he turned to Tom, he saw a boy who wasn't afraid of him. Tom, who had always been loved by dogs and children, smiled at the big yellow mongrel, said "Come here, old fellow," and in an instant had the great hound licking his hand and looking up to him with the brown-yellow eyes full of a dog's faith and a dog's fidelity. These are great qualities. A cynic once said: "The more I see of men the more I like dogs." That cynic probably got from men what he gave to them. But still it is true that the unfaltering faith of a dog and a child, once their confidence has been won, is a rare and a precious thing. Tom patted his new friend's head. The big tail wagged with joy. The hound looked reproachfully at Morris, as much as to say: "See how you misunderstood me; I want to be friends: but here"—he turned and looked at the boy who was smiling at him—"here is my best friend."
He stayed with them an hour, contented andhappy, humbly grateful for a tiny piece of meat they gave him. Then, as dark drew near, he became uneasy. Two or three times he started as if to leave them, turned to see whether they were following him, looked beseechingly at them, barked gently, put his big paw on Tom's arm and pulled at him. Evidently he wanted them to come with him, but this they did not dare to do.
"Ef we lets him go, he'll bring his folkses here," Morris whispered.
"I suppose we must tie him up," Tom reluctantly assented. "I hate to treat him that way, for he's a good dog. But if we leave him tied and push off in the boat, he'll howl after a while and his master will find him. Take a bit of fishing-line and tie him."
Morris turned towards the hidden boat, but the hound, as if aware of what they had said, suddenly started for his hidden home and vanished into the underbrush before Tom could catch hold of him. When Tom called, he stopped once and looked back, but he did notcome back. He shouldered his way into the bushes and trotted off, with that amusing air of being in a hurry to keep a most important appointment which all dogs sometimes show. And as he started, Morris appeared again, with a shrill whisper: "De boat's dun sunk hisself."
Tom ran to the bank of the creek. The news was too true. The boat had sunk. The rotten caulking had dropped from one of the rotten seams. The bow, tied to a tree in the canebrake, was high in air. The stern was under five feet of water. The oars had floated away. The fishing-pole was afloat, held to the old craft by the hook-and-line, which had caught in the sunken seat. What were they to do? They felt as a Western trapper used to feel, when he had lost his horse and saw himself compelled to make his perilous way on foot through a country swarming with savage foes. What to do?
"We must raise the boat, Morris, get her on shore, turn her over, caulk her with something, make some paddles somehow and get off."
They did, by great effort and with much more noise than they liked to make, drag the crazy old craft upon the bank of the creek. They turned her bottom-side up. The negro plucked down a long, waving mass of Spanish moss from a cypress that grew in the swampy soil. Children in the South call this Spanish moss "old men's gray beards." Each long drift of it looks as if it might have grown on the chin of an aged giant. They were pressing it into the gaping seam with feverish haste, listening the while for any sign of that dreaded coming of the big hound's "folkses." The short twilight of Southern skies ended. A deep curtain of darkness fell upon them. And through it they heard the nearby patter of the dog's paws and the shuffling footfalls of a man. And they saw the gleam of a lantern.
"We'se diskivered, Massa Tom," old Morris whispered, "we'se diskivered."
As he spoke, he slipped over the bank into the creek and lay in much his attitude when Tom had first "diskivered" him, except that thewater covered all of him except mouth and nose and eyes. Tom bent down to him.
"Hush," he said, "keep still. There's only one man coming. The dog's all right. I'll meet the man. You stay here."
Then he stepped into a circle of light cast by the lantern upon a mass of underbrush and said, with a cheerful confidence he did not feel:
"Howdy, neighbor?"
The big yellow dog was fawning at his feet in a second. A quavering old voice came from behind the light of the lantern.
"Howdy, Massa," it said. "Is I intrudin' on you?"
An old, old negro shambled up to him, the lantern in one hand, a ragged hat in another. He bowed his crown of white kinky hair respectfully before the white boy. There was no enemy to be feared here. The boy's heart bounded with relief and he laughed as he answered:
"No, Uncle, you're not intruding. I'm glad tosee you. I'm sure you'll help us. Come here, Morris."
Morris scrambled up the bank, the wettest man in the world. His eyeballs shone as he neared them. They shone still more as he stood before the old negro, held out his hand, and said:
"Unk' Moses, I'se po'erful glad to meet up wid you."
Uncle Moses almost dropped his rude lantern in his surprise.
"Well, ef it ain't Massa Pinckney's Morris! Howdy, Morris? How cum so as you-uns is here, a-hidin'? I know'd de way dat ar Towser wuz a-actin' when he dun cum home dat dere wuz sum-un in de bush out hyar, but I neber s'picioned t'wuz you, Morris. Is you dun run away?"
The situation was soon explained. Uncle Moses had already become familiar with it. Hunted men, both white and black, were no novelty to him by that time. He had helped many of them on their scared way. Too old to work, he lived alone in a little cabin on the outskirtsof his owner's plantation. He tilled a tiny plot of vegetables when "de rumatiz" permitted and with these and some rations from "de big house" he eked out a scanty living. This owner's self-respect had not prevented his working Moses through all a long life, with no payment except food and lodging, and behind these always the shadow of the whip. But the slave's self-respect required him to work for the hand that fed him, so long as failing strength permitted. All he could do now was to scare crows from the cornfield, but that he could do well, for his one suit of the ragged remains of what had been several other people's clothes made him a perfect scarecrow. Besides his vegetables, he had some chickens, a sacred possession. "Old Unk' Mose" was known and respected through all the countryside. No chicken-thief ever came to his cabin. The kind old patriarch was reaping the reward of a kind long life. He dwelt in peace.
He took Tom and Morris to the lonely cabin and treated them there with a royal hospitality.Despite his protests, Tom was obliged to take the one bed. Unk' Mose and Morris slept upon the floor. First, they had a mighty dinner. Two of Moses's fattest chickens and everything Moses had in the way of other food filled their starved stomachs. Then to sleep. The last thing Tom heard that night was the swish of Towser's mighty tail upon the earthen floor as the dog lay beside his cot. The last thing of which he was conscious was Towser's gently licking the hand that hung down from the cot.
The next day they toiled with such feeble help as Moses could give them upon their leaky boat. They put it in fair shape and then, with a rusty ax which was one of Unk' Mose's most precious possessions, they fashioned a couple of rough oars. Then they spent a day trying to persuade Moses to seek freedom with them. It was in vain.
"I'se too old, Massa Tom," said Uncle Moses. "Dey wuz timeses when I dun thought all de days and dun prayed all de nights dat freedum'd cum along or dat I cud go to freedum. It's toolate nowadays. Unk' Mose mus' jes' sot hyar, a-waitin'. P'raps, ef I keeps a-helpin' udder folkses to find deir freedum, p'raps sum day, 'fore I'se troo' a-waitin', de angel ob de Lawd'll cum a-walkin' up to my do' and he'll be a-holdin' by de han' ob a great big udder angel 'n de udder angel he'll dun smile at me and say: 'Unk' Moses, I'se Freedum 'n I'se cum to you.' Den I'll say: 'Thank de good Lawd,' and I'll be so happy I guess I'll jes' die 'n go to de great White Throne, whar ebberybody's free."
Late that afternoon when they had had to give up the hope of taking Uncle Mose with them, they were making a bundle of the food he had given them. It was a big bundle. He would have slaughtered his last chicken for them, had they permitted it. Suddenly there came the sound of a long, shrill whistle. Uncle Moses, tying up the bundle on his knees, forgot "de rumatiz" and almost sprang to his feet.
"Lawd-a-massy, dat's de oberseer! He's dun callin' de hands to de quarters." The quarters were the slave-quarters which always clusteredat a respectful distance in the rear of a planter's home. "Dat ar oberseer mebbe'll cum hyar. You folkses mus' hide."
The whistle had sounded dangerously near. As they looked out of the one door that gave light to the slave's cabin, they saw three horsemen trotting towards it, two white men and a negro. They were Moses's master, the dreaded overseer, and a groom. It was impossible to run across the small cleared space about the cabin and seek the woods without being seen. But where could they hide in a one-roomed hut?
"De chimbley, quick, de chimbley," gasped Uncle Mose.
A big chimney, full of the soot of many years of wood-fires on the broad hearth below, filled half one side of the room. Tom and Morris rushed to it, climbed up the rough stone sides, found a precarious footing just above the fireplace, and waited. Fortunately the fire upon which the food for the journey had been cooked had almost died down. A little smoke floated up the wide opening. The smoke and the soottickled the boy's nostrils until it seemed to him that he must sneeze. A sneeze might mean death. With a mighty effort he kept still for what seemed to him an hour. It was really about five minutes.
Mr. Izzard, owner of Uncle Moses and of some hundreds of other black men, Jake Johnson, his overseer, a renegade Yankee, with a face that told of the cruel soul within him, trotted up to the door, the black groom a few yards behind them. Uncle Moses had thrust the bundle of food far back under the bed. He stood respectfully in his doorway, bowing to the ground. Towser cowered beside him. Towser had felt more than once the sting of the long whip Jake Johnson carried. He feared and he hated the overseer.
"Howdy, Massa Izzard." said Moses. "Howdy, Mista Johnsing. Will you-uns light down 'n cum in?"
"Howdy, Uncle Moses?" Mr. Izzard replied. He was a tall, pale, well-born, well-bred, well-educated man, as kind a man as ever held hisfellowmen in slavery, and as sure that he was justified in doing so by the laws of both God and man as the German emperor was that he ruled a subject people by divine right. "No, we won't light down. We just came to say howdy. Are you getting on all right? If you want anything, come up to the big house and ask for it."
He smiled and the overseer scowled upon the old negro as he stammered a few words of thanks. Suddenly the overseer asked:
"Have you seen anything of Mr. Pinckney's Morris, Mose?"
"No, sah, Mista Johnsing, sah, I ain't seen hide nor har ob Morris. Has dat fool nigger runned away?"
Johnson looked at him sharply.
"If I thought you knew already he had run away," said he, "I'd"—he cracked his whip in the air to show what he would have done.
Moses and Towser cowered. But Mr. Izzard told Johnson to stop frightening "the best darkey on the place" and they rode away.Mose dropped upon his one chair and was just about to give fervent thanks for the escape from detection, when Johnson, who had turned a short distance away and had galloped back, flung himself off his horse at the door and strode into the dusky hut.
"I b'lieve you know something about that Morris," he roared at the shrinking old negro. "You looked guilty. Tell me what you know or I'll thrash you within an inch of your black life." He cracked his dreaded whip again.
"I dun know nothin' 'bout him, Mista Johnsing," Moses pleaded.
Alas, at that moment, smoke and soot proved too much for the overtried nostrils of Tom. He sneezed with the vigor of a sneeze long held back. His "at-choo! at-choo!" sounded down the chimney like a chorus of bassoons. Johnson was across the room in a bound. He knelt upon the hearth, groped up the chimney, caught the boy by the ankle and pulled him down. The soot had made a negro of Tom. The overseer was sure he had caught the fleeing Morris.
At that terrible moment, when Johnson's throat was swelling for a yell of triumph that would surely have brought Mr. Izzard back to the hut, Uncle Moses cast the traditions of a life of servile fear of the white man behind him. Never had he dreamed of laying a finger on one of his owner's race, even in those long-ago days when stout thews and muscles made him fit to fight. Now, in trembling old age, the truth of the poet's saying,