He ran his fingers lightly over the strings and the men threw down their dirty packs of cards and crowded around John"s tent. Julius only sang one line at a time and picked his banjo between them to a low wailing sound of his own invention:
"O! far" you well, my Mary Ann; Far" you well, my dear!
I"ve no one left to love me now And little do I care----"
He paused between the stanzas and picked his banjo to a few prose interpolations of his own.
"Dat"s what I"m a tellin" ye now, folks--little do I care!"
He knew his master had been crossed in love and he rolled his eyes and nodded his woolly head in triumphant approval. John smiled wanly as he drifted slowly into his next stanza.
"An" ef I had a scoldin" wife I"d whip her sho"s yer born, I"d take her down to New Orleans An" trade her off fer corn----"
Julius stopped with a sudden snap and whispered to John:
"Lordy, sah, I clean fergit "bout dat meetin" at de cullud folks"
church, sah, dat dey start up. I promise de preacher ter fetch you, sah--An" ef we gwine ter march ter-morrow, dis here"s de las" night sho----"
The concert was adjourned to the log house which an old colored preacher had converted into a church. It was filled to its capacity and John stood in the doorway and heard the most remarkable sermon to which he had ever listened.
The grey-haired old negro was tremendously in earnest. He could neither read nor write but he opened the Bible to comply with the formalities of the occasion and pretended to read his text. He had taken it from his master who was a clergyman. Ephraim invariably chose the same texts but gave his people his own interpretation. It never failed in some element of originality.
The text his master had evidently chosen last were the words:
"And he healeth them of divers diseases."
Old Ephraim"s version was a free one. From the open Bible he solemnly read:
"An" he healed "em of all sorts o" diseases an" even er dat wust o"
complaints called de Divers!"
He plunged straight into a fervent exhortation to sinners to flee from the Divers.
"I"m gwine ter tell ye now, chillun," he exclaimed with uplifted arms, "ye don"t know nuttin" "bout no terrible diseases till dat wust er all called de Divers git ye! An" hit"s a comin" I tell ye. Hit"s gwine ter git ye, too. Ye can flee ter the mountain top, an" hit"ll dive right up froo de air an" git ye dar. Ye kin go down inter de bowels er de yearth an" hit"ll dive right down dar atter ye. Ye kin take de wings er de mornin" an" fly ter de ends er de yearth--an" de Divers is dar. Dey kin dive anywhar!
"An" what ye gwine ter do when dey git ye? I axe ye dat now? What ye gwine ter do when hit"s forever an" eternally too late? Dese doctors roun" here kin cure ye o" de whoopin"-cough--mebbe--I hain"t nebber seed "em eben do dat--but I say, mebbe. Dey kin cure ye o" de measles, mebbe.
Er de plumbago or de typhoid er de yaller fever sometimes. But I warns ye now ter flee de wrath dat"s ter come when dem Divers git ye! Dey ain"t no doctor no good fer dat nowhar--exceptin" ye come ter de Lord.
For He heal "em er all sorts er diseases an" de wust er all de complaints called de Divers!
"Come, humble sinners, in whose breast er thousand thoughts revolve!"
John Vaughan turned away with a smile and a tear.
"In G.o.d"s name," he murmured thoughtfully, "what"s to become of these four million black children of the tropic jungles if we win now and set them free! Their fathers and mothers were but yesterday eating human flesh in naked savagery."
He walked slowly back to his tent through the solemn starlit night. The new moon, a silver thread, hung over the tree tops. He thought of that dusky grey-haired child of four thousand years of ignorance and helplessness and the tragic role he had played in the history of our people. And for the first time faced the question of the still more tragic role he might play in the future.
"I"m fighting to free him and the millions like him," he mused. "What am I going to do with him?"
The longer he thought the blacker and more insoluble became this question, and yet he was going into battle to-morrow to fight his own brother to the death on this issue. True the problem of national existence was at stake, but this black problem of the possible degradation of our racial stock and our national character still lay back of it unsolved and possibly insoluble.
The red flash of a picket"s gun on the sh.o.r.e of the river and the quick answer from the other side brought his dreaming to a sudden stop before the sterner fact of the swiftly approaching battle.
He s.n.a.t.c.hed but a few hours sleep before his regiment was up and on the march to the water"s edge. A dense grey fog hung over the river and obscured the town. The bridge builders swung their pontoons into the water and soon the sound of timbers falling into place could be heard with the splash of the anchors and the low quick commands of the officers.
The grey sharpshooters, concealed on the other sh.o.r.e, began to fire across the water through the fog. The sound was strangely magnified. The single crack of a musket seemed as loud as a cannon.
The work went quickly. The bullets flew wide of the mark. The fog suddenly lifted and a steady fusillade from the men hidden in the hills of Fredericksburg began to pick off the bridge builders with cruel accuracy. At times every man was down. New men were rushed to take their places and they fell.
The signal was given to the artillery and a hundred and forty-seven great guns suddenly began to sweep the doomed town. Houses crumpled like egg-sh.e.l.ls and fires began to blaze.
The sharpshooters fell back. The bridges were laid and the grand army of a hundred and thirteen thousand began to pour across. The caissons, with their huge black, rifled-barrel guns rumbling along the resounding boards in a continuous roar like distant thunder.
On the southern sh.o.r.e the deep mud cut hills put every team to the test of its strength and the utmost skill of their drivers. Hundreds of men were in the mud at the wheels and still they would stick.
And then the patient heavens above heard the voices of army teamsters in plain and ornamental swearing! Such profanity was probably never heard on this earth before and it may well be hoped will not be heard again.
The driver whose wheels had stuck, cracked his whip first and yelled. He yelled again and cracked his whip. And then he began to swear, loudly, and angrily at first and then in lower, steadier, more polite terms--but always in an unending nerve-racking torrent.
He cursed his mules individually by name and the whole team collectively, and consigned it to the lowest depth of the deepest h.e.l.l and then the devil for not providing a deeper one. Each trait of each mule, good and bad, he named without fear or favor and d.a.m.ned each alike with equal emphasis. He named each part of each mule"s anatomy and d.a.m.ned it individually and as a whole, with full bill of particulars.
He swore in every key in the whole gamut of sound and last of all he d.a.m.ned himself for his utter inability to express anything he really felt.
The last big gun up the hill and the infantry poured into the town of Fredericksburg, halting in regiments and brigades in its streets. Only a few shots had been exchanged with the men in grey. They had withdrawn to the heights a mile beyond. The a.s.sault had been a mere parade. Many of the inhabitants had fled in terror at the approach of the men in blue.
Some of the lower types of soldiers in the Northern army broke into these deserted houses and began to rob and pillage.
Julius "found" many delicacies lying about on lawns and in various unheard-of places. His master never pressed him with rude questions when his zeal bore such good results for their table.
Ned Vaughan had been very much amused at an old woman who had been driven from her home by marauders. She had piled such goods and chattels as she could handle into an ox cart and drove past the grey battle lines, hurrying as fast as she could Southward. Her wrinkled old face beamed with joy at the sight of their burnished muskets and her eyes flashed with the gleam of an Amazon as she shouted:
"Give it to the d.a.m.ned rascals, boys! Give "em one fer me--one fer me and don"t you forget it!"
Far down the line she could be heard delivering her fierce exhortation.
The men smiled and answered her good-naturedly. The day of wrath and death had dawned. It was too solemn an hour for boastful words.
For two days the grand army in blue poured across the river and spread out through the town of Fredericksburg. The fateful morning of the 13th of December, 1862, dawned in another heavy fog. Its grey mantle of mystery shrouded the town, clung wet and heavy to the ground in the silent valley before the crescent-shaped hills and veiled the face of their heights.
Under the cover of this fog the long waves of blue spread out in the edge of the valley and took their places in battle line. The grey men in the brown gra.s.s on the hills crouched behind their ditches and stone walls, gripped their guns and waited for the foe to walk into the trap their commanders had set.
An unseen hand slowly lifted the misty curtain and the sun burst on the scene. The valley lay like the smooth ground of some vast arena prepared for a pageant and back of it rose the silent hills, tier on tier like the seats of a mighty amphitheatre. But the men crouching on those seats were not spectators--they were the grimmest actors in the tragedy.
For a moment it was a spectacle merely--the grandest display of the pageantry of war ever made on a field of death.
Franklin"s division suddenly wheeled into position for its united a.s.sault on the right.
Ned Vaughan, from his lair on the hill, could see the officers in their magnificent new uniforms, their swords flashing as they led their men. A hundred thousand bayonets were gleaming in the sparkling December sun.
Magnificent horses in rich ta.s.selled trappings were plunging and prancing with the excitement of marching hosts, some of them keeping time to the throb of regimental bands.
The bands were playing now, all of them, a band for every thousand men, the shrill scream of their bugles and the roar of their drums sending a mighty chorus into the heavens that echoed ominously against the silent hills.