"Pin that paper to the far side of that tree, first," he said, with a grim smile. "I'll wait."
The man refused, but the wounded fellow essaying to drag himself toward it again, he yielded, and the return challenge was posted.
Two hours later its work, was done. The ------
La. held the hill again! A laughing shout went up. It might have been a warmly contested game of football, so free from malice was it.
All over the great battle-field the work of the day was back and forth over the same bloody and trampled ground. The mud of the morning took on another tinge of red, and the mingled blood of the gallant fellows who gave their lives for the side they had espoused made hideous mortar of the ghastly sacrifice. The river ran on its way to the sea, floating the costliest driftwood ever cast by man as an offering to his own passions, mistakes, and ambitions; a driftwood pale and ghastly, clad in gray or in blue, and scattering from Maine to Texas, from ocean to ocean, the sorrow that travels in the wake of war, the anguish of those who silently wait by the fireside, for the step that will never come, for the voice that is silent forever! Ah, the ghastliness of war! Ah, the costliness of war! It is those who do not fight who pay the heaviest debt and find its glory ashes!
On the hill was the rivalry of the challenge. It gave grim humor to the contest. Three challenges were taken, and three replaced, before the sunset brought that suspension of effort which left the hill, the tree, and the final glory of the day in the hands of the Confederates. The drawn battle was over for the night, but the trend of the victory was southward, and the heavens once more deluged the dead and dying with the pitiless downpour of chilling rain all the night long. In the northern camp the tired men slept in spite of rain and mud and distant cannonading. With the slain beside them, the groans of the dying about them, the echo of the conflict in their ears, the promise of the struggle of the morrow, still the tired men slept! In the Confederate camp sleep was impossible. The Federal relief boats had come! To-morrow fresh men would fill the Northern ranks. Meantime the thunder of the great gunboats continued the unequal contest. Shot and shell fell with the rain into the Confederate camp. All night the bombardment went on. The river was tinged with red, the heavens kept up the old refrain and wept for the sins, the mistakes, the cruelties of men, and still the tired soldiers slept and waited for the morrow--and what? There would be no more surprises at least. Both understood now that it was a stubborn fight. Both knew that the reinforcements were here for the Federal troops. Pickets and scouts were wide awake now; no danger of another surprise. All night the relief corps worked. All night the distant echoes from the gunboats brought hope to the one and desperation to the other army. All night the surgeons labored. All night stragglers came in dragging wounded limbs. All night suffering horses neighed and whinnied and struggled and at last died from loss of blood--and still men slept! Ah, the blessed oblivion and relief of sleep! If to-morrow's action must come, then to-night nature must restore the wasted energy, and repair the deathly exhaustion,--and men slept! Soaked through with rain, begrimed with smoke and with mud, assailed with groans and with that insidious foe of rest, uncertainty, still men slept, soundly, profoundly, dreamlessly!