In the
darkness, dusky figures could be seen swinging the sponge-staff,
swabbing the cannon, driving home the charge. In the starlight, the
moonlight, or the gloom lit by the red glare, those figures, resembling
phantoms, were seen marshalled behind the breastworks to repel the
coming assault. Silence had fled from the trenches--the crash of
musketry and the bellow of artillery had replaced it. That seemed never
to cease. The men were rocked to sleep by it. They slept on in the dark
trenches, though the mortar-shells rose, described their flaming
curves, and, bursting, rained jagged fragments of iron upon them. And
to many that was their last sleep. The iron tore them in their tattered
blankets. They rose gasping, and streaming with blood. Then they
staggered and fell; when you passed by, you saw a something lying on
the ground, covered with the old blanket. It was one of "Lee's
Miserables," killed last night by the mortars--and gone to answer,
"Here!" before the Master.
The trenches!--ah! the trenches! Were you in them, reader? Thousands
will tell you more of them than I can. There, an historic army was
guarding the capital of an historic nation--the great nation of
Virginia--and how they guarded it! In hunger, and cold, and nakedness,
they guarded it still. In the bright days and the dark, they stood at
their posts unmoved.
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