He lay down to sleep the night he deserted1 in a clump2 of trees near the Confederate outposts and rested his head on a pillow of pine straw. When he waked in the morning at dawn he felt something tickle3 his nose. He cautiously reached one hand up to see what it was and felt a lock of hair. He rose slowly, fearing to look till he had gained his feet. He turned his eyes at last and saw that he had been sleeping on a dead man's head protruding4 through the shallow dirt and pine straw that had been hastily thrown over it the first day of the battle.
With a yell of terror he started on a run for his life.
He never stopped until he had flanked Lee's army by a wide swing, made his way to the rear and joined the Confederacy.
Grant had now changed his plan of campaign. He determined5 to capture Petersburg by a coup6 and cut the communication of Lee and Richmond with the South. The coup failed. The ragged7 remnants of Lee's army which had been left there to defend it, held the trenches8 until reinforcements arrived.
He determined to take it by a resistless concerted assault. On the 16th he threw three of his army corps9 on Beauregard's thin lines before Petersburg, capturing four redoubts. At daylight, on the 17th, he again hurled10 his men on Beauregard and drove his men out of his first line of defense12. All day the defenders13 held their second line, though Grant's crack divisions poured out their blood like water. As night fell the dead were once more piled high on the Federal front and the Confederate dead filled the trenches.
As the third day dawned the fierce, assault was renewed, but Lee had brought up Anderson's Corps with Kershaw and Field's division and the blue waves broke against the impregnable grey ranks and rolled back, leaving the dead in dark heaps.
As the shadows of night fell, Grant withdrew his shattered lines to their trenches.
He had lost ten thousand five hundred more men and had failed.
He began to burrow14 his fortifications into the earth around Petersburg and try by siege what had been found impossible by assault. Further and further crept his blue lines with pick and axe15 and spade and shovel16, digging, burrowing17, piling their dirt and timbers. Before each blue rampart silently grew one in grey until the two siege lines stretched for thirty-seven miles in bristling18, flaming semicircle covering both Richmond and Petersburg.
Again Grant planned a coup. He chose the role of the fox this time instead of the lion. He selected the key of Lee's long lines of defense and set a regiment19 of Pennsylvania miners to work digging a tunnel under the Confederate fort known as "Elliot's Salient," which stood but two hundred yards in front of Burnside's corps.
The tunnel was finished, the mine ready, the fuses set, and eight thousand pounds of powder planted in the earth beneath the unsuspecting Confederates.
Hancock's division with Sheridan's cavalry20 were sent to make a demonstration22 against Richmond and draw Lee's main army to its defense. The ruse23 was partly successful. There were but eighteen thousand behind the defenses of Petersburg on the dark night when Grant massed fifty thousand picked men before the doomed24 fort. The pioneers with their axes cleared the abatis and opened the way for the charging hosts. Heavy guns and mortars25 were planted to sweep the open space beyond the Salient and beat back any attempted counter charge.
The time set for the explosion was just before dawn. The fuse was lit and fifty thousand men stood gripping their guns, waiting for the shock. A quarter of an hour passed and nothing happened. An ominous26 silence brooded over the dawning sky. The only sounds heard were the twitter of waking birds in the trees and hedgerows. The fuse had failed. Two heroic men crawled into the tunnel and found it had spluttered out in a damp spot but fifty feet from the powder. It required an hour to secure and plant a new fuse. Day had dawned. Just in front of John Vaughan's regiment a Confederate spy was caught. He could hear every word of the pitiful tragedy.
He was a handsome, brown-eyed youngster of eighteen.
He glanced pathetically toward the doomed fort, and shook his head:
"Fifteen minutes more and I'd have saved you, boys!"
He turned then to the executioners:
"May I have just a minute to pray?"
"Yes."
He knelt and lifted his head, the fine young lips moving in silence as the first rays of the rising sun flooded the scene with splendor27.
"May I write just a word to my mother and to my sweetheart?" he asked with a smile. "They're just over there in Petersburg."
"Yes."
They gave him a piece of paper and he wrote his last words of love, and in a moment was swinging from the limb of a tree. Only a few of the more thoughtful men paid any attention. It was nothing. Such things happened every day. God only kept the records.
The new fuse was set and lighted. The minutes seemed hours as the men waited breathlessly. With a dull muffled28 roar from the centre of the earth beneath their very feet the fort rose two hundred feet straight into the sky, driven by a tower of flame that stood stark29 and red in the heavens. And then with blinding crash the mighty30 column of earth, guns, timbers and three hundred grey bodies sank into the yawning crater31. The pit was sixty-five feet wide and three hundred feet long.
The explosion had been a complete success. The undermined fort had been wiped from the landscape. A great gap opened in Lee's lines marked by the grave of three hundred of his men.
Burnside's division rushed into the crater and climbed through the breach32. His men were met promptly33 by Ransom's brigade of North Carolinians and held. The union support became entangled34 in the hole, stumbled and fell in confusion.
General Mahone's brigades hastily called, rushed into position, and a general Confederate charge was ordered. In silence, their arms trailing by their sides, they quickly crossed the open space and fell like demons21 on the confused blue lines which were driven back into the crater and slaughtered35 like sheep. The Confederate guns were trained on this yawning pit whose edges now bristled36 with flaming muskets38. Regiment after regiment of blue were hurled into this hell hole to be torn and cut to pieces.
A division of negro troops were hurried in and the sight of them drove the Southerners to desperation. It took but a moment's grim charge to hurl11 these black regiments39 back into the pit on the bodies of their fallen white comrades. The crater became a butcher's shambles40.
When the smoke cleared four thousand more of Grant's men lay dead and wounded in the grave in which had been buried three hundred grey defenders.
Lee's losses were less than one third as many. Grant asked for a truce41 to bury his dead and from five until nine next morning there was no firing along the grim lines of siege for the first time since the day Petersburg had been invested.
So confident now was Lee that he could hold his position against any assault his powerful opponent could make, he detached Jubal Early with twenty thousand men and sent him through the Shenandoah Valley to strike Washington.
Grant was compelled to send Sheridan after him. In the meantime he determined to take advantage of Lee's reduced strength and cut the Weldon railroad over which were coming all supplies from the South.
Warren's corps was sent on this important mission. His attack failed and he was driven back with a loss of three thousand men. He entrenched42 himself and called for reinforcements. Hancock's famous corps was hurried to the assistance of Warren.
John Vaughan's regiment was now attached to Hancock's army. As they were strapping43 on their knapsacks for this march, to his amazement44 Julius suddenly appeared, grinning and bustling45 about as if he had never strayed from the fold. His clothes were in shreds46 and tatters.
"Where have you been all this time, nigger?" John asked.
"Who, me?"
"And where'd you get that new suit of clothes?"
"Well, I'm gwine tell ye Gawd's truf, Marse John. Atter dat Cold Harbor business I lit out fur de odder side. I wuz gittin' 'long very well dar wid General Elliot in de Confederacy when all of er sudden somfin' busted47 an' blowed me clean back inter48 de union. An' here I is—yassah. An' I'se gwine ter stick by you now. 'Pears lak de ain't no res' fur de weary no whar."
John was glad to have his enterprising cook once more and received the traitor49 philosophically50.
Lee threw A. P. Hill's corps between Warren and Hancock's advancing division. Hancock entrenched himself along-the railroad which he was destroying.
Hill trained his artillery51 on these trenches and charged them with swift desperation late in the afternoon. The union lines were broken and crushed and the men fled in panic. In vain "Hancock the Superb," who had seen his soldiers fall but never fail, tried to rally them. In agony he witnessed their utter rout52. His trenches were taken, his guns captured and turned in a storm of death on his fleeing men. He lost twelve stands of colors, nine big guns and twenty-five hundred men.
As the darkness fell General Nelson A. Miles succeeded in rallying a new line and stayed the panic by a desperate countercharge.
Once more the grapple was hand to hand, man to man, in the darkness. John Vaughan had fired the last load, save one, from his revolver, and sword in hand, was cheering his men in a mad effort to regain53 their lost entrenchments. Blue and grey were mixed in black confusion. Only by the light of flashing guns could friend be distinguished54 from foe55. A musket37 flamed near his face and through the deep darkness which followed a sword thrust pierced his side. He sprang back with an oath and clinched56 with his antagonist57, feeling for his throat in silence. For a minute they wheeled struggled and fought in desperation, stumbling over underbrush, slipping to their knees and rising. Every instinct of the fighting brute58 in man was up now and the battle was to the death for one—perhaps both.
John succeeded at last in releasing his right hand and drawing his revolver. His enemy sprang back at the same moment and through the darkness again came the sword into his breast. He felt the blood following the blade as it was snatched away, raised his revolver and fired his last shot squarely at his foe. The muzzle59 was less than two feet from his face and in the flash he saw Ned's look of horror, both brothers recognizing each other in the same instant.
"John—my God, it's you!"
"Yes—yes—and it's you—God have mercy if I've killed you!"
In a moment the older brother had caught Ned's sinking body and lowered it gently on the leaves.
"It's all right, John, old man," he gasped60. "If I had to die it's just as well by your hand. It's war—it's hell—all hell—anyhow—what's the difference——"
"But you mustn't die, Boy!" John whispered fiercely. "You mustn't, I tell you!"
"I didn't want to die," Ned sighed. "Life was—just—becoming—real—beautiful—wonderful——"
He stopped and drew a deep breath.
John bent61 lower and Ned's arm slipped toward his neck and his fingers touched the warm blood soaking his clothes.
"I'm—afraid—I—got—you,—too,—John——"
"No, I'm all right—brace up, Boy. Pull that devil will of yours together—we've both got it—and live!"
The younger man's head had sunk on his brother's blood-stained breast.
"Now, look here, Ned, old man—this'll never do—don't—don't—give up!"
The answer came faint and low:
"Tell—Betty—when—you—see—her—that—with—my—last—breath—I—spoke—her—name—her—face—lights—the—dark—way——"
"You're going, Ned?"
"Yes——"
"Say you forgive me!"
"There's—nothing—to—forgive—it's—all—right—John—good-bye——"
The voice stopped. The battle had ceased. The woods were still. The older brother could feel the slow rising and falling of the strong young chest as if the muscles in the glory of their perfect life refused to hear the call of Death.
He bent in the darkness and kissed the trembling lips and they, too, were still. He drew himself against the trunk of a tree and through the beautiful summer night held the body of his dead brother in his arms.
His fevered eyes were opened at last and he saw war as it is for the first time. It had meant nothing before this reckoning of the dead and wounded after battle—sixty thousand men from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor in thirty days—ten thousand five hundred in the futile62 dash against Petersburg—four thousand in the crater—five thousand five hundred more now on this torn, twisted railroad, and all a failure—not an inch of ground gained.
These torn and mangled63 bundles of red rags he had watched the men dump into trenches and cover with dirt had meant nothing real. They were only loathsome64 things to be hidden from sight before the bugles65 called the army to move.
Now he saw a vision. Over every dark bundle on those blood-soaked fields bent a brother, a father, a mother, a sister or sweetheart. He heard their cries of anguish66 until all other sounds were dumb.
The heaps of amputated legs and arms he had seen so often without a sigh were bathed now in tears. The surgeons with their hands and arms and clothes soaked with red—he saw them with the eyes of love—scene on scene in hideous67 review—the young officer at Cold Harbor whose leg they were cutting off without the use of chloroform, his face convulsed, his jaws68 locked as the knife crashed through nerve and sinew, muscle and artery69. And those saws gnawing70 through bones—God in heaven, he could hear them all now—they were cutting and tearing those he loved.
He heard their terrible orders with new ears. For the first time he realized what they meant.
"Give them the bayonet now——"
The low, savage71, subdued72 tones of the officer had once thrilled his soul. The memory sickened him.
He could hear the impassioned speech of the Colonel as the men lay flat on their faces in the grass—the click of bayonets in their places—the look on the faces of the men eager, fierce, intense, as they sprang to their feet at the call:
"Charge!"
And the fight. A big, broad-shouldered brute is trying to bayonet a boy of fifteen. The boy's slim hand grips the steel with an expression of mingled73 rage and terror. He holds on with grim fury. A comrade rushes to his rescue. His bayonet misses the upper body of the strong man and crashes hard against his hip74 bone. The man with his strength seizes the gun, snatches it from his bleeding thigh75 and swings it over his head to brain his new antagonist, when the first boy, with a savage laugh, plunges76 his bayonet through the strong man's heart and he falls with a dull crash, breaking the steel from the musket's muzzle and lies quivering, with the blood-spouting point protruding from his side. He understood now—these were not soldiers obeying orders—they were fathers and brothers and playmates, killing77 and maiming and tearing each other to pieces.
Lord God of Love and Mercy, the pity and horror of it all!
It was one o'clock before Julius, searching the field with a lantern, came on him huddled78 against the tree with Ned's body still in his arms, staring into the dead face.
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收听单词发音
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1
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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tickle
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| v.搔痒，胳肢；使高兴；发痒；n.搔痒，发痒 | |
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protruding
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| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的现在分词 )；凸 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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coup
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| n.政变；突然而成功的行动 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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hurl
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| vt.猛投，力掷，声叫骂 | |
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defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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defenders
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| n.防御者( defender的名词复数 )；守卫者；保护者；辩护者 | |
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14
burrow
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| vt.挖掘(洞穴)；钻进；vi.挖洞；翻寻；n.地洞 | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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burrowing
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| v.挖掘（洞穴），挖洞( burrow的现在分词 )；翻寻 | |
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18
bristling
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| a.竖立的 | |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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demons
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| n.恶人( demon的名词复数 )；恶魔；精力过人的人；邪念 | |
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demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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ruse
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| n.诡计，计策；诡计 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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mortars
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| n.迫击炮( mortar的名词复数 )；砂浆；房产；研钵 | |
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ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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crater
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| n.火山口，弹坑 | |
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32
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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entangled
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| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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slaughtered
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| v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bristled
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| adj. 直立的，多刺毛的 动词bristle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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musket
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| n.滑膛枪 | |
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muskets
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| n.火枪，（尤指）滑膛枪( musket的名词复数 ) | |
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regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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40
shambles
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| n.混乱之处；废墟 | |
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41
truce
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| n.休战，(争执，烦恼等的)缓和；v.以停战结束 | |
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42
entrenched
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| adj.确立的，不容易改的(风俗习惯) | |
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43
strapping
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| adj. 魁伟的, 身材高大健壮的 n. 皮绳或皮带的材料, 裹伤胶带, 皮鞭 动词strap的现在分词形式 | |
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44
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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45
bustling
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| adj.喧闹的 | |
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46
shreds
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| v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件） | |
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47
busted
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| adj. 破产了的，失败了的，被降级的，被逮捕的，被抓到的 动词bust的过去式和过去分词 | |
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48
inter
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| v.埋葬 | |
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49
traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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50
philosophically
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| adv.哲学上；富有哲理性地；贤明地；冷静地 | |
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51
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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52
rout
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| n.溃退，溃败；v.击溃，打垮 | |
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53
regain
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| vt.重新获得，收复，恢复 | |
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54
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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55
foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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56
clinched
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| v.（尤指两人）互相紧紧抱[扭]住( clinch的过去式和过去分词 )；解决（争端、交易），达成（协议） | |
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57
antagonist
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| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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58
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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59
muzzle
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| n.鼻口部；口套；枪(炮)口；vt.使缄默 | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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61
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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62
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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63
mangled
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| vt.乱砍（mangle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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64
loathsome
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| adj.讨厌的，令人厌恶的 | |
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65
bugles
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| 妙脆角，一种类似薯片但做成尖角或喇叭状的零食； 号角( bugle的名词复数 )； 喇叭； 匍匐筋骨草； （装饰女服用的）柱状玻璃（或塑料）小珠 | |
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66
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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67
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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68
jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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artery
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| n.干线，要道；动脉 | |
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70
gnawing
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| a.痛苦的，折磨人的 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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72
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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thigh
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| n.大腿；股骨 | |
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plunges
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| n.跳进，投入vt.使投入，使插入，使陷入vi.投入，跳进，陷入v.颠簸( plunge的第三人称单数 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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77
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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