5sang Edward—

5

The cypress wood ended. They came out into vast cotton-fields where the drowning bolls, great melancholy snowflakes, clung to the bushes, idle as weeds, careless of famine in mill-towns oversea. The water stood between the rows, rows that ran endlessly, cut from sight at last by a whirling and formless grey vapour.

The land was as flat as Holland, but the rank forest, the growth about the wandering arms of bayous breathed of another clime. The rain came down as in the rainy season, the wind was mounting, the wings of the dusk flapping nearer.

“Get on, men, get on! We’re miles from Vidalia.”

“Look out, Artillery! There’s water under those logs!”

The horses and the first gun got across the rotting logs roofing black water, infantry helping, tugging, pushing, beating down the cane.

“Shades of night, where are we anyhow? Cane rattling and the moss waving and water bubbling—is it just another damned bayou or the river?... And all the flat ground and the strange trees.... My head is turning round.”

“It’s Bayou Jessamine,” volunteered an artilleryman. He spoke in a drawling voice. “We aren’t far from the river, or the river isn’t far from us, for I think the river’s out. It appears to me that you Virginians grumble a lot. There isn’t anything the matter with this country. It’s as good a country as God’s got. Barksdale’s men and the Washington Artillery are always writing back that Virginia 6can’t hold a candle to it.... Whoa, there, Whitefoot! Whoa, Dick!”

6

The second gun had come upon the raft of logs. A log slipped, a wheel went down, gun and caisson tilted—artillery and infantry surged to the aid of the endangered piece. A second log slipped, the wheel beneath the caisson went down, the loaded metal chest jerked forward, striking forehead and shoulder of one of the aiding infantrymen. The blow was heavy and stretched the soldier senseless, half in the black water, half across the treacherous logs. Amid ejaculations, oaths, shouted orders, guns and caisson were righted, the horses urged forward, the piece drawn clear of the bayou. Down came the rain as though the floodgates of heaven were opened; nearer and nearer flapped the dusk....

Edward Cary, coming to himself, thought, on the crest of a low wave of consciousness, of 

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