The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army: A Story of the Great Rebellion, - [story reading .TXT] 📗

might be. At any rate, if Tom had known the cause of the delay, he would freely have forgiven him for wasting his time in healthful precautions.

The fugitive retraced his steps to the river by the same route he had taken in approaching the hospitable roof of the farmer. As nearly as he could judge by the sounds that reached him from the distance, the officer and his father were gathering up a force to hunt down the fugitive. Tom jumped into the bateau, and pushed off. Keeping under the shadow of the bank of the river, he plied his paddle vigorously, and by the time his pursuers arrived at the river, he was a couple of miles from the spot. He could hear a shout occasionally in the deep silence of the night, but with the distance between him and the enemy, he felt entirely secure. The danger had passed, and he floated leisurely on his voyage, buoyant as his light bark, and hopeful as the dream of youth.

Hour after hour, in the gloom of the solemn night, he was borne by the swift tide towards the lines of the loyal army. The day was dawning, and he was on the lookout for a suitable place to conceal himself, until the friendly shades of night should again favor his movements. After the experience of the former night near the ford, he was very cautious in the selection of a hiding place. It is not always safe to be fastidious; for while Tom was rejecting one location, and waiting for another to appear, the river bore him into a tract of very open country, which was less favorable than that through which he had just been passing.

The prospect began to make him nervous; and while he was bitterly regretting that he had not moored the boat before, he was startled to hear a sharp, commanding voice on the bank at his left.

“Who comes there? Halt!”

Tom looked up, and discovered a grayback, standing on the shore, very deliberately pointing his musket at him.

“Who comes there?” demanded the picket; for at this point were stationed the outposts of the rebel force in the Shenandoah valley.

“Friend!” replied Tom.

“Halt, then!”

“I would, if I could,” answered Tom, as hastily as possible.

“Halt, or I’ll fire!”

“I tell you I can’t halt,” replied Tom, using his paddle vigorously, as though he was trying to urge the bateau to the shore. “Don’t fire! For mercy’s sake, don’t fire.”

Tom appeared to be intensely frightened at the situation in which he was placed, and redoubled his efforts apparently to gain the bank of the stream; but the more he seemed to paddle one way, the more the boat went the other way. However much Tom appeared to be terrified by the peril that menaced him, it must be confessed that he was not wholly unmoved.

“Stop your boat, quick!” said the soldier, who had partially dropped his musket from its menacing position.

“I can’t stop it,” responded Tom, apparently in an agony of terror. “I would go ashore if I could.”

“What’s the matter?”

“The water runs so swift, I can’t stop her; been trying this two hours.”

“You will be inside the Yankee lines in half an hour if you don’t fetch to,” shouted the picket.

“Gracious!” exclaimed Tom, redoubling his efforts.

But it was useless to struggle with the furious current, and Tom threw himself into the bottom of the boat, as if in utter desperation. If Niagara Falls, with their thundering roar and fearful abyss, had been before him, his agony could not have been more intense, as judged from the shore.

By this time, the sentinel on the bank had been joined by his two companions, and the three men forming the picket post stood gazing at him, as he abandoned himself to the awful fate of being captured by the blood-thirsty Yankees, to whose lines the relentless current of the Shenandoah was bearing him.

When Tom was first challenged by the grayback, the boat had been some twenty rods above him; and it had now passed the spot where he stood, but the rebels were still near enough to converse with him. Tom heard one of them ask another who he was. Of course neither of them knew who he was, or where he came from.

“Try again!” shouted one of the pickets. “The Yankees will have you in a few minutes.”

Tom did make another ineffectual effort to check the progress of the bateau, and again abandoned the attempt in despair. The rebels followed him on the bank, encouraging him with words of cheer, and with dire prophecies of his fate if he fell into the hands of the cruel Yankees.

“Can’t you help me?” pleaded Tom, in accents of despair. “Throw me a rope! Do something for me.”

Now, this was a suggestion that had not before occurred to the picket guard, and Tom would have been infinitely wiser if he had not put the idea of assisting him into their dull brains; for it is not at all probable that they would have thought of such a thing themselves, for the south, especially the poor white trash, are not largely endowed with inventive genius.

“Save me! Save me!” cried Tom, as he saw the rebels engaged in a hasty consultation, the result of which was, that two of them started off upon the run in a direction at right angles with the stream.

“Try again! Stick to it!” shouted the picket left on the shore.

“I can’t do any more; I’m all tired out,” replied Tom, throwing himself for the fourth time in the bottom of the boat, the very picture of despair.

The picture was very much exaggerated and over-drawn; but as long as the bullet from the rebel’s musket did not come his way, Tom was satisfied with his acting, and hopeful for the future. The man on the shore, full of sympathy for the distressed and exhausted voyager, walked and ran so as to keep up with the refractory barge, which seemed to be spitefully hurling its agonized passenger into the Federal lines, where death and dungeons lurked at every corner.

While this exciting drama was in progress, the stream bore Tom to a sharp bend in the river, where the current set in close to the shore. His attentive guardian on the bank ran ahead, and stationed himself at this point, ready to afford any assistance to the disconsolate navigator which the circumstances might permit.

“Now’s your chance!” shouted he. “Gosh all whittaker! put in now, and do your pootiest!”

Tom adopted this friendly advice, and “put in” with all his might; but the more he “put in,” the more he put out—from the shore, whither the inauspicious eddies were sweeping him. If Tom had not been born in Pinchbrook, and had a home by the sea, where boating is an appreciated accomplishment, he would probably have been borne into the arms of the expectant rebel, or received in his vitals the ounce of cold lead which that gentleman’s musket contained. As it was, he had the skill to do what he seemed not to be doing. Mr. Johnny Reb evidently did not suspect that Tom was “playing ’possum,” as the Tennessee sharpshooters would have expressed it. The voyager’s efforts appeared to be made in good faith; and certainly he applied himself with a degree of zeal and energy which ought to have overcome the inertia of a small gunboat.

The bateau approached the point not more than a rod from the waiting arms of the sympathizing grayback. As it passed, he waded a short distance into the water, and stretched forth his musket to the unhappy voyager. Tom threw down his paddle, and sprang with desperate energy to obtain a hold upon the gun. He even succeeded in grasping the end of the bayonet. For a moment he pulled so hard that it was doubtful whether the bateau would be hauled ashore, or Secesh drawn into the deep water.

“Hold on tight, my boy! Pull for your life!” shouted the soldier, highly excited by the probable success of his philanthropic efforts.

“Save me! Save me!” groaned Tom, as he tugged, or seemed to do so, at the bayonet.

Then, while the united exertions of the saver and the saved, in anticipation, were on the very point of being successful, the polished steel of the bayonet unaccountably slipped through the fingers of Tom, and the bateau was borne off towards the opposite shore.

“Save me! Save me,” cried Tom again, in tones more piteous than ever.

“What d’ye let go fur?” said the grayback, indignantly, as his musket, which he had held by the tip end of the stock, dropped into the water, when Tom let go of the bayonet.

The soldier indulged in a volley of peculiarly southern oaths, with which we cannot disfigure our page, even in deference to the necessity of painting a correct picture of the scene we have described. Tom had a vein of humor in his composition, which has already displayed itself in some of the rough experiences of his career; and when he saw the rebel soldier deprived of all power to make war upon him, either offensive or defensive, he could not resist the temptation to celebrate the signal strategical victory he had obtained over the picket guard. This triumphal demonstration was not very dignified, nor, under the circumstances, very prudent or sensible. It consisted in placing the thumb of his right hand upon the end of his nose, while he wiggled the four remaining digital appendages of the same member in the most aggravating manner, whistling Yankee Doodle as an accompaniment to the movement.

If Secesh did not understand the case before, he did now; and fishing up his musket, he emptied the water out of the barrel, and attempted to fire it. Luckily for Tom, the gun would not go off, and he swept on his way jubilant and joyous.

Chapter XXIII. The End of the Voyage.

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Tom Somers’s voyage down the Shenandoah was, in many respects, a type of human life. He experienced the various reverses, the trials and hardships, which attend all sojourners here below. He triumphed over all obstacles, and when he had completely outwitted the grayback who had labored so diligently to save him from his impending fate, he was at the zenith of prosperity. He had vanquished the last impediment, and the lines of the Union army—the haven of peace to him—were only a short distance from the scene of his victory.

Prosperity makes men arrogant and reckless, and I am sorry to say that it had the same effect upon Tom Somers. If he had been content modestly to enjoy the victory he had achieved, it would have been wiser and safer for him; but when Fortune was kind to him, he mocked her, and she turned against him.

When he had passed out of the reach of the rebel soldier, whose musket had been rendered useless for the time being, Tom believed that he was safe, and that he had fairly escaped from the last peril that menaced him on the voyage. But he was mistaken; for as the current swept the bateau around the bend of the river, he discovered, to his astonishment and chagrin, the two secesh soldiers, who had left the picket post some time before, standing at convenient distances from each other and from the shore, in the water, ready to rescue him from the fate before him. The place they had chosen was evidently a ford of the river, where they intended to check the boat in its mad career down the stream. They were painfully persistent in their kind intentions to save him from the horrible Yankees, and Tom wished they had been less humane and less enthusiastic in his cause.

As soon as Tom perceived this trap, he regretted his imprudence in betraying himself to the soldier from whom he had just escaped. His sorrow was not diminished, when, a few minutes later, he heard the shouts of the third soldier, who, by hard running across the fields, had reached the ford before him.

“Shoot him! Shoot him! He’s a Yankee!” bellowed the grayback on the shore.

Tom was appalled at these words, and wondered how the soldier could have found out that he was a Yankee; but when he recalled the fact that he had entertained him with Yankee Doodle at their last meeting, the mystery became less formidable.

“Shoot him! He’s a Yankee!” shouted Secesh on the bank of the stream.

“We’ve left our guns on shore,” replied Secesh in the water.

“I’m very much obliged to you for that,” said Tom to himself, as he grasped his paddle, and set the boat over towards the right bank of the river.

No doubt the rebels in the water, when they saw with what facility the boatman moved the bateau in the swift tide, as compared with his futile efforts farther up the stream, were fully satisfied of the truth of their companion’s assertion. Tom decided to run the gauntlet between the right bank and the soldier nearest to that