ONE OF THE MISSING
Jerome Searing, a private soldier of General Sherman's army, thenconfronting the enemy at and about Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, turnedhis back upon a small group of officers with whom he had been talking inlow tones, stepped across a light line of earthworks, and disappeared ina forest. None of the men in line behind the works had said a word tohim, nor had he so much as nodded to them in passing, but all who sawunderstood that this brave man had been intrusted with some perilousduty. Jerome Searing, though a private, did not serve in the ranks; hewas detailed for service at division headquarters, being borne upon therolls as an orderly. "Orderly" is a word covering a multitude of duties.An orderly may be a messenger, a clerk, an officer's servant--anything.He may perform services for which no provision is made in orders andarmy regulations. Their nature may depend upon his aptitude, upon favor,upon accident. Private Searing, an incomparable marksman, young, hardy,intelligent and insensible to fear, was a scout. The general commandinghis division was not content to obey orders blindly without knowing whatwas in his front, even when his command was not on detached service, butformed a fraction of the line of the army; nor was he satisfied toreceive his knowledge of his _vis-a-vis_ through the customary channels;he wanted to know more than he was apprised of by the corps commanderand the collisions of pickets and skirmishers. Hence Jerome Searing,with his extraordinary daring, his woodcraft, his sharp eyes, andtruthful tongue. On this occasion his instructions were simple: to getas near the enemy's lines as possible and learn all that he could.
In a few moments he had arrived at the picket-line, the men on dutythere lying in groups of two and four behind little banks of earthscooped out of the slight depression in which they lay, their riflesprotruding from the green boughs with which they had masked their smalldefenses. The forest extended without a break toward the front, sosolemn and silent that only by an effort of the imagination could it beconceived as populous with armed men, alert and vigilant--a forestformidable with possibilities of battle. Pausing a moment in one ofthese rifle-pits to apprise the men of his intention Searing creptstealthily forward on his hands and knees and was soon lost to view in adense thicket of underbrush.
"That is the last of him," said one of the men; "I wish I had his rifle;those fellows will hurt some of us with it."
Searing crept on, taking advantage of every accident of ground andgrowth to give himself better cover. His eyes penetrated everywhere, hisears took note of every sound. He stilled his breathing, and at thecracking of a twig beneath his knee stopped his progress and hugged theearth. It was slow work, but not tedious; the danger made it exciting,but by no physical signs was the excitement manifest. His pulse was asregular, his nerves were as steady as if he were trying to trap asparrow.
"It seems a long time," he thought, "but I cannot have come very far; Iam still alive."
He smiled at his own method of estimating distance, and crept forward. Amoment later he suddenly flattened himself upon the earth and laymotionless, minute after minute. Through a narrow opening in the busheshe had caught sight of a small mound of yellow clay--one of the enemy'srifle-pits. After some little time he cautiously raised his head, inchby inch, then his body upon his hands, spread out on each side of him,all the while intently regarding the hillock of clay. In another momenthe was upon his feet, rifle in hand, striding rapidly forward withlittle attempt at concealment. He had rightly interpreted the signs,whatever they were; the enemy was gone.
To assure himself beyond a doubt before going back to report upon soimportant a matter, Searing pushed forward across the line of abandonedpits, running from cover to cover in the more open forest, his eyesvigilant to discover possible stragglers. He came to the edge of aplantation--one of those forlorn, deserted homesteads of the last yearsof the war, upgrown with brambles, ugly with broken fences and desolatewith vacant buildings having blank apertures in place of doors andwindows. After a keen reconnoissance from the safe seclusion of a clumpof young pines Searing ran lightly across a field and through an orchardto a small structure which stood apart from the other farm buildings, ona slight elevation. This he thought would enable him to overlook a largescope of country in the direction that he supposed the enemy to havetaken in withdrawing. This building, which had originally consisted of asingle room elevated upon four posts about ten feet high, was now littlemore than a roof; the floor had fallen away, the joists and planksloosely piled on the ground below or resting on end at various angles,not wholly torn from their fastenings above. The supporting posts werethemselves no longer vertical. It looked as if the whole edifice wouldgo down at the touch of a finger.
Concealing himself in the debris of joists and flooring Searing lookedacross the open ground between his point of view and a spur of KennesawMountain, a half-mile away. A road leading up and across this spur wascrowded with troops--the rear-guard of the retiring enemy, theirgun-barrels gleaming in the morning sunlight.
Searing had now learned all that he could hope to know. It was his dutyto return to his own command with all possible speed and report hisdiscovery. But the gray column of Confederates toiling up the mountainroad was singularly tempting. His rifle--an ordinary "Springfield," butfitted with a globe sight and hair-trigger--would easily send its ounceand a quarter of lead hissing into their midst. That would probably notaffect the duration and result of the war, but it is the business of asoldier to kill. It is also his habit if he is a good soldier. Searingcocked his rifle and "set" the trigger.
But it was decreed from the beginning of time that Private Searing wasnot to murder anybody that bright summer morning, nor was theConfederate retreat to be announced by him. For countless ages eventshad been so matching themselves together in that wondrous mosaic to someparts of which, dimly discernible, we give the name of history, that theacts which he had in will would have marred the harmony of the pattern.Some twenty-five years previously the Power charged with the executionof the work according to the design had provided against that mischanceby causing the birth of a certain male child in a little village at thefoot of the Carpathian Mountains, had carefully reared it, supervisedits education, directed its desires into a military channel, and in duetime made it an officer of artillery. By the concurrence of an infinitenumber of favoring influences and their preponderance over an infinitenumber of opposing ones, this officer of artillery had been made tocommit a breach of discipline and flee from his native country to avoidpunishment. He had been directed to New Orleans (instead of New York),where a recruiting officer awaited him on the wharf. He was enlisted andpromoted, and things were so ordered that he now commanded a Confederatebattery some two miles along the line from where Jerome Searing, theFederal scout, stood cocking his rifle. Nothing had been neglected--atevery step in the progress of both these men's lives, and in the livesof their contemporaries and ancestors, and in the lives of thecontemporaries of their ancestors, the right thing had been done tobring about the desired result. Had anything in all this vastconcatenation been overlooked Private Searing might have fired on theretreating Confederates that morning, and would perhaps have missed. Asit fell out, a Confederate captain of artillery, having nothing betterto do while awaiting his turn to pull out and be off, amused himself bysighting a field-piece obliquely to his right at what he mistook forsome Federal officers on the crest of a hill, and discharged it. Theshot flew high of its mark.
As Jerome Searing drew back the hammer of his rifle and with his eyesupon the distant Confederates considered where he could plant his shotwith the best hope of making a widow or an orphan or a childlessmother,--perhaps all three, for Private Searing, although he hadrepeatedly refused promotion, was not without a certain kind ofambition,--he heard a rushing sound in the air, like that made by thewings of a great bird swooping down upon its prey. More quickly than hecould apprehend the gradation, it increased to a hoarse and horribleroar, as the missile that made it sprang at him out of the sky, strikingwith a deafening impact one of the posts supporting the confusion oftimbers above him, sm
ashing it into matchwood, and bringing down thecrazy edifice with a loud clatter, in clouds of blinding dust!
When Jerome Searing recovered consciousness he did not at onceunderstand what had occurred. It was, indeed, some time before he openedhis eyes. For a while he believed that he had died and been buried, andhe tried to recall some portions of the burial service. He thought thathis wife was kneeling upon his grave, adding her weight to that of theearth upon his breast. The two of them, widow and earth, had crushed hiscoffin. Unless the children should persuade her to go home he would notmuch longer be able to breathe. He felt a sense of wrong. "I cannotspeak to her," he thought; "the dead have no voice; and if I open myeyes I shall get them full of earth."
He opened his eyes. A great expanse of blue sky, rising from a fringe ofthe tops of trees. In the foreground, shutting out some of the trees, ahigh, dun mound, angular in outline and crossed by an intricate,patternless system of straight lines; the whole an immeasurable distanceaway--a distance so inconceivably great that it fatigued him, and heclosed his eyes. The moment that he did so he was conscious of aninsufferable light. A sound was in his ears like the low, rhythmicthunder of a distant sea breaking in successive waves upon the beach,and out of this noise, seeming a part of it, or possibly coming frombeyond it, and intermingled with its ceaseless undertone, came thearticulate words: "Jerome Searing, you are caught like a rat in a trap--in a trap, trap, trap."
Suddenly there fell a great silence, a black darkness, an infinitetranquillity, and Jerome Searing, perfectly conscious of his rathood,and well assured of the trap that he was in, remembering all and nowisealarmed, again opened his eyes to reconnoitre, to note the strength ofhis enemy, to plan his defense.
He was caught in a reclining posture, his back firmly supported by asolid beam. Another lay across his breast, but he had been able toshrink a little away from it so that it no longer oppressed him, thoughit was immovable. A brace joining it at an angle had wedged him againsta pile of boards on his left, fastening the arm on that side. His legs,slightly parted and straight along the ground, were covered upward tothe knees with a mass of debris which towered above his narrow horizon.His head was as rigidly fixed as in a vise; he could move his eyes, hischin--no more. Only his right arm was partly free. "You must help us outof this," he said to it. But he could not get it from under the heavytimber athwart his chest, nor move it outward more than six inches atthe elbow.
Searing was not seriously injured, nor did he suffer pain. A smart rapon the head from a flying fragment of the splintered post, incurredsimultaneously with the frightfully sudden shock to the nervous system,had momentarily dazed him. His term of unconsciousness, including theperiod of recovery, during which he had had the strange fancies, hadprobably not exceeded a few seconds, for the dust of the wreck had notwholly cleared away as he began an intelligent survey of the situation.
With his partly free right hand he now tried to get hold of the beamthat lay across, but not quite against, his breast. In no way could hedo so. He was unable to depress the shoulder so as to push the elbowbeyond that edge of the timber which was nearest his knees; failing inthat, he could not raise the forearm and hand to grasp the beam. Thebrace that made an angle with it downward and backward prevented himfrom doing anything in that direction, and between it and his body thespace was not half so wide as the length of his forearm. Obviously hecould not get his hand under the beam nor over it; the hand could not,in fact, touch it at all. Having demonstrated his inability, hedesisted, and began to think whether he could reach any of the debrispiled upon his legs.
In surveying the mass with a view to determining that point, hisattention was arrested by what seemed to be a ring of shining metalimmediately in front of his eyes. It appeared to him at first tosurround some perfectly black substance, and it was somewhat more than ahalf-inch in diameter. It suddenly occurred to his mind that theblackness was simply shadow and that the ring was in fact the muzzle ofhis rifle protruding from the pile of debris. He was not long insatisfying himself that this was so--if it was a satisfaction. Byclosing either eye he could look a little way along the barrel--to thepoint where it was hidden by the rubbish that held it. He could see theone side, with the corresponding eye, at apparently the same angle asthe other side with the other eye. Looking with the right eye, theweapon seemed to be directed at a point to the left of his head, and_vice-versa._ He was unable to see the upper surface of the barrel, butcould see the under surface of the stock at a slight angle. The piecewas, in fact, aimed at the exact centre of his forehead.
In the perception of this circumstance, in the recollection that justpreviously to the mischance of which this uncomfortable situation wasthe result he had cocked the rifle and set the trigger so that a touchwould discharge it, Private Searing was affected with a feeling ofuneasiness. But that was as far as possible from fear; he was a braveman, somewhat familiar with the aspect of rifles from that point ofview, and of cannon too. And now he recalled, with something likeamusement, an incident of his experience at the storming of MissionaryRidge, where, walking up to one of the enemy's embrasures from which hehad seen a heavy gun throw charge after charge of grape among theassailants he had thought for a moment that the piece had beenwithdrawn; he could see nothing in the opening but a brazen circle. Whatthat was he had understood just in time to step aside as it pitchedanother peck of iron down that swarming slope. To face firearms is oneof the commonest incidents in a soldier's life--firearms, too, withmalevolent eyes blazing behind them. That is what a soldier is for.Still, Private Searing did not altogether relish the situation, andturned away his eyes.
After groping, aimless, with his right hand for a time he made anineffectual attempt to release his left. Then he tried to disengage hishead, the fixity of which was the more annoying from his ignorance ofwhat held it. Next he tried to free his feet, but while exerting thepowerful muscles of his legs for that purpose it occurred to him that adisturbance of the rubbish which held them might discharge the rifle;how it could have endured what had already befallen it he could notunderstand, although memory assisted him with several instances inpoint. One in particular he recalled, in which in a moment of mentalabstraction he had clubbed his rifle and beaten out another gentleman'sbrains, observing afterward that the weapon which he had been diligentlyswinging by the muzzle was loaded, capped, and at full cock--knowledgeof which circumstance would doubtless have cheered his antagonist tolonger endurance. He had always smiled in recalling that blunder of his"green and salad days" as a soldier, but now he did not smile. He turnedhis eyes again to the muzzle of the rifle and for a moment fancied thatit had moved; it seemed somewhat nearer.
Again he looked away. The tops of the distant trees beyond the bounds ofthe plantation interested him: he had not before observed how light andfeathery they were, nor how darkly blue the sky was, even among theirbranches, where they somewhat paled it with their green; above him itappeared almost black. "It will be uncomfortably hot here," he thought,"as the day advances. I wonder which way I am looking."
Judging by such shadows as he could see, he decided that his face wasdue north; he would at least not have the sun in his eyes, and north--well, that was toward his wife and children.
"Bah!" he exclaimed aloud, "what have they to do with it?"
He closed his eyes. "As I can't get out I may as well go to sleep. Therebels are gone and some of our fellows are sure to stray out hereforaging. They'll find me."
But he did not sleep. Gradually he became sensible of a pain in hisforehead--a dull ache, hardly perceptible at first, but growing more andmore uncomfortable. He opened his eyes and it was gone--closed them andit returned. "The devil!" he said, irrelevantly, and stared again at thesky. He heard the singing of birds, the strange metallic note of themeadow lark, suggesting the clash of vibrant blades. He fell intopleasant memories of his childhood, played again with his brother andsister, raced across the fields, shouting to alarm the sedentary larks,entered the sombre forest beyond and with timid steps followed the fai
ntpath to Ghost Rock, standing at last with audible heart-throbs beforethe Dead Man's Cave and seeking to penetrate its awful mystery. For thefirst time he observed that the opening of the haunted cavern wasencircled by a ring of metal. Then all else vanished and left him gazinginto the barrel of his rifle as before. But whereas before it had seemednearer, it now seemed an inconceivable distance away, and all the moresinister for that. He cried out and, startled by something in his ownvoice--the note of fear--lied to himself in denial: "If I don't sing outI may stay here till I die."
He now made no further attempt to evade the menacing stare of the gunbarrel. If he turned away his eyes an instant it was to look forassistance (although he could not see the ground on either side theruin), and he permitted them to return, obedient to the imperativefascination. If he closed them it was from weariness, and instantly thepoignant pain in his forehead--the prophecy and menace of the bullet--forced him to reopen them.
The tension of nerve and brain was too severe; nature came to his reliefwith intervals of unconsciousness. Reviving from one of these he becamesensible of a sharp, smarting pain in his right hand, and when he workedhis fingers together, or rubbed his palm with them, he could feel thatthey were wet and slippery. He could not see the hand, but he knew thesensation; it was running blood. In his delirium he had beaten itagainst the jagged fragments of the wreck, had clutched it full ofsplinters. He resolved that he would meet his fate more manly. He was aplain, common soldier, had no religion and not much philosophy; he couldnot die like a hero, with great and wise last words, even if there hadbeen some one to hear them, but he could die "game," and he would. Butif he could only know when to expect the shot!
Some rats which had probably inhabited the shed came sneaking andscampering about. One of them mounted the pile of debris that held therifle; another followed and another. Searing regarded them at first withindifference, then with friendly interest; then, as the thought flashedinto his bewildered mind that they might touch the trigger of his rifle,he cursed them and ordered them to go away. "It is no business ofyours," he cried.
The creatures went away; they would return later, attack his face, gnawaway his nose, cut his throat--he knew that, but he hoped by that timeto be dead.
Nothing could now unfix his gaze from the little ring of metal with itsblack interior. The pain in his forehead was fierce and incessant. Hefelt it gradually penetrating the brain more and more deeply, until atlast its progress was arrested by the wood at the back of his head. Itgrew momentarily more insufferable: he began wantonly beating hislacerated hand against the splinters again to counteract that horribleache. It seemed to throb with a slow, regular recurrence, each pulsationsharper than the preceding, and sometimes he cried out, thinking he feltthe fatal bullet. No thoughts of home, of wife and children, of country,of glory. The whole record of memory was effaced. The world had passedaway--not a vestige remained. Here in this confusion of timbers andboards is the sole universe. Here is immortality in time--each pain aneverlasting life. The throbs tick off eternities.
Jerome Searing, the man of courage, the formidable enemy, the strong,resolute warrior, was as pale as a ghost. His jaw was fallen; his eyesprotruded; he trembled in every fibre; a cold sweat bathed his entirebody; he screamed with fear. He was not insane--he was terrified.
In groping about with his torn and bleeding hand he seized at last astrip of board, and, pulling, felt it give way. It lay parallel with hisbody, and by bending his elbow as much as the contracted space wouldpermit, he could draw it a few inches at a time. Finally it wasaltogether loosened from the wreckage covering his legs; he could liftit clear of the ground its whole length. A great hope came into hismind: perhaps he could work it upward, that is to say backward, farenough to lift the end and push aside the rifle; or, if that were tootightly wedged, so place the strip of board as to deflect the bullet.With this object he passed it backward inch by inch, hardly daring tobreathe lest that act somehow defeat his intent, and more than everunable to remove his eyes from the rifle, which might perhaps now hastento improve its waning opportunity. Something at least had been gained:in the occupation of his mind in this attempt at self-defense he wasless sensible of the pain in his head and had ceased to wince. But hewas still dreadfully frightened and his teeth rattled like castanets.
The strip of board ceased to move to the suasion of his hand. He tuggedat it with all his strength, changed the direction of its length all hecould, but it had met some extended obstruction behind him and the endin front was still too far away to clear the pile of debris and reachthe muzzle of the gun. It extended, indeed, nearly as far as the triggerguard, which, uncovered by the rubbish, he could imperfectly see withhis right eye. He tried to break the strip with his hand, but had noleverage. In his defeat, all his terror returned, augmented tenfold. Theblack aperture of the rifle appeared to threaten a sharper and moreimminent death in punishment of his rebellion. The track of the bulletthrough his head ached with an intenser anguish. He began to trembleagain.
Suddenly he became composed. His tremor subsided. He clenched his teethand drew down his eyebrows. He had not exhausted his means of defense; anew design had shaped itself in his mind--another plan of battle.Raising the front end of the strip of board, he carefully pushed itforward through the wreckage at the side of the rifle until it pressedagainst the trigger guard. Then he moved the end slowly outward until hecould feel that it had cleared it, then, closing his eyes, thrust itagainst the trigger with all his strength! There was no explosion; therifle had been discharged as it dropped from his hand when the buildingfell. But it did its work.
* * * * *
Lieutenant Adrian Searing, in command of the picket-guard on that partof the line through which his brother Jerome had passed on his mission,sat with attentive ears in his breastwork behind the line. Not thefaintest sound escaped him; the cry of a bird, the barking of asquirrel, the noise of the wind among the pines--all were anxiouslynoted by his overstrained sense. Suddenly, directly in front of hisline, he heard a faint, confused rumble, like the clatter of a fallingbuilding translated by distance. The lieutenant mechanically looked athis watch. Six o'clock and eighteen minutes. At the same moment anofficer approached him on foot from the rear and saluted.
"Lieutenant," said the officer, "the colonel directs you to move forwardyour line and feel the enemy if you find him. If not, continue theadvance until directed to halt. There is reason to think that the enemyhas retreated."
The lieutenant nodded and said nothing; the other officer retired. In amoment the men, apprised of their duty by the non-commissioned officersin low tones, had deployed from their rifle-pits and were moving forwardin skirmishing order, with set teeth and beating hearts.
This line of skirmishers sweeps across the plantation toward themountain. They pass on both sides of the wrecked building, observingnothing. At a short distance in their rear their commander comes. Hecasts his eyes curiously upon the ruin and sees a dead body half buriedin boards and timbers. It is so covered with dust that its clothing isConfederate gray. Its face is yellowish white; the cheeks are fallen in,the temples sunken, too, with sharp ridges about them, making theforehead forbiddingly narrow; the upper lip, slightly lifted, shows thewhite teeth, rigidly clenched. The hair is heavy with moisture, the faceas wet as the dewy grass all about. From his point of view the officerdoes not observe the rifle; the man was apparently killed by the fall ofthe building.
"Dead a week," said the officer curtly, moving on and absently pullingout his watch as if to verify his estimate of time. Six o'clock andforty minutes.
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce — Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians Page 5
