The Foxes of Harrow

by Frank Yerby

  Young Lieutenant Thomas Meredith, Junior, United States Navy, standing aboard the gunboat watching the mortar shells loop into Fort Pulaski, off the coast of Georgia . . . this too was tomorrow, the fort taken, and three hundred sixty prisoners with it. This and Island Number Ten in the Mississippi, taken by Commodore Foote and General John Pope.

  “Yes, it goes well now, but tomorrow . . .”

  Now, again, it was April in the land. The lavender, pink and white crepe myrtle were ablaze with blossoms. There were the white oleander, the yellowish pink mimosa, and the feathery green and gold acacia. The magnolias drooped heavy and waxen, and above the cruel spines of the yucca the great blossoms made Spring snow.

  At the Lascal plantation, below New Orleans, the flowers were as bright as at Harrow, and the air as perfume-laden. Here, in the morning, the sun riding in over the river, Camile Lascal stopped halfway down the page of the letter she was writing to her brother Henri, and walked out into the garden. The river showed golden through the magnolia trees and on its surface nothing moved. Camile walked over to the trellis where the red ramblers were. She’d cut one, and press it to send to Henri. Henri loved flowers, and God knows he had scant chance to enjoy them away in the North fighting with the Louisiana Grays for her and for all fair women.

  She took out her scissors and snipped at the stem. The scissors were dull and the rose held. She caught the stem in her hand and twisted. The rose gave but she got a thorn into her finger. She pulled it out, sticking the injured finger into her mouth, raising her head as she did so. Then her brown eyes widened for the river was no longer empty. A low schooner was butting its way upstream.

  Camile turned and ran back to the house. A few moments later she was back with the pearl opera glasses. She leveled them at the schooner, rapidly twirling the adjustable knob. She could see it clearly now-even the name: S-a-c-h-e-m, she spelled out; then she swept her glasses upward. Then she was running back to the house, calling the Negroes as she neared it. There was no further doubt about it—that was a Yankee flag. Ten minutes later, not even having stopped to don her fetching riding habit, she was pounding northward, toward New Orleans. . . .

  General Mansfield Lovell received her cordially and thanked her for her information. Afterwards he called out a guard of honor and had the lovely Creole lady inspect the troops. And Camile rode homeward, escorted by six handsome cavalrymen, feeling quite the heroine.

  But when Major Stephen Fox, who was present at Headquarters when Camile brought in her message, suggested that one of his companies be sent to reconnoiter the general said:

  “Humph! Arrant nonsense, Major Fox! I can’t have my cavalry worn out because a silly girl thinks she’s seen a Union sloop!”

  But the New Orleans Picayune found it necessary to reassure the citizenry. It marshaled up a most militant air and described in detail the dam a quarter of a mile below the forts which would hold any flotilla on earth for at least two hours during which time it would be under heavy crossfire from both the forts, mounting one hundred seventy guns of the heaviest caliber, many of which would be served with red-hot shot.

  Stephen paused as he read this. If such a dam existed then General Duncan’s engineers were the marvels of the earth, for a week ago when he had visited the forts he had seen no sign of any such dam. As for the guns, he himself had counted only one hundred twenty-eight, of which at least an hundred were hopelessly antiquated. But, possibly the Picayune’s reporter had better information than he. He read further.

  “Between New Orleans and the forts there is a constant succession of earthworks. At the plain of Chalmette, near Janin’s property, there are redoubts armed with rifled cannon which have been found to be effective at five miles range.”

  Now by the saints, somebody must be crazy! There were batteries at Chalmette, true enough, but they were ancient smooth-bore cannon which couldn’t carry half a mile. And between Chalmette and New Orleans there wasn’t even a drainage ditch! Any really good gunners could knock out Chalmette in half an hour. He picked up the paper, frowning.

  “At Forts St. Phillip and Jackson, there are three thousand men, of whom a goodly portion are experienced artillerymen, and gunners who have served in the navy.” Well that much was true, he’d have to grant the Picayune that.

  “In New Orleans itself, we have 32,000 infantry, and as many more quartered in the immediate neighborhood. In discipline and drill they are far superior to the Yankees. We have two very able and active generals, who possess our entire confidence, General Mansfield Lovell and Brigadier General Ruggles.”

  Stephen let out a long, slow whistle. There were, to his certain knowledge, only three thousand troops quartered in New Orleans and perhaps seven thousand more in the vicinity. As for their superiority in discipline and drill, that remained to be seen. These accounts might have been printed to fool the enemy, Stephen thought. He got up at once and, mounting his palamino, rode out of New Orleans toward Harrow. Aurore and the children, by which term he meant both Julie and Ceclie as well as his grandchildren, must be warned. With such idiotic bombast in the saddle, New Orleans was certainly in danger.

  Twenty miles below the forts, Admiral Farragut had called a conference of his officers to hear the report of Captain Gerdes of the Sachem. By reason of the fact that he was second in command of the gunboat Itasca, Captain Caldwell, commanding, Lieutenant Thomas Meredith was present at the meeting. Captain Gerdes had done well. The artillery ranges had been calculated to the yard, and flags placed along the banks marked exactly the position that each vessel was to occupy. Admiral Farragut gave strict orders that once in position, the vessels were not to be moved a foot. They were to be ranged in two lines on either side of the river.

  Listening to the orders, Tom could feel the hammer pulse at the base of his throat pounding away. It was for this he had schemed, begged, pleaded, employed cajolery, bribed—so that he might be transferred to Farragut’s command. Even if the objective had been Mobile, as he had thought, still it would have been worth the effort. But New Orleans itself—that had been beyond his wildest dreams. Soon they would break through,—just beyond New Orleans Julie waited, not knowing that she waited, and no city on earth must stand between them! If he had to smash New Orleans into ashes he’d get through. Within the week he’d be at Harrow. Beyond that, his mind stopped, unable to contemplate the bliss awaiting him.

  He returned to the heavy oaken deck of the Itasca and made a thorough examination. The guns were polished and ready, the fuses already cut, the shot piled up beside them and the canvas powder bags. All around the deck bales of cotton were lashed to the cabins and wrapped in heavy iron chains. This would provide armor of a sort; but, damn it, if anything happened to the Itasca he’d swim upriver to Harrow!

  Now the nineteen mortar schooners under Commander Porter were moving upstream, pushing ahead against a four-knot current. And the Itasca too was slipping into line, taking its place among the convoying gunboats—six in all, two of them double-ended ferry boats from New York City. The shores slipped backward with agonizing slowness. It would take them all day and half the night to reach the forts.

  Just before morning, the mortar schooners anchored around a bend in the river just out of sight of the forts. Parties of men went ashore into the thick woods that crowned the bend and, lying off shore, Tom could hear the sound of their axes. When the sun came up, the masts of every vessel had been disguised with leafy boughs, so that from a distance, it was impossible to say where the forest left off and the schooners began.

  As the darkness left the face of the Mississippi, Tom could see feverish activity taking place aboard the nearest mortar schooner. The short, fat gun, as broad across almost as it was long, and anchored to the heavy timbers, was being elevated until its ugly muzzle pointed skyward. Now the gunners were ramming home the charge, and groaning under the weight of the thirteen-inch diameter, two-hundred-fifty-pound mortar shell. Then the gun was ready. Tom saw the gunner jerk the lanyard but, brace himself as he would,
he was still shaken by the explosion. It rolled out over the river, awaking echoes, and young Meredith could see the black ball arching against the sky, then dropping lazily in a perfect parabola. But before it dropped into the fort, another mortar spoke, then another, and another until the face of the river reverberated to the belly-deep booming of the cannon. The smoke drifted up from the muzzles, and already the nearer gunners were as black as Negroes. Then, some time later, the guns in the forts began to reply. Tom saw a geyser of dirty, yellow-white water rise thirty feet high in midchannel. Then another was pointing skyward as the shells in the forts probed closer and closer to the hidden flotilla. At last it had begun.

  On April 25, 1862, it rained. The day came drumming up in rain and the face of the river was rain-stippled. Standing upon the belvédère, Aurore looked downriver toward New Orleans. The rain lanced down into her face. Her cloak and the shawl which she had tied over her head were already soaked, and wisps of white hair were plastered tight against her forehead. She bent forward, taut with listening. But no sound came from the city. Of course, she didn’t really expect to hear the guns. They were at the forts ninety-odd miles below New Orleans . . . more than an hundred from here. And as long as the great chains stretched between Forts Jackson and St. Phillips held, no Yankee would be able to steam upriver. Pray God they held! But she shouldn’t worry. To do so was something like sacrilege. The good God would protect that chain . . . yes, the chain, and the forts, and her Stephen standing now just back of his gunners on the ramparts of Fort St. Phillip, and squinting into the teeth of the Yankee guns. Still it wouldn’t be amiss to beseech a special benediction of the Blessed Virgin. Her lips moved swiftly in the dim rain-wet air.

  The sound of hoofbeats on the alley of oaks caused her to open her eyes quickly. Leaning over the balustrade, she could see Ceclie pounding up the drive, her horse’s hooves clopping dismally in the sea of mud. Cross saddle as usual, Aurore murmured, and in spite of herself, she could not repress a tiny feeling of disgust. But she turned and went down the narrow stairway, closing the trapdoor behind her. Her garments trailed wetly on the stairs as she went down, but she did not stop to change them. Ceclie might have news. Panting a little from the exertion, she rounded the last great sweep of the gigantic spiral of stairs, and paused half way from the bottom.

  Ceclie was standing facing Julie. Her face was grave, almost hard. She had thrown her riding hat into one of the big chairs. Where it had struck the cushions were stained with water. Aurore looked from her to Julie. The girl was swaying on her feet, her young face a chalky mask. She turned toward where Aurore stood and her voice was high and edged.

  “Oh, Mother,” she wept, “Mother!”

  Slowly Aurore came down the steps and slipped her arms around her daughter. But her eyes were fixed on Ceclie’s face.

  “They broke the chain,” Ceclie said harshly. “Like a piece of string. Then they ran the forts. Every ship we had on the river is either sunk or ablaze. They knocked out the guns at the Chalmette in twenty minutes without even stopping. New Orleans is burning. Warehouses, sugar, cotton, wharves, steamboats—everything. The people are in a perfect frenzy.”

  Aurore opened her mouth but no sound came out. She wet her dry lips and her voice was a husky dry whisper.

  “The men in the forts,” she got out; “Stephen . . .”

  Ceclie looked her straight in the face, and her brown eyes were very hard.

  “Dead or captured,” she said and strode past them up the curving stairs.

  XXXV

  FROM the decks of the gunboat Pinola to which he had been transferred when the Itasca had been wrecked by a round shot through her boilers, Lieutenant Meredith looked out over the city. A black pall of smoke hung over the entire waterfront, and the great flames of blazing cotton which the mobs had dragged from the warehouses and set afire to prevent its falling into Union hands bloodied the sky. Molasses and wine ran down the gutters, and the crash of breaking glass could be heard even where he stood. The levee was black with howling humanity hurling curses at the Yankees, shaking their fists and even brandishing weapons. New Orleans was running true to form. That city could make even a civil war baroque.

  But now the small boats were putting two men ashore. They were both officers, and Tom recognized them at once. Captain Theodorus Bailey and Lieutenant G. H. Perkins stepped ashore alone. Tom gasped. Was there to be no escort? Why, that howling mob would tear the officers to pieces. Had the old man gone daft?

  But the old man, Admiral Farragut, knew exactly what he was doing. He had lived in the city in his youth, and gauged the temper of its inhabitants exactly. The Orleanians would shout and swear, but they wouldn’t lay a finger on the men. Watching them disappear from sight, Tom thought about Julie. How much longer would he have to wait before he saw her? Had she changed? Perhaps now, after so much blood had stained the Southern earth, she no longer wanted to see him. He felt sick and miserable and completely empty of triumph.

  For the Johnny Rebs were beaten, there was no doubt about that. Their last hope, the gigantic ironclad Louisiana had been slipped from its moorings near St. Phillip early this morning, and had drifted downstream, blazing from stem to stern, her mighty guns bellowing. She had swerved in upon the Harriet Lane, where Admiral Farragut had been talking over the terms of surrender with Lieutenant Colonel Higgins, commander of Fort Jackson, and had blown up so close to the schooner that the Lane had almost capsized. There was nothing that the Confederates could do now, even if they wanted to. He frowned looking at the densely packed crowds. There must be some way of getting upriver to Julie!

  At eleven, while he was listening—or rather, not listening—to the Chaplain deliver the usual Sunday morning sermon, the air was suddenly heavy with cannon fire. At once every man jumped to the alert. Tom ordered his men to issue small arms and stand by to repel boarders. But after maintaining a vigil of more than an hour, they were put at ease by the Captain’s orders and the explanation given.

  It seemed that the Pensacola, anchored off Esplanade Avenue, had sent ashore a party to raise the United States flag over the recaptured Mint. The men had done so, but no sooner had they returned to the Pensacola than the flag had been torn down and dragged through the streets by a party of four men. The maintop howitzer had opened fire, but apparently it hadn’t hit anything.

  This opera bouffe was growing tiresome, Tom decided; why the devil didn’t Butler come?

  But he had to endure five more days of waiting before General Butler’s troops appeared in the city. The Negroes were out in droves, laughing, singing and cheering the Union troops as they marched down the levee to Poydras, on Poydras to St. Charles, down St. Charles to Canal, and on Canal to Custom House. The whites muttered curses and threw overripe fruit. It was still comic opera, but New Orleans had met Benjamin F. Butler, the best and most capable administrator it had ever had, and certainly the most hated. Later they were to become better acquainted.

  The next day, while Butler’s men were arresting W. B. Mumford (a man in his forties, a husband and the father of three children, but forever thereafter to be spoken of in New Orleans as a rash, impetuous lad for his outrage against the flag), the Cayuga was ordered upstream to investigate the report that irregulars were operating in the bayou country to the north of the city.

  Watching the Cayuga standing out from the wharf, Tom’s mind was busy with a thousand schemes. He had tried vainly to transfer to the Cayuga for this upriver trip, but without success. He considered taking French leave, renting a horse, making his way up the levee to the river road. But who would let him have a horse? Certainly not Ben Butler’s cavalry. And to approach the citizens of New Orleans in his blue uniform would get him exactly nowhere. Besides, even if he secured the animal, how would he get through the sentries? Nothing to do now but wait.

  Up at Harrow, Julie, too, was waiting. The plantation was an island, shut off from all contact with the outside world. No word from Tom. No word from Stephen. And Etienne, too, lost to them,
his fate unknown. All of them dead perhaps. Or maimed. Or blinded. Or taken prisoner. Pray God, it was the last! No matter how bad the food at Rock Island or Fort Jackson or Camp Douglass, no matter how brutal the guards, still they would then be alive. Still they could come back to her, these men of hers. Please God, let them be captured and out of it!

  It was a bright day, and the sun rode high over the river. Julie sat with her mother upon the upper gallery and gazed at the river. Aurore’s face was drawn and working. Julie stretched out her hand to pat her mother reassuringly, but her fingers stopped inches from Aurore’s shoulder. Her whole body froze. Aurore, too, leaned forward, listening. A thin cloud of blue-grey smoke swirled upward from the cypress grove and afterwards came the ragged crash of musketry. The two women stood up. Then the sky was split with the deep-toned boom of a cannon, and even from where they stood they could see the great white splinters hurling upward from the trees.

  An instant later they saw the troop of horsemen burst from the shelter of the trees, the riders crouched low over the horses’ necks, and come racing up the drive straight toward Harrow. Julie looked at her mother. Then, without a word, the two women went down the stairway.

  The men were hurling themselves from their mounts and running up the stairs into the house. They were all thin, bearded, unkempt. Julie walked out upon the lower gallery and lifted her hand.

  “Gentlemen,” she called, “I must ask you to explain . . .”

  A tall man stopped before her. His black beard was matted with dirt and twigs. His pale eyes gleamed queerly out of the heavily begrimed face. He put out a horny paw and caught her under her chin, and his big, looselipped mouth split into a grin. Julie could see that his teeth were broken, blackened, and largely missing. His breath was fetid.