ONE night in the autumn of 1861
a man sat alone in the heart of a forest in western Virginia. The region
was one of the wildest on the continent-the Cheat
Mountain country. There was no
lack of people close at hand, however; within a mile of where the man sat
was the now silent camp of a whole Federal brigade.
Somewhere about-it might be still
nearer-was a force of the enemy, the numbers unknown. It was this uncertainty
as to its numbers and position that accounted
for the man's presence in that
lonely spot; he was a young officer of a Federal infantry regiment and
his business there was to guard his sleeping comrades in the
camp against a surprise. He was
in command of a detachment of men constituting a picket-guard. These men
he had stationed just at nightfall in an irregular line,
determined by the nature of the
ground, several hundred yards in front of where he now sat. The line ran
through the forest, among the rocks and laurel thickets,
the men fifteen or twenty paces
apart, all in concealment and under injunction of strict silence and unremitting
vigilance. In four hours, if nothing occurred, they
would be relieved by a fresh detachment
from the reserve now resting in care of its captain some distance away
to the left and rear. Before stationing his men the
young officer of whom we are writing
had pointed out to his two sergeants the spot at which he would be found
if it should be necessary to consult him, or if his
presence at the front line should
be required.
It was a quiet enough spot-the fork of an old wood-road, on the two branches
of which, prolonging themselves deviously forward in the dim moonlight,
the sergeants were themselves stationed,
a few paces in rear of the line. If driven sharply back by a sudden onset
of the enemy-the pickets are not expected to
make a stand after firing-the men
would come into the converging roads and naturally following them to their
point of intersection could be rallied and “formed.”
In his small way the author of
these dispositions was something of a strategist; if Napoleon had planned
as intelligently at Waterloo he would have won that
memorable battle and been overthrown
later.
Second-Lieutenant Brainerd Byring was a brave and efficient officer, young
and comparatively inexperienced as he was in the business of killing his
fellow-men. He had enlisted in
the very first days of the war as a private, with no military knowledge
whatever, had been made first-sergeant of his company on
account of his education and engaging
manner, and had been lucky enough to lose his captain by a Confederate
bullet; in the resulting promotions he had gained
a commission. He had been in several
engagements, such as they were-at Philippi, Rich Mountain, Carrick's Ford
and Greenbrier-and had borne himself with such
gallantry as not to attract the
attention of his superior officers. The exhilaration of battle was agreeable
to him, but the sight of the dead, with their clay faces,
blank eyes and stiff bodies, which
when not unnaturally shrunken were unnaturally swollen, had always intolerably
affected him. He felt toward them a kind of
reasonless antipathy that was something
more than the physical and spiritual repugnance common to us all. Doubtless
this feeling was due to his unusually acute
sensibilities-his keen sense of
the beautiful, which these hideous things outraged. Whatever may have been
the cause, he could not look upon a dead body
without a loathing which had in
it an element of resentment. What others have respected as the dignity
of death had to him no existence-was altogether
unthinkable. Death was a thing
to be hated. It was not picturesque, it had no tender and solemn side-a
dismal thing, hideous in all its manifestations and
suggestions. Lieutenant Byring
was a braver man than anybody knew, for nobody knew his horror of that
which he was ever ready to incur.
Having posted his men, instructed his sergeants and retired to his station,
he seated himself on a log, and with senses all alert began his vigil.
For greater
ease he loosened his sword-belt
and taking his heavy revolver from his holster laid it on the log beside
him. He felt very comfortable, though he hardly gave the
fact a thought, so intently did
he listen for any sound from the front which might have a menacing significance-a
shout, a shot, or the footfall of one of his
sergeants coming to apprise him
of something worth knowing. From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight
overhead fell, here and there, a slender, broken stream
that seemed to plash against the
intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among
the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and
served only to accentuate the blackness
of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with
all manner of unfamiliar shapes, menacing,
uncanny, or merely grotesque.
He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence
in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to
be told
what another world it all is-how
even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character.
The trees group themselves differently; they draw
closer together, as if in fear.
The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it
is full of half-heard whispers-whispers that startle-ghosts of
sounds long dead. There are living
sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange
night-birds, the cries of small animals in sudden
encounters with stealthy foes or
in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves-it may be the leap of a
wood-rat, it may be the footfall of a panther. What caused
the breaking of that twig?-what
the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds
without a name, forms without substance, translations in
space of objects which have not
been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to change its
place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight,
how little you know of the world
in which you live!
Surrounded at a little distance by armed and watchful friends, Byring felt
utterly alone. Yielding himself to the solemn and mysterious spirit of
the time and
place, he had forgotten the nature
of his connection with the visible and audible aspects and phases of the
night. The forest was boundless; men and the
habitations of men did not exist.
The universe was one primeval mystery of darkness, without form and void,
himself the sole, dumb questioner of its eternal
secret. Absorbed in thoughts born
of this mood, he suffered the time to slip away unnoted. Meantime the infrequent
patches of white light lying amongst the
tree-trunks had undergone changes
of size, form and place. In one of them near by, just at the roadside,
his eye fell upon an object that he had not previously
observed. It was almost before
his face as he sat; he could have sworn that it had not before been there.
It was partly covered in shadow, but he could see that it
was a human figure. Instinctively
he adjusted the clasp of his swordbelt and laid hold of his pistol-again
he was in a world of war, by occupation an assassin.
The figure did not move. Rising, pistol in hand, he approached. The figure
lay upon its back, its upper part in shadow, but standing above it and
looking
down upon the face, he saw that
it was a dead body. He shuddered and turned from it with a feeling of sickness
and disgust, resumed his seat upon the log, and
forgetting military prudence struck
a match and lit a cigar. In the sudden blackness that followed the extinction
of the flame he felt a sense of relief; he could no
longer see the object of his aversion.
Nevertheless, he kept his eyes in that direction until it appeared again
with growing distinctness. It seemed to have moved a
trifle nearer.
“Damn the thing!” he muttered. “What does it want?”
It did not appear to be in need of anything but a soul.
Byring turned away his eyes and began humming a tune, but he broke off
in the middle of a bar and looked at the dead body. Its presence annoyed
him,
though he could hardly have had
a quieter neighbour. He was conscious, too, of a vague, indefinable feeling
that was new to him. It was not fear, but rather a
sense of the supernatural-in which
he did not at all believe.
“I have inherited it,” he said to himself. “I suppose it will require a
thousand ages-perhaps ten thousand-for humanity to outgrow this feeling.
Where and
when did it originate? Away back,
probably, in what is called the cradle of the human race -the plains of
Central Asia. What we inherit as a superstition our
barbarous ancestors must have held
as a reasonable conviction. Doubtless they believed themselves justified
by facts whose nature we cannot even conjecture in
thinking a dead body a malign thing
endowed with some strange power of mischief, with perhaps a will and a
purpose to exert it. Possibly they had some awful
form of religion of which that
was one of the chief doctrines, sedulously taught by their priesthood,
as ours teach the immortality of the soul. As the Aryans
moved slowly on, to and through
the Caucasus passes, and spread over Europe, new conditions of life must
have resulted in the formulation of new religions.
The old belief in the malevolence
of the dead body was lost from the creeds and even perished from tradition
but it left its heritage of terror, which is transmitted
from generation to generation-is
as much a part of us as are our blood and bones.”
In following out his thought he had forgotten that which suggested it;
but now his eye fell again upon the corpse. The shadow had now altogether
uncovered it. He saw the sharp
profile, the chin in the air, the whole face, ghastly white in the moonlight.
The clothing was grey, the uniform of a Confederate
soldier. The coat and waistcoat,
unbuttoned, had fallen away on each side, exposing the white shirt. The
chest seemed unnaturally prominent, but the abdomen
had sunk in, leaving a sharp projection
at the line of the lower ribs. The arms were extended, the left knee was
thrust upward. The whole posture impressed
Byring as having been studied with
a view to the horrible.
“Bah!” he exclaimed; “he was an actor-he knows how to be dead.”
He drew away his eyes, directing them resolutely along one of the roads
leading to the front, and resumed his philosophizing where he had left
off.
“It may be that our Central Asian ancestors had not the custom of burial.
In that case it is easy to understand their fear of the dead, who really
were a
menace and an evil. They bred pestilences.
Children were taught to avoid the places where they lay, and to run away
if by inadvertence they came near a corpse. I
think, indeed, I'd better go away
from this chap.”
He half rose to do so, then remembered that he had told his men in front
and the officer in the rear who was to relieve him that he could at any
time be
found at that spot. It was a matter
of pride, too. If he abandoned his post he feared they would think he feared
the corpse. He was no coward and he was
unwilling to incur anybody's ridicule.
So he again seated himself, and to prove his courage looked boldly at the
body. The right arm-the one farthest from him-
was now in shadow. He could hardly
see the hand which, he had before observed, lay at the root of a clump
of laurel. There had been no change, a fact which
gave him a certain comfort, he
could not have said why. He did not at once remove his eyes; that which
we do not wish to see has a strange fascination,
sometimes irresistible. Of the
woman who covers her eyes with her hands and looks between the fingers
let it be said that the wits have dealt with her not
altogether justly.
Byring suddenly became conscious of a pain in his right hand. He withdrew
his eyes from his enemy and looked at it. He was grasping the hilt of his
drawn
sword so tightly that it hurt him.
He observed, too, that he was leaning forward in a strained attitude- crouching
like a gladiator ready to spring at the throat of an
antagonist. His teeth were clenched
and he was breathing hard. This matter was soon set right, and as his muscles
relaxed and he drew a long breath he felt
keenly enough the ludicrousness
of the incident. It affected him to laughter. Heavens! what sound was that?
what mindless devil was uttering an unholy glee in
mockery of human merriment? He
sprang to his feet and looked about him, not recognizing his own laugh.
He could no longer conceal from himself the horrible fact of his cowardice;
he was thoroughly frightened! He would have run from the spot, but his
legs
refused their office; they gave
way beneath him and he sat again upon the log, violently trembling. His
face was wet, his whole body bathed in a chill perspiration.
He could not even cry out. Distinctly
he heard behind him a stealthy tread, as of some wild animal, and dared
not look over his shoulder. Had the soulless living
joined forces with the soulless
dead?-was it an animal? Ah, if he could but be assured of that! But by
no effort of will could he now unfix his gaze from the face
of the dead man.
I repeat that Lieutenant Byring was a brave and intelligent man. But what
would you have? Shall a man cope, single-handed, with so monstrous an alliance
as that of night and solitude and
silence and the dead-while an incalculable host of his own ancestors shriek
into the ear of his spirit their coward counsel, sing
their doleful death-songs in his
heart, and disarm his very blood of all its iron? The odds are too great-courage
was not made for so rough use as that.
One sole conviction now had the man in possession: that the body had moved.
It lay nearer to the edge of its plot of light-there could be no doubt
of it. It
had also moved its arms, for, look,
they are both in the shadow! A breath of cold air struck Byring full in
the face; the boughs of trees above him stirred and
moaned. A strongly defined shadow
passed across the face of the dead, left it luminous, passed back upon
it and left it half obscured. The horrible thing was
visibly moving! At that moment
a single shot rang out upon the picket-line-a lonelier and louder, though
more distant, shot than ever had been heard by mortal
ear! It broke the spell of that
enchanted man; it slew the silence and the solitude, dispersed the hindering
host from Central Asia and released his modern
manhood. With a cry like that of
some great bird pouncing upon its prey he sprang forward, hot-hearted for
action!
Shot after shot now came from the front. There were shoutings and confusion,
hoof-beats and desultory cheers. Away to the rear, in the sleeping camp,
were a singing of bugles and grumble
of drums. Pushing through the thickets on either side the roads came the
Federal pickets, in full retreat, firing backward at
random as they ran. A straggling
group that had followed back one of the roads, as instructed, suddenly
sprang away into the bushes as half a hundred horsemen
thundered by them, striking wildly
with their sabres as they passed. At headlong speed these mounted madmen
shot past the spot where Byring had sat, and
vanished round an angle of the
road, shouting and firing their pistols. A moment later there was a roar
of musketry, followed by dropping shots-they had
encountered the reserve-guard in
line; and back they came in dire confusion, with here and there an empty
saddle and many a maddened horse, bullet-stung,
snorting and plunging with pain.
It was all over-“an affair of out-posts.”
The line was re-established with fresh men, the roll called, the stragglers
were re-formed. The Federal commander, with a part of his staff, imperfectly
clad,
appeared upon the scene, asked
a few questions, looked exceedingly wise and retired. After standing at
arms for an hour the brigade in camp “swore a prayer or
two” and went to bed.
Early the next morning a fatigue-party, commanded by a captain and accompanied
by a surgeon, searched the ground for dead and wounded. At the fork
of the road, a little to one side,
they found two bodies lying close together-that of a Federal officer and
that of a Confederate private. The officer had died of a
sword-thrust through the heart,
but not, apparently, until he had inflicted upon his enemy no fewer than
five dreadful wounds. The dead officer lay on his face in
a pool of blood, the weapon still
in his heart. They turned him on his back and the surgeon removed it.
“Gad!” said the captain-“It is Byring!”-adding, with a glance at the other,
“They had a tough tussle.”
The surgeon was examining the sword. It was that of a line officer of Federal
infantry-exactly like the one worn by the captain. It was, in fact, Byring's
own. The only other weapon discovered
was an undischarged revolver in the dead officer's belt.
The surgeon laid down the sword and approached the other body. It was frightfully
gashed and stabbed, but there was no blood. He took hold of the left
foot and tried to straighten the
leg. In the effort the body was displaced. The dead do not wish to be moved-it
protested with a faint, sickening odour. Where it
had lain were a few maggots, manifesting
an imbecile activity.
The surgeon looked at the captain. The captain looked at the surgeon.
The End
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