The Sea is a Thief (30 page)

At that moment he heard a faint call, one man shouting to another. “
Up here, John!”
  Sam stared through the curtain of pine needles to find its source.

“Ho!” a deeper voice responded.  

A small figure appeared, head covered by a broad hat.  Behind him followed a taller figure, pulling a wagon by a rope handle.  The first man stooped to the ground very near where Sam had fallen, coming up with a rifle in his hands.  

“This one's got blood on the bayonet,” he said, turning to his companion, who glanced at the weapon before tossing it in the wagon.  He tugged the wagon forward.  Its wooden wheels creaked and clattered over the stones.  The shorter man took off his hat and wiped his brow.  

“Smoke a pipe?” he said.  

“Aye,” replied the other.  They dropped to the ground not ten yards from Sam's hiding place, leaning against a tall pine.  The larger man sat with his back to Sam. He could see the other in profile.  He was young; thirteen or fourteen perhaps, and very thin, with long uncombed hair.  He filled a clay pipe with tobacco from a cloth pouch and lit it.  He puffed on the pipe as blue smoke curled into the air.  His shoulders drooped.  He relaxed against the tree, smoking, face pointed skyward.  He did not wear a uniform as such, but all his clothing was grey.

“How far you think they got by now?” he asked.  

“Hard to say.  Th' sergeant that I spoke to said the federals just up and pulled back all of a sudden.  Didn't say why—or p'raps he didn't know.  They don't bother to tell me much.  'Just go get the rifles,' they say, and that's it.”

A chill ran down Sam's spine. He lay completely still.

“But we got 'em on the run, do we?”

“Oh, we do for certain.  They won't be back today.”

“They won't
never
come back, after that lickin!”

The two laughed, and smoked in silence. Sam struggled to comprehend what he had just overheard.  It could mean only one thing: Butler's army had been driven back towards Bermuda Hundred.  The south had carried the day.  
How was it possible?

“You got enough rifles to make a run back to Jeb with ‘em?”

“Believe I do.  Must be fifteen or twenty now, with those we just picked up here.”

The two puffed away.  A crow cawed loudly overhead, and took wing from a high branch.

“Them crows'll be comin' around, now,” said the boy.

“And the black vultures, later.”    

“I shot one last week, y'know.”

“Any good?”

“Naw.  We was low on rations so I figured I'd give it a try.  Never cooked one up before.  Awful tastin' thing.  Rather eat beans.”

The boy knocked out his pipe on the heel of his shoe, then ground out the embers on a stone.  “Let's haul them rifles back to Jeb, then.”

“Aye.”

They left the way they had come, the noise of the wagon wheels receding into the distance.

Sam's mind raced.  The army had pulled back.  Would they counterattack tomorrow?  If the rebel attack had accomplished so much, a quick recovery seemed impossible.  Butler had relied on the strength of his numbers.  They had been told that their assault would be a crushing blow; once they took the fort at Drewry's Bluff, they would storm Richmond.  The rebel force must have been far larger than anyone suspected.  The fighting Sam had seen was fierce, men dying all around on both sides.  He had heard his share about General Butler's methods from the veteran soldiers.  They told him he was cautious; he certainly proved that when he sat them down in the rain for three days, just a few miles short of their destination.

In an instant, Sam Dreher knew: the army was gone.  He was on his own. Reaching for his haversack, he withdrew his knife from its sheath and laid it close to his right hand.  If they found him he would not be taken prisoner, but go fighting.  God willing, he would slip past them and find a way back.  

He lay in the cave as the light dimmed, drifting in and out of sleep as the pain in his leg allowed him, gathering his strength.  A half-moon rose, the first moon he had seen since stepping on land a week before.  The clouds parted, revealing a deep blue sky.  A breeze cleared the mist from the spring air.  Sam could see no movement outside. No fires glowed in the forest. The Confederate army was pursuing Benjamin Butler somewhere far ahead. The moon cast enough light to navigate; his best chance was to move quickly.  Whatever the odds, he was not a man to wait when he had the chance to act.  He scraped away the lawyer of pine needles from the floor of the cave.  Beneath them was a layer of rich black earth.  He scooped up handfuls of the mossy-smelling dirt, rubbing it deeply into the skin of his face and his hands.  He would make himself harder to see.    

Pushing the pine bough aside, he dragged himself from the protection of the cave.  The night air was sweet.  The pain in his leg was tolerable enough if he did not put weight on it, it.  He had to brace it somehow if his escape were to succeed. There wasn't time to waste.  At any moment a patrol might happen by.  God willing, they were all occupied elsewhere.

He propped himself up against the stone ledge.  Taking the pine bough in both hands, he found the right size branch. With effort he snapped it free.  The crack resounded in the air and he froze, ready to retreat to the cave, ears straining to hear the approach of anyone who might have been attracted by the sound.  

All was still.  The branch had been half-split by time and weather; a fissure ran down its length, extending deeply into the wood.  It was exactly what he needed.  Forcing his knife into the crack, he twisted it sharply, prying the two halves of the round branch apart little by little.  At last it split cleanly, leaving him with two lengths of wood, each flat on one side.  He lay them in the mouth of the cave.  He pulled himself forward to the place where he had found his two comrades lying dead.  The boys foraging for weapons had not disturbed them.  He lifted them the haversacks from their shoulders, pulling the straps from underneath their faces.  Their necks were stiff and unmoving.  Silently, he prayed for the souls of the two men who had fought beside him earlier in the day.  He did not know their names.  Their packs slung around his own neck, he returned to the cave.  He found some rations, which he stowed in his own haversack, and a canteen, half-full.  It would help until he found water again.

With his knife he cut the lacing that held the straps to the haversacks.  He wrapped the two long strips of leather several times around his leg, one as high as he could, and one just above his knee.  Pulling the laces through the straps again, he joined the two ends, tightening them around his leg.  It hurt him, but he could bear it.  He slid the two halves of the pine branch through the straps, high and low, one on each side of his thigh, and tied off the laces.  He had splinted his broken leg.  He hoped it would be enough.   

Taking up the pine bough again, he found a sturdy branch that was nearly his height, and followed it to the place where it joined the heavier bough at an angle.  He whittled away at the junction of the two.  When he was finished he had a long, straight length of pine with a crosspiece at its top end that extended a few inches fore and aft: a crutch.   He fitted it under his left arm.  It was too long.  A few more minutes' labor with his knife and he had shortened it to fit. Sam sheathed his knife, shouldered his haversack, and lifted himself to his feet using the crutch he had made.  He took a few tentative steps.  It worked.   He could walk.

At night he could move unseen.  The rebel army was encamped, eating, and soon enough would be asleep.  They would surely post sentries, but if he were lucky enough not to stumble on the perimeter of a campsite, he would not encounter them.  Now was the time.  Opening his haversack, he took out his Bible.  Between the testaments was the drawing of the green-winged teal that Anna had made for him years before.  He kissed it, and when he did he saw her face before him.  He looked up at the moon, the same Virginia moon she might be looking at just at that moment.  He could hear her wishing him Godspeed.

Taking a bearing from the stars, he set off to the east.  

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Walk through the Valley

 

The skills of a sailor can come in very handy, even on land.   Lacking map or compass, Sam navigated by the stars.  The Virginia sky had been his guide since the war began.  He had studied charts before the battle; during the approach to Richmond he kept track of his position.  He had a pretty fair idea of where he was.  The James River, slow and wide, ran southwards and east towards the Chesapeake Bay.  All the other big rivers in eastern Virginia did, too.  He could not follow the James back along the path of the Union army's retreat.  The rebels would have set up lines just in front of the Union lines, somewhere between the field of battle and Bermuda Hundred.  If he followed the James he would have to cross right through them to get back to his own troops.  The James was no route to freedom.

If he could hold a course due east for fifteen miles or so, he would reach the Chickahominy, which fed into the James.  Even if he navigated poorly and missed it, he would reach the larger York River in thirty miles.  Either one offered some possibility of an encounter with a Union vessel—if a Confederate patrol didn't stumble on him first.  Night was his ally.  Who would choose to go out searching for a lone wounded Union soldier when he could just as easily be asleep?  

He could travel only very slowly.  He had never walked with a crutch, let alone a homemade one.  The ground was uneven, shifting from rocky and treacherous to wet and boggy in the course of a few hundred yards.  A week's worth of rain had put a new face on the terrain.  Water had accumulated in every ditch and hollow.  Where the ground was naturally marshy, it was now a swamp.  To his great relief, the weather had changed dramatically in his favor.  The stars blazed like torches in the cool indigo sky, and the moon lit his path like a lantern.  Had he been healthy, he could have walked almost as though it were daytime.  As it was, the pain in his left leg reminded him continually of the need for unusual care.  Any misstep sent a jolt through it.  He was alone and unarmed in hostile Virginia; if he should slip and worsen the injury, all chance for escape was lost.

He stopped frequently to drink from his canteen and orient himself by the heavens.  It was at those moments that his thoughts flew to Anna Daisey.  As his eye sought out the constellations that would lead him eastward, he imagined his destination to be Assateague Island, the farthest point eastward before the sea began.  She wasn't that far away, as the crow flies, but still impossibly far.  He pledged again to himself and to his Anna that he would return to her.    

Early on, his path was marked by the devastation of battle.  The wreckage of equipment was everywhere: shattered caissons, broken wagons, dead horses.  It was easy to see even by moonlight how strong the rebel force had been.  Far stronger, he thought, than any Union general had imagined.  It was no wonder that the day unfolded as it did.  Drewry's Bluff had dealt the Union another unexpected card.  This one had proved an ace.

When the absolute dead of night had passed and the faintest stirrings of the oncoming day made themselves felt, he began to seek out shelter.  Sunrise would be too late to search for a hiding place.  By the time the dawn chorus of songbirds had replaced the shrill piping of the nighthawks, he had to be well concealed in a spot that prying Confederate eyes were unlikely to find.  He figured he was about halfway to his destination.  Time would tell.  If he had not navigated well there was no saying where he might be headed.  If his reckoning were good, another night's travel might find him on the banks of the Chickahominy River.  This was the time to rest.  His leg was sometimes sore and sometimes numb.  The splint held, but it could do only so much.  His arm was rubbed raw by the crutch.  For now, he needed a respite more than anything else.  

In the dim light he spied the trunk of a huge fallen tree.  It appeared to have been struck by lightning.  Ten or twelve feet remained standing; the rest lay nearby.  Moss and decay were overtaking it.  The trunk had been split partially open by the strike.  With a little effort a person might wriggle inside, if he were thin enough.  Sam figured he was.  Using a long stick, he probed the tree with for snakes.  Nothing crawled out.  He stepped inside the trunk with his good leg, dragging the other behind it.  The sky was noticeably lighter now.  He could just barely make out his surroundings within the tree trunk: leaves, fallen branches, club moss. He found that he could sit with his broken leg extended.  It was a godsend.  He could sleep.

He was surprisingly hungry.  He took it as a good sign.  He ate half the rations he carried in his sack and drank his fill from his canteen.  For the moment, he was alive and safe.  He let his head lean backwards onto the splintered wood of the tree and breathed deeply.  One night's journey done.  It was as though angels had come to lift the burden from his soul.  In minutes he was asleep.

 

Sam was awakened by the sound of conversation and marching boots.  In his half-slumber, he imagined himself back among the Union line, but when he roused himself and looked around he remembered.  Peering up through the veil of leaves above him, he saw that the sun was high.  A group a men was nearby—
who were they?
  He pressed himself flat against the tree trunk.  Only someone who made the effort could see him.  If these were Confederate troops, and one of them did look inside, he was a dead man.  He lay still as stone.  The group stopped nearby.  He heard the clanking of metal and the sounds of horses, then the heavy creaking of wagon wheels.  The wagons were some distance behind.  When they caught up the whole procession moved past him.   Many wagons passed, pulled by teams of horses.  The men spoke little.  He could not make out what they were saying.  Most likely they had brought supplies to the army and were returning for more.  Soon they faded into the distance, and silence returned.  He breathed deeply again, and the tension left his aching body.  He had been lucky.  Any thought of moving during the day left him.