Cudjo's Cave Part 60

The rebels advancing over the rocks had suddenly disappeared, having either fallen in the crevices or scrambled back up the bank while hidden from view by the smoke. The chain descending the tree had broken; those near the ground leaped down or slid, while those above seemed seized by a wild impulse to climb back with all haste to the summit of the wall. A few threw away their guns, which fell upon the heads of those below. At the same time those below might have been seen scampering to places of shelter behind rocks and trees.

If ever panic were excusable, this surely was. Since the patriots were terrified by their own firing, we need not wonder at the alarm of the rebels. Some had seen the flashes sever the darkness, and their comrades fall; while all had felt the earthquake and the thundering. To those at the entrance it had seemed that these were the jaws and throat of a monster mountain-huge, which at their approach spat flame and bellowed.

"Now is our time! Clear them out!" said Grudd.

"Rush in and finish them with the bayonet!" said Stackridge. Six of the guns had bayonets, and his was one of them.

"Not yet!" said Pomp. "They will fire on you from above. We must first attend to that. Shall I show you? Then do as I do!"

Instinctively they accepted his lead. Loading his piece, he ran forward until, himself concealed under the brow of the cavern, he could see the rebels in the tree and on the cliff.

"Once more! All together!" he said, taking aim. "Give the word, captain!"

The men knelt among the loosely tumbled rocks, which served at once as a breastwork and as rests for their guns. The projecting roof of the cave was over them; through the obscure opening they pointed their pieces.

Above them, in the full light, were the frightened confederates, some on the tree, some on the cliff, some leaping from the tree to the cliff; while their comrades in the sink lurked on the side opposite that where the patriots were.

"Take the cusses on the top of the rocks!" said Stackridge. "The rest are harmless."

"It's all them in the tree can do to take keer of themselves," added Withers. "Reg'lar seces.h.!.+ All they ax is to be let alone."

Grudd gave the word. Flame from a dozen muzzles shot upwards from the edge of the pit. When the smoke rolled away, the cliff was cleared. Not a rebel was to be seen, except those in the tree franticly scrambling to get out, and two others. One of these had fallen on the cliff: his head and one arm hung horribly over the brink. The other, in his too eager haste to escape from the tree, had slipped from the limb, and been saved from das.h.i.+ng to pieces on the rocks below only by a projection of the wall, to which he had caught, and where he now clung, a dozen feet from the top, and far above the river that rolled black and slow in its channel beneath the cliff.

"Now with your bayonets!" said Pomp. "This way!"

There were six bayonets before; now there were eight.

"That Carl is worth his weight in gold!" said the enthusiastic Stackridge.

While the patriots, preparing for their second volley, were getting positions among the rocks on the left, Carl had crept up the embankment in front, and brought away two muskets from two dead rebels. These were they who had fallen at the first fire. Both guns had bayonets. Pomp took one; Carl kept the other. Cudjo with his sword accompanied the charging party; Grudd and the rest remaining at their post, ready to pick off any rebel that should appear on the cliff.

Swift and stealthy as a panther, Pomp crept around still farther to the left, under the projecting wall, raising his head cautiously now and then to look for the fugitives.

"As I expected! They are over there, afraid to follow the stream into the cave, and hesitating whether to make a rush for the tree. All ready?"

He looked around on his little force and smiled. Instead of eight bayonets, there were now nine. Penn had arrived.

"All ready!" answered Stackridge.

Pomp bounded upon the rocks and over them, with a yell which the rest took up as they followed, charging headlong after him. Cudjo, brandis.h.i.+ng his sword, leaped and yelled with the foremost--a figure fantastically terrible. Penn, with the fiery Stackridge on one side, and his beloved Carl on the other, forgot that he had ever been a Quaker, hating strife. Not that he loved it now; but, remembering that these were the deadly foes of his country, and of those he loved, and feeling it a righteous duty to exterminate them, he went to the work, not like an apprentice, but a master,--without fear, self-possessed, impetuous, kindled with fierce excitement.

The rebels in the sink, fifteen in number, had had time to rally from their panic; and they now seemed inclined to make resistance. They were behind a natural breastwork, similar to that which had sheltered the patriots on the other side. They levelled their guns hastily and fired.

One of the patriots fell: it was Withers.

"Give it to them!" shouted Pomp.

"Every cussed scoundrel of 'em!" Stackridge cried.

"Kill! kill! kill!" shrieked Cudjo.

"Surrender! surrender!" thundered Penn.

With such cries they charged over the rocks, straight at the faces and b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the confederates. Some turned to fly; but beyond them was the unknown darkness into which the river flowed: they recoiled aghast from that. A few stood their ground. The bayonet, which Penn had first made acquaintance with when it was thrust at his own breast, he shoved through the shoulder of a rebel whose clubbed musket was descending on Carl's head. Three inches of the blade come out of his back; and, bearing him downwards in his irresistible onset, Penn literally pinned him to the ground. Cudjo slashed another hideously across the face with the sword. Pomp took the first prisoner: it was Dan Pepperill. The rest soon followed Dan's example, cried quarter, and threw down their arms.

"Quarter!" gasped the wretch Penn had pinned.

"You spoke too late--I am sorry!" said Penn, with austere pity, as, placing his foot across the man's armpit to hold him while he pulled, he put forth his strength, and drew out the steel. A gush of blood followed, and, with a groan, the soldier swooned.

"It is one of them wagabonds that gave you the tar and fedders!" said Carl.

"And a.s.sisted at my hanging afterwards!" added Penn, remembering the ghastly face.

Thus retribution followed these men. Gad and Griffin he had seen dead.

Was it any satisfaction for him to feel that he was thus avenged? I think, not much. The devil of revenge had no place in his soul; and never for any personal wrong he had received would he have wished to see b.l.o.o.d.y violence done.

The prisoners were disarmed, and ordered to remain where they were.

"Bring the wounded to me," said Pomp, hastening back to the spot where Withers had fallen.

Stackridge and another were lifting the fallen patriot and bearing him to the shelter of the cave. Pomp a.s.sisted, skilfully and tenderly. Then followed those who bore away the wounded prisoners and the guns that had been captured. Pepperill had been ordered to help. He and Carl carried the man whose face Cudjo had slashed. This was the only rebel who had fought obstinately: he had not given up until an arm was broken, and he was blinded by his own blood. Penn and Devitt brought up the rear with the swooning soldier. When half way over they were fired upon by the rebels rallying to the edge of the cliff. Grudd and his men responded sharply, covering their retreat. Penn felt a bullet graze his shoulder.

It made but a slight flesh wound there; but, pa.s.sing down, it entered the heart of the wounded man, whose swoon became the swoon of death.

This was the only serious result of the confederate fire.

"I am glad I did not kill him!" said Penn, as they laid the corpse beside the stream.

Then out of the mask of blood which covered the face of the stout fellow who had fought so well, there issued a voice that spoke, in a strange tongue, these words:--

"_Was hat man mir gethan? Wo bin ich, mutter?_"

But the words were not strange to Carl; neither was the voice strange.

"Fritz! Fritz!" he answered, in the same language, "is it you?"

"I am Fritz Minnevich; that is true. And you, I think, are my cousin Carl."

They laid the wounded man near the stream, where Pomp was examining Withers's hurt.

"O, Fritz!" said Carl, "how came you here?"

"They said the Yankees were coming to take our farm. So Hans and I enlisted to fight. I got in here because I was ordered. We do as we are ordered. It was we who whipped the woman. We whipped her well. I hope my good looks will not be spoiled; for that would grieve our mother."

Thus the soldier talked in his native tongue, while Carl, in sorrow and silence, washed the blood from his face. He remembered he was his father's brother's son; a good fellow, in his way; dull, but faithful; and he had not always treated him cruelly. Indeed, Carl thought not of his cruelty now at all, but only of the good times they had had together, in days when they were friends, and Frau Minnevich had not taught her boys to be as ill-natured as herself.

"What for do you do this, Carl?" said Fritz. "There is no cause that you should be kind to me. I did you some ill turns. You did right to run away. But our father swears you shall have your share of the property if you ever come back for it, and the Yankees do not take it."

"It is all lies they tell you about the Yankees!" said Carl. "O Pomp!

this is my cousin--see what you can do for him."

Pomp had been reluctantly convinced that he could do nothing for Withers: his wound was mortal. And Withers had said to him, in cheerful, feeble tones, "I feel I'm about to the eend of my tether. So don't waste yer time on me."