“Now, men, to your portholes!” says Willis.  “We must give ’em a partin’ salute.”

The flame was long in catching.  Every eye was alternately peeping to the front and looking anxiously at the brush heap.  At last she caught, and a thin column of black smoke began to ascend.

“Be sharp, now!  Them rebs will want to know what we’re up to.”

A few curious heads could be seen, but no shot was fired at us, or by us at them.

The smoke increased, but, alas! the wind was wrong and blew it away from the woods.

“Hell and Tom Walker!” says Willis.

But heaven—­which he had not appealed to—­had decreed that Fort Willis should be evacuated under her own auspices.  Our attention had been so fixed upon two important specks that the rest of the universe had become a trivial matter.  A sudden clap of thunder almost overhead startled the defenders of the redoubt.  Without our knowledge a storm had rolled up from the Atlantic; the rain was beginning to fall in big icy-cold drops, already obscuring our vision.

“Fire!” shouted Willis.

The tempest burst in fury, and the gang marched bravely back to the skirmish-line, amidst a hail, not of bullets, but of nature’s making.

XII

MORE ACTIVE SERVICE

    “Do but start

An echo with the clamour of thy drum,
And even at hand a drum is ready braced
That shall reverberate all as loud as thine.” 

          
                                                                  —­SHAKESPEARE.

Early on the morning of the 4th of May loud explosions were heard in the direction of Yorktown, and the heavens glowed with the light of great fires.  At sunrise our division got orders to be ready to march, but the morning wore away, and it was almost two o’clock before the long roll beat.  At length we moved with the column, already unnerved by long-continued expectation, westward upon the Williamsburg road.

Willis was triumphant.  “We got ’em now, boys,” says he.  “I told you so.”

Lawler responded that any weather prophet would get rain if he kept on predicting till the rain came.

The mud was deep and heavy.  The roads had been horribly cut up by the retreating rebels and by our cavalry advancing ahead of us.

Late in the afternoon we came to a long halt; a division had come into our road from the left and was now advancing, blocking our way.  We rested.  About dark our head of column was turned back and we countermarched, and halted, and marched again, and halted again, where, I do not know; but I know that I was thoroughly worn out when orders were given that the men should lie on their arms, but that they should otherwise make themselves as comfortable as they could.  Rain was falling, the night was black, comfort was impossible.  I suppose I got two or three hours’ sleep.  At daylight the march was again taken up; in an hour or two we halted and formed line with skirmishers in front; it was still raining.