The opportunity at last arrived, and I shall never forget the glee with which, after several postponements, I finally rode forth, a little before midnight, on a night which seemed made for the purpose.  I had, of course, kept my own secret, and was entirely alone.  The great Southern fire-flies were out, not haunting the low ground merely, like ours, but rising to the loftiest tree-tops with weird illumination, and anon hovering so low that my horse often stepped the higher to avoid them.  The dewy Cherokee roses brushed my face, the solemn “Chuck-will’s-widow” croaked her incantation, and the rabbits raced phantom-like across the shadowy road.  Slowly in the darkness I followed the well-known path to the spot where our most advanced outposts were stationed, holding a causeway which thrust itself far out across the separating river,—­thus fronting a similar causeway on the other side, while a channel of perhaps three hundred yards, once traversed by a ferry-boat, rolled between.  At low tide this channel was the whole river, with broad, oozy marshes on each side; at high tide the marshes were submerged, and the stream was a mile wide.  This was the point which I had selected.  To ascertain the numbers and position of the picquet on the opposite causeway was my first object, as it was a matter on which no two of our officers agreed.

To this point, therefore, I rode, and dismounting, after being duly challenged by the sentinel at the causeway-head, walked down the long and lonely path.  The tide was well up, though still on the flood, as I desired; and each visible tuft of marsh-grass might, but for its motionlessness, have been a prowling boat.  Dark as the night had appeared, the water was pale, smooth, and phosphorescent, and I remember that the phrase “wan water,” so familiar in the Scottish ballads, struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate.  A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless Southern night.  There was no sound but the faint swash of the coming tide, the noises of the reed-birds in the marshes, and the occasional leap of a fish; and it seemed to my over-strained ear as if every footstep of my own must be heard for miles.  However, I could have no more postponements, and the thing must be tried now or never.

Reaching the farther end of the causeway, I found my men couched, like black statues, behind the slight earthwork there constructed.  I expected that my proposed immersion would rather bewilder them, but knew that they would say nothing, as usual.  As for the lieutenant on that post, he was a steady, matter-of-fact, perfectly disciplined Englishman, who wore a Crimean medal, and never asked a superfluous question in his life.  If I had casually remarked to him, “Mr. Hooker, the General has ordered me on a brief personal reconnaissance to the Planet Jupiter, and I wish you to take care of my watch, lest it should be damaged by the Precession of the Equinoxes,” he would have responded with a brief “All right, Sir,” and a quick military gesture, and have put the thing in his pocket.  As it was, I simply gave him the watch, and remarked that I was going to take a swim.