He looked
down upon it with haggard, bewildered eyes, and then a strange gasp
and fullness of the throat! For afar a solitary bugle had blown the
"reveille" at Fort Alcatraz.
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
Night at last, and the stir and tumult of a great fight over. Even the
excitement that had swept this portion of the battlefield--only a small
section of a vaster area of struggle--into which a brigade had marched,
held its own, been beaten back, recovered its ground, and pursuing,
had passed out of it forever, leaving only its dead behind, and knowing
nothing more of that struggle than its own impact and momentum--even
this wild excitement had long since evaporated with the stinging smoke
of gunpowder, the acrid smell of burning rags from the clothing of a
dead soldier fired by a bursting shell, or the heated reek of sweat and
leather. A cool breath that seemed to bring back once more the odor of
the upturned earthworks along the now dumb line of battle began to move
from the suggestive darkness beyond.
But into that awful penetralia of death and silence there was no
invasion--there had been no retreat. A few of the wounded had been
brought out, under fire, but the others had been left with the dead for
the morning light and succor.
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