Another conference was held by the Southern generals in the forest, but now the central figure, the great Johnston, was gone. The others, however, summoned their courage anew, and passed the whole night arranging their forces, cheering the men, and preparing for the morn. Their scouts and skirmishers kept watch on the Northern camp, and the Southerners believed that while they had whipped only one army the day before, they could whip two on the morrow.
Dick and his friends meanwhile were lying on the earth, resting, but not able to sleep. The nerves, drawn so tightly by the day’s work, were not yet relaxed wholly. A deep apathy seized them all. Dick, from a high point on which he lay, saw the dark surface of the Tennessee, and the lights on the puffing steamers as they crossed, bearing the Army of the Ohio. His mind did not work actively now, but he felt that they were saved. The deep river, although it was on their flank, seemed to flow as a barrier against the foe, and it was, in fact, a barrier more and more, as without its command the second Union army could never have come to the relief of the first.
Dick, after a while, saw Colonel Winchester, and other officers near him. They were talking of their losses. They gave the names of many generals and colonels who had been killed. Presently they moved away, and he fell into an uneasy sleep, or rather doze, from which he was awakened after a while by a heavy rumbling sound of a distant cannonade.
The boy sprang up, wondering why any one should wish to renew the battle in the middle of the night, and then he saw that it was no battle. The sound was thunder rolling heavily on the southern horizon, and the night had become very dark. Vivid flashes of lightning cut the sky, and a strong wind rushed among the trees. Heavy drops of water struck him in the face and then the rain swept down.
Dick did not seek protection from the storm, nor did any of those near him. The cool drops were grateful to their faces after the heat and strife of the day. Their pulses became stronger, and the blood flowed in a quickened torrent through their veins. They let it pour upon them, merely seeking to keep their ammunition dry.
Ten thousand wounded were yet lying untouched in the forest, but the rain was grateful to them, too. When they could they turned their fevered faces up to it that it might beat upon them and bring grateful coolness.
Deep in the night a council like that of the Southern generals was held in the Northern camp, also. Grant, his face an expressionless mask, presided, and said but little. Buell, Sherman, McClernand, Nelson, Wallace and others, were there, and Buell and Sherman, like their chief, spoke little. The three men upon whom most rested were very taciturn that night, but it is likely that extraordinary thoughts were passing in the minds of every one of the three.
Grant, after a day in which any one of a dozen chances would have wrecked him, must have concluded that in very deed and truth he was the favorite child of Fortune. When one is saved again and again from the very verge he begins to believe that failure is impossible, and in that very belief lies the greatest guard against failure.
It is said of Grant that in the night after his great defeat around the church of Shiloh, he was still confident, that he told his generals they would certainly win on the morrow, and he reminded them that if the Union army had suffered terribly, the Southern army must have suffered almost equally so, and would face them at dawn with numbers far less than their own. He had not displayed the greatest skill, but he had shown the greatest moral courage, and now on the night between battles it was that quality that was needed most.
Dick, not having slept any the night before, and having passed through a day of fierce battle, was overcome after midnight, and sank into a sleep that was mere lethargy. He awoke once before dawn and remembered, but vaguely, all that had happened. Yet he was conscious that there was much movement in the forest. He heard the tread of many feet, the sound of commands, the neigh of horses and the rumbling of cannon wheels. The Army of the Ohio was passing to the exposed flank of the Army of the Tennessee and at dawn it would all be in line. He also caught flitting glimpses of the Tennessee, and of the steamers loaded with troops still crossing, and he heard the boom of the heavy cannon on the gunboats which still, at regular and short intervals, sent huge shells curving into the forest toward the camp of the Southern army. He also saw near him Warner and Pennington sound asleep on the ground, and then he sank back into his own lethargic slumber.