Those dark hours seemed an eternity to Harry. The floating fog seemed to grow thicker and to enter his very bones. He shivered and drew the blanket close. Now, with his ears close to the earth, he was sure that he could hear the axes and the saws and the hammers beating on steel rivets on the other side of the Rappahannock.
The Confederate cannon still fired the signals of alarm at regular intervals, but the night and the fog always closed in again quickly over the flash that the discharge had made. After a while a murmur came from the long Southern line along the heights and on the ridges. Horses stirred here and there, cannon, moved to new positions, made sighing sounds as their wheels sank in the mud; sabres and bayonets clanked, thousands of men whispered to one another. All these varying sounds united into one great soft voice which was like the murmur of a wind through the summer night.
Toward five o’clock in the morning, when the darkness had not diminished a whit, a messenger from General Lee rode up with a note for General Jackson. It merely stated that all was ready and to hold the positions that he had taken up the night before. Jackson wrote a brief reply by the light of a lantern that an orderly held, and the messenger galloped away with it. It was the only incident that had occurred in a long time.
“They’re not using many lights on the other side of the river,” said Harry, although he noted an occasional flame in the darkness. “Of course, they want to hide their bridge building, but you’d think they’d have fires burning elsewhere.”
“They’ve learned the value of caution,” said Dalton. “I’m bound to say they’re going about the first part of their work with skill.”
He spoke with the calm superiority of a young Officer.
Harry took out his own watch, and by holding it close to his eyes was able to read its face.
“A quarter to six,” he said. “According to the watch it is less than three hours since we first heard those alarm guns, but my five known senses and all the unknown tell me that it has been at least a week.”
“In an hour we should see something,” said Dalton. “Confound this fog. If it weren’t so thick we could see now.”
Harry’s pulses began to beat hard again in the next hour. He strove with glasses even for a glimpse of the winter sun which he knew would come so late, but as yet the fog showed nothing save a faint luminous tinge low down in the east. An orderly brought food to them, and while they ate they saw the luminous tinge broaden and deepen.
“The sun’s rising behind that fog,” said Dalton, “but here comes a little wind that will drive away the fog or thin it out so we can see.”
“Yes, I feel it,” said Harry, “and you can see the dull, somber red of the sun trying to break through. Look, George, unless I’m mistaken the fog’s moving down the river!”
“So it is, there’s the flash of the stream, the color of steel, and by all the stars, there’s their bridge two-thirds of the way across!”
Heavier puffs of wind came and the fog billowed off down the river. The whole gigantic theater of action sprang at once into the light. There were the two great armies clustered on opposing ridges, there was the deserted town, there was the deep river, the color of lead, flowing between the foes, two-thirds of its width already spanned by the Union bridge, the bridge itself covered with workmen, and boats swarming by its side.
Harry felt a thrill and a shudder which were almost simultaneous. Then came a deep muffled roar from the two armies on the ridges looking at each other. But as the roar died it was succeeded by the rapid, stinging fire of rifles. The Mississippians in their pits and cellars near the bank of the river were sending a hail of bullets upon the bridge builders.
The rest of the Southern army stood by and watched. Harry knew that Lee and Jackson would make their chief defense on the ridges, but the Mississippians were there to keep the enemy from being too forward. So deadly were their rifles that every workman fled off the bridge to the Union shore, save those who were struck down upon it, falling into the water.