“Very little that I can see, but a battle is never won or lost until it’s fought. We’d better report now to General Jackson.”
They saluted General Stuart, and rode away over the icy mud. General Jackson received their report with pleasure.
“Excellent! Excellent!” he said. “General Stuart has routed them with horse artillery! A capable man! A most wonderful man!”
He said the last words to himself, rather than to Harry, and Stuart soon proved that his horse artillery was not underrated by winning a second encounter with the gunboats a day or two later. Early also beat back an attempt to cross the river at a third place, and it became apparent now that the Union army could make no flanking attack upon its enemy south of the Rappahannock. It must be made, if at all, directly on its front at Fredericksburg.
But Harry had no doubt that it would be made. The reports of their numerous scouts and spies told with detail of the immense preparations going on in the Union camp. He could often watch them himself with his glasses from the hills. He did not see much of St. Clair and Langdon these days, as they remained closely with their regiment, the Invincibles, but Dalton and he were much together.
It was well into December when they were watching through the glasses the concentration of Union cannon on Stafford Heights across the river. One hundred and fifty great guns were in position there and they could easily blow Fredericksburg to pieces. Harry looked down again at this little city which had jumped suddenly into fame by getting itself squarely between the two armies arrayed for battle.
He felt the old sensation of pity as he gazed at the closed shutters and the smokeless chimneys. Nobody was stirring in the streets, except some Mississippi soldiers who had been placed there to oppose the passage, and who were fortifying themselves in the houses and cellars along the river front.
“It’s no good looking any more,” Harry said to Dalton. “There’s nothing to do now but wait. That’s what General Jackson is doing. I saw him in his tent to-day, reading a book on theology that Dr. Graham has just sent him.”
“You’re right, Harry. If the general can rest, so can we. Well, not much of this day is left. See how the Yankee batteries are fading away in the twilight.”
“Yes, Harry, fading now, but they’ll come back again, massive metal and as sinister as ever, in the morning.”
“Which won’t keep me from sleeping soundly tonight. Funny how you get used to anything. Neither the presence nor the absence of the Yankee army will interfere with my sleep unless the general wants to send me on an errand.”
“And we also grow used to sights so tremendous in their nature that they turn the whole current of our history. Look at that winter sun setting there over the western hills. It may be my fancy, Harry, but it seems to have the colors of bronze and steel in it, a sort of menace, one might call it.”
“I see the same colors, George, but I suppose it’s fancy. The whole sky is one of steel to me. I see the gleaming of steel everywhere, over the hills, the river and the armies.”
“Our imaginations are too vivid, Harry. But look how that darkness closes in on everything! Now the Yankee cannon and the Yankee army are gone! The river itself is fading, and there goes the town! Now, see the lights spring up on the far shore!”
“It’s supper and sleep for me,” said Harry. “It doesn’t do to let your imagination run away with you. You know that Lee and Old Jack and Jim Longstreet have arranged for everything.”
They ate their suppers, and, the general giving them leave, they lay down in the tent next to his, wrapped in their blankets. Harry slept soundly, but while the pitchy darkness of a winter night still enclosed the land he was awakened by a heavy rumbling noise. His nerves had been attuned so highly by exciting days that he was awake in an instant and sprang to his feet, Dalton also springing up with equal promptness.