A drizzling rain had set in at twilight, and, growing
bolder with the darkness, was beating a dismal tattoo on the tent,--the
tent of Mess 6, Company A, --th Regiment, N.Y. Volunteers. Our mess,
consisting originally of eight men, was reduced to four. Little Billy,
as one of the boys grimly remarked, had concluded to remain at
Manassas; Corporal Steele we had to leave at Fairfax Court-House, shot
through the hip; Hunter and Suydam we had said good-by to that
afternoon. "Tell Johnny Reb," says Hunter, lifting up the leather
sidepiece of the ambulance, "that I'll be back again as soon as I get a
new leg." But Suydam said nothing; he only unclosed his eyes languidly
and smiled farewell to us.
The four of us who were left alive and unhurt that shameful July day sat
gloomily smoking our brier-wood pipes, thinking our thoughts, and
listening to the rain pattering against the canvas. That, and the
occasional whine of a hungry cur, foraging on the outskirts of the camp
for a stray bone, alone broke the silence, save when a vicious drop of
rain detached itself meditatively from the ridge-pole of the tent, and
fell upon the wick of our tallow candle, making it "cuss," as Ned Strong
described it. The candle was in the midst of one of its most profane
fits when Blakely, knocking the ashes from his pipe and addressing no
one in particular, but giving breath, unconsciously as it were, to the
result of his cogitations, observed that "it was considerable of a
fizzle.
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