Chapter 32
WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C., April 4th, 1862.
Knowing you to be a connoisseur in horse-flesh, my boy, it is but proper I should tell you that I have leased my steed, the gothic Pegasus, for a few days to an army carpenter, that gentleman having expressed a wish to use my architectural animal as a model for some new barracks. Pegasus, my boy, when viewed lengthwise, presents a perspective not unlike a Hoboken cottage, and eminent builders tell me that his back is the very beau ideal of a combination roof. I sent a side-view photograph of the fiery stallion to a venerable grandmother not long since, and she wrote back that she was glad to see I had my quarters elevated on piles to avoid dampness, but should think the hut would smoke with such a crooked chimney! The old lady is rather hard of hearing, my boy, and makes trifling mistakes without her spectacles.
In the absence of my war-horse I hired a respectable hack to take me to Mana.s.sas, the driver saying that he would not charge me more than ten dollars an hour, as he had seen better days himself. What his seeing better days had to do with me I didn't exactly see, my boy; but I hired the chariot, and we went down the river at a pace sometimes achieved by that carriage in a funeral which contains the parents of the deceased.
Wet towels, soda-water, and a few wholesome kicks in the rear having rendered Company 3, Regiment 5, Mackerel Brigade, sufficiently certain of their legs to march a polka in the s.p.a.ce of an ordinary corn field, Captain Villiam Brown placed himself at their head, and, flanked by a canteen and an adjutant, the combined pageant was just about to move on a reconnoitering expedition as I came up.
"Ha!" said Villiam, hastily placing his s.h.i.+rt-frill over the neck of a bottle that accidentally peeped from his bosom--"I am about to lead these n.o.ble beings on the path of glory, and you shall partic.i.p.ate in the beams."
Without a word, I turned his left wing; and as the band, which consisted of a fat Dutchman and a night-key bugle, struck up "Drops of Brandy," we moved onward, like the celestial vision of childhood's dream.
Like the radiance of a higher heaven streaming through the golden-tinted windows of some grand old cathedral, fell the softened light of that April afternoon, on budding Nature, as we halted before a piece of woods just this side of Strasburg. On the new leaves of the trees in front of us the suns.h.i.+ne coined a thousand phantom cataracts of specie, and in the vale below us a delicate purple shadow wrestled with the hill-reflected fire of the sun. Deep silence fell on Company 3, Regiment 5, Mackerel Brigade; the band put his instrument on the ring with the key of his trunk, and Villiam softly reconnoitred through a spy-gla.s.s furnished with a cork. Suddenly the tones of a rich, manly voice swelled up from the bosom of the valley.
"Hus.h.!.+" says Villiam, sternly eyeing the band, who had just hiccupped--"'tis the song of the Contrabands."
[Ill.u.s.tration]
We all listened, and could distinctly hear the following words of the singer:
"They're holding camp-meeting in Hickory Swamp, O, let my people go; De preacher's so dark dat he carry um lamp, O, let my people go.
De brudders am singing dis jubilee tune, O, let my people go; Two dollars a year for de Weekly Tribune, O, let my people go!"
As the strain died away in the distance, the adjutant slapped his left leg.
"Why," said he, dreamily, "that must be Greeley down there."
"No!" says Villiam, solemnly, "it is one of the wronged children of tyranny warbling the suppressed hymn of his injured people. It is a sign," says Villiam, trembling with bravery, "that the Southern Confederacy is somewhere around; for when you hear the squeak of the agonized rat," said Villiam, philosophically, "you may be sure that the sanguinary terrier is on
Scarcely had he spoken, my boy, when there emerged from the edge of the wood before us a rebel company, headed by an officer of hairy countenance and much s.h.i.+rt collar. This officer's face was a whisker plantation, through which his eyes peeped forth like two snakes coiled up in a window-brush. His dress was shoddy, his air was toddy, and a yard of valuable stair-carpet enveloped his manly shoulders.
"Halt!" said he to his file of reptiles, whose general effect was that of a congress of rag-merchants just come in from a happy speculation in George-Law muskets.
"Sir," said the officer, bowing in a graceful semicircle, "I am somewhat in the First Family way, own a plantation, drink but little water at home, and have the honor to be Captain Munchausen, of the Southern Confederacy."
"Dost fence?" says Villiam, grimly drawing his sword.
"Fence!" says Captain Munchausen, also drawing his disguised crowbar.
"Didst ever hear, boy, or read, of that great fencer of the olden time, the Chevalier St. George?"
"Often," says Villiam, in a tone that was as plainly the echo of a lie as is that of the delicate female eater of slate-pencils, when she says that she never could bear pork and beans.
"Well," says Captain Munchausen, haughtily, "the chevalier was so extremely jealous of my superior skill, that he actually went and died nearly a hundred years before I was born."
"Soap," says Villiam, like one talking in his sleep, "is sometimes made with powerful lie."
"By Chivalry!" says Captain Munchausen, cholerically; "I swear, I never told a single lie in all my life."
"A _single_ lie!" says Villiam, abstractedly; "ah, no! for the lies of the Southern Confederacy are all married, and have large families."
This domestic speech, my boy, was too much for Munchausen. Asking one of the rag merchants to hold his three-ply overcoat, and carefully removing his fragmentary cap, that none of the cold potatoes should spill out of it, he planted the remains of his right boot slightly in advance of the skeleton of his left, and thundered:
"'Sblood!"
Quick as the lightning leaps along the cloud did Captain Villiam Brown send the great toe of his dexter foot to meet that of his foe; his Damascus blade lay across the opposing brand, and he whispered:
"'Sdeath!"
It was a beautiful sight--by Minerva it was!
"Stop!" says Villiam, suddenly hauling in his weapon again; "it shall never be said that I took advantage of a foeman."
As he uttered these memorable words, my boy, this ornament of the service plucked an infant demijohn from his fearless bosom and magnanimously pa.s.sed it to his antagonist.
A soft commotion was visible in the whiskers of Captain Munchausen--the suburb of a smile as it were; a cavern opened in their midst, the vessel ascended curvilinearly thereto, and the sound was as the trickling of water down a mountain gulch.
The adjutant took his seat on the sleeping body of the band, and with pencil and paper prepared to record the combat. The opposing champions faced each other, and as Villiam once more raised his blade he smiled horribly.
Then, my boy, was witnessed a scene to make old Charlemagne's paladins dance High-jinks in their graves, and call all the Arturian knights to life again. _Carte et tierce!_ but it was a spectacle for Hector and Achilles. With swords pointed straight at each other's noses did the valorous heroes skip wildly back, and then as wildly forward. Slam!
bang! crack! smack! right and left! over and under! parry, feint, and _premiere force_! Now did they hop fierily along on opposite sides of the road, eyeing each other like demoniac Thomas Cats upon the moonlit fence. Ever and anon did they dart furiously to the centre, cutting the blessed atmosphere to invisible splinters, and slaying imaginary legions.
But a crisis was at hand! In one of his terrible chops, the cool and collected Villiam brought his deadly weapon down full upon the knuckles of the enemy. But for the fact that Villiam's sword was not quite as sharp as the side of an ordinary three-story house, Munchausen's hand would never more have wielded trenchant blade. As it was, he hastily dashed his brand to the ground, crammed his knuckles into his mouth, struck up an impa.s.sioned dance, and mumbled, in extreme agitation:
"Golfire your cursed abolition soul!"
It was beautiful, my boy, to see how the calm Villiam leaned upon his sword and smiled.
"Ah!" says Villiam, "so perish the foes of the Union, the Const.i.tution, and the Enforcement of the Laws. I have bruised the Confederacy.--Adjutant!"
says Villiam, in a sudden burst of pardonable exultation, "score one for the United States of America!"
Now it happened, my boy, that, as Villiam said this, he turned to where the adjutant was sitting, and bent down to give particular directions.
His body was thus made to a.s.sume somewhat of the shape of the letter U, the curve being sharply toward the enemy. In an instant Captain Munchausen regained his sword, grasped it after the manner of a flail, and, with a prodigious spank, applied it to the unguarded portion of my hero's anatomy.
High sprang the almost a.s.sa.s.sinated Villiam into the air, with sparks pouring from his eyes, and Union oaths hissing from his working jaws.
"Adjutant!" roared Captain Munchausen, "score one for the Southern Confederacy!"
No sooner had Villiam reached the ground and picked up the cork that had fallen from his bosom as he ascended, than he plunged rampagiously at his adversary, and aimed a blow at his head that must have taken it off had Captain Munchausen been about a yard taller. As it was, the stroke mercilessly split the air, and caused my hero to spin like a mighty top.
In vain did the shameless Confederate swordsman endeavor to get in a hit as Villiam went round; the sword of the Union met him at every turn, and right quickly was the avenging blade humming around his head again. Inspired with the strength of Hercules, the endurance of Prometheus, and the fire of Pluto, the gorgeous Villiam Brown went at his work once more, like a feller of great trees, and in another moment his awful blade tw.a.n.ged upon the foeman's head.
Down went Captain Munchausen singing inverted psalms, with a whole nest of rockets exploding in his brain. Pale turned his rag merchants at the sight, and one of them immediately deserted to our side and swore that he had always been a Union man.
Villiam leaned upon his blade, and kindly remarked:
"His head is broken; I heard it crack."
"'Tis false!" says Captain Munchausen, gloomily; "that is an old crack--I've had it ever since I was a boy."
"Ah!" says Villiam, airily, "I'm afraid my blow has caused more than one funeral in the inseck kingdom, for the cut went right through the hair. Have a comb?" says Villiam, pleasantly.