The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 1, July, 1862. Various
of the horse beneath the surface.
The dog ranged up and down on the opposite bank, but all to no purpose: the overseer had not been there. He had gone either up or down the stream—in which direction, was now the question. Calling Sandy back to our side of the run, the Colonel proceeded to hold a 'council of war.' Each one gave his opinion, which was canvassed by the others, with as much solemnity as if the fate of the Union hung on the decision.
The native proposed we should separate—one go up, another down the stream, and the third, with the dog, follow the road; to which he thought Moye had finally returned. Those who should explore the run would easily detect the horse's tracks where he had left it, and then taking a straight course to the road, we could all meet some five miles further on, at a place indicated.
I gave in my adhesion to Sandy's plan, but the Colonel overruled it on the ground of the waste of time to be incurred in thus recovering the overseer's trail.
'Why not,' he said, 'strike at once for the end of his route? Why follow the slow steps he took in order to throw us off the track? He has not come back to this road. Six miles below there is another one leading also to the railway. He has taken that. We might as well send Sandy and the dog back at once, and go on by ourselves.'
'But if bound for the Station, why should he wade through the creek here, sis miles out of his way? Why not go straight on by the road?' I asked.
'Because he knew the dog would track him, and he hoped by taking to the run to make me think he had crossed the country instead of striking for the railroad.'
I felt sure the Colonel was wrong, but knowing him to be tenacious of his own opinions, I made no further objection.
Directing Sandy to call on Madam P– and acquaint her with our progress, he then dismissed the negro-hunter, and we once more turned our horses up the road.
The next twenty miles, like our previous route, lay through an unbroken forest, but as we left the water-courses, we saw nothing but the gloomy pines, which there—the region being remote from the means of transportation—were seldom tapped, and presented few of the openings that invite the weary traveler to the dwelling of the hospitable planter.
After a time the sky, which had been bright and cloudless all the morning, grew overcast and gave out tokens of a coming storm. A black cloud gathered in the west, and random flashes darted from it far off in the distance; then gradually it neared us; low mutterings sounded in the air, and the tops of the tall pines a few miles away, were lit up now and then with a fitful blaze, all the brighter for the deeper gloom that succeeded. Then a terrific flash and peal broke directly over us, and a great tree, struck by a red-hot bolt, fell with a deafening crash, half-way across our path. Peal after peal followed, and then the rain—not filtered into drops as it falls from our colder sky, but in broad, blinding sheets, poured full and heavy on our shelterless heads.
'Ah! there it comes!' shouted the Colonel. 'God have mercy upon us!'
Suddenly a crashing, crackling, thundering roar rose above the storm, filling the air, and shaking the solid earth till it trembled beneath our horses' feet, as if upheaved by a volcano. Nearer and nearer the sound came, till it seemed that all the legions of darkness were unloosed in the forest, and were mowing down the great pines as the mower mows the grass with big scythe. Then an awful, sweeping crash thundered directly at our backs, and turning round, as if to face a foe, my horse, who had borne the roar and the blinding flash till then, unmoved, paralyzed with dread, and panting for breath, sunk to the ground; while close at my side the Colonel, standing erect in his stirrups, his head uncovered to the pouring sky, cried out:
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