light. Once more we
encountered a battery, making five in all; I could hear the guns of the
assailants, and could not distinguish the explosion of their shells
from the answering throb of our own guns. The kind Quartermaster kept
bringing me news of what occurred, like Rebecca in Front-de-Boeuf s
castle, but discreetly withholding any actual casualties. Then all faded
into safety and sleep; and we reached Beaufort in the morning, after
thirty-six hours of absence. A kind friend, who acted in South Carolina
a nobler part amid tragedies than in any of her early stage triumphs,
met us with an ambulance at the wharf, and the prisoners, the wounded,
and the dead were duly attended.

The reader will not care for any personal record of convalescence;
though, among the general military laudations of whiskey, it is worth
while to say that one life was saved, in the opinion of my surgeons,
by an habitual abstinence from it, leaving no food for peritoneal
inflammation to feed upon. The able-bodied men who had joined us were,
sent to aid General Gillmore in the trenches, while their families
were established in huts and tents on St. Helena Island. A year after,
greatly to the delight of the regiment, in taking possession of a
battery which they had helped to capture on James Island, they found in
their hands the selfsame guns which they had seen thrown overboard from
the Governor Milton. They then felt that their account with the enemy
was squared, and could proceed to further operations.

Before the war, how great a thing seemed the rescue of even one man from
slavery; and since the war has emancipated all, how little seems the
liberation of two hundred! But no one then knew how the contest might
end; and when I think of that morning sunlight, those emerald fields,
those thronging numbers, the old women with their prayers, and the
little boys with them: living burdens, I know that the day was worth all
it cost, and more.

Chapter 8. The Baby of the Regiment

We were in our winter camp on Port Royal Island. It was a lovely
November morning, soft and spring-like; the mocking-birds were singing,
and the cotton-fields still white with fleecy pods. Morning drill was
over, the men were cleaning their guns and singing very happily; the
officers were in their tents, reading still more happily their letters
just arrived from home. Suddenly I heard a knock at my tent-door, and
the latch clicked. It was the only latch in camp, a