singular and primitive warfare. Of the
hundreds who unavoidably saw the apparition (for apparition it certainly
seemed) not one will ever forget it or remember it without a shudder.
The figure was that of a very tall man, evidently of immense natural
strength, with a face shrunk to skeleton thinness and terrible staring
eyes rendered more fearful by the heavy red beard and long matted hair.
It was dressed in what appeared to be white trousers, but barefoot; and
its upper clothing seemed to be a shirt beneath and a loose flowing
white robe hanging from the shoulders. In its hand this terrible figure
carried a club of green sapling oak, heavily knotted at the end, about
five feet in length, two inches in diameter at the butt and tapering to
where it was grasped at the lower end. A more effective weapon in close
combat could not be devised; and with this weapon, and with fierce yells
that seemed like those emanating from the throat of an infuriate madman,
this strange combatant began laying about him in the rebel ranks,
crushing heads, breaking arms, and killing and disabling scores of armed
men. No sword could reach him, and no bullet appeared to strike him,
though dozens of the rebels discharged muskets and even revolvers at
him, at close range, when it began to be apparent on which side he was
fighting. Up went that mighty flail, and down it came again on the heads
of the human tares of rebeldom who so needed threshing out in the very
garner of wrath. More than one of the Union men in the vicinity of the
strange spectacle, who happened to have been classic readers in other
days, gazing at the white figure and its terrible prowess, thought of
Castor and Pollux and the apparitions in white which decided the battle
on the shore of Lake Regilius, when the Thirty Cities warred against
Rome. But there was nothing of the supernatural in this figure; for
after a few moments of wonderful immunity in the midst of that plunging
fire, and after a destruction of life which seemed really wonderful to
be accomplished by one single man,--fate withdrew the shield which had
been interposed before him. The great club was full uplifted in the air,
when the combatants saw him suddenly waver and stagger, then saw the
deadly weapon drop, a stream of spouting blood from the wounded breast
gush over the white garment, and that tall figure and ghastly face sink
downward to the earth, one last long yell, wilder and more fearful than
any that had p