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Updated: June 26, 2025
As the sun went down a gray chill fog arose from the river and the lowlying shores and fell down over the little city like a thin wet veil, blurring and softening and reddening the light from the innumerable camp-fires, built under the dark shadows of overhanging trees, and the broad glows coming from canvas houses and tents, lighted from within, and the bright glares that poured through the doors and windows of the more brilliantly illuminated dance-halls and gambling-hells, giving to all a weird and dream-like aspect, fascinating, romantic, and beautiful.
With great secrecy he prepared an army and went forth once more against the city with which he had been engaged in warfare for so many years. So swift was Mohammed's advance and so secret had his plans been kept that the Meccans knew nothing of his approach until they saw the camp-fires of his mighty army shining about their walls.
The smell of fresh wood smoke and stale damp fire came to our nostrils. We gained the star and found it to be a log smouldering; and up the hill other stars red as blood. So we knew that we had crossed the zone of an almost extinct forest fire, and looked on the scattered camp-fires of an army of destruction. The moon rose.
We loved the hunt, the camp-fires, the sacred feasts, the legends of the Mighty Men; and the earth was a good friend, whom we knew as the child knows its mother." She paused. Something seemed to arrest her attention. Frank followed her eyes. She was watching Captain Vidall and Marion.
As I passed through the angle formed by the creek and the river, about half a mile from home, there came to my cars the cheery clink-clink of hobble-chains, the jangle of horse-bells, and the gleam of a dozen camp-fires. The shearing was done out in Riverina now, and the men were all going home.
"I'm glad, too, Hawk, terribly glad." The sun was crimsoning; the wind grew chilly. The beach was scattered with camp-fires. Their own fire settled into compact live coals which, in the dusk of the dune-hollow, spread over the million bits of quartz a glow through which pirouetted the antic sand-fleas.
Camp-fires still burning enabled me to steer clear of the road, but it was midnight when I reached my aunt's, and, going to the negro cabin farthest from her dwelling, I succeeded, after a long time, in getting "Uncle" Mose to venture out of his door. He said he thought the Yankees were all gone, but to wait till he crept up to the house and let "Ole Miss" know I was about.
Here she had hoped to find true confidence; but as she listened to the talk of the armed soldiers who surrounded the camp-fires in dense circles, she heard that Uri's proposal had reached them also.
In the morning two of them returned to pick up some things that had been left; they found that the alarm had been false, for the utensils that had been overlooked in the confusion were undisturbed, and a negro who had been left behind in the hurry was still sleeping quietly by the camp-fires. On the 20th of the month they reached the Ohio.
The weather was fine; camp-fires blazed cheerfully lighting up bronzed and swarthy men, comely women, and healthy children, with a ruddy glow, while merry laughter now and then rose above the general hum, for children care little for unfelt distress, and grown people easily forget it in present comfort. Ruined though they were, many of them felt only the warmth of the hour.
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