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The men will suppose you are one of the drummers I am taking with me, to serve as a messenger, or something of that sort. That way you can follow close behind me, while I am posting the sentries after leaving the main body at the guardhouse. After posting the last man at the seashore, I can turn off with you for a few yards, as if giving you an order.
The sentries at the gates on the previous evening would be questioned, and when it was found that no one answering to his description had passed out before these were closed, there would be a rigid search throughout the city and port. The vessels would all be examined, and the boatmen questioned as to whether any craft was missing.
Charioteers swore full-mouthed oaths and smote slaves; horses reared and plunged and bearers hurried back through the dark with empty chairs. Meanwhile the pacing sentries made frank criticism and gazed at each alighting new-comer with eyes of connoisseurs.
The entire front was brilliantly illuminated; the long, regularly aligned array of stacks stood out against the darkness, and the ruddy blaze, reflected from the burnished barrels of the rifles, assumed the hue of new-shed blood; the erect, stern figures of the sentries became visible in the fiery glow.
He saw that this "peace method" would have to be given up; sentries in future would have to remain in the trenches. Intermittently throughout the whole night firing continued. A searchlight had been played continually on the lines, and if anything, the artillery duel began before it was light. This was his first opportunity to watch shell fire.
At ordinary times I have no doubt there were sentries, but Sandy and Hussin had probably managed to clear them off this end for a little. Anyhow he saw nobody as he crossed the road and dived into the snowy fields. He knew very well that he must do the job in the twelve hours of darkness ahead of him.
But he terminated his first steps in the school of "Hardee's Tactics," the standard text-book of the period, by bringing his awkward squad from the servants' hall, and, relieving the sentries, replaced the genuine with these tyros. For the sake of the vacation they, the regulars, bowed to the commission with its potent Stanton and Lincoln, and United States Army seal.
So he had passed beyond the challenge of the sentries who had stood as guardians of his boyhood and had sought to keep him among them that he might be subject to them and serve their ends. Pride after satisfaction uplifted him like long slow waves.
The guard consisted of a non-commissioned officer and nine men three sentries being furnished for the necessary duties one for the stores already described another for the commanding officer's quarters the mess-room and the surgery, and the third for the, southern bastion, upon which floated the glorious stars and stripes of the Union.
Those who were doomed to die rolled their heads about gently; others dragged themselves along and brought them drink. The sentries walked up and down along the narrow paths in order to warm themselves, or stood in a fierce attitude with their faces turned towards the horizon, and their pikes on their shoulders.
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