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Updated: June 12, 2025
The constant tramp of soldiers' feet echoed along the side-walks of this erstwhile quiet, Southern town. Sentries stood on the corners challenging passers-by, wharves creaked under the loads of ordnance and quartermasters' stores. Army wagons and ambulances were constantly passing in the street, all strange and novel at first to the Mountain Boys but soon familiar.
When Gilbert reached the outskirts of Charleston, he checked the advance of the enemy long enough to enable the quartermasters at the post to move their trains across the Elk; but the haste of the evacuation was so great that the stores in depot there were not removed, and were burned to prevent their falling into the enemy's hands.
"Now, my lads, we will heave the log," said the boatswain, when the ship was well out from the land. "We know how to do that," replied Smith, one of the quartermasters. "I dare say you do, young gentlemen; but in my opinion, you can't do it. You know how to write a psalm, but I don't believe you could write one," added Peaks.
Surajah and Dick were generally with the party that went on with the quartermasters, and, as soon as the camping ground was fixed upon, aided them in the purchase of forage and food from the natives, as it was most desirable that the forty days' provisions the army carried with it should remain intact, until the army had passed up the ghauts.
Neither do I mean to say that the commissaries and quartermasters did not do all that they possibly could to land and forward supplies of all kinds. I mean only that, as a result of our inability to surmount difficulties promptly, our army at the front was not properly equipped and our wounded were not adequately cared for.
This double end will not be so difficult of attainment as might at first sight seem, for the reason that the solution of any problem which represents a situation actually probable will automatically provide all the minor situations necessary to drill the various bodies; and the more inherently probable a situation is, the more probable will be the situations in which the various flag-officers, captains, quartermasters, engineers' forces, turret crews, etc., will find themselves.
"All asleep in the steerage, sir," he said. Then a quartermaster entered with the same report of the forecastles. "Very well," said the captain, rising; "one by one come into my office watchmen first, then petty officers, then the men. Quartermasters will watch the door that no man goes out until I have seen him."
The oldest quartermasters took their places near the helm, and others, assisted by a small body of men, manned the relieving tackles below, to be used in case, as frequently happened, the wheel should be shot away.
But meanwhile I was not getting the long hours of unbroken sleep the heavy mental toil of enumeration requires. Free government bachelor quarters makes strange bed-fellows or at least room-fellows. Quartermasters, like justice, are hopelessly blind or I might have been assigned quarters upon the financial knoll where habits and hours were a bit more in keeping with my own.
So, after a while, processions of freebooting soldiers, foraging Quartermasters, deaf gentlemen, Fogg's regiment, and multitudes of ghosts from Manassas, drifted by in my dreams. And, in the end, Miss Bessie's long curls brushed into my eyes, and I found the morning, ruddy as her cheeks, blushing at the window.
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