Chapter XLIII: Deliverance at Last

Who knew, she thought, what the amazement,
The eruption of clatter and blaze meant,
And if, in this morning of wonder,
No outlet mid lightning and thunder,
Lay broad, and her shackles all shivered,
The captive, at last, was delivered?
Aye, that was the open sky o’erhead!
And you saw by the flash in her forehead,
By the hope in those eyes, broad and steady,
She was leagues o’er the free earth already.—ROBERT BROWNING.

“I was sick, and in prison and ye visited me not!”

Ah! in all our great cities, how many human beings there are “sick and in prison,” whose lot is much more miserable than that of the poorest beggar who enjoys the free air! These are not always criminals, but they are almost always friendless; for who dreams of visiting them?

“I was sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not!” These pathetic words of Our Saviour recurred to my mind, with my recollection of one heroic young woman, who, for no other crime than that of serving her country according to her own conscience, was, for a great length of time, confined in the solitary cell of a Confederate prison.

Britomarte, for many weary months, remained a captive in Castle Thunder. The tediousness, the heaviness, the wretchedness of this captivity, who can imagine?

She was more than a suspected spy in the hands of the enemy, and as such, she was only saved from the usual fate of a spy by that consideration for her sex which restrained her captors from putting a woman to death for anything less than a capital crime proved upon her—not by circumstantial evidence, but by direct testimony.

Yet was her captivity even more bitter and terrible than death. She was debarred from books, newspapers, companionship, and from conversation, even with her guards. She could get no intelligence of her friends or her country.

Whether Colonel Rosenthal had recovered, or had died of his wounds, or whether he had been exchanged, or was still a prisoner at Belle Isle, she could not surmise.

Whether General Grant had crossed the James and invested Richmond, or whether the Army of the Potomac had again been beaten back to Washington, she did not know.

Occasionally, from the shouts that filled the city sheets by day, and the lights that illumined the city windows by night, she conjectured that a Confederate victory had been gained, or a false report of such a victory spread.

These were her only sources of even conjecture.

In solitude, in silence, in idleness, in close confinement, intense anxiety and maddening suspense, the heavy days and nights, the horrible autumn and winter of her captivity crept slowly into the past. For months her brave soul bore nobly up.

But as the spring opened, bringing life and light and beauty to all the earth, but no ray of joy, or hope, or comfort, into her prison cell, her body, soul and spirit all broke down.

These were the darkest hours of her long dreary night of misery, but like such hours, they fell just before the dawn of her new, sweet day of joy.

It was the ever memorable second of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-five. Up to this day, the great Confederate capital had continued confident in its own fancied security, and even now it was as utterly unconscious of its fast approaching capture, as was the solitary prisoner in Castle Thunder of her quickly coming deliverance.

It was Sunday, and the sweet Sabbath peace reigned over the city.

Britomarte sat at the grated window of her cell, as she had sat—how many heavy days and sleepless nights! She was almost as fleshless as a skeleton, as bloodless as a corpse, and as hopeless as a lost spirit. She had been listening to the solemn Sabbath bells calling the citizens to their afternoon worship; she had been watching these citizens, both male and female, young and old, troop past, in their quaint, faded, and old-fashioned apparel, that the severity of the blockade compelled them still to wear, and she had been wondering wearily at the strange self-delusion and inconsistency which permitted these people to collect and pray like Christians in their churches, and to muster and make war like heathen upon their brethren.

But now the bells had ceased to ring, the churches were filled, and the streets were empty. Her head dropped upon her hand, and she sat in dull despair, while the hours crept slowly by, and the sun sank slowly to his setting.

Then the cry of her heart went up:

“‘How long, O Lord, how long?’”

Not long now, oh pale prisoner! “The day of the Lord is at hand, at hand.” The sun has set for the last time upon the Rebel capital. To-morrow it will rise upon a redeemed city.

Even now Lee’s army is in full retreat. And those Sabbath bells you late heard ringing summoned, among others, one worshipper to church, who ere he left his pew again, received a telegram announcing, in effect, that his reign was over and his city about to be taken.

Even now the trains of cars at the station of the Richmond and Danville Railroad are seized for the use of the Confederate President and his retinue, who are about to fly from the falling capital. Breckenridge and his army have received orders to evacuate Richmond by midnight; but he has resolved to leave behind him a tremendous token of vengeance by destroying the city that they could not hold. There is an ever-increasing noise and confusion throughout the city, though as yet the people are kept in ignorance and do not know what all the excitement is about.

Britomarte, sitting at the grated window of her prison cell, and seeing the crowds hurry through the streets, thought at first that they were the congregations dismissed from the several churches.

But as the crowds became multitudes, and the confusion became uproar, she began to think that news of some great battle had been received; but whether the people were howling over a defeat or hurrahing over a victory, she could _not_ discover.

While she was enduring this suspense, the door of her cell was unlocked, and the guard, or turnkey, who attended her, brought in the cup of unsalted corn meal gruel that formed her usual supper.

For months she had ceased to speak to her guards, because they had been forbidden to hold any conversation with her. But now the unexplained uproar of the whole city, the excited looks of this man, and her own intense anxiety, irresistibly impelled her to question him.

“What is the matter outside?” she eagerly inquired.

He hesitated a moment, glanced at her anxious countenance, and then, with a harsh laugh, he answered:

“Don’t you know? The Army of the Potomac is utterly destroyed. Grant and all his generals are taken prisoners, and are on their way to the city. And the mob mean to lynch them, if the president and the general don’t prevent it.”

“My God!” exclaimed Britomarte; and the cup of gruel fell untasted from her hands.

Having told this bitter falsehood, the guard picked up the fragments of the broken cup, and, laughing sarcastically, left the cell, and locked the door.

Britomarte remained with her hands lifted in appeal to Heaven.

Did she then believe the terrible tale? Not entirely; nor did the mocking guard expect that she would do so.

But she was enfeebled and enervated in body and mind by her long solitary confinement; and she succumbed to the shock of that announcement before she could reflect upon its improbability.

When, however, she had time to recover her composure, and to arrange her thoughts, she perceived that the guard had gone too far in hinting that the mob proposed to lynch the illustrious prisoners said to have been taken. And in utterly rejecting this part of the story as impossible, she was led to question the whole of it as improbable. Though this conclusion saved her from despair, it did not moderate her anxiety.

She pressed her face to the bars of her prison window, and watched and listened with “all” her eyes and ears to discover if possible the true cause of all the uproar in the city.

The night was now quite dark, or would have been so but for the gas lamps at the corners.

A torrent of human beings rushed through the streets, a confusion of many tongues rose on the air.

“What _can_ be the matter?” she asked of herself for the hundredth time. “If there really should have been a recent Confederate victory, as the guard stated, I shall soon know. In that case there will be an impromptu and partial illumination to-night, and a concerted and general one to-morrow night.”

But the hours crept on towards midnight, and there was no illumination.

Meanwhile the multitude of people, ever increasing in number and gathering in force, continued to roll on like a river with resistless impetuosity through the streets; and the babel of many voices to whirl like a tornado in a ceaseless roar up into the midnight air. Yet these voices were not the utterances of victors; these fierce invectives and deep maledictions were not exclamations of joy or triumph!

What could be their purport then?

Britomarte could not answer. She could only watch and listen in intense anxiety and awful suspense.

At length the bell of some neighboring public building tolled.

And simultaneously with this knell there rolled up into the cool night air, against the clear purple sky, a huge, black, crimson and sulphurous volume of smoke!

The illumination was about to appear, but not in the character she had expected to see it.

This was a fire, she knew, but whence or where she knew not. She could only watch and listen as before.

The black and crimson smoke speedily burst into flame, and all the earth and all the heavens were lighted up as by a general conflagration.

So might have belched forth the subterranean fires of Vesuvius upon the doomed cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii!

Viewed from her window, the scene was wild, splendid and magnificent beyond description. Against the broadening sheets of flame the city buildings stood up black, stark and spectral, while all the crowded streets between them formed a Pandemonium.

The ocean of fire rolled on and on. Every nook of the city was intensely illuminated. The inside of her own cell was so dazzlingly lighted up that she had to close her eyes, at intervals, to relieve them of the blinding glare. And the sea of flame rolled on and on!

And the horror was presently augmented, when, with tremendous reports that rent the air and shook the ground like an earthquake, magazine after magazine exploded, sending blazing timbers, bricks, mortar, and every description of ignited missile, whirling through the city; while a driving shower of sparks and burning coals fell like the rain of fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah!

“Grant is before the inner line of intrenchments, and is shelling the city,” was the natural conclusion of Britomarte, as she heard the detonating thunder of the frequent explosions, the dreadful crash of falling buildings, and the fierce cries of the infuriated mob; as she saw the flood of flame and the rain of burning coals.

“And when he takes the city, at what a stupendous cost of life. It will be utterly destroyed, with all its people. And we, the Union prisoners, will find our only deliverance through a death by fire.”

And Britomarte sank to her knees, and covered her eyes, and bowed her head, and prayed—not in fear for herself, for she was brave to meet the fire, but in pity for the innocent children, the delicate women, the suffering invalids, and all the helpless and harmless that she thought must go down with the strong and the guilty in this general destruction.

Long and earnestly she prayed to the Lord of Heaven and earth to mitigate the horrors of this most horrible night.

When at length she arose, and looked out upon the burning city, she beheld a scene which, in its sublime terrors, overwhelmed her senses, and brought to her appalled soul the vision of “that dreadful day, that day of wrath,” when the firmament shall melt with a fervid heat, the heavens be rolled together as a scroll, and the sun, moon and stars be blotted out.

The flood of flame rolled and roared on and on with devouring fury; the rain of fire and burning cinders fell thick and blinding as a hailstorm. And the explosion of shells, torpedoes and powder magazines still rent the sky and shook the earth. And the groans and the curses of men, and the shrieks of women and children, filled the air!

Overcome with horror in her weakened condition, she who had often led the charge in person to the very cannon’s mouth, now shrank away, covered her face with her hands, reeled and fell on her prison floor in a deadly swoon.

In a mercifully permitted unconsciousness, she lay for nearly two hours.

When she recovered day had dawned, and the unhallowed glare of the conflagration was fading in the blessed beams of the rising sun.

There were no more explosions. The supposed bombardment seemed to have ceased. And with its cessation, the shower of sparks, and burning cinders, and the whirling storm of fiery missiles had passed away. The flames still raged and roared up into the sky, but they did not seem to spread, and they looked paler and less terrible by daylight. There was still a multitudinous sound of many feet and many tongues in the streets, but the character of these sounds had changed. They were eager, joyous, triumphant!

Stiff and sore, bewildered and confused, she arose and went to the grated window, and looked forth.

Oh! joy! joy! joy! Deliverance at last? The street was filled with a procession of dark figures, but these figures wore the blue uniform of the United States soldiers! She recognized them. Her regiment had stood beside them on many a well-fought field, and last of all at Cold Harbor, where she had been taken prisoner! They were a detachment of the colored soldiers forming Weitzel’s Division of the gallant Ninth Corps.

And they were about to open her prison doors!

Now, while they halted in the middle of the street in front of the prison, they were hailed and welcomed with tears and praises by the colored population that filled the sidewalk.

They were officered by young white men; one of those attracted Britomarte’s especial attention. He was a gallant little fellow, full of fire, spirit and vivacity. He was mounted on a fine horse, and rode hither and thither, maintaining order among his excited soldiers and their overjoyed friends.

Britomarte knew him, or had known him, as little Mim, and he had known and admired her but only as Miss Conyers. Afterwards, when she was known as Captain Wing, and he as Private Mim, she had recognized him again, but he had not identified her in her new character. At the battle of Cold Harbor, where she had been taken prisoner, he had still been a private. Now, however, he wore the uniform of a commissioned officer, though of what grade she could not, from her point of view, determine.

She seized the bars of her grated window, and shook and rattled them; she put her wasted hand through, them and waved it; she called and shouted, but her voice was weak, and the din below was deafening; so that she failed to attract attention until Major Mim, happening to look up, saw the wasted hand waving through the grated window. He did not recognize Miss Conyers then, but he saw that the pale hand belonged to an imprisoned _woman_, and that was quite enough to fire the blood of such a devoted “squire of dames” as Major Mim.

He had been just on the point of opening the prison doors to release such of our people as he might happen to find there, this being his appointed duty on the premises, but now he hurried his movements.

Calling to four or five subordinate officers to follow him, he entered the prison. There were none to resist him. The guards had run away hours before.

Britomarte, in her cell, heard the rushing footsteps of her deliverers. They spread themselves throughout all the lobbies of the prison.

But the squad led by little Mim came hurrying towards her door, and paused in much excitement before it. This door was locked and barred on the outside, and it required some little time and force before it could be broken open.

Then Major Mim, with his face fiery from exertion and excitement, rushed in.

“You are free, Madam!” he exclaimed, lifting his cap to Britomarte, but failing to recognize her.

“Don’t you know me”—she hesitated a moment to glance at his straps and ascertain his precise rank—“Major Mim? Don’t you know me?”

“Heaven and earth! It is Miss Conyers!” exclaimed little Mim, in consternation.

“Or what remains of her,” added Britomarte, with a wan smile.

“In the name of Providence, how came you here?” demanded Mim.

“I was taken as a suspected spy. The story is too long to tell you now, Major. But tell me news of our army. I am dying, yes, dying to hear.”

“We have got Richmond,” said Mim.

“I see that. But Colonel Rosenthal?”

“He is with General Grant.”

“And General Grant?”

“Is gone after Lee.”

“And Lee?”

“In full retreat down the valley, half his army destroyed, the other half doomed.”

“So Richmond is ours. Thank Heaven! But oh, why did you set the city on fire? Was that necessary?”

“_We_ set the city on fire! No, thank Heaven, Miss Conyers, the crime of burning this beautiful city does not rest on our souls. It seems to have been set on fire either by the evacuating party or by the excited mob, we do not know which, but we do know that when we marched in we found the city in flames, and that our first business was to go to work, as fast as we could, to put it out. And although the wretches that fired the city also cut the hose, we are still, by the blessing of God, bringing the flames under.”

“Thank Heaven for that! Tell me more news of our friends. Who has fallen? Who survive?”

“Miss Conyers, it seems to me, speaking broadly, that all who are not killed are promoted. Among the killed, Miss Conyers, is that gallant young fellow they used to call the ‘Destroying Angel,’ on account of his fiery impetuosity.”

“Who?” inquired Britomarte.

“You know—he who was so adored in the whole brigade. What was his name again? I am the worst hand at names. I seem to get the idea without the word. What was it again? Bird?—no. Dash?—no. Spring?—no. But it was something with a _rush_ in it. WING! That was it. Ah, poor fellow!”

“What of him?” inquired Britomarte, suppressing a laugh.

“Missing—missing for nearly a year past. Dead, of course; lost among heaps of dead in the trenches, or the rivers, or the woods, or in the ditches of the Rebel prisons. Colonel Rosenthal has done all he could to discover traces of his fate, but in vain. And I really think the uncertainty wears upon the colonel.”

“Perhaps Wing may yet be found in some of the rebel prisons of Richmond,” suggested Britomarte.

“Heaven grant it. Yet it is not likely. Come, Miss Conyers; you look worn and wasted. Let me take you somewhere where you can be comfortably lodged and refreshed. Colonel O’Neill has his quarters at the Goldsborough House. His wife is with him. I know they will gladly welcome you. Will you let me take you there for the present?”

“Thanks, yes! Anywhere—anywhere—out of this horrible place!” said Britomarte.

Major Mim ordered an ambulance brought up, placed Miss Conyers in it, and conveyed her to the quarters of Colonel O’Neill, where she was warmly welcomed and affectionately tended by that gallant officer’s amiable wife.