Another man died that night.
What was our chagrin, the next morning, to learn that we must go
back to the "Newbern," to carry some freight from up-river. There
was nothing to do but stay on board and tow that dreary barge,
filled with hot, red, baked-looking ore, out to the ship, unload,
and go back up the slue. Jack's diary records: "Aug. 23rd. Heat
awful. Pringle died to-day." He was the third soldier to succumb.
It seemed to me their fate was a hard one. To die, down in that
wretched place, to be rolled in a blanket and buried on those
desert shores, with nothing but a heap of stones to mark their
graves.
The adjutant of the battalion read the burial service, and the
trumpeters stepped to the edge of the graves and sounded "Taps,"
which echoed sad and melancholy far over those parched and arid
lands. My eyes filled with tears, for one of the soldiers was
from our own company, and had been kind to me.
Jack said: "You mustn't cry, Mattie; it's a soldier's life, and
when a man enlists he must take his chances."
"Yes, but," I said, "somewhere there must be a mother or sister,
or some one who cares for these poor men, and it's all so sad to
think of."
"Well, I know it is sad," he replied, soothingly, "but listen! It
is all over, and the burial party is returning."
I listened and heard the gay strains of "The girl I left behind
me," which the trumpeters were playing with all their might. "You
see," said Jack, "it would not do for the soldiers to be sad when
one of them dies. Why, it would demoralize the whole command. So
they play these gay things to cheer them up."
And I began to feel that tears must be out of place at a
soldier's funeral. I attended many a one after that, but I had
too much imagination, and in spite of all my brave efforts,
visions of the poor boy's mother on some little farm in Missouri
or Kansas perhaps, or in some New England town, or possibly in
the old country, would come before me, and my heart was filled
with sadness.
The Post Hospital seemed to me a lonesome place to die in,
although the surgeon and soldier attendants were kind to the
sick men. There were no women nurses in the army in those days.
The next day, the "Cocopah" started again and towed a barge out
to the ship. But the hot wind sprang up and blew fiercely, and we
lay off and on all day, until it was calm enough to tow her back
to the slue. By that time I had about given up all hope of
getting any farther, and if the weather had only been cooler I
could have endured with equanimity the idle life and knocking
about from the ship to the slue, and from the slue to the ship.
But the heat was unbearable.
