Carolina Chansons: Legends of the Low Country — The Blockade Runner

I

Three years!

Since I had seen the city, in the time We waited through the tenseness of the hours, While nerves were zither strings For fate to jar upon: All through that night we counted old St. Michael's chimes Now three o'clock-- The bells spoke as they had on marriage days, With high and silver-happy tongues Yet somehow they had gained an irony, For out across the quiet April bay Grim, new-built forts grinned at old Sumter Through the morning mist-- _One--two--three--four--_ And no sound yet!

Then-- Thirty minutes like a life too long;

A red flash dirked the night;

I thought a voice cried, "DOOM";

That was the gun that killed a million men.

God!

How the city woke!

With what a rush of wonder in her streets, "_Burr_" of strained voices, earthquakes of feet, Tramping to rolling drums, The crowd swept to the Battery.

Roofs were black with gazing folk in knots, Leveling their spyglasses Like phalanx spears, From sea wall to the chimney tops.

Over the rippling harbor came The growling, bull-dog bark of culverins, Red rockets curved and plunged Across the dawn.

The world seemed drunk with confidence That day-- Some secret nervousness about the slaves;

What they might think or say;

But they did neither;

The bugles shouted at the Citadel.

Hours were punctuated by glad bells, Soon to be hid away, And gales of laughter came from gardens, Where bright tear-dashed eyes must weep farewells The braver lips refused to falter-- Mouths then seemed only made to kiss For men in gray, Who left the ancient houses of proud names, Through magic gates upon that magic day When the lost cause was still-born in its hope.

II

And I had gone-- It seemed no man's work then-- To buy supplies from "good friends" at the North-- Two years at old St. Louis and then down the river, Past winking lights of towns and federal rams, In flat-boats with a precious freight of barrels, Marked for the Yankees; but one night We supped past their last fort And floated down to Vicksburg through the dark.

How dull the lanterns glimmered at the quay!

But there was welcome, too, Proud, thankful hands, To take the medicine and powder, And unload sorghum barrels That we might change to quinine and to gold, If we could ever get them to Nassau.

The column which they printed in the "News" On wall-paper, first made me think That it was worth-while man's work after all.

Then, out across the miles of leaguered states, Through pine-barrens where frowsy men in gray Lay with their wounded in the haggard camps-- A glimpse of old times in Atlanta Like a last febrile glow in well-loved eyes.

Now rolling in flat cars, trundling to the sea, Back of the bull-head, wood-devouring engines.

At last by night to Charleston Just before the iron ring closed-- Ours was the last freight train of the war, Before the anaconda squeezed;

But I had won (perhaps) if we could get Those precious barrels to England or Nassau.

How changed my city was-- The grass grew in her streets, And there were blackened ruins raw with fire;

A few old darkies crept along her ways;

The busy thunder of the drays was gone;

And ruin spoke with statue lips.

Only a glimmering candle lurked in landward windows, Dim through shimmering shutter chinks-- Silence--silence was over all--no bells-- St. Michael's were in hiding, And St. Philip's spoke another voice, And rung a blatant dirge to bluecoats, far [11]In old Virginia, with Lee's batteries.

The miles of cotton rotted on the wharfs, And the _Swamp Angel_ belled with distant shocks Like earthquake jars;

There was heat-lightning in the sky That God had never made, From our sea-island batteries;

And once a shell fell somewhere in the town With a despairing scream that hope was dead.

Such were the streets-- And it was starving time in houses Where fat generosity once ran amuck, No fires in inns, no cheerful bark of hounds, Or stroke of social hoofs upon the stones.

And the long docks bit the black water Like old loosened fangs that held the sea In one last grinning jaw-clamp of despair.

I knew those docks When at the hour of noon A molten clangor shivered cheerful air And thousand ship-bells rang-- And now--only a drifting buoy-bell rung The knell of hope with its emphatic tongue, Cut loose by the blockaders To wander down the harbor in despair.

III

Close in the shadow of a warehouse lay The blockade-runner with her smokestacks gray, Back-raking like her masts, and up her hatches Came voices, and the furnace-light in patches Beat on the sails, and there alone was life-- The stevedores sang muffled snatches, and a strife Of bales and barrels streamed down her yawning hold;

Cotton more valuable than money, And barrels of the St. Louis sorghum and molasses, Honey to lure the bees of English gold.

Three days she lay, this arrow-pointed boat, With a light gold necklace, beaded at her throat, Something there was about her like a stoat That lies in wait to make a silent rush, And there was something in her like a thrush, For she had paddle-wheels, each like a wing.

She had a long hornet stern that seemed to hold a sting.

Sometimes her paddles slowly turned, For they kept steam up, waiting for a gale.

It seemed as if the slim boat chafed and yearned To go hell-tearing under steam and sail.

The oily water churned And made a _slap-slap_ to the paddles' stroke;

And a high painted canvas screen cut off The blue haze of the lightwood smoke.

On the third evening, just at sunset, came A scud of driving cloud; the lightning's flame;

The sun glared from a vicious, misty socket, And in the moaning twilight curved a rocket While a blue flame blurred and frayed At Castle Pinckney; thus we knew the storm Had shifted the blockade.

IV

Out from the docks we shot Into the screaming night;

We steered by lightning's light;

The paddles beat a mad tattoo;

The gridded walking-beam Pumped up, pumped down, Against the misty gleam;

Faster and faster jets the stand-pipes' steam.

And the white water whirls Astern in phosphorescent whorls-- It swirls And then leads backward green with light Of streaming foam across the velvet night.

By the last lightning flare, That must be Sumter, bare Against a torn cloud like a rag;

But now the wind begins to flag, And as it fails the engines lag;

Then comes a low hail from the mast "Avast"-- Again the engines slow-- Then stop-- And we were drifting like a log As silent as a drowned corpse In the sea-set tide, Muffled in dripping fog.

No word from all the ship-- She seemed asleep-- Only the cluck of water and the feel Of grim Atlantic rollers at the keel, Nuzzling two fathoms deep;

They made her heel.

The porpoise played about our copper lip.

It seemed as if they were The only living things in all that blur, And we-- The only ship upon an ancient sea.

When suddenly a laugh broke through the spell;

It was so near Our pulses lapsed a heart-beat, Struck with fear.

The curtains of the fog were blown apart;

Stark in the sallow moonlight's metal day, The white decks of a Yankee frigate lay.

I saw the glint of moonlight on her bell;

She was not twenty fathoms length away.

A man's face leaped out in the cherry glow Of match flame in the hands he cupped About the pipe whose curling wreaths he supped.

"Clang!"

like a fireman's gong Our engine signals rang;

The paddles thrashed into a frothy song;

Five ship's lengths we had forged along Before their bugles sang.

We had ten long lengths on them Before their ship began to swerve.

The rabid screw was frothing at her stern;

But I could feel the verve Of our blithe timbers tremble; every nerve Of our good race-horse ship For open water seemed to yearn.

That was a Titan's race;

The answering rockets snaked it down the coast, Dying like scarlet worms Among the fog-wreaths; but we gained, And when her flaming cannon stabbed the mist They thundered at our ghost.

So we were gone, With cotton in our furnace, Once the aft-stacks flared, And then we plied pitch-pine Dampened with turpentine, Until the black sea glared-- But we had gone-- Over the world's round shoulder Thrust the dawn, Their ugly, black masts dipping it hull down.

Three days the paddles beat while we drove on!

And I had won;

For on the fourth day as I sat In the black coffin-shadow of a boat, The burning decks a-wash with lime-white sun, I saw the graybeard lookout swell his throat And utter forth a glad and bronze hurrah, "_Land Ho_!"

he cried-- We lined the windward side To cheer the washing palm tops of Nassau.

H.

A.

[11] See the note on the chimes at back of book.