of truce was Captain John C. Calhoun. In Florida we had been so
recognized long before; but that was when they wished to frighten us out
of Jacksonville.

Such was our life on picket at Port Royal,--a thing whose memory is now
fast melting into such stuff as dreams are made of. We stayed there more
than two months at that tune; the first attack on Charleston exploded
with one puff, and had its end; General Hunter was ordered North,
and the busy Gilmore reigned in his stead; and in June, when the
blackberries were all eaten, we were summoned, nothing loath, to other
scenes and encampments new.

Chapter 6. A Night in the Water

Yes, that was a pleasant life on picket, in the delicious early summer
of the South, and among the endless flowery forests of that blossoming
isle. In the retrospect I seem to see myself adrift upon a horse's back
amid a sea of roses. The various outposts were within a six-mile radius,
and it was one long, delightful gallop, day and night. I have a faint
impression that the moon shone steadily every night for two months; and
yet I remember certain periods of such dense darkness that in riding
through the wood-paths it was really unsafe to go beyond a walk, for
fear of branches above and roots below; and one of my officers was once
shot at by a Rebel scout who stood unperceived at his horse's bridle.

To those doing outpost-duty on an island, however large, the main-land
has all the fascination of forbidden fruit, and on a scale bounded only
by the horizon. Emerson says that every house looks ideal until we enter
it,--and it is certainly so, if it be just the other side of the hostile
lines. Every grove in that blue distance appears enchanted ground, and
yonder loitering gray-back leading his horse to water in the farthest
distance, makes one thrill with a desire to hail him, to shoot at him,
to capture him, to do anything to bridge this inexorable dumb space that
lies between. A boyish feeling, no doubt, and one that time diminishes,
without effacing; yet it is a feeling which lies at the bottom of many
rash actions in war, and of some brilliant ones. For one, I could never
quite outgrow it, though restricted by duty from doing many foolish
things in consequence, and also restrained by reverence for certain
confidential advisers whom I had always at hand, and who considered it
their mission to keep me always on short rations of personal adventure.
Indeed, most of that sort of entertainm