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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.
