Capua
CHAPTER IV. Friends in Council
CHAPTER V. The Ford
CHAPTER VI. The Ferry
CHAPTER VII. Fallen Across the Threshold
CHAPTER VIII. The Road to Avernus
CHAPTER IX. Caged Birds
CHAPTER X. Dark Days
CHAPTER XI. Homeward Bound
CHAPTER XII. A Popular Armament
CHAPTER XIII. The Debatable Ground
CHAPTER XIV. Slavery and the War
BORDER AND BASTILLE
CHAPTER I.
A FOUL START.
Looking back on an experience of many lands and seas, I cannot recall a
single scene more utterly dreary and desolate than that which awaited
us, the outward-bound, in the early morning of the 20th of last
December. The same sullen neutral tint pervaded and possessed
everything--the leaden sky--the bleak, brown shores over against us--the
dull graystone work lining the quays--the foul yellow water--shading one
into the other, till the division-lines became hard to discern. Even
where the fierce gust swept off the crests of the river wavelets,
boiling and breaking angrily, there was scant contrast of color in the
dusky spray, or murky foam.
The chafing Mersey tried in vain to make himself heard. All other
sounds--a voice, for instance, two yards from your ear--were drowned by
the trumpet of the strong northwester. All through the past night, we
listened to that note of war; we could feel the railway carriages
trembling and quivering, as if shaken by some rude giant's hand, when
they halted at any exposed station; and, this morning, the pilots shake
their wise, grizzled beads, and hint at worse weather yet in the offing.
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