I rode the thirty odd miles to Kinston in—­little more than three hours.  A locomotive was waiting for me, and I jumped into a cab with a friendly engineer.  Soon we were roaring seaward through the vast pine forests.  It was a lonely journey, and you were much in my mind.  My greatest apprehension was that we might be derailed and the despatches captured; for as fast as our army had advanced, the track of it had closed again, like the wake of a ship at sea.  Guerillas were roving about, tearing up ties and destroying bridges.

There was one five-minute interval of excitement when, far down the tunnel through the forest, we saw a light gleaming.  The engineer said there was no house there, that it must be a fire.  But we did not slacken our speed, and gradually the leaping flames grew larger and redder until we were upon them.

Not one gaunt figure stood between them and us.  Not one shot broke the stillness of the night.  As dawn broke I beheld the flat, gray waters of the Sound stretching away to the eastward, and there was the boat at the desolate wharf beside the warehouse, her steam rising white in the chill morning air.

CHAPTER XIV

THE SAME, CONTINUED

Headquarters armies of the united states,
city point, Virginia, March 28, 1865.

Dear mother:  I arrived here safely the day before yesterday, and I hope that you will soon receive some of the letters I forwarded on that day.  It is an extraordinary place, this City Point; a military city sprung up like a mushroom in a winter.  And my breath was quite taken away when I first caught sight of it on the high table-land.  The great bay in front of it, which the Appomattox helps to make, is a maze of rigging and smoke-pipes, like the harbor of a prosperous seaport.  There are gunboats and supply boats, schooners and square-riggers and steamers, all huddled together, and our captain pointed out to me the ‘Malvern’ flying Admiral Porter’s flag.  Barges were tied up at the long wharves, and these were piled high with wares and flanked by squat warehouses.  Although it was Sunday, a locomotive was puffing and panting along the foot of the ragged bank.

High above, on the flat promontory between the two rivers, is the city of tents and wooden huts, the great trees in their fresh faint green towering above the low roofs.  At the point of the bluff a large flag drooped against its staff, and I did not have to be told that this was General Grant’s headquarters.

There was a fine steamboat lying at the wharf, and I had hardly stepped ashore before they told me she was President Lincoln’s.  I read the name on her—­the ‘River Queen’.  Yes, the President is here, too, with his wife and family.

There are many fellows here with whom I was brought up in Boston.  I am living with Jack Hancock, whom you will remember well.  He is a captain now, and has a beard.