McDougall shook his head.
“Trick, Captain. It’s a trick.”
Wake stood there trying to think about what had happened. The Rebels had all but overrun them. Could do so at any minute, in fact, or even stand off and continue to blast the crossroads with grapeshot. Why didn’t they? Why stop when they were so close?
As he asked the questions to himself, the answer became clear. It was so simple and clear it astounded him.
As McDougall grimaced beside him, Wake called out to the enemy. “Fine, Reb. This is Lieutenant Peter Wake of the United States Navy. I’m in command here and I’ll meet you halfway. I’m coming out with a white flag too. I want to talk to your commanding officer.”
The voice called back, Wake registering that it contained no bravado or timidity. It was a calm voice, one that had done this before.
“We know who y’all are, Yank! Our colonel says he will meet ya’ halfway. No tricks now. Any tricks an’ y’all’re dead first.”
McDougall grasped Wake’s arm, locking his eyes into his captain’s. “Captain, we’ve been through more than jus’ a wee bit together. Don’t do this. I’ll go. I’ll carry back any message they might be havin’.”
“No, it’s my decision and I will go. You will have command here if I fall. Now, what can I use for a white rag?”
McDougall exhaled a deep breath with a sigh, then stripped out of his blue jumper and handed over his grimy undershirt.
“Could use a bit o’ washin’, sir, but it’s close enough ta’ white for them Rebs. Come back in one damn piece, Captain. If I don’t return to the St. James with you aboard, I’ll have the hell ta pay with that young Irish fool Rork.”
Wake smiled at the older man, bare-chested now and appearing even more gaunt and aged than usual. After shaking hands, he left the gunner and walked out into the open, holding the rag high and telling all around him to hold their fire. He noticed that the rain and breeze had stopped too but couldn’t remember when. Above the stillness of the air, Wake could hear the men of both sides talking. He knew they were talking about him, but couldn’t make out the words.
In front of him, standing maybe seventy feet away, by the side of a crudely built log home beside the road, stood a tall middle-aged man in a tattered gray uniform, officer’s gold cuff lacing faded, with a slouch hat flattened on one side. The man was holding a white rag of some sort also, a bed sheet perhaps, as he walked forward toward Wake, a limp apparent in his left leg. They met halfway between the positions of the two forces, each man surveying the other’s posture and eyes, trying to determine the measure of his opponent. The man in gray spoke first. His face displayed no emotion even as his voice gave a pleasant greeting.
“Good afternoon, Lieutenant Wake, allow me to introduce myself. Colonel Daniel Bates Holland, commanding officer of the Fifteenth Florida Infantry Regiment, at your service, sir.”
Wake took a moment and considered this Colonel Holland and the Fifteenth Florida before replying. He remembered reading a captured Tallahassee newspaper in Key West three months earlier that had given a detailed and glorious account of this regiment. The Fifteenth Florida, the “Fightin’ Fifteenth” they had called it, had fought in Tennessee with General Sims at Bloody Ridge and Byrus Mountain and Detarville. They had been at the battle of Schmidt’s Mill in Georgia the previous February. The Fifteenth, the last infantry regiment formed from Florida, was down to half its strength, replacements being nonexistent anymore since the eligible men of Florida were already fighting, dead, invalided, or gone over to the enemy. The men of the Florida Fifteenth had “seen the elephant,” as Hammersley had put it, a dozen times in the last year. Now they had been sent to defend their home state against the increasing Yankee coastal raids, for Florida was the last remaining breadbasket area of the South.
“Colonel Holland, it is an honor to meet you, sir. The fame of your regiment has preceded your arrival here. How is it that you know of me, might I ask?”
Colonel Holland permitted a smile to cross his face. “Lieutenant Wake, you seem to have been, shall we say, active, on this coast. The people at Deadman’s Bay advised us of a naval officer named Wake who faced down a group of very angry citizenry there. Those types of situations can erupt in tragedy. That one did not. It impressed many people. Unfortunately, of course, you are also the enemy, so one’s appreciation can only go so far. But still, it appears by all accounts you’re at least an honorable enemy, which I’ve found to be distressingly rare is this sad conflict between our peoples.”
Flattery notwithstanding, Wake found himself liking this man’s sense of style. It was a relic of another era, a gentler time that seemed long ago, before the obscene insanity of this war. “Thank you, sir.”
“Some of my artillerymen who are local militia, the Gulf Guardians they style themselves, remembered you from that morning at Deadman’s Bay and called your identity to my attention. Thought you might be prevailed upon to stop this useless bloodshed. This is, after all, not much of a place for you to die for, Lieutenant. It’s not even anywhere near your home state, which by your accent I would place somewhere in New England, probably Massachusetts.”
Wake nodded his head. The suave colonel with the dry humor was certainly correct in that statement. Wake decided to play this game of raconteur and smiled at his enemy.
“Well, you certainly have me there, Colonel. Massachusetts it is. That this place isn’t much to die for, I’ll be the first to admit, but then glory or fame is no prerequisite for a man to do his duty, is it? And it
