Nodding heads provided the tired response.
“Very well then. Let us return to our positions. Hilderbrant, pick a detail and get our dead buried, with markers. Have the Reb prisoners bury their own. I want a strong guard put on those prisoners. They are dangerous veterans. McDougall, see to that. Chase, you’ll have the first officer’s watch once we let the men sleep.”
Hilderbrandt and McDougall acknowledged their orders. Wake stepped outside and looked around at the sky. It was cloudless in the east and a land breeze was beginning to stir. The light was increasing but was still not strong enough to allow Wake to see over to the tree line where the Fifteenth Florida was deployed. He was curious whether his hunch would be correct, but he would have to wait longer for the sun to make the woods visible.
He headed to the hut where he had slept earlier. Once inside he sat down and ate a piece of salt pork he found in his trouser pocket. Gnawing through the tough hunk of meat, he thought of what he would say to Wherley later in the morning. It would be a confrontation, he knew, but Wake was past the point of being patient. Too many men had been killed and wounded for politeness to be much of an influence on what was to come.
***
Claresville was a shambles. The battle, particularly the artillery, had destroyed what little structural strength there was in the buildings. Many were leaning precariously, others shorn of their thatch. The contents had been ransacked and anything of defensive value used by the sailors to build low walls between the homes. Many of the belongings of the former inhabitants were strewn over the ground. The ground itself had changed. Where once wild grass had provided at least a modicum of pleasant pastoral effect around the rough dwellings, there was now mud. The grass had been trampled by the feet of hundreds of men as they desperately tried to take or defend the collection of huts whose only value lay in the intersection of the two roads. The rains had completed the transformation and turned the pummeled earth into a sticky morass. As he walked out of the defensive works on the west side of the village, Wake observed that Claresville appeared even more depressing now than when he first had laid eyes on it.
Wake observed something else once the sun rose high enough to see better—no sign of the Florida Fifteenth Infantry in the tree line between the coastal road and the Collmerton road. It was not definitive—the Rebs could be hiding further back in the woods—but it was encouraging. Without more men Wake could not send a patrol to search the forest, but at least the Confederates were not close enough to attack without warning. The fact eased his mind a bit and allowed him to concentrate on the test of wills that was coming.
Walking alone along the road through the swamp back to the army’s encampment, Wake was relieved to see no signs of activity along the way. The rains had blotted out the road so that any tracks would be easily visible, but there were none. The Confederate commander had evidently not tried to completely encircle and cut off the sailors, Wake figured. He had been worried about that possibility, but now he surmised that probably Colonel Holland’s regiment was not strong enough to accomplish both the attack and a siege. The realization strengthened his resolve as he approached the army picket line across the road up ahead.
A tall sergeant came out from the trees on the side of the road and bellowed toward Wake. “Halt, who goes there!”
Wake was tired and kept walking forward. “Lieutenant Peter Wake, commanding officer of the naval landing party.”
A younger soldier leveled his rifle, bayonet fixed, at Wake and called out in a higher voice. “The sergeant said to stop, mister.”
The sergeant now recognized Wake’s uniform and told the youngster to put down his rifle as Wake walked up to and past them both without a word. The sergeant saw the look in Wake’s eyes and said nothing.
A hundred yards further on Wake came to the line of breastworks his sailors had started. The soldiers of the 195th New York Infantry had greatly enhanced them, putting equipment boxes and large limbs and logs across to make a formidable barrier to attack. It was not a temporary wall, but one made to protect a unit that was there to stay.
Wake walked through a second guard post without speaking when he was challenged. He felt it was apparent that he was a lone naval officer and he didn’t trust his self-discipline to keep quiet when he saw the encampment within the breastworks.
The 195th New York had done much in twenty-four hours. They hadn’t sallied out of their works to reinforce the sailors under attack, but they had made the river-bend beach camp as defensible and comfortable as they could. Tents sprouted in neat company rows, cooks tended cauldrons down by the water, and ammunition and supply boxes were arranged by unit in groupings around the perimeter. Several units were drilling in the open area between the tents and the breastworks. Hundreds of men sat, lay, or walked around. Wake could feel his anger growing, his jaw working tensely as his teeth ground and his eyes burned. Men turned to watch him as he walked through the encampment.
Then he saw what he was looking for. Regimental and American flags flew on posts in front of a large tent in the center of the camp. As Wake approached he saw a contingent of sailors by the bluff, not there for a work party, but armed with cutlasses and muskets and looking around them with disgust at
