As usual when
unoccupied they were set free to volunteer for staff duty. It thus
chanced that Penhallow found himself for a time an extra aide to General
John Parke.
The guarded outer lines of the defences of Petersburg included forests
with here and there open spaces and clumps of trees. More than a half
mile away from the enemy, on rising ground, amid bushes and trees, lay
the army corps of General Parke. It was far into the night. The men were
comfortably asleep, for on this second of April, the air was no longer
chilly and there were no tents up. In the mid-centre of the corps-line
behind the ridge a huge fire marked the headquarters. As the great logs
blazed high, they cast radiating shadows of tree trunks, which were and
were not as the fire rose or fell. Horses tied to the trees moved
uneasily when from far and near came the clamour of guns. Now and then a
man sat up in the darkness and listened, but this was some new recruit.
For the most of the sleepers the roar of guns was less disturbing than
the surly mosquitoes and the sonorous trumpeting of a noisy neighbour.
Aides dismounted near the one small tent in the wood shadows, and coming
out mounted horses as tired as the riders and rode away into the night.
Here and there apart black servants and orderlies slept the deep sleep of
irresponsibility and among them Josiah.
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