The next morning the march was resumed by daylight, the two companies remaining on the skirmish-line. The country gradually became more rugged as the route brought them near Centreville. There were no hills—a bare but not bleak champaign, mostly without houses or farms, as the North knows them. Sluggish brooks became more frequent, but none that were not easily fordable. There were no landmarks to hold the mind to the scene, nor, in case of battle, give the strategists points of vantage for the iron game. About noon, the detached groups stalking a little negligently now over the tedious plains, were startled by the unexpected.
On the green slope of a hill, a mile or more ahead, a score of little puffs of white smoke were seen, then a sharp report, and, in some places near by, the ground was broken as if by a thrust of a spear, and little scraps of clay scattered over the greensward. Then the bugle sounded a halt. A few minutes later the horsemen spread in a chain across the line of march, rode swiftly to a common center, formed in a solid group, turned to the rear and rode back of the skirmishers to the main body. Company K watched them as they galloped back, and as they reached the group at the head of the long line, a half-mile or so distant, a body of men hastened forward laden with stretchers and hospital appliances. Ah! at last! It is now real war. The bugle sounds Forward! and with an elastic spring the groups of four push dauntlessly ahead. Their eyes are fixed on the brow of the hill, separated from them by a narrow depression.
The whole line—perhaps three miles wide—but, of course, not at all regular, conforming largely to the difficulties encountered, moves down the sloping bank on a run. Before they reach the bottom they are an excellent target, and for the first time that most blood curdling of sounds—the half-singing, half-hissing z-z-z-ip of the minie-ball—numbs the ardor of the bravest. It is such a malignant, direct, devilish admonition of murder; it comes so unexpectedly, no matter how well you are prepared, that Achilles himself would feel a spasm of fear. And when it strikes it does its work with such a venomous, exultant splutter, that there seems something animate, demoniac in it. The volley, as I said, came as the men were hurried down the hill by their own momentum and by the sharp fall in the ground. The balls passed too high or too low, but they impressed the fact on enthusiasts, who had longed for battle, that one might die for one's country and not die gloriously. It seemed such an ignoble, such a dastardly, outrageous thing, that death could come to them from unseen hands, for as yet they had not seen a soul. But now they are at the foot of the hill—though it is not correct to so call it, for it was a long, winding valley, through which ran a dancing streamlet, very welcome to the thirsty warriors when they had succeeded in breaking through the vicious naturalchevaux de friseof blackberry-briers and nettles. But now there wasn't much time to slake thirst. The bullets had begun to come regularly; and suddenly, as Jack conducted his squad across the stream, he was startled by the exclamation, uttered rather in reverence, it seemed to him, than surprise or pain:
"My God, I'm hit!"
Yes, a fair-haired lad—one of his class—tottered a second in a limp, helpless way, and fell headlong, pitching into the little stream. Jack ran and lifted him out; but even before the hospital corps came the boy was dead. The bullet had gone quite through his heart.
However, now the first numbing terror of the bullet was changed to a sort of revengeful delight. Relinquishing any return fire for a moment, the company, with a great shout, that sounded all along its front, dashed up the hill, through the scrub-oak at the brow, and then they could see the enemy slowly retiring, a chain of them a mile or more wide. While one of the rebel ranks fired the other knelt, or lay flat upon the ground loading, where there were no natural obstacles to take shelter behind. A vengeful shout ran along the Union lines.
"Capture them—don't fire!" and with one impulse the groups lied forward so swiftly that the enemy, believing the rush only momentary, delayed too long, and in two minutes the Union line was pell-mell among them.
"Surrender!" Jack shouted to the squad just ahead of him—"surrender, or we'll blow your heads off!" and along the line for some distance to his left and right he could hear his own exultant demand echoed. There was nothing to do for the rebels, who had neglected to keep their enemies at the proper distance, but throw up their hands. Jack's squad sent back twenty-three prisoners to Major Mike, who took them in proud triumph to General Tyler, riding with the head of the column, now that the tenacity of the rebel skirmishers made it seem probable that there would be serious work. But though the firing kept up as the Union forces advanced, no obstacle more, serious than the thin lines of the skirmishers revealed itself.
At dusk the bugles, moving with the captains in the rear, sounded the rally, and then the scattered groups came together in company. They were to bivouac on the spot to await their regiment when it arrived. Meanwhile, to the bitter discontent of the Caribee companies, their post of honor was taken by new troops, and they knew that next day they would march in line. They had so enjoyed the glory of the first volleys, the first deaths, and the first prisoners, that, not remembering military procedure, they resented the change as an aspersion upon their valor.
When the regiment came up, however, they forgot their mortification in the eager questioning and envious jocularities of the rest. Companies K and H were so beset that they forgot to boil their coffee, and would have gone thirsty to their dewy beds, if the other companies' cooks had not shared their rations with the gossiping heroes. As darkness fell, the sky was reddened for miles with pillars of fire, and for a time the Caribees thought it was the enemy. But Tom Twigg, who had been with the major at headquarters, explained to Jack that the army was divided into three bodies of about ten thousand men each, and that Tyler's column, of which the Caribees were the advance, were the extreme northern body; that they were now at Vienna, far north of Manassas, where Schenck had been beset a month before in his never-enough-ridiculed reconnaissance by train; that in the morning they were to push on to Fairfax Court-House and thence to Centreville, where the army was to come together for the blow at the rebels. Jack and his friends were a good deal chagrined to learn that they were not as near the enemy as the column to the south of them, whose fires had been mistaken for Beauregard's. Though the levée came to an end at "taps," no one felt sleepy, and the excitement banished the pains of fatigue. Major Mike, sauntering through the dark lines near midnight, heard the tale still going on in drowsy monotone, but, good-naturedly, made no sign.
Though not given the skirmish-line next day—the 17th—Jack was delighted to find that the Caribees led all the rest. With them rode the commander of the brigade, Colonel Sherman, whom the soldiers thought a very crabbed and "grumpy" sort of a fellow. His red hair bristled straight up and out when he took his slouch hat off, as he did very often, for the heat was intolerable. His eyes had a merry twinkle, however, that won the hearts of the lads as he rode by, scrupulously striking into the fields to save the panting and heavily laden line every extra step he could. Often, in after-days—when Sherman had become the Turenne of the armies—Jack, who was often heard to brag of his gift of detecting greatness, used to turn very red in the face when he was reminded of a saying of his on that hot July day:
"That chap is too lean and hungry to have much stomach for a fight; he looks better fitted for wielding the ferule than the sword. Schoolmaster is written in every line of his face and stamped in his pedagogue manner."
The march that day was south by a little west, and about nine o'clock a cool morning breeze lifted the clouds of dust far enough above the horizon to reveal the distant blue of the mountains. The whole line seemed to come to a pause in the enchanting, mirage-like spectacle. "The Shenandoah," Jack said, mopping the dust, or rather the thin coating of mud, from his face and brow, for the perspiration, oozing at every pore, naturally covered the exposed skin with an unpremeditated cosmetic. The march to Fairfax Court-House, for which judicial temple the curious soldier looked in vain, was but eight miles from the point of departure in the morning, but it was two o'clock in the afternoon when the Caribees passed the hamlet, turning sharply to the right. They marched up the deep cut of projected railway, where, for a time, they were shaded from the sun by the high banks. But, emerging presently on the Warrenton pike, they saw evidences that other columns—whether friends or foes they couldn't tell—had recently preceded them. Scores of the raw and overworked were breaking down now every hour.
The dust and heat were insupportable. Whenever the march came near water, all thought of discipline was forgotten, and the panting, miner-like hosts broke for the inviting stream. The officers were powerless to enforce discipline; when these breaks happened the column was forced to come to a halt until every man had filled his canteen—and here is one, among the many trivial causes, that brought about the reverses of McDowell's masterly campaign. A march that ought to have been made in twenty-four hours, or thirty at the utmost, took more than three days! One of those days saved to the army would have enabled McDowell to finish Beauregard before the ten thousand re-enforcements from the Shenandoah came upon his flank at Bull Run. But we shall see that in proper time, for there is nothing more dramatically timely, or untimely, than this incident in the history of battles, unless it be Blücher's miraculous appearance at Waterloo, when Napoleon supposed that Grouchy was pummeling him twenty miles away.
There was no provost guard to spur on the stragglers; and when, late in the afternoon, the way-worn columns spread themselves on the western slope of the hamlet of Centreville, at least a third of each regiment was far in the rear. Nearly every man had, in the heat and burden of the march, thrown away the provisions in his haversack, and that night ten thousand men lay down supperless on the grateful greensward, happy to rest and sleep. Mother Earth must have ministered to the weary flesh, for at sunrise, when the music of the bugles aroused them, they started up with the alert vivacity of old campaigners. Provisions, that should have been with the column the night before, arrived in the morning. While the reinvigorated ranks were at coffee, there was a great clatter in the rear, and presently acortégeof mounted officers appeared, General McDowell among them. Dick Perley, who was at the brigade headquarters, with Grandison, came to the Caribees presently with great news.
The battle was to begin that very day. General Tyler was to go forward to a river called Bull Run, where Beauregard was waiting. The whole army was to spread out like a fan and fight him. He had seen the map on the table, and the place couldn't be more than four miles away. Yes, they all looked eagerly to the westward now. The mountains in the distance rolled themselves down into lower and lower ridges, and just about four miles ahead could be seen a range that seemed to melt into a wide plateau fringed deeply with scrub-oak and clusters of pine. Jack had provided himself with a field-glass. Standing in the middle of the Warrenton pike, a fine highway, that ran downward as solid as a Roman causeway, for four or five miles, he could see the break made by the Bull Run River, and—yes, by the glaive of battle!—he could see the glistening of bayonets now and then, where the screen of woods grew thinner.
The general, too, was examining the distant lines, and Jack took it as a good omen that Sherman grew jocose and appeared to be making merry with Tyler, whose face looked troubled, now that the decisive moment seemed at hand. But the day passed, and there was no advance. It was not until late in the evening that the cause became known. The army had been waiting for supplies, ammunition, and what not, that should have been on the field the day before. The Caribees were made frantic, too, by what seemed a battle going on to the south of them, a few miles to the left. The camp that night was a grand debating society, every man propounding a theory of strategy that would have edified General McDowell, no doubt, if he could have been given aprécisof the whole. How such things become known it is difficult to guess, but every man in the columns knew that the general had planned to put forward his thirty thousand men in the form of a half-moon, covering about ten miles from tip to tip. The right or northward horn was to be considerably thicker and of more body than the left or southern. When the time came this right was to curve in like a hook and cut the ground out from the left wing of the rebel army.
This is the homely way these unscientific strategists made the movement known to each other, and it very aptly describes the formulated plan of battle, save that, of course, there were gaps between the forces here and there along this human crescent. Long before daylight Sherman's brigade, with a battery of guns and a squadron of cavalry, set out due south, leaving the broad Warrenton pike far to their right hand. Such a country as the march led into, no one had ever seen in the North outside of mountain regions—deep gullies; wastes of gnarled and aggressive oaks, that tore clothes and flesh in the passage; sudden hillocks rising conical and inconsequent every few rods; deep chasms conducting driblets of water; morasses covered with dark and stagnant pools, where the pioneers fairly picked their steps among squirming reptiles. A stream, sometimes large as a river, crawling languidly through deep fissures in the red shale, protected the left flank of the column. The cavalry was forced to hold the narrow wood road, as the bush was hardly passable for men.
"Hi, Jack!" Barney cries, catching his breath at the edge of a muddy stream, "what sort of a place must the rebels be in if they let us promenade through such a jungle as this unopposed?"
"I have been thinking of that," Jack replies. And so had every man in the expedition—for to think was one of the drawbacks as well as one of the excellences of the soldier in the civil war. But presently, after five hours of laborious work, a halt is called. The men dive into their haversacks, and even the brackish water in the nearest sedge pond has a flavor of nectar and the invigoration of a tonic. On they tear again, the whole body pushing on in skirmish-like dispersion. Suddenly the land changes. They are climbing a rolling table-land, cleared in some places as though the axe of the settler had been at work. The march is now easier and the picket-lines are strengthened. Then a sharp volley comes, as if from the tree-tops.
The march is instantly halted. The mass, moving in a column, is deployed—that is, stretched out to cover a mile or more as it moves forward; the cavalry divides and rides far to right and left, to see that no ambush is set to enable the rebels to sneak in behind the vast human broom, as it sweeps through the solemn aisles of the pines, now rising in vernal columns thicker and thicker. The firing is going on now in scattering volleys, and soon the wounded—a dozen or more—are carried back through the silent ranks. Joking has now ceased. Lips are compressed; eyes glitter, and the men avoid meeting each other's gaze. It is the moment of all moments, the most trying to the soldier, when he is expecting every instant a hurricane of bullets, and yet sees no one to avenge his anguish on or forestall in the deadly work. But they have been moving forward all the time, the hurtling bullets sweeping through the leafy covering, now and then thumping into the soft pine with a vicious joyousness, as if to say to each man, "The next is for you, see how well our work is done." For these hideous missiles have a language of their own, as every man that stood fire can tell. The skirmishers are now all drawn in. The solid line must do the work at hand. No one but the commander and his confidants knew the work intended, save that to kill and be killed was the business to be done. The panting lines are on high cleared ground now, and they can see absolutely nothing but the irregular depressions that mark the channel of the Bull Run, as it rushes down to the Rappahannock. The line is moving along steadily. Looking to left and right, Jack can see the colors of three regiments, and his eye rests with pleasure on the bright, shining folds of the Caribees' dark-blue State flag spread to the breeze beside the stars of the Union. Are they to cross the river? Evidently, for the command is still "Forward, bear center, bear right." Then, square in front, where the thick, broad leaves of the oak glitter in the sun, there is seen a cylinder of steam-like smoke, with fiery gleams at the end, a crackling explosion of a hogshead of fire-crackers, then a rushing, screaming sound in their very faces, then a few rods behind a ringing, vicious explosion. They are in the very teeth of a masked battery. The Union skirmishers have been withdrawn too soon. The main line will be torn to pieces, for retreat is as fatal as advance.
"Lie down, men!" The command rings out and is echoed along the column. The guns have the range, and the enemy knows the ground. The Caribees are directly in the sweep of the artillery, and the command comes to them by company to crawl backward, exposing themselves as little as may be. Presently two brass guns are brought up behind the Caribees. The gunners have noted the point of the enemy's fire. The men point the big muzzles with intrepid equanimity, firing over the prostrate blue coats. For twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour, this is kept up; then there is silence on the hill beyond. The column rises to its feet, and at the command, "Forward!" they start with a rush and a cheer. Five hundred yards onward, and a solid mass of gray coats confront them. A volley is fired and returned; the exulting Caribees, with two lines behind them, give a loud cheer and, in an instant, the gray mass has disappeared, as if the earth had opened. The skirmish-line, advancing now, picks up a half-dozen or more wounded rebels, besides two or three who had become confused in the hasty retreat and run toward the "Yankees" instead of their own line. Jack's comrade held this conversation with one of the prisoners:
"I say, reb, what place is this?"
"Mitchell's Ford."
"Much of your army here?"
"'Nuff to lick you uns out of your boots, I reckon."
"What did they run across the ford for, then?"
"Oh, you'll see soon enough—when our folks get ready."
"Who's in command here?"
"General Bonham, of South Carolina."
"How many men, about?"
"Well, there's right smart on to a million, I reckon. They had to cut the trees down, yonder, to get room for 'em.".
The man's eyes twinkled as he gave this precise approximation; but Barney, who had brought the humorist in, whispered to the captain to let him have a moment's speech with the man before he was sent away. The captain nodded, and Barney said innocently:
"Had anything to eat to-day?"
"Not a mouthful. The trains were all taken up with soldiers coming fromRichmond."
"Have a bit of beef—and here's a cracker or two. You can have some coffee if the guards will let you make it."
"Old Longstreet himself would envy me now," the rebel cried, his mouth stuffed with the cold meat and hard-tack, almost as fresh and crisp as soda-crackers, for the contractors had not yet learned the trick of making them out of sawdust, white sand, and other inexpensive substitutes for flour.
"Longstreet?" Barney said, carelessly.
"Yes, that's the commander of the right wing, just below, at Blackburn'sFord."
"Blackburn's Ford?"
"Yes, that's a mile down, and really behind you uns, for the run makes a big elbow to the east. I tell you what it is, Yank, you'll see snakes right soon, for our folks are behind you."
Sure enough, a crackling to the left confirmed this, and the captain, who had listened to Barney's adroit cross-questioning, sent the man with a note to Colonel Sherman, a few rods in the rear. Ten minutes later the column fell into ranks again and moved off swiftly southeastward. A march of a mile or so brought them to a bold ridge cutting down almost aslant to the clear water of the run. The skirmishers, for some reason, had not pushed ahead to explore the ground, and the regiments, marching in close masses, came out in a rather disorderly multitude on the ridged crest. A hundred yards nearly below the water-course was fringed with thick copses of oak, and the gently ascending slopes on the western bank were completely hidden from the Union lines. A few gaunt, almost limbless trees rose up spectrally on the ridge, offering the compact masses neither shelter from the sun nor security from the enemy—if there were an enemy near.
Dick came up to Jack out of breath with great news, just as the Caribees were aligning themselves to move forward.
"General Tyler just told Richardson"—a brigade commander—"that the rebels had retreated from Manassas, and he (Tyler) is going to have the glory of occupying the works: that McDowell thought the army would have to fight a big battle to get—"
"Glory!" the group shouted, near enough to hear; and the delightful story ran up and down the lines by a telephone process that was much swifter than Edison's electric invention. A roar of gratulatory triumph broke—a roar so loud and inspiring that for a moment the densely packed masses did not distinguish an ear-splitting outburst just in front of them. But on the instant piercing shrieks among the huddled cheerers—cries of death and agony—changed the paeans of triumph into wails of anguish and mortal pain. A panic—instant, unreasoning, irresistible—fell upon the mass, a breath before so confident. A third of the regiment seemed to wither away. The colors fell in the struggling group in the center. Hoarse shouts, indistinguishable and ominous, could be vaguely heard from the staff and line.
Direr still, hideous clamor of masked cannon, right in their very faces, added the horror of surprise to the disorder of attack, and the thick blue lines broke in irrestrainable confusion. The terror of the unknown seized officers and men alike. In five minutes the crest was cleared, and the ignoble vanity, ignorance, and self-sufficiency of one man had undone in an hour the splendid work of the commander-in-chief. Amêléeof miserable, disgraceful disorder ensued. The rebel sharpshooters, hurrying to the flank, poured in hurtling, murderous volleys, filling the minds of the panic-stricken mob with the idea, the most awful that can enter a soldier's mind, that his line is surrounded. Hundreds threw away guns and everything that could impede flight. Other hundreds fired wildly wherever they saw moving men, and thus aided the rebels in killing their own comrades, for it was into the supporting Union forces they directed their random shots. The fire grew every instant more bewildering. Shots came in volleys from every direction, and the helpless hordes darted wildly together—sometimes toward, instead of from the enemy. Had the rebels been as numerous as they were crafty, the brigade could have been seizeden masse. But now Sherman is at hand with fresh regiments, others are at his heels, and the contest takes on some of the order of intelligent action. The rebels, too, are re-enforced, but the dispositions made by the Union chiefs bring the combat to equal terms. The clamor of cannon and musketry continues an hour, though the lines are now among the friendly undergrowth, and the losses are not serious. But the Caribees, with the regiment supporting them, have been blotted from the scene as a factor. For hours the scattering groups fled—fled in ever-increasing panic, and it was long after dark before the remnants of the regiment came into camp at Centreville.
Poor Jack! He gave no heed to supper that dreadful night. He threw himself on the ground, too exhausted to think and too disheartened to talk. He couldn't understand the shameful panic. The Caribees were not cowards; every man in the regiment had longed for the battle. When under fire at Mitchell's Ford, an hour earlier than the disaster at Blackburn, all had stood firmly in place, fought with coolness, and gave no sign of fear. The volume of fire when they broke was not much greater than the Mitchell's Ford volleys. During the night Grandison came to camp and assembled the officers. He expressed his sorrow at the sudden shadow that had fallen on the fair fame of the regiment, but since the panic had not been followed, as such outbreaks often are, by the total destruction of the men, there would be abundant chance to redeem the disgrace of the day. He had himself begged the division commander to give the men another trial, and he had staked his commission on their doing such duty as would remove the tarnish of the afternoon from their banners.
The officers had been dispirited. Major Mike had raged over the field, through the woods, a very angry man indeed, belaboring the fleeing men with his sword and imploring those he couldn't reach to "come to me here. Dress on me. There's no call to be afeard. We've more men than they have, and we'll soon wallop them."
But the resounding blows on the backs of those near the officer did not give the encouraging emphasis to his appeal that captivates men whose reasoning faculties are almost gone for the moment. Before daylight on the next morning—Saturday, the 20th—the companies were called together and little addresses were made to the men by the officers. The substance of Colonel Grandison's words was imparted, and the hope expressed that when, in the course of that or the next day the regiment was again under fire, they would show that the panic of yesterday had not been cowardice. The men said nothing, and every one was glad that the light was so dim that the officers could not look in their faces, though, as a matter of fact, the shoulder-straps had shown as little fortitude as the muskets in the dispersion. All that day the forces rested, the Caribees providing themselves with new arms and equipments, or the two or three hundred who had flung their own away. During the afternoon an incident happened in the division that lessened the mortification of the Caribees. A splendid regiment and a battery of bronze guns came into the highway from the extreme of the line that was expected to take part in the battle which all knew would be opened the next morning. Every one was surprised to see the men moving without muskets and the colors wrapped in their cases. "Where you bound for?" some one at the roadside yelled curiously.
"Our time is out; we're going home."
Then a derisive howl followed the line as it passed through the masses of the army, and remarks of an acrid nature were made that were not gratifying to the departing patriots:
"Don't you want a guard to protect you?"
"Does your mamma know you're out alone?"
"Wait till to-morrow and we'll send Beauregard's forces to see you safe home."
The men and officers looked very conscious and uncomfortable under the gamut of jeers, for word went along the line, and all along the route to the rear they passed through this clamor of contemptuous outcry.
"Well, I thought we had reached the eminent deadly pinnacle of disgrace," Barney said, with a sigh, as a group of Company K watched the considerable number taken out of McDowell's small army, "but this sight makes me feel like the man on trial for murder who escapes with a verdict of manslaughter."
Late at night Dick came down to Jack's bivouac with a strange tale.McDowell had come to Tyler's quarters storming with rage. He had accusedthat officer of disobeying orders in forcing a fight on the fords ofBull Run where he had been told to merely reconnoitre.
The staff believed that Tyler would be cashiered, for he had not only wrecked the general's plan of battle, but he had given the rebels the secret of the movement and demoralized one wing of the army by putting raw soldiers in front of masked batteries that could have been detected by proper outpost work. Then one of the staff reported a speech Tyler had made when his troops rushed over the empty rebel breastworks and forts around Centreville. His officers were discussing the probable forces Beauregard had behind the crooked stream beyond.
"I believe we've got them on the run," Tyler said, exultingly, "from what we see here. I tell you the great man of this war is the man that plants the flag at Manassas, and I'm going through to Richmond to-night."
"Not much comfort in knowing we've got such a fool for a commander," Jack cried, thinking of the disgrace of the day before and of the small chance the regiment had under such a chief to redeem its prestige on the morrow. All personal griefs, everything but the pending battle, were driven from the men's minds as the signs of the momentous work of the morrow accumulated. The hospital corps was up in force. The yellow flag floated from an immense tent near the roadway. A greatcortégeof general officers rode away from McDowell's quarters about ten in the evening. The haversacks were filled with three days' cooked rations. One hundred rounds of ammunition to a man were dealt out to each company. Everything not absolutely necessary was ordered to the company wagons.
The talk in the camp that night was of home—of anything and everything but the dreadful to-morrow, so long looked forward to with eager hope, now regarded with uncertainty that was not so much fear as the memory of the panic at Blackburn's Ford. Jack was provided with a large atlas map of Virginia, and with the bits of information given by Dick he was able to conjecture the probable plan of the next day. The cronies of Company K listened in delight to his exposition of the action.
"Here," he said, "is the Bull Run. It makes two big elbows eastward toward us—one about four miles to the northwest of us, the other about eight miles to the southeast of that, and about four miles from our right hand here! The rebel we quizzed yesterday says that there are five fords between the Warrenton pike bridge—that's just ahead of us yonder at the end of the road we are on—the last one is McLean's Ford, at the very knuckle of the elbow that is crooked toward us a mile west of where we were yesterday. That is near the railway, which it is Beauregard's business to fight for and our business to get, for then he will have to fall back near Richmond to feed his army. Now from the railway where it crosses Bull Run near Mitchell's Ford to the Warrenton road, which Beauregard must also hold, is about nine miles. He must guard all these fords, and we must fight for any one or two of them that we need to cross by. The only problem is, whether our general is going to strike with his right arm at Mitchell's Ford, his left arm at this very Warrenton road we are on, or whether he means to butt the middle of the line of Beauregard's battle to break him into two pieces?"
"What would Frederick the Great or Napoleon do?" Nick asked, absorbed inJack's confident predications.
"If Frederick had equal forces he would have a reserve just where we shall be in the morning—there at that point marked 'Stone Ridge,' and move a heavy mass to the southwest below McLean's Ford there, where you see the railway runs along the run for a half-mile or more. Or he would send this body to the northeast, over there where you see Sudley Springs marked in rather large letters, and he would by either one of these movements turn the enemy's flank—that is, get in behind him and force him to change front to fight, something that is rarely done successfully in battle. Napoleon would, on the contrary, mass all his best troops at the stone bridge, open the fight with every piece of artillery he could bring to bear, and in the panic send divisions ten deep across the bridge."
"Which would be the better plan?"
"Ah! that no one can say. The first is sure enough and less dangerous, if the commander is not certain of his men, because you notice that we felt excellent and confident all day, so long as we were marching forward and pushing the enemy from our path. The trial in battle is to be kept standing under fire, not sure where your enemy is; and then you noticed that our own guns behind us, sending shot and shells over us, were just as trying as the rebels'. Only soldiers of the very first class can be depended on in the Napoleon tactics. We are not soldiers of the first class; and you may be sure McDowell, who was many years in Europe, and who is a trained officer, will make use of the manoeuvres best calculated to bring out whatever there is in his men. As a matter of opinion, I should say that, in view of the miserable affair on the right yesterday, he will strike out for Sudley Springs, where we shall have the rebels just as you would have me if you were at my side, held my left arm behind me, ready to break my back with your knee planted in it."
Jack was sergeant of the guard that night, and it was in the group of sentries awaiting their relief every two hours, re-enforced by his tent-mates of Company K, that these learned dissertations on war were carried on. It was a never to be forgotten Saturday night to millions yet living. In Washington the President and his Cabinet sat far into the morning hours receiving the dispatches from the weary and disappointed chief—for, if Tyler had not made his miserable attempt to reach Manassas, the battle would have been fought that vital Saturday, and the result would have been another story in history. As the morning broke, red and murky, the army was up and in line, but without the usual noisy signals. The artillery-horses began to move first wherever it was possible. The heavy guns were pushed forward on the sward, to prevent the loud metallic clangor that penetrated the still air like clashing anvils. By half after six, the advance brigade, the Caribees in their old place, were within gunshot of the stone bridge.
"Ah ha, Jack! It is the Napoleonic plan!" Barney cried, as the artillery took places in front of the masses lying on the ground.
"Wait," Jack cried, owlishly. "The battle isn't fought always where the guns are loudest."
But the guns were now loud and quick. The rebels, behind a thick screen of trees, took up the challenge, and every sound was drowned in the roar of the artillery. A few far in the rear were wounded—those nearest the rebels were in the least danger, whether because the guns could not be sufficiently depressed, or because the gunners were poor hands, couldn't be determined. A breathless suspense, an insatiate craving to see, to move, to fly forward, or do anything, devoured the prostrate ranks. The firing had gone on two hours or more, which seemed only so many minutes, when to the group near General Tyler a courier, panting and dusty, rode in great excitement.
"General Tyler, the major-general has just learned that the enemy have crossed in force at Blackburn's Ford, below you. You are at once to take measures to protect your left flank."
"Ah ha, Jack; Frederick's on the other side, eh?" Barney said, as, standing near the group, these words reached their ears.
"Perhaps there are two Fredericks at work. Look yonder!" handing him his glass as he spoke.
"Thunder! our whole army is marching over there to the right, and we sha'n't even see the battle. They are four miles off. Why, what an immense army we must have! I thought this was the bulk of it, but we're not a brigade compared to that."
"Now, Barney, I feel confident that is the grand movement. Look how they fly along! The fields are as good as roads out there, and if it were not for the artillery they could make five miles an hour. Now, keep your ears open, my lad: you'll hear music off there to the northwest, music that will make Beauregard sick, if that courier's information is exact. For, don't you see, as we are placed here, with that gully to our left and the thick woods in front, we could hold this ground against six times our number."
Company K were now sent forward to the right to relieve a body of skirmishers that had been hidden on the margin of Bull Run, some distance to the westward of the stone bridge. Jack, going forward with his glass, noticed an officer among the men, but not catching sight of his face did not recognize him.
"Is that a rebel or one of our fellows?" one of the men said, pointing to a horseman disappearing in the woods four hundred yards to the right and in front of the company, marching in a straggling line two abreast, "by the flank," as it is called. Jack took his glass to discover, but the rider had disappeared. An instant after from a knoll, Jack, glass at eye, was examining eagerly the field on the other side of the river, when a horseman suddenly shot into view, riding desperately.
"By George, it is the same man! I wonder how he crossed the stream?There must be a bridge down there among those thick trees and bushes,"Jack said, excitedly.
"Are you sure, sergeant, that is the same man that was in the woods to the right there, five minutes ago?"
Jack turned; the officer was at his shoulder. He saluted respectfully, recognizing, with a thrill of joy, old Red Top, as the company called Sherman.
"Yes, colonel, it's the same man. He was in his shirtsleeves and had a blue scarf tied about his arm. There can be no mistake; several of us saw him quite plainly."
"If that be true, we've gained a half-day's work in two minutes." He was looking diligently through the glass as he spoke, and his eye brightened as he marked the man until he disappeared. He turned to an orderly that was following at a distance leading a horse. Mounting this lightly the colonel rode to the head of the company and said in a short, decisive tone:
"Come ahead men, at a double-quick, until you strike the stream." He kept beside the men as they moved. In fifteen minutes they were at the water's edge. Then the company was deployed as skirmishers, two thirds halting where they struck the water and the rest keeping on up the bank of the river for a few hundred yards. Sherman was eying every inch of the bank until, suddenly reaching a break where fresh tracks of a horse were visible, he directed his orderly to follow, and plunged into the water. It was not up to the horses' knees from bank to bank. Riding back, his face aglow, the colonel ordered the captain to cross half his men and station them up and down on the bank where they would not be seen by the rebels on the high ground above. Then, addressing Jack, he said:
"Sergeant, select two or three trusty men. Follow the bank of the stream until you come to General Hunter's division, which may be a mile, perhaps more, to the right yonder; you can tell by the firing soon. Tell General Hunter that we have discovered a ford and shall not have to fight for the stone bridge. We shall be across in no time and take the enemy in the rear. If you can't find Hunter, give this intelligence to any officer in command. Stay."
He scribbled a line on a sheet of his order-book, saying: "This will be your authority. It's better not to write the rest for fear you should be captured. In case you are in danger tell each man with you what to say, so that there will be more chances of getting the information where it will do good; and remember, sergeant, that this news in Hunter's hands will be almost equivalent to victory. Ah!"
He paused again. Reverberating crashes came from the high grounds up the river. "You will have no trouble in finding him now. Those are Hunter's guns. Hurry."
Glowing, grateful, big with the fate of the battle, Jack had Barney, Nick, and another, whom he charged with the duty of historian, detailed for this duty of glory. The group set off with a fervent Godspeed from the company sheltered among the thick pines and oaks.
"Now, boys," Jack said, every inch the captain, "we must spread out like skirmishers. Our chief danger will be from the left, as no one will be likely to be in the water but our own men, and we must look as sharply for them as for the enemy. I will take the center; you, Barney, the left, next to me; and you, Nick, four paces farther to the left." Jack looked at his watch. It was just 9.30, Sunday morning, July 21, 1861. The crash of musketry ahead now became one unbroken roar, with acrescendoof artillery that fairly shook the ground the messengers were darting over, for all were on a dead run. The bushes grew thick on the hillside and their branches were stubborn as crab thorns. Hell, as Barney afterward remarked, would have been cool in comparison to the heat as the adventurers tugged and wrestled forward. Now guns were roaring on every side save the river. Behind, before, to the left, the thunders played upon the parched land. At the end of a half-hour the bullets and shells passed over the group as Jack and his squad pushed along the hilly way. Twice, commands, and even the clicking, of what Jack knew must be rebel guns sounded not twenty paces away, but, thanks to the thick bushes, the scouts passed unseen, and, thanks to the noise of battle, unheard. But now the danger is from friends, not enemies. Balls come hurtling through the trees across the stream, and in a low voice Jack bids Barney summon Nick. Then all slip down to the water's edge, and make their way painfully through the marshy swamps, the cane-like rushes that fill the narrow valley. The run has been a fearful strain upon Nick, and at length he falls, gasping, in a clump of cat-tails.
"What is it, old fellow?" Jack cries in alarm.
"O Jack! I can't go a step farther. You go on and leave me. I shall follow when I get breath."
He was white and gasping. Barney filled his canteen from the running water, and, wetting his handkerchief, laid it on Nick's parboiled head and temples.
"Best a few minutes," Jack said, soothingly. "I will reconnoitre a bit." Stripping off his accoutrements, he clasped a tall sycamore growing at the crest of the ravine, and when far up brought his glass to bear. A third of a mile to the left and southward, he could see a regiment with a flag bearing a single star, surrounding a small stone farm-house on the brow of a gentle hill. They were firing to the west and toward the north, where the black clouds obscured his view. But the red gleam in the smoke told of at least a dozen guns, and he knew that the main battle was there, though the fury of it reached far to the east, near the stone bridge which he had quit an hour before. Then through the veil of smoke long, deep masses of blue emerge and make for the rebel front on the brow of the hill, fairly at Jack's feet; the enemy redoubles the fire; two guns at their left pour canister into the advancing wall of blue. It never wavers, but, as a group falls to the earth, the rest close together and the mass whirls on.
Jack feels like flying. Oh, the grandeur of it, the fearlessness, the intoxication! He almost falls from the tree in his excitement. But he takes a last sweep of the belching hill. Hark! Loud cheers in the trees back of the rebels, far to the southeast, perhaps a mile and a half; then the flaunting Palmetto flag flying forward in the center of deep masses of gray. Which will reach the hill first? He can not quit the deadly sight. Ah! the blue lines are pressing on now; the cannon-shots pass over their heads into the devoted line of gray, desperately thinned, but clinging to the key of the battle-field. But, great God! Perhaps his delay is aiding the enemy. He sees the route now clear—straight to the west—and no rebels near enough to intervene. He descends so fast that his hands and legs are blistered, but he is down.
"Look sharp, boys; you must follow me as best you can. I know the route—there is a forest path directly to our lines, and we shall be there in twenty minutes—I shall, at least." He doesn't stop to see whether he is followed or not, but dashes on, and the rest after him. He is far out of sight in an instant. It is only by the crackling of the branches that the others keep his course. The way is between steep, precipitous hills, which explains how they could be so near the battle and yet not in it, nor harmed by the missiles flying sometimes very near them. At a deep branch of the stream the three rearmost came in sight of Jack, up to his armpits in water and pushing for the shore.
While they are hailing him exultantly he sinks out of sight; an awful anguish almost stops the others, but Barney, flinging his musket and impediments off as he runs, leaps far into the stream, and when the rest reach the spot he has Jack by the hair, dragging him to the bank. He is fairly worn out by the stress, and the others loosen his coat, stretch him on the brown sward and rub his hands, his body. It is ten minutes, it seemed an hour, before he is able to get up, and the rest insist on carrying his accoutrements. Then the wild race is begun again, every instant bringing them nearer the pandemonium of battle. Suddenly the sharp commands of officers are heard in front and to the left. Is it the enemy, or is it friends? The group halts in an agony of doubt. How can they find out? Barney takes out his handkerchief and puts it on his gun, which he was careful to go back and recover when Jack was on the bank. A ray of bright red suddenly flits above the thick tops of the scrub-oaks.
Yes, God be praised, there is the flag of stars, and there are blue uniforms! With a wild hurrah, drowned in the musketry to the left, they rush forward, are halted by a picket guard, exhibit Sherman's order, and are directed to the commanding-officer. That personage has no knowledge of General Hunter's whereabouts, but Colonel Andrew Porter is just beyond, commanding the brigade. To him Jack makes known Sherman's message, and is directed farther to the southwest, the Union right now facing nearly to the east in the execution of McDowell's admirable flank manoeuvre.
Now among their own, Sherman's couriers run more peril than when skirting the edge of the battle, for the shells are directed at the line they are pursuing. They push to the rear and continue southeastward, where Hunter's headquarters are supposed to be. But Jack is easy on the score of his mission, since the general, who is nearest the stone bridge, has been apprised, and well knows that the fire which has been coming near his left flank is Sherman's. Until, however, he has executed his orders literally Jack won't be satisfied, and plunges on, the others following, nothing loath. But it is a way of pain for the lads now. Every step they come upon the dead and dying. The air is filled with moaning men, whinnying horses, the hurried movement of stretchers, the solemn solicitude of the hospital corps. The line of foremost battle is less terrifying, less trying than this inner way of Golgotha, and the four are well-nigh unnerved when they reach a group where the commanding officer has been pointed out.
"General Hunter?" Jack says, addressing an officer with a star.
"My name is Franklin. General Hunter was wounded an hour ago. What's the matter?"
Jack gave his message, and Franklin said, cheerfully: "That's good news. You're a very brave fellow. Go a few yards in the rear yonder and you'll find General McDowell. He'll enjoy your message."
On the hill they halt electrified.
Thick copses of scrub-pine dot the gently sloping sward. Here and there clumps of tall pines stand in the bare, brown sod as if to guard the young outshoots clustering about them in wanton dispersion. Cow-paths, marked only by the worn edges of the bushes, run in zigzags across the hillside and up to the plateau. The remnants of rail fences strew the ground here and there. The low roof of the farm-house can be seen far back even from the depression, where the lines of blue are now resting a brief, deadly half-hour.
The sun is now behind the halted line of blue; the bayonets, catching the light, make a sea of liquid, mirror-like rivulets hovering in the air, with the bushy branches of pine rising like green isles in the shimmering tide. The men are filling their cartridge-boxes; new regiments are gliding into the gaps where death has cut the widest swath. From the woods, cries, groans, commands, clashing steel as the men hustle against each other in the rush into line, prelude the Vulcan clamor soon to begin. Men, bent, sometimes crawling, with stretchers on their shoulders, glide through the maimed and shrieking fragments of bodies, picking out here and there those seeming capable of carriage. Other men, prone on their faces, hold canteens of tepid, muddy water—but ah! a draught to the feverish lips which seems godlike nectar. Against the stout bodies of the trees, armless men, legless trunks, the maimed in every condition of death's fantastic sport, hold themselves limply erect, to gain succor or save some of the vital stream pouring from their gaping wounds.
Couriers dash up to the impassive chief, calm-eyed, keen, alert, surveying the line, dispatching brief commands, receiving reports. It is Franklin. With the air of a marshal on a civic pageant, perplexed only by some geometrical problem denying the possibility of two right lines on the same plane, he glances upward toward the brow of the plateau. The four flags had been increased by half a dozen. Ah, they have received aid! A tremendous crash comes from the left. That must be Sherman. He is on the rebel rear. One strong pull, and the two bodies will be united, his left arm reaching Sherman's right. The shining mirage of steel above the green isle sinks. The clash of hurtling accoutrements comes up musically, tranquilly from the low ground. The blue mass, first deliberately, then in a quiet, regular run, passes like a moving barricade up the sloping hillside. Then from one end of the long wall to the other white puffs as of some monster breathing spasmodically.
The air is a blur of sulphurous blackness. The bullets are as thick as if a swarm of leaden locusts had been routed from the foliage, and taken wing hillward. Then behind, through the gaps in the trees, big, whining, screeching swarms of another caliber shells fly over the wall of blue. In a moment the ground of the plateau is torn, the red clay flying far into the air. But now the blue wall is girdling the very crest of the hill; it stops, shrivels. Long gaps are cut in its broken surface. The hillside is dotted with sprawling figures. The crest is a ragged edge of writhing bodies and struggling limbs. Forward! The wall is advancing, but shorter. It is within reach of the shining guns—spouting flame and iron in the very face of the dauntless wall. Then there is a pause. The smoke hides everything but the maimed and quivering heaps that strive to crawl backward, back to the crest, back to the deeps that are not rest nor security. The hillside is like a field, covered with sheaved grain—with a thousand mangled bodies that had been men.
Then to these wrestling specters—for in the dim smoke and Tartarean atmosphere the actions of loading and aiming take the shape of huge writhing, convulsing, monstrous, grappling—come quick-moving lines of help. They rush through them, over them. The thirteen cannon behind the struggling hydra of gray seem one vortex—sulphurous, flaming, spitting, as from one vast mouth, scorching fire, huge mouthfuls of granite venom. Back—back, the gray masses break in sinuous, definite, slow-yielding disruption.
Then a sudden inrush from the left of the broken gray, where smoke and space play fantastic tricks with the sunshine. Miraculously a dark mass is projected on the shimmering spectrum, and a ringing voice is heard:
"We are saved; we are re-enforced. We will die here!" Then high above the din, in the exultant tumult of the deadly won ground, the nearest in blue hear a stentorian voice—grim, deliberate, exultant:
"Look where Jackson stands like a stone-wall! At them, men! Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer."
Die he did, when the yelling horde in the sudden outrush grazed the edge of the Union besom sweeping over the plain in a rush of death. Then behind these spectral shapes came others—thousands—with wild, fierce shouts. The blue mass is thinned to a single line. Men in command look anxiously to the rear. Where is Burnside? Where are the twelve thousand men whom Hunter and Heintzelman deployed in these woods two hours since? Back, slowly, fiercely, but backward, the slender wall of blue is forced; not defeated, but not victorious. All this Jack sees, and he turns heartsick from the sight.
When the straggling couriers reached the point designated as McDowell's headquarters, he had gone to the eastward of the line, and, faithful to the command given him, Jack set out with Barney, leaving the others to deliver the message in case he missed the general. They emerged presently on the edge of a plateau, whence nearly the whole battle could be seen. Jack climbed a tall oak to reconnoitre the ground for McDowell, but, as his glass revealed the battling lines, he shouted to Barney to climb for a moment, to impress the frightful yet grandiose spectacle upon his mind. Far off toward the stone bridge, now a mile or more northeast of them, they could see the Union flags waving, and mark the white puffs of smoke that preceded the booming of the cannon. Every instant the clouds of smoke came southward, where the rebel lines were concealed by the thick copses. But they were breaking—always breaking back anew. In twenty minutes more, at the same rate, the hill upon which the rebel lines nearest the tree held the Union right at bay would be surrounded on two sides.
This, for the moment, was a sulphurous crater, the fire-belching demons, invisible in the smoke. Through the glass Jack could see the lines clearly—or the smoke arising above them. The enemy had been pushed back nearly two miles since he had left Colonel Sherman a few rods above the stone bridge. The Union force, as marked by the veil of smoke, curved, about the foemen, a vast crescent, seven miles or more from tip to tip. The bodies opposing were scattered like a gigantic staircase, with the angles of the steps confronting each other step by step. But now the Union ranks at Jack's feet rush forward; a group of riders are coming to the tree, and Jack descends hastily to meet the general. He is again disappointed. It is not McDowell. At a loss what to do, he salutes one of the officers and states his case, recognizing, as he turns, General Franklin.
"I don't see that you can do better than remain where you are, or, still better, push to the brow of that hill yonder and act as a picket. In case you see any force approaching from this side, which is not likely, give warning. Our cavalry ought to be here, but it isn't. If you are called to account when the battle is done, give me as your authority. I take it your brigade will be around here pretty soon, if they make as rapid work all the way as they have made since eleven o'clock. If the cavalry come, you can report to the nearest officer for assignment."
The two free lances set out now, relieved of all responsibility, and determined to watch the open fields and woods to see that this part of the field was not surprised. The hill to which the general had directed them was farther from the battle than they had yet been, but the work going on to the northeast showed that this would soon be the western edge of the combat if Sherman continued advancing. They are soon on the hill, and Jack posts himself in a tree with his glass. There is a lull in the quarter they have just quit. The smoke rolls away, and now he can see streams of gray-coats hurrying to the edge of the plateau, where, two hours before, he had encountered Porter's brigade. Can it be possible that Porter's troops do not see these on-rushing hordes? They are moving on the right point of the crescent, and unless the Union commander is alert they will break in on the back of the point; for Jack, without knowing it, was virtually in the rebel lines—that is, he was nearer the rebel left flank, the foot of the long, bow-shaped staircase, than he was to the tip of the Union crescent.
But no! The Stars and Stripes fly forward; they are on the very crest whence the defiant guns spat upon them. But now the smoke covers everything. Then there is a calm. The ground is clear again. The gray masses are pouring up to the crest in still greater numbers; a large body of them march down the hill in the rear of the Union line concealed by the woods; they march right up to the ranks where the red-barred flag is flying! What can it mean? Neither side fires. There must surely be some mistake. Hark! now the blue line discovers—too late—that the mass is the enemy, and half the line withers in the point-blank discharge. They are swept from the ground. Jack is trembling—demoniac. The gray mass springs forward; they have seized the guns—four of them—and turn them upon the disappearing blue. Then a hoarse shout of delirious triumph. The guns are lost; the day is lost, for now there are no blue-coats in sight. But no! A still wilder shout—electrifying, stentorian—comes across the plateau. The blue mass reappears; they come with a wild rush in well-ordered array; they are the regulars, Jack can tell by their movements. It must be the famous Rickett's battery he saw at Centreville in the morning. In five minutes the tale was retold, and the guns, snatched from the worsted gray-coats, are safe in the hands of their masters. Again the smoke obscures the picture; again it clears away, and now the gray are in greater force than before, and the horseless batteries are again the prize of this rapacious grapple. Swarming in from three sides, the gray again hold the contested pieces. The blue vanish into the thick bushes. Another irruption, another pall of smoke, and Jack's heart bounds in exultant joy, for he sees the New York flag in the van. Sherman has reached the point of dispute. But alas! the guns are run back, and as the gray lines sway rearward in billowy, regular measure, they retain the Titanically contested trophies.
The sun is now far beyond the meridian. The Union lines are closing up compactly. One more such grapple as the last and the broad plateau where the rebel artillery is massed, pointing westward, northward, eastward, will be won. But a palsy seems to have settled on the lines of blue. They are motionless, while their adversaries are hurrying men from some secret place, where they seem to be inexhaustible. The whole battle is now within the compass of a mile. But where can these hordes come from? Surely, General McDowell has never been mad enough to leave them disengaged along the fords! No; they do not come from that direction. They come at the very center of the rebel rear. Can it be that troops are arriving from Richmond? The Southern lines are longer than the Northern, but they have been since the first moment Jack got a glimpse of them. He could see, too, that they were thinner: that on the spur of the plateau in front of the massed rebel artillery a single brigade was holding the Union mass at bay. He can almost hear the rebel commands as the re-enforcements pour in. But now the thunder breaks out anew, rolls in vengeful fury around the western and northern base of the plateau. The gray lines stagger; the falling men block the steps of the living. Surely now McDowell is going to do or die. Yes. The iron game goes on; the blue lines jostle and crush forward. They are at the last wall of resistance. But what is the sound at his very feet? As Jack looks down in the narrow way between the hill he is on and the plateau on the very edge of the Union line—in fact, behind it now, for it has moved forward since he took post—a rushing mass of gray-clad soldiery is moving forward on the dead run. In one instant the head of the column is where General Franklin rode but an hour or two before. He looks for Barney. He can see him nowhere. He climbs down in haste and discovers his comrade soundly sleeping against the base of the tree.
"Barney, the army is ruined!"
"Is the battle over?"
"Oh, no, no, but it will be in a moment. Hark, hear that!"
A roar of musketry—it seemed at their very feet. Then an outbreak of yells, so sharp, so piercing, so devilish the sound, that the marrow froze in their veins, arose, as if from the whole thicket about them.
"Is it too late to warn General Franklin?" Barney asked, trembling.
"Ah, Barney, we are as bad as traitors; we ought to have seen these rebels before they got near. If we had done our duty this would never have happened. Perhaps it is not too late to get back. Let me go up and see where we can find a way without running into the enemy."
Reaching his perch again, Jack cast his despairing eyes toward the fatal hill. It was now clear of smoke, and there wasn't a regiment left on it. His heart leaped for an instant, the next it was lead, for the ranks that had disappeared were down on the brow of the hill—in the valley— rushing forward, unresisted, the red and blue of the Union, mixed with the stars and bars of the rebellion; but, worse than all, the ranks of gray were sweeping in overwhelming masses quite behind the lines of blue, cutting them down as a scythe when near the end of the furrow. To the eastward Sherman still clung desperately to the crests he had won, but Jack saw with agony that, slipping between him and the river, a great wedge of gray was hurrying forward. His last despairing glance caught a body of jet black horses galloping wildly into the dispersing ranks of blue. He came down from the tree limp, nerveless, unmanned.
"Well?" Barney asked.
"It's all over—we are ruined!"
"The army, you mean?"
"Ah, yes! the army and we too."
"But what's going to become of us?"
"I don't much care what becomes of us—at least I don't care what becomes of me!"
"But if we don't get back to our regiment, they'll think we're deserters."
"Good God, yes! I forgot that; I think I can find the way back. But we'll have to be careful, the enemy are all around us. I can hear them plainly, very near. Follow me, and don't speak above a whisper."
Then, with swift movement, always as near the thick bushes as they could push, they fled faster and faster, as fear fell more and more heavily upon their quickened fancies. The thought of the repute of deserters lent them endurance, or they must have broken down before the weary shiftings of that dreadful flight. They are now near the spot where they had met Porter's pickets in the morning. The sounds of battle had died out at intervals, renewed now and again by an outcry of cheers, a quick fusillade, then more cheers, and then an ominous silence. But now there is a continuous roll of musketry near the knoll, back of the Warrenton road. The two wanderers, breathless, with torn uniforms, swollen faces, halt, gasping, to take their bearings. They can see the turnpike far beyond the stone bridge half-way to Centreville: they see crowds fleeing in zigzag lines over the open fields, see horses plunging wildly, laden down by two and even three men on their backs; they see vehicles overturned at the roadside, whence the horses have been cut or killed by the rebel shells; they see an army, in every sense a mob, swarming behind the deserted rebel forts; they see orderly ranks of shining black horses this side the stone bridge charging the fleeing lines of blue; they see shells whirling like huge blackbirds in the sky, suddenly falling among the skurrying thousands; they see a shell finally burst on the bridge, shiver a caisson to fragments, and then all sign of organized flight comes to an end.
But near them, meanwhile, a sullen fire replies with desperate promptitude to the rebel shots.
"If we can get over to the men fighting at the edge of the woods, we may be killed or captured, but we won't be disgraced!" Jack cries.
Again they make a wide circuit through the woods, and now the firing is near at hand, coming slowly toward them. They have only to wait and they will be among the forlorn hope. Ah, with what fervent joy Jack marks the Union banner, flapping its twin streamers among the hurtling pines! They are near it; they are under it! Their own guns are no longer available; hundreds are lying at hand; they seize them. The line is firing in retreat. It is a sadly depleted battalion of Keyes's regulars, steadfast, imperturbable, devoted. A handful of them has been forgotten or misdirected. The rebels, uncertain whether it was not a trap to snare them, move with caution, while far to the left a turning column is hurrying to hem the Union group in on every side. There are hardly three hundred blue-coats in the mass, but their volleys are so swift, so regular, so steady, that they make the impression of a thousand. The enemy felt sure, as was afterward learned, that there was at least a regiment.
A young captain, soiled, ragged, his sleeves hanging in ribbons, the whole skirt of his coat gone, moves alertly, composedly in the center, seizing a gun when one comes handy on the ground, where there are plenty scattered.
"Steady, men, steady! We shall be at the water's edge, soon, and then we can give them hell!"
Never music sounded sweeter in Jack's car than that jaunty epithet "hell"! How inspiring! How little of the ordinary association the word brought up! Now they were traversing slowly the very ground Jack and his comrades had flown over in the morning. Still firing—still working with all his heart in the deadly play, Jack sidles to the officer and cries out:
"Captain, I know a ford that will take us across above the stone bridge.We discovered it this morning. Shall I guide that way?"
"Guide if you can; but fire like seven devils, above all!" the captain cried, seizing two or three pouches lying in a mass and emptying the cartridges into his pockets.
"There, keep to the left sharp, and we shall come to a deep gully where the water is only knee-deep," Jack cries, also replenishing his cartridge-box, which had shrunk under the rapid work of the last half-hour.
"What regiment are you, sergeant?" the captain cries, looking for a moment at the tattered recruit.
"Caribees of New York, Sherman's brigade."
"And how came you off here? Your brigade was near the right of the line at the stone budge." The captain asked this with a shade of suspicion in his voice.
Jack explained his mission, and the officer, who had been dealing out the timely windfall of ammunition, nodded.
"Poor Hunter was shot early in the advance. It would have been victory to our flag if the poor old follow had been wounded before the action began. He lost three hours in the attack, and gave the rebels a chance to come up from Winchester."
Now Jack understood the mysterious legions that seemed to spring from the earth. They were Johnston's army from the Shenandoah.
"Keep up heart, men: Burnside and Schenck are near us somewhere. They are in reserve, and they'll give these devils a warm welcome, if they push far enough after us."
Then the steady volleys grew swifter, if that were possible, the enemy moving steadily after the slowly retiring group. But now there is a clear field to cross, so wide that the smallness of the force must be detected. The captain halts the line, takes his bearings, divides the little army into two bodies, orders one to move at a double-quick directly across the open; the rest are stretched out as skirmishers. He retires with the first squad across the field, directing the skirmishers to hold the ground until they hear three musket-shots from the wood behind. The rebels can now be seen closing in very near. But the skirmish-line, spreading over a wider front, evidently perplexes them, and they halt. The three shots are presently heard, then the skirmish-line flees in groups across the bare downs, the vociferating yells of the gray-coats fairly drowning the hideous clamor of the muskets.
"Ah! we're saved," a lieutenant cries, waving his cap like a madman. "Look! there are men in the wood yonder, to our right; they are coming this way!"
Jack turned, he was near the captain; and he marked, with deadly panic, a look of despair settle down on the heroic, handsome face. What could it mean? Didn't he believe that there were men there? Jack handed him his own glass—the captain had none.
"By Heaven, our flag! But what troops can they be in that quarter? They must be surrounded, like ourselves.—Sergeant, can you undertake a dangerous duty?"
"With all my heart," Jack cried, heartily.
"What's your name and company?"
"John Sprague, Caribees, Company K."
"Slip around the edge of the skirt of bushes. You'll be within an arm's length of the enemy all the way. Reach the place where we saw those men a moment since. When you get there, if they are friendly, fire a shot. Here, take this pistol. Fire that; I shall recognize it from the musketry. If they are the enemy, fire all the barrels as fast as you can and retreat. You run great danger; you can only by a miracle escape capture; but it is our only resource for the next charge. We must surrender or die," he added, looking wofully at the meager remnant of his company. Before the words had fairly ended, Jack is off like a shot, forgetting Barney, forgetting everything but the extrication of this grand young Roman. As he skurried along, sometimes on hands and knees, he blames himself for not learning the captain's name. He feels sure that a day will come when the world will know and admire it. He has gained the other corner, and in a moment he will be in the thick copse where the Union flag had been seen, but as he makes a dash through a clump of laurel he is confronted by two men, muskets in hand.
"A Yank, by the Lord! Surrender, you damned mudsill!"
For answer Jack raised the pistol in his hand and fired. The man fell, with a frightful yell. The other leveled his musket fairly in Jack's face; but before he could pull the trigger a report at his ear deafened Jack, and the second man staggered against the tree.
"Ah, ha! me boy, the rear rank did the best work there," Barney cried, as Jack turned to see whence the timely aid had come, "A day after the fair's better than the fair itself, if the rain has kept the girls away," and Barney laughed good-humoredly.
"Well, 'pon my soul, Barney, it's a shameful thing to say, but all thought of you had gone from my mind. I should not have let you come if you had proposed it, but now we're in for it. Ah—!"
As he spoke the Union flag he had seen came forward, but it was in the hands of a rebel bearer, and was upside down in mockery. The sight was enough. He fired the shots as agreed upon, firing two at the group marching heedlessly forward, as the skirmish-line was far ahead, or they supposed it was, for the two men disabled by Jack and Barney were the advance, as it was not supposed that any but stragglers were near at hand, and the company were returning to their regiment. In an instant a fierce volley is returned, and Barney, who is fairly in the bush behind a huge tree, hears a low groan. He looks where Jack had been and sees him lying on the ground, stifling an agonized cry by holding his left arm over his mouth. Barney might have escaped, at least he might have delayed capture, but coming from behind the tree, he holds up his hands, and flinging himself on the ground beside his comrade takes his head upon his knee and awaits the worst.