SHARPSBURG
"Sharpsburg!" said long afterwards Stephen D. Lee. "Sharpsburg was
Artillery Hell!"
"Sharpsburg," said the infantry of the Army of Northern Virginia.
"Sharpsburg! That was the field where an infantryman knew that he stood
on the most dangerous spot on the earth!"
Through the passes of the South Mountain, over Red Hill, out upon the
broken ground east of the Antietam poured the blue torrent--McClellan
and his eighty-seven thousand. Lee met it with a narrow grey sea--not
thirty thousand men, for A. P. Hill was yet upon the road from Harper's
Ferry. In Berserker madness, torrent and uproar, clashed the two
colours.
There was a small white Dunkard church with a background of dark woods.
It was north of Sharpsburg, near the Hagerstown turnpike, and it marked
the Confederate left. Stonewall Jackson held the left. Before him was
Fighting Joe Hooker with Meade and Doubleday and Ricketts.
From a knoll behind Sharpsburg the commander-in-chief looked from
Longstreet on the right to D. H. Hill, and from Hill to Jackson. He
looked to the Harper's Ferry Road, but he did not see what he wished to
see--A. P. Hill's red battle shirt. "Artillery Hell" had begun. There
was enormous thunder, enormous drifting murk. All the country side, all
the little Maryland villages and farmhouses blenched beneath that sound.
Lee put down his field glass. He stood, calm and grand, the smoke and
uproar at his feet. The Rockbridge Guns came by, going to some indicated
quarter of the field. In thunder they passed below the knoll, the iron
war-beasts, the gunners with them, black with powder and grime! All
saluted; but one, a very young, very ragged, very begrimed private at
the guns, lingered a moment after his fellows, stood very straight at
the salute and with an upward look, then with quickened step caught up
with his gun and disappeared into the smoke ahead. Lee answered a glance
of his chief of staff. "Yes. It was my youngest son. It was Rob."
The Dunkard church! In this war it was strange how many and how ghastly
battles surged about small country churches! The Prince of Peace, if he
indwelled here, must have bowed his head and mourned. Sunrise struck
upon its white walls; then came a shell and pierced them. The church
became the core of the turmoil, the white, still reef against which beat
the wild seas in storm.
Fighting Joe Hooker came out of the North Wood. His battle flags were
bright and he had drums and brazen horns. Loud and in time, regular as a
beat in music, came the Huzzah! Huzzah! of his fourteen thousand men. He
crossed the turnpike, he came down on the Dunkard church. "Yaii! Yaaaii!
Yaaaaaaaaiihhh!" yelled the grey sea,--no time at all, only fierce
determination. Sometimes a grey drum beat, or bugle called, but there
was no other music, save the thunder of the guns and the long rattle,
never ceasing, of the musketry. There were battle flags, squares of
crimson with a starry Andrew's cross. They went forward, they shrank
back. Standard-bearers were killed. Gaunt, powder-grimed hands caught at
the staves, lifted them; the battle-flags went forward again.
Doubleday struck and Ricketts. They charged against Stonewall Jackson
and the narrow grey sea. All the ground was broken; alignment was lost;
blue waves and grey went this way and that in a broken, tumultuous fray.
But the blue waves were the heavier; in mass alone they outdid the grey.
They pushed the grey sea back, back, back toward the dark wood about the
Dunkard church! Then Stonewall Jackson came along the front, riding in a
pelting, leaden rain. "Steady, men. Steady! God is over us!" His men
received him with a cry of greeting and enthusiasm that was like a
shriek, it was so wild and high. His power upon them had grown and
grown. He was Stonewall Jackson! He was Stonewall Jackson! First, they
would die for those battle-flags and the cause they represented; second,
they would die for one another, comrades, brethren! third, they would
die for Stonewall Jackson! They lifted their voices for him now, gaunt
and ragged troops with burning eyes. _Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall
Jackson! Virginia! Virginia! Virginia! the South! the South!_ He turned
his horse, standing in the whistling, leaden rain. "Forward, and drive
them!"
Lawton and D. H. Hill leaped against Meade. He was a staunch fighter,
but he gave back. The wood about the Dunkard church appeared to writhe
like Dante's wood, it was so full of groaning, of maimed men beside the
tree trunks. The dead lay where they fell, and the living stepped upon
them. Meade gave back, back--and then Mansfield came in thunder to
reinforce the blue.
The grey fought as even in this war they had hardly fought before. They
were so gaunt, they were so ragged, they were so tired! But something
ethnic was coming more and more rapidly to the front. They were near
again to savage nature. The Maryland woods might have been thicker,
darker, the small church might have been some boulder altar beside some
early Old World river. They were a tribe again, and they were fighting
another and much larger tribe whom they had reason, reason, reason to
hate! Their existence was at stake and the existence of all that their
hearts held dear. They fought with fury. About each were his
tribesmen--all were brothers! Brother fought for brother, brother saw
brother fall, brother sprang to avenge brother. Their lips were
blackened from tearing cartridges; their eyes, large in their thin,
bronzed faces, burned against the enemy; their fingers were quick, quick
at the musket lock; the spirit was the spirit behind hurled stones of
old, swung clubs, thrown javelins! They had a loved leader, a great
strong head man who ruled them well and led them on to victory. They
fought for him too, for his scant and curt praise, for his "Good, Good!"
They fought for their own lives, each man for his own life, for their
tribe, their possessions, for women at home and children, for their
brethren, their leader, their cause. Something else, too, of the past
was there in force--hatred of him who opposed. They fought for hate at
Sharpsburg, as they fought for love. The great star drew, the iron thong
fell. Led and driven, the tribe fought gigantically.
* * * * *
The battle became furious. Within the din of artillery and musketry human
voices, loud, imperative, giving orders, shouting, wailing, died like a low
murmur in the blast. Out of the wildly drifting smoke, now dark, now
flame-lit, forms emerged, singly or in great bodies, then the smoke drew
together, hiding the struggle. There was blackness and grime as from the
ash of a volcano. The blood pounded behind the temples, the eyeballs
started, the tongue was thick in the mouth, battle smell and battle taste,
a red light, and time in crashes like an earthquake-toppling city! The
inequalities of the ground became exaggerated. Mere hillocks changed into
rocky islands. Seize them, fortify them, take them before the blue can! The
tall maize grew gigantically taller. Break through these miles of cane as
often before we have broken through them, the foemen crashing before us
down to their boats! The narrow tongues of woods widened, widened. Take
these deep forests, use them for shelter, from them send forth these new
arrows of death--fight, fight! in the rolling murk, the red light and
crying!
Before the Dunkard church Starke, commanding Jackson's old division, was
killed, Jones was wounded, Lawton wounded. Many field officers were
down, many, many of lesser rank. Of the blue, Mansfield was killed,
Hooker was wounded, and Hartsuff and Crawford. The grey had pressed the
blue back, back! Now in turn the blue drove the grey. The walls of the
white church were splashed with blood, pocked with bullets. Dead men lay
at the door; within were those of the wounded who could get there. But
the shells came too, the shells pierced the roof and entered. War came
in, ebon, blood-stained, and grinning. The Prince of Peace was crowded
out.
The artillery was deafening. In the midst of a tremendous burst of sound
D. H. Hill flung in the remainder of his division. Sumner came through
the smoke. The grey and blue closed in a death grapple. From toward the
centre, beneath the howling storm rose a singing--
The race is not to them that's got
The longest legs to run.
"Hood's Texans! Hood's Texans!" cried the Stonewall and all the other
brigades on the imperilled left. "Come on, Hood's Texans! Come on!
Yaaaii! Yaaaaaiih!"
Nor the battle to those people,
That shoots the biggest gun.
The Texans came to the Dunkard church. Stonewall Jackson launched a
thunderbolt, grey as steel, all his men moving up as one, against the
opposing, roaring sea. The sea gave back. Then Sumner called in
Sedgwick's fresh troops.
Allan Gold, fighting with the 65th, took the colours from the last of
the colour guard. He was tall and strong and he swung them high. The
glare from an exploding shell showed him and the battle flag. Gone was
the quiet school-teacher, gone even the scout and woodsman. He stood a
great Viking, with yellow hair, and the battle rage had come to him. He
began to chant, unconscious as a harp through which strikes a strong
wind. "Come on!" he chanted. "Come on!
"Sixty-fifth, come on!
Come on, the Stonewall!
Remember Manassas,
The first and the second Manassas!
Remember McDowell,
Remember Front Royal,
Remember the battle of Winchester,
Remember Cross Keys,
Remember Port Republic,
The battle of Kernstown, and all our battles and skirmishes,
Our marches and forced marches, bivouacs, and camp-fires,
Brother's hand in brother's hand, and the battle to-morrow!
Remember the Seven Days, Seven Days, Seven Days!
Remember the Seven Days! Remember Cedar Run.
The Groveton Wood, and the Railroad cut at Manassas
Where you threw stones when your cartridges were gone, where you
struck with the bayonet,
And the General spoke to you then, 'Steady, men, steady!'
Remember Chantilly, remember Loudoun and Maryland Heights.
Harper's Ferry was yesterday. Remember and strike them again!
Come on, 65th! Come on, the Stonewall!"
Back through the cornfield before the Dunkard church fell the blue. Dead
and dying choked the cornfield as the dead and dying had choked the cane
brake. Blade and stalks were beaten down, the shells tore up the earth.
The blue reformed and came again, a resistless mass. Heavier and
heavier, Fighting Joe Hooker, with Meade and Doubleday and Ricketts and
Sumner, struck against Stonewall Jackson! Back came the grey to the
little Dunkard church. All around it, wood and open filled with
clangour. The blue pressed in--the grey were giving way, were giving
way! An out-worn company raised a cry, "They're flanking us!" Something
like a shiver passed over the thinning lines, then, grey and haggard,
they tore another cartridge. Stonewall Jackson's voice came from behind
a reef of smoke. "Stand fast, men! Stand fast. There are troops on the
road from Harper's Ferry. It is General McLaws. Stand fast!"
It was McLaws, with his black bullet head, his air of a Roman Consul! In
he thundered with his twenty-five hundred men, tawny with the dust of
the seventeen miles from Harper's Ferry. He struck Sedgwick full. For
five minutes there was brazen clangour and shouting and an agony of
effort, then the blue streamed back, past the Dunkard wood and church,
back into the dreadful cornfield.
Maury Stafford, sent with a statement to the commander-in-chief, crossed
in one prolonged risk of life from the wild left to the only less
stormed-against centre. Here a strong blue current, French and
Richardson, strove against a staunch grey ledge--a part of D. H. Hill's
line, with Anderson to support. Here was a sunken road, that, later, was
given a descriptive name. Here was the Bloody Lane. Lee was found
standing upon a knoll, calm and grand. "I yet look for A. P. Hill," he
said. "He has a talent for appearing at identically the right moment."
Stafford gave his statement. All over the field the staff had suffered
heavily. Some were dead, many were wounded. Those who were left did
treble duty. Lee sent this officer on to Longstreet, holding the long
ridge on the right.
Stafford rode through the withering storm across that withered field.
There seemed no light from the sky; the light was the glare from the
guns. He marked, through a rift in the smoke, a battery where it stood
upon a height, above felled trees. He thought it was Pelham's--the Horse
Artillery. It stood for a moment, outlined against the orange-bosomed
cloud, then, like an army of wraiths, the smoke came between and hid it.
His horse frightened at a dead man in his path. The start and plunging
were unusual, and the rider looked to see the reason. The soldier had
drawn letters from his breast and had died with them in his hands. The
unfolded, fluttering sheets stirred as though they had life. Stafford,
riding on, found the right and found Longstreet looking sombrely, like
an old eagle from his eyrie. "I told General Lee," he said "that we
ought never to have divided. I don't see A. P. Hill. You tell General
Lee that I've only got D. R. Jones and the knowledge that we fight like
hell, and that Burnside is before me with fourteen thousand men."
Stafford retraced his way. The ground beneath was burned and scarred,
the battle cloud rolled dark, the minies sang beside his ear. Now he was
in a barren place, tasting of powder, smelling of smoke, now lit, now
darkened, but vacant of human life, and now he was in a press of men,
grey forms advancing and retreating, or standing firing, and now he was
where fighting had been and there was left a wrack of the dead and
dying. He reached the centre and gave his message, then turned toward
the left again. A few yards and his horse was killed under him. He
disengaged himself and presently caught at the bridle and stayed
another. There were many riderless horses on the field of Sharpsburg,
but he had hardly mounted before this one, too, was killed. He went on
afoot. He entered a sunken road, dropped between rough banks overhung by
a few straggling trees. The road was filled with men lying down, all in
shadow beneath the rolling battle smoke. Stafford thought it a regiment
waiting for orders; then he saw that they were all dead men. He must go
back to the Dunkard wood, and this seemed his shortest way. He entered
the lane and went up it as quickly as he might for the forms that lay
thick in the discoloured light. It looked as though the earth were
bleeding, and all the people were fantastic about him. Some lay as
straight as on a sculptured tomb, and some were hooped, and some lay
like a cross, and some were headless. As he stepped with what care he
might, a fierce yelling broke out on the side that was the grey side.
There was a charge coming--already he saw the red squares tossing! He
moved to the further side of the sunken road and braced himself against
the bank, putting his arm about a twisted, protruding cedar. D. H.
Hill's North Carolinians hung a moment, tall, gaunt, yelling, then
swooped down into the sunken lane, passed over the dead, mounted the
other ragged bank and went on. Stafford waited to hear the shock. It
came; full against a deep blue wave. Richardson had been killed and
Hancock commanded here. The blue wave was strong. The sound of the melee
was frightful; then out of it burst a loud huzzahing. Stafford
straightened himself. The grey were coming back, and after them the
blue. Almost before he could unclasp his arm from the cedar, the first
spray of gaunt, exhausted, bleeding men came over and down into the
sunken lane. All the grey wave followed. At the moment there outburst a
renewed and tremendous artillery battle. The smoke drifting across the
Bloody Lane was like the fall of night, a night of cloud and storm.
Orange flashes momentarily lit the scene, and the sullen thunders
rolled. The grey, gaunt and haggard, but their colours with them,
overpassed the dead and wounded, now choking the sunken road. Behind
them were heard the blue, advancing and huzzahing. The grey wave
remounted the bank down which it plunged fifteen minutes before. At the
top it stayed a moment, thin and grey, spectral in the smoke pall, the
battle flags like hovering, crimson birds. A line of flame leaped, one
long crackle of musketry, then it resumed its retreat, falling back on
the west wood. The blue, checked a moment by that last volley, now
poured down into the sunken road, overpassed the thick ranks of the dead
and wounded, mounted, and swept on in a counter charge.
Maury Stafford had left the cedar and started across with the last
broken line of the grey. Going down the crumbling bank his spur caught
in a gnarled and sprawling root. The check was absolute, and brought
him violently to his knees. Before he could free himself the grey had
reached the opposite crest, fired its volley, and gone on. He started to
follow. He heard the blue coming, and it was expedient to get out of
this trap. Before him, from the figures covering the earth like thrown
jackstraws, an arm was suddenly lifted. The hand clutched at him,
passing. He looked down. It was a boy of nineteen with a ghastly face.
The voice came up: "Whoever you are, you're alive and well, and I'm
dying. You'll take it and put a stamp on it and mail it, won't you? I'm
dying. People ought to do things when the dying ask them to."
Stafford looked behind him, then down again. "Do what? Quick! They're
coming."
The hand would not relax its clasp, but its fellow fumbled at the grey
jacket. "It's my letter. They won't know if they don't get it. My side
hurts, but it don't hurt like knowing they won't know ... that I was
sorry." The face worked. "It's here but I can't--Please get it--"
"You must let me go," said Stafford, and tried to unclasp the hand.
"Stay any longer and I will be killed or taken."
The hand closed desperately, both hands now. "For God's sake! I don't
believe you've got so hard a heart. Take it and stamp it and mail it. If
they don't know they'll never understand and I'll die knowing they'll
never understand. For God's sake!"
Stafford knelt beside him, opened the grey jacket, and took out the
letter. Blood was upon it, but the address was legible. "Die easy. I'll
stamp and mail it. I will send a word with it, too, if you like."
A light came into the boy's face. "Tell them that I was like the
prodigal son, but that I'm going home--I'm going home--"
The arms fell, the breast ceased to heave, the head drew backward. Death
came and stamped the light upon the face. Before Stafford could get to
his feet, the blue wave had plunged into the trough. He remembered using
his pistol, and he remembered a dizziness of being borne backward. He
remembered that a phrase had gone through his mind "the instability of
all material things." Then came a blank. He did not assume that he had
lost consciousness, but simply he could not remember. He had been
wrecked in a turbulent, hostile ocean. It had made him and others
captives, and now they were together at a place which he remembered was
called the Roulette House. An hour might have passed, two hours; he
really could not tell. There were a number of prisoners, most of them
badly wounded. They lay in the back yard of the place, on the steps of
out-houses, with blue soldiers for guards. A surgeon came through the
yard, and helped a little the more agonizedly hurt. He glanced at
Stafford's star and sash, came across and offered to bind up the cut
across his forehead. "An awful field," he said. "This war is getting
horrible. You're a Virginian, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Used to know a lot of Virginia doctors. Liked them first rate! Now we
are enemies, and it seems to me a pity. Guess it's as Shakespeare says,
'What fools these mortals be!' I know war's getting to seem to me an
awful foolishness. That cornfield out there is sickening--Now! that
bleeding's stopped--"
On the left, around and before the Dunkard church, the very fury of the
storm brought about at last a sudden failing, a stillness and cessation
that seemed like those of death. Sound enough there was undoubtedly, and
in the centre the battle yet roared, but by comparison there seemed a
dark and sultry calm. Far and near lay the fallen. It was now noon, and
since dawn twelve thousand men had been killed or wounded on this left,
attacked by Fighting Joe Hooker, held by Stonewall Jackson. Fifteen
general officers were dead or disabled. Hardly a brigade, not many
regiments, were officered as they had been when the sun rose. There was
an exhaustion. Franklin had entered on the field, and one might have
thought that the grey would yet be overpowered. But all the blue forces
were broken, disorganized; there came an exhaustion, a lassitude.
McClellan sent an order forbidding another attack. Cornfield and wood
lay heavy, hot, and dark, and by comparison, still.
Stonewall Jackson sat Little Sorrel near the Dunkard church. They
brought him reports of the misery of the wounded and their great
numbers. His medical director, of whom he was fond, came to him.
"General, it is very bad! The field hospital looks as though all the
fields of the world had given tribute. I know that you do not like
hospitals--but would you come and look, sir?"
The general shook his head. "What is the use of looking? There have to
be wounded. Do the utmost that you can, doctor."
"I have thought, sir, that, seeing the day is not ended, and they are so
overwhelmingly in force, and the Potomac is not three miles in our
rear--I have thought that we might manage to get the less badly hurt
across. If they attack again and the day should end in defeat--"
"What have you got there?" asked Jackson. "Apples?"
"Yes, sir. I passed beneath a tree and gathered half a dozen. Would you
like--"
"Yes. I breakfasted very early." He took the rosy fruit and began to
eat. His eyes, just glinting under the forage cap, surveyed the scene
before him,--trampled wood where the shells had cut through bough and
branch, trampled cornfields where it seemed that a whirlwind had passed,
his resting, shattered commands, the dead and the dying, the dead
horses, the disabled guns, the drifting sulphurous smoke, and, across
the turnpike, in the fields and by the east wood, the masses of blue,
overcanopied also by sulphurous smoke. He finished the apple, took out a
handkerchief, and wiped fingers and lips. "Dr. McGuire, they have done
their worst. And never use the word defeat."
He jerked his hand into the air. "Do your best for the wounded, doctor,
do all that is humanly possible, but do it _here_! I am going now to the
centre to see General Lee."
Behind the wood, in a grassy hollow moderately sheltered from the
artillery fire, at the edge of the ghastly field hospital, a young
surgeon, sleeves rolled up and blood from head to foot, met the medical
director. "Doctor, the Virginia Legion came on with General McLaws.
They've just brought their colonel in--Fauquier Cary, you know. I wish
you would look at his arm."
The two looked. "There's but one thing, colonel."
"Amputation? Very well, very well. Get it over with." He straightened
himself on the boards where the men had laid him. "Sedgwick, too!
Sedgwick and I striking at each other like two savages decked with beads
and scalps! Fratricidal strife if ever there was fratricidal strife! All
right, doctor. I had a great-uncle lost his arm at Yorktown. Can't
remember him,--my father and mother loved to talk of him--old Uncle
Edward. All right--it's all right."
The two doctors were talking together. "Only a few ounces left. Better
use it here?"
"Yes, yes!--One minute longer, colonel. We've got a little chloroform."
The bottle was brought. Cary eyed it. "Is that all you've got?"
"Yes. We took a fair quantity at Manassas, but God only knows the amount
we could use! Now."
The man stretched on the boards motioned with the hand that had not been
torn by the exploding shell. "No, no! I don't want it. Keep it for some
one with a leg to cut off!" He smiled, a charming, twisted smile,
shading into a grimace of pain. "No chloroform at Yorktown! I'll be as
much of a man as was my great-uncle Edward! Yes, yes, I'm in earnest,
doctor. Put it by for the next. All right; I'm ready."
On the knoll by Sharpsburg Lee and Jackson stood and looked toward the
right. McClellan had apparently chosen to launch three battles in one
day; in the early morning against the Confederate left, at midday
against its centre, now against its right. A message came from
Longstreet. "Burnside is in motion. I've got D. R. Jones and twenty-five
hundred men."
It was evident that Burnside was in motion. With fourteen thousand men
he came over the stone bridge across the Antietam. They were fresh
troops; their flags were flying, their drums were beating, their bugles
braying. The line moved with huzzahs toward the ridge held by
Longstreet. From the left came tearing past the knoll the Confederate
batteries. Lee was massing them in the centre, training them against the
eastern foot of the ridge. There had been a lull in the storm, now
Pelham opened with loud thunders. Other guns followed. The Federal
batteries began to blaze; there broke out a madness of sound. In the
midst of it D. R. Jones with his twenty-five hundred men clashed with
Burnside's leading brigades.
Stonewall Jackson pulled the forage cap lower, jerked his hand into the
air. "Good! good! I will go, sir, and send in my freshest troops."
"Look," said Lee. "Look, general! On the Harper's Ferry road."
All upon the knoll turned and gazed. Air and light played with the
battle smoke, drove it somewhat to one side and showed for a few seconds
a long and sunlit road, the road from Harper's Ferry. One of the staff
began a low uncontrollable laughter. "By God! I see his red battle
shirt! By God! I see his red battle shirt!"
Lee with a glance checked the sound. He himself looked nobly lifted,
grave and thankful. The battle smoke closed, obscuring the road, but the
sound of marching men came along it, distinguishable even beneath the
artillery fire. "Good, good!" said Jackson. "A. P. Hill is a good
soldier."
Tawny with the dust of the seventeen miles, at a double quick and
yelling, the crimson battle flags slanting forward, in swung the Light
Division! D. R. Jones rallied. Decimated, out-worn, but dangerous, the
aiding regiments from the left did well. The grey guns worked with a
certain swift and steadfast grimness. From all the ridges of the
Antietam the blue cannon thundered, thundered. Blue and grey, the
musketry rolled. Sound rose into terrific volume, the eddying smoke
blotted out the day. Artillery Hell--Infantry Inferno--the field of
Sharpsburg roared now upon the right.
The Horse Artillery occupied a low ridge like a headland jutting into a
grassy field. Below, above, behind, the smoke rolled; in front the flame
leaped from their guns, the shells sped. There was a great background of
battle cloud, lit every ten seconds by the glare from an opposing
battery. John Pelham stood directing. Six guns were in fierce and
continuous action. The men serving them were picked artillery men. To
and fro they moved, down they stooped, up they stood, stepped backward
from the gun at fire, moved forward at recoil, fell again to the loading
with the precision of the drill ground. They were half naked, they were
black with powder, glistening with sweat, some were bleeding. In the
light from the guns all came boldly into relief; in the intermediate
deep murk they sank from sight, became of the clouds, cloudy, mere
shapes in the semi-darkness.
Stonewall Jackson, returning to the Dunkard church and passing behind
this headland, turned Little Sorrel's head and came upon the plateau.
Pelham met him. "Yes, general, we're doing well. Yes, sir, it's holding
out. Caissons were partly filled during the lull."
"Good, good!" said Jackson. He dismounted and walked forward to the
guns. Pelham followed. "I don't think you should be out here, general.
They've got our range very accurately--"
The other apparently did not notice the remark. He stood near one of the
guns and turned his eyes upon the battle on the right. "Longstreet
strikes a heavy blow. He and Hill will push them back. Colonel Pelham,
train two guns upon that body of the enemy at the ford."
Pelham moved toward the further guns. The howitzer nearest Jackson was
fired, reloaded, fired again. The men beside it stood back. It blazed,
thundered, recoiled. A great, black, cylindrical shell came with a
demoniac shriek. At the moment the platform was lit with the battle
glare. Its fall was seen. It fell, smoking, immediately beside Stonewall
Jackson. Such was the concussion of the air that for a moment he was
stunned. Involuntarily his arm went up before his eyes; he made a
backward step. Pelham, returning from the further guns and still some
yards away, gave a shout of warning and horror; from all the men who had
seen the thing there burst a similar cry. With the motion almost of the
shell itself, a man of the crew of the howitzer reached the torn earth
and the cylinder. His body half naked, blackened, brushed, in passing,
the general. He put his hands beneath the heated, smoking bottle of
death, lifted it, and rushed on to the edge of the escarpment fifty feet
away. Here he swung it with force, threw it from him with burned hands.
Halfway to the field below it exploded.
Pelham, very pale, protested with some sternness. "You can't stay here,
general! My men can't work with you here. It doesn't matter about us,
but it does matter about you. Please go, sir."
"I am going, colonel. I have seen what I wished to see. Who is the man
who took up the shell?"
Pelham turned to the howitzer. "Which of you was it?"
Half a dozen voices were raised in answer. "Deaderick, sir. But he
burned his hands badly and he asked the lieutenant if he could go to the
rear--"
"Good, good!" said Stonewall Jackson. "He did well. But there are many
brave men in this army." He went back to Little Sorrel, where he stood
cropping the dried grass, and stiffly mounted. As he turned from the
platform and the guns, all lit again by the orange glare, there came
from the right an accession of sound, then high, shrill, and triumphant
the Confederate yell. A shout arose from the Horse Artillery. "They're
breaking! they're breaking! Burnside, too, is breaking! Yaaaii!
Yaaaaiiihh! Yaaaaaiiihhh!"