What it was that influenced me to use the word I do not know, unless it
was that I thought that if they were our men I was safe, being in their
rear, and that if they were Yankees they would at once accept the
challenge. I wanted to end the matter.
They accepted.
A dozen voices shouted, "We are for the Union!" and half a dozen rifles
cracked.
They must have fired into the fence-row. I heard no bullet--but then, no
bullet can be heard at such a nearness.
I kept my post--flat on my face. It would not be best for me to rise and
run. Perhaps I could get off by doing so, but I could manage better. I
would remain quiet until they should think I had gone. Then I would
crawl away.
Two or three minutes passed. I was making up my mind to start. Suddenly
a gruff voice spoke. It was near me. It was in the fence-row. A Yankee
had crept toward me. He said, at an ordinary pitch, but very gruffly,
"Who _are_ you, anyhow?"
If he is yet alive, these lines may inform him that I was Jones. It was
my time to be silent. I feared that he would continue to come, but the
next instant I knew that he was in doubt as to how many I was, and I
stuck fast.
I heard nothing more. No doubt he had given it up--had gone back and
reported that the enemy had disappeared from the immediate front.
Five minutes more, and I had picked up my gun and was walking back to
our line. I struck it in front of Company C, whose men had been warned
that I was out, but who now had to be restrained from firing on me. They
had heard the voices up the hill, and bullets had whistled over them,
and they had thought me a prisoner, so when they saw a man coming toward
them they were itching to shoot.
We remained all night as we were, with a gap in the skirmish-line at the
left of Pender's division.