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CHAPTER VII. THE DISASTER AT BALL'S BLUFF.

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HASTY breakfast, with a rigid inspection of their muskets, and a hurried packing of knapsacks, preceded the long role of the drum, the signal to be up and doing. The sight of a body of soldiers with their glittering arms and tasty uniforms is inspiriting, and dull and cold must be the bosom that does not leap quicker at the thought that he belongs to this grand whole. Ralph felt a thrill of exultation as he realized that he was a part and parcel of the men who were massed on the bank of the Potomac that bright October day. There were Ralph's regiment of Massachusetts men, the Forty-second New York, Seventy-first Pennsylvania and a Rhode Island battery, counting, in all, some 2,000 men, watching for a chance to cross at an island which lay there.