As they landed, Fred stood aghast at the sight before him. Cowering beneath the high bank were thousands upon thousands of trembling wretches. It was a dense mass of shivering, weeping, wailing, swearing, praying humanity, each one lost to shame, lost to honor, lost to everything but that dreadful fear which chained him soul and body.
As Nelson's advance brigade forced its way through the panic-stricken throng, they were greeted with, "You are all going to your death! You are all going to your death!"
"Back! back!" roared Nelson, purple with rage. "Don't touch my men; you contaminate them; don't speak to them, you cowards, miscreants, you should be swept from the face of the earth."
And in the fury of his wrath, Nelson begged for the privilege of turning cannon on them.
With firm, unwavering steps, and well closed up, the division pressed their way up the bank, and there were soldiers in the ranks who looked with contempt on the shivering wretches below the hill, who themselves, the next day, fled in terror from the awful destruction going on around them. So little do we know ourselves and what we will do when the supreme moment comes.
Afterward the great majority of the soldiers who cowered under the bank at Shiloh covered themselves with glory, and hundreds of them laid down their lives for their country.
Fred always remembered that night on the battlefield. From the Landing came the groans and shrieks of the wounded, tortured under the knives of the surgeons. The night was as dark and cloudy as the day had been bright and clear. About eleven o'clock a torrent of rain fell, drenching the living, and cooling the fevered brows of the wounded. Fred sat against a tree, holding the bridle of his horse in his hand. If by chance he fell asleep, he would be awakened by the great cannon of the gunboats, which threw shells far inland every fifteen minutes.
At the first dawn of day Nelson's division advanced, and the battle began. Fred acted as aid to Nelson, and as the general watched him as he rode amid the storm of bullets unmoved he would say to those around him: "Just see that boy; there is the making of a hero."
About eleven o'clock one of Nelson's brigades made a most gallant charge. Wheeling to the right, the brigade swept the Confederate line for more than half a mile. Before them the enemy fled, a panic-stricken mob. A battery was run over as though the guns were blocks of wood, instead of iron-throated monsters vomiting forth fire and death. In the thickest of the fight, Fred noticed Robert Marsden, the betrothed of Mabel Vaughn, cheering on his men.
"Ah!" thought Fred, "he is worthy of Mabel. May his life be spared to make her happy."