Suddenly, madly, the young officer and his general flung themselves back into their saddles, wildly they galloped to the summit of that wave-like crest.
What they saw there was incredible, yet real; it was impossible, yet it was visible. How far had the enemy gone in the retreat which they suspected? The enemy was at hand. What of their speculations about his withdrawal, of their cool consideration of his intention? In five minutes he would be upon them. From the heavy smoke he issued, regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade, his front half a mile broad, his ranks shoulder to shoulder, line supporting line. His eyes were fixed upon that rounded clump of trees, his course was directed toward the centre of that wave-like crest. He was eighteen thousand against six thousand; should his gray mass enter, wedge-like, the Union line, yesterday's Union victories, day before yesterday's Union losses would be in vain.
To the young officer, enemies though they were, they seemed admirable. They had but one soul; they would have been, under a less deadly fire, opposed by less fearful odds, an irresistible mass. Before them he saw their galloping officers, their scarlet flags; he discerned their gun-barrels and bayonets gleaming in the sun.
His own army was composed also; it required no orders, needed no command; it knew well what that gray wall portended. He heard the click of gun-locks, the clang of muskets, raised to position upon the stone wall, the clink of iron axles, the words of his general, quiet, calm, cool.
"Do not hurry! Let them come close! Aim low and steadily!"
There came to him a moment of fierce rapture. He saw the color-sergeant tipping his lance toward the enemy; he remembered that from that glorious flag, lifted by the western breeze, these advancing hosts would filch half its stars. With bursting heart, blessing God who had kept him loyal, he determined that this thing should not be.
He was sent to Meade to announce the coming of the foe; he returned, galloping along the crest. Into that advancing army the Union cannon poured shells; then, as the range grew shorter, shrapnel; then, canister; and still the hardy lines moved on. There was no charging shout, there was still no confusion, no halt under that raking fire. Stepping over the bodies of their friends, they continued to advance, they raised their muskets, they fired. There was now a new sound, "like summer hail upon the city roofs."
The young officer searched for his general, and could not find him. He had been mounted; now, probably wounded, possibly killed, he was down from his horse.
Then, suddenly, once more, the impossible, the incredible became possible, real. The young officer had not dreamed that the Confederates would be able to advance to the Union lines; his speculation concerned only the time they would be able to stand the Union fire. But they have advanced, they are advancing still farther. And there in that weak centre—he cannot trust his own vision—men are leaving the sheltering wall; without order or reason, a "fear-stricken flock of confusion," they are falling back. The fate of Gettysburg, it seemed to his horrified eyes, hung by a spider's single thread.
"A great, magnificent passion"—thus in his youthful emotion he describes it—came upon the young man. Danger had seemed to him throughout a word without meaning. Now, drawing his sword, laying about with it, waving it in the air, shouting, he rushed upon this fear-stricken flock, commanded it, reproached it, cheered it, urged it back. Already the red flags had begun to thicken and to flaunt over the deserted spot; they were to him, he wrote afterwards, like red to a maddened bull. That portion of the wall was lost; he groaned for the presence of Gibbon, of Hays, of Hancock, of Doubleday, but they were engaged, or they were too far away. He rushed hither and yon, still beseeching, commanding, praying that troops be sent to that imperiled spot.