As he neared the summit, he noticed that the roar of the cannon directly in front seemed to have died down a good deal. There were still angry outbursts, but one had to wait for them now; and a new kind of noise, made up of peal after peal of crackling musketry fire, was rising from the gully farther to the left.
The boy had come now to the top of the ridge, only to find it crowned with a thick fringe of alders which completely shut out his view. From the roots of the farther bushes the hillside dropped precipitously. He worked his way along until, by a cleft in the rocks, an opening offered itself.
Here, stooping low and bending aside the alders, he could creep out upon a big, flat, moss-grown boulder, which overhung the ravine like a balcony. He had not thought he was so high up. The other side of the gulf spread out before him could not be seen for the smoke—but the tops of tall pines growing on its bottom were far below him.
The steepness of the descent made him dizzy. The rock on which he stood seemed to be suspended in mid-air. He drew back a little. Then curiosity got the upper hand. He laid himself face down on the boulder, and edged cautiously forward till he could peer over its front.
The fog-like smoke was so dense that at first he could see nothing. Even when the bearings of the land below, masked as it all was under forest, began to be apparent to him, his ears were still the best guide to what was going on. The confused sound of men's shouts and yells mingled now with the intermittent volleys of musketry to the left. The cannon-firing had stopped altogether.
He discovered all at once that a good many of the tree-tops in front of him seemed to have been broken off very recently. Some were hanging to the trunks by their bark; everywhere the splinters were white and fresh. Now that he listened more intently, there were weird whistling noises among these shattered boughs and an incessant dropping of leaves and twigs.
Suddenly a big branch not far away shook violently, then toppled downward. At the same moment a swift ringing buzz sounded just over his head, and a bunch of alder-blossoms fell upon one of his hands. He pulled himself back abruptly.
Crawling backward out through the alders, he did not venture to lift his head until there was a comfortable wall of rocks between him and that murderous ravine. Then, getting to his feet, he looked amazed down upon the brigade camp, which he had left an hour before. The big tent, and the little ones about it, only a while ago the scene of such bustling activity, were all deserted.
Some of the wagons could be seen rolling and bumping off toward the road to the left under drivers who stood up to lash their teams. The white, canvas-hooped tops were the centres of wild confusion.
Other drivers were scurrying off on horseback, leading with them in a frantic gallop groups of the team horses, pulled along by their bunched reins. The people on foot—doctors, nurses, camp-guards and the rest—were all racing pell-mell toward the road for dear life.