Again they make a wide circuit through the woods, and now the firing is near at hand, coming slowly toward them. They have only to wait and they will be among the forlorn hope. Ah, with what fervent joy Jack marks the Union banner, flapping its twin streamers among the hurtling pines! They are near it; they are under it! Their own guns are no longer available; hundreds are lying at hand; they seize them. The line is firing in retreat. It is a sadly depleted battalion of Keyes's regulars, steadfast, imperturbable, devoted. A handful of them has been forgotten or misdirected. The rebels, uncertain whether it was not a trap to snare them, move with caution, while far to the left a turning column is hurrying to hem the Union group in on every side. There are hardly three hundred blue-coats in the mass, but their volleys are so swift, so regular, so steady, that they make the impression of a thousand. The enemy felt sure, as was afterward learned, that there was at least a regiment.
A young captain, soiled, ragged, his sleeves hanging in ribbons, the whole skirt of his coat gone, moves alertly, composedly in the center, seizing a gun when one comes handy on the ground, where there are plenty scattered.
"Steady, men, steady! We shall be at the water's edge, soon, and then we can give them hell!"
Never music sounded sweeter in Jack's car than that jaunty epithet "hell"! How inspiring! How little of the ordinary association the word brought up! Now they were traversing slowly the very ground Jack and his comrades had flown over in the morning. Still firing—still working with all his heart in the deadly play, Jack sidles to the officer and cries out:
"Captain, I know a ford that will take us across above the stone bridge.
We discovered it this morning. Shall I guide that way?"
"Guide if you can; but fire like seven devils, above all!" the captain cried, seizing two or three pouches lying in a mass and emptying the cartridges into his pockets.
"There, keep to the left sharp, and we shall come to a deep gully where the water is only knee-deep," Jack cries, also replenishing his cartridge-box, which had shrunk under the rapid work of the last half-hour.
"What regiment are you, sergeant?" the captain cries, looking for a moment at the tattered recruit.
"Caribees of New York, Sherman's brigade."
"And how came you off here? Your brigade was near the right of the line at the stone budge." The captain asked this with a shade of suspicion in his voice.