How often I have laughed and laughed at myself when thinking of that first shelling we got there by the river! For up to that time I had had a very poor, old-fashioned idea of what a shell was like, having derived it probably from accounts of sieges in the Mexican war.
I had thought a shell was a hollow ball of iron, filled with powder and furnished with a fuse, and that they threw it over into your ranks, and there it lay, hissing and spitting, till the fire reached the powder, and the shell burst and killed a dozen men or so; that is, if some venturesome fellow didn't run up and stamp the fire off the fuse before the miserable thing went off! Of a conical shell, shaped like a minie-ball, with ridges on the outside to fit the grooves of a rifled cannon, and exploding by a percussion-cap at the pointed end, I had no idea in the world. But that was the sort of thing they were firing at us now,—Hur-r-r—bang! Hur-r-r—bang!
Throwing myself flat on my face while that terrible shriek is in the air, I cling closer to the ground while I hear that low, whirring sound near by, which I foolishly imagine to be the sound of a burning fuse, but which, on raising my head and looking up and around, I find is the sound of pieces of exploded shells flying through the air about our heads! The enemy has excellent range of us, and gives it to us hot and fast, and we fall in line and take it as best we may, and without the pleasure of replying, for the enemy's batteries are a full mile and a half away, and no Enfield rifle can reach half so far.
"Colonel, move your regiment a little to the right, so as to get under cover of yonder bank." It is soon done; and there, seated on a bank about twenty feet high, with our backs to the enemy, we let them blaze away, for it is not likely they can tumble a shell down at an angle of forty-five degrees.
And now, see! Just to the rear of us, and therefore in full view as we are sitting, is a battery of our own coming up into position at full gallop,—a grand sight indeed! The officers with swords flashing in the evening sunlight, the bugles clanging out the orders, the carriages unlimbered, and the guns run up into position; and now, that ever beautiful drill of the artillery in action, steady and regular as the stroke of machinery! How swiftly the man that handles the swab has prepared his piece, while the runners have meanwhile brought up the little red bag of powder and the long conical shell from the caisson in the rear! How swiftly they are rammed home! The lieutenant sights his piece, the man with the lanyard with a sudden jerk fires the cap, the gun leaps five feet to the rear with the recoil, and out of the cannon's throat, in a cloud of smoke, rushes the shell, shrieking out its message of death into the lines a mile and a half away, while our boys rend the air with wild hurrahs, for the enemy's fire is answered!
Now ensues an artillery duel that keeps the air all quivering and quaking about our ears for an hour and a half, and it is all the more exciting that we can see the beautiful drill of the batteries beside us, with that steady swabbing and ramming, running and sighting, and bang! bang! bang! The mystery is how in the world they can load and fire so fast.
"Boys, what are you trying to do?"
General Doubleday dismounts and sights the Gun.