It is Major-General Abner Doubleday, our division-commander, who reins in his horse and asks the question. He is a fine-looking officer, and is greatly beloved by the boys. He rides his horse beautifully, and is said to be one of the finest artillerists in the service, as he may well be, for it was his hand that fired the first gun on the Union side from the walls of Fort Sumter.
"Why, General, we are trying to put a shell through that stone barn over there; it's full of sharpshooters."
"Hold a moment!" and the general dismounts and sights the gun. "Try that elevation once, sergeant," he says; and the shell goes crashing through the barn a mile and a half away, and the sharpshooters come pouring out of it like bees out of a hive. "Let them have it so, boys." And the general has mounted, and rides, laughing, away along the line.
Meanwhile, something is transpiring immediately before our eyes that amuses us greatly. Not more than twenty yards away from us is another high bank, corresponding exactly with the one we are occupying, and running parallel with it, the two hills inclosing a little ravine some twenty or thirty yards in width.
This second high bank, the nearer one, you must remember, faces the enemy's fire. The water has worn out of the soft sand-rock a sort of cave, in which Darkie Bill, our company cook, took refuge at the crack of the first shell. And there, crouching in the narrow recess of the rock, we can see him shivering with affright. Every now and then, when there is a lull in the firing, he comes to the wide-open door of his house, intent upon flight, and, rolling up the great whites of his eyes, is about to step out and run, when Hur-r-r—bang—crack! goes the shell, and poor scared Darkie Bill dives into his cave again head-first, like a frog into a pond.
After repeated attempts to run and repeated frog-leaps backward, the poor fellow takes heart and cuts for the woods, pursued by the laughter and shouts of the regiment, for which he cares far less, however, than for that terrible shriek in the air, which, he afterward told us, "was a-sayin' all de time, 'Where's dat nigger! Where's dat nigger! Where's dat nigger!'"
As nightfall comes on, the firing ceases. Word is passed around that under cover of night we are to cross the pontoons and charge the enemy's works; but we sleep soundly all night on our arms, and are awaked only by the first streaks of light in the morning sky.
We have orders to move. A staff-officer is delivering orders to our colonel, who is surrounded by his staff. They press in toward the messenger, standing immediately below me as I sit on the bank, when the enemy gives us a morning salute, and the shell comes ricochetting over the hill and tumbles into a mud-puddle about which the group is gathered; the mounted officers crouch in their saddles and spur hastily away, the foot officers throw themselves flat on their faces into the mud; the drummer-boy is bespattered with mud and dirt; but fortunately the shell does not explode, or my readers would never have heard how we got our first shelling.
And now, "Fall in, men!" and we are off on a double-quick in a cloud of dust, amid the rattle of canteens and tin cups, and the regular flop, flop of cartridge-boxes and bayonet-scabbards, pursued for two miles by the hot fire of the enemy's batteries, for a long, hot, weary day's march to the extreme right of the army at Chancellorsville.