Collecting my poor fevered faculties, I determined to follow the course of a little stream I heard plashing down among the bushes to the left. By and by I fixed my eye on a certain bright camp-fire, and determined to make for it at all hazards, be it of friend or of foe. Judge of my joyful surprise when I found it was burning in front of my own tent!
Standing about our fire trying to get warm and dry, our fellows were discussing the question of the retreat about to be made. But I was tired and sick, and wet and sleepy, and did not at all relish the prospect of a night-march through the woods in a drenching rain. So, putting on the only remaining dry shirt I had left (I had two on already, and they were soaked through), I lay down under my shelter, shivering and with chattering teeth, but soon fell sound asleep.
In the gray light of the morning we were suddenly awakened by a loud "Halloo there, you chaps! Better be digging out of this! We're the last line of cavalry pickets, and the Johnnies are on our heels!"
It was an easy matter for us to sling on our knapsacks and rush after the cavalry-man, until a double-quick of two miles brought us within the rear line of defences thrown up to cover the retreat.
CHAPTER X.
THE FIRST DAY AT GETTYSBURG.
"Harry, I'm getting tired of this thing. It's becoming monotonous, this thing of being roused every morning at four, with orders to pack up and be ready to march at a moment's notice, and then lying around here all day in the sun. I don't believe we are going anywhere, anyhow."
We had been encamped for six weeks, of which I need give no special account, only saying that in those "summer quarters," as they might be called, we went on with our endless drilling, and were baked and browned, and thoroughly hardened to the life of a soldier in the field.
The monotony of which Andy complained did not end that day, nor the next. For six successive days we were regularly roused at four o'clock in the morning, with orders to "pack up and be ready to move immediately!" only to unpack as regularly about the middle of the afternoon. We could hear our batteries pounding away in the direction of Fredericksburg, but we did not then know that we were being held well in hand till the enemy's plan had developed itself into the great march into Pennsylvania, and we were let off in hot pursuit.
So, at last, on the 12th of June, 1863, we started, at five o'clock in the morning, in a north-westerly direction. My journal says: "Very warm, dust plenty, water scarce, marching very hard. Halted at dusk at an excellent spring, and lay down for the night with aching limbs and blistered feet."