But hark!
"Pop! Pop! Pop-pop-pop!" The pickets are beginning to fire, the "ball is going to open," and things will soon be getting lively.
A venturesome fellow climbs up a tall tree to see what he can see, and presently comes scrambling down, reporting nothing in sight but signal-flags flying over the tree-tops, and beyond them nothing but woods and woods for miles.
Orderlies are galloping about, and staff-officers are dashing up and down the line, or forcing their way through the tangled bushes, while out on the skirmish line is the ever-increasing rattle of the musketry,—
"Fall in, men! Forward, guide right!"
There is something grand in the promptitude with which the order is obeyed. Every man is at his post. Forcing its way as best it can through the tangled undergrowth of briers and bushes, across ravines and through swamps, our whole magnificent line advances, until, after a half-hour's steady work, we reach the skirmish line, which, hardly pressed, falls back into the advancing column of blue as it reaches a little clearing in the forest. Now we see the lines of gray in the edge of the woods on the other side of the little field; first their pickets behind clumps of bushes, then the solid column appearing behind the fence, coming on yelling like demons, and firing a volley that fills the air with smoke and cuts it with whistling lead. Sheltered behind the trees, our line reserves its fire, for it is likely that the enemy will come out on a charge, and then we'll mow them down!
With bayonets fixed, and yells that make the woods ring, here they come, boys, through the clearing, on a dead run! And now, as you love the flag that waves yonder in the breeze, up, boys, and let them have it! Out from our Enfields flashes a sheet of flame, before which the lines of gray stagger for a moment; but they recover and push on, then reel again and quail, and at length fly before the second leaden tempest, which sweeps the field clear to the opposite side.
With cheers and shouts of "Victory!" our line, now advancing swiftly from behind its covert of the trees, sweeps into and across the clearing, driving back the enemy into the woods from which they had so confidently ventured.
The little clearing over which the lines of blue are advancing is covered with dead and dying and wounded men, among whom I find Lieutenant Stannard, of my acquaintance.