The noise of the battle on the distant crest was at first in separate bursts of sound, as regiment after regiment came into position and opened fire. The intervals between these bursts had disappeared, and it had now become a steady roar.
A wild mob came rushing backward from the front.
“My God, our men are whipped!” exclaimed the young Adjutant in tones of Anguish.
“No, no,” said Captain Bennett, with cheerful confidence. “These are only the camp riff-raff, who run whenever so much as a cap is burst near them.”
So it proved to be. There were teamsters upon their wheel-mules, cooks, officers' servants, both black and white, and civilian employees, mingled with many men in uniform, skulking from their companies. Those were mounted who could seize a mule anywhere, and those who could not were endeavoring to keep up on foot with the panic-stricken riders.
All seemed wild with one idea: To get as far as possible from the terrors raging around the mountain top. They rushed through the regiment and disordered its ranks.
“Who are you a-shovin', young fellow—say?” demanded Abe Bolton, roughly collaring a strapping hulk of a youth, who, hatless, and with his fat cheeks white with fear came plunging against him like a frightened steer.
“O boys, let me pass, and don't go up there! Don't! You'll all be killed. I know it, I'm all the one of my company that got away—I am, really. All the rest are killed.”
“Heavens! what a wretched remnant, as the dry-goods man said, when the clerk brought him a piece of selvage as all that the burglars had left of his stock of broadcloth,” said Kent Edwards. “It's too bad that you were allowed to get away, either. You're not a proper selection for a relic at all, and you give a bad impression of your company. You ought to have thought of this, and staid up there and got killed, and let some better-looking man got away, that would have done the company credit. Why didn't you think of this?”
“Git!” said Abe, sententiously, with a twist in the coward's collar, that, with the help of an opportune kick by Kent, sent him sprawling down the bank.