Allan caught it. "You're very good, Yank. Thank you."
"Have you got any quinine?"
"No."
The blue scout tossed across a small box. "There's for you! No, I don't want it. We've got plenty.—Well, good-bye."
"I hope you'll get back safe," said Allan, "and have a beautiful wedding."
The blue vanished in the underbrush, the grey went on his way through the heavy forest. He was moving now toward sound, heavy, increasing, presaging a realm of jarred air and ringing ear-drums. Ahead, he saw a column of swiftly moving troops. Half running, he overtook the rear file. "Scout?"—"Yes—Stonewall Brigade—" "All right! all right! This is A. P. Hill's division.—Going into battle. Come on, if you want to."
Through the thinning woods showed a great open plain, with knolls where batteries were planted. The regiment to which Allan had attached himself lay down on the edge of the wood, near one of the cannon-crowned eminences. Allan stretched himself beneath a black gum at the side of the road. Everywhere was a rolling smoke, everywhere terrific sound. A battery thundered by at a gallop, six horses to each gun, straining, red-nostrilled, fiery-eyed. It struck across a corner of the plain. Over it burst the shells, twelve-pounders—twenty-pounders. A horse went down—the drivers cut the traces. A caisson was struck, exploded with frightful glare and sound. About it, when the smoke cleared, writhed men and horses, but the gun was dragged off. Through the rain of shells the battery gained a lift of ground, toiled up it, placed the guns, unlimbered and began to fire. A South Carolina brigade started with a yell from the woods to the right, tore in a dust cloud across the old fields, furrowed with gullies, and was swallowed in the forest about the creek which laved the base of the Federal position. This rose from the level like a Gibraltar, and about it now beat a wild shouting and rattle of musketry. Allan rose to his knees, then to his feet, then, drawn as by a magnet, crept through a finger of sumach and sassafras, outstretched from the wood, to a better vantage point just in rear of the battery.
Behind him, through the woods, came a clatter of horses' hoofs. It was met and followed by cheering. Turning his head, he saw a general and his staff, and though he had never seen Lee he knew that this was Lee, and himself began to cheer. The commander-in-chief lifted his grey hat, came down the dim, overarched, aisle-like road, between the cheering troops. With his staff he left the wood for the open, riding beneath the shelter by the finger of sumach and sassafras, toward the battery. He saw Allan, and reined up iron-grey Traveller. "You do not belong to this regiment.—A scout? General Jackson's?—Ah, well, I expect General Jackson to strike those people on the right any moment now!" He rode up to the battery. The shells were raining, bursting above, around. In the shelter of the hill the battery horses had at first, veteran, undisturbed, cropped the parched grass, but now one was wounded and now another. An arm was torn from a gunner. A second, stooping over a limber chest, was struck between the shoulders, crushed, flesh and bone, into pulp. The artillery captain came up to the general-in-chief. "General Lee, won't you go away? Gentlemen, won't you tell him that there's danger?"
The staff reinforced the statement, but without avail. General Lee shook his head, and with his field-glasses continued to gaze toward the left, whence should arise the dust, the smoke, the sound of Jackson's flanking movement. There was no sign on the left, but here, in the centre, the noise from the woods beyond the creek was growing infernal. He lowered the glass. "Captain Chamberlayne, will you go tell General Longstreet—"
Out of the thunder-filled woods, back from creek and swamp and briar and slashing, from abattis of bough and log, from the shadow of that bluff head with its earthworks one above the other, from the scorching flame of twenty batteries and the wild singing of the minies, rushed the South Carolina troops. The brigadier—Maxey Gregg—the regimental, the company officers, with shouts, with appeals, with waved swords, strove to stop the rout. The command rallied, then broke again. Hell was in the wood, and the men's faces were grey and drawn. "We must rally those troops!" said Lee, and galloped forward. He came into the midst of the disordered throng. "Men, men! Remember your State—Do your duty!" They recognized him, rallied, formed on the colours, swept past him with a cheer and reëntered the deep and fatal wood.