"Yes. Lane's North Carolinians awaiting their signal."
A little to the east and south broke out in the Wilderness a sudden rattling fire, sinking, rising, sinking again, the blue and grey skirmishers now in touch. All through the vast, dark, tangled beating heart of the place, sprang into being a tension. The grey lines listened for the word Advance! The musket rested on the shoulder, the foot quivered, eyes front tried to pierce the darkness. Sound was unceasing; and yet the mind found a stillness, a lake of calm. It was the moment before the moment.
Stonewall Jackson came toward the Carolinians. He rode quickly, past the dark shell of a house sunken among pines. There were with him seven or eight persons. The horses' hoofs made a trampling on the Plank road. The woods were deep, the obscurity great. Suddenly out of the brush rang a shot, an accidentally discharged rifle. Some grey soldier among Lane's tensely waiting ranks, dressed in the woods to the right of the road, spoke from the core of a fearful dream: "Yankee cavalry!"
"Fire!" called an officer of the 18th North Carolina.
The volley, striking diagonally across the road, emptied several saddles. Stonewall Jackson, the aides and Wilbourne, wheeled to the left, dug spur, and would have plunged into the wood. "Fire!" said the Carolinians, dressed to the left of the road, and fired.
Little Sorrel, maddened, dashed into the wood. An oak bough struck his rider, almost bearing him from the saddle. With his right hand from which the blood was streaming, in which a bullet was imbedded, he caught the bridle, managed to turn the agonized brute into the road again. There seemed a wild sound, a confusion of voices. Some one had stopped the firing. "My God, men! You are firing into us!" In the road were the aides. They caught the rein, stopped the horse. Wilbourne put up his arms. "General, general! you are not hurt?—Hold there!—Morrison—Leigh!—"
They laid him on the ground beneath the pines and they fired the brushwood for a light. One rode off for Dr. McGuire, and another with a penknife cut away the sleeve from the left arm through which had gone two bullets. A mounted man came at a gallop and threw himself from his horse. It was A. P. Hill. "General, general! you are not much hurt?"
"Yes, I think I am," said Stonewall Jackson. "And my wounds are from my own men."
Hill drew off the gauntlets that were all blood soaked, and with his handkerchief tried to bind up the arm, shattered and with the main artery cut. A courier came up. "Sir, sir! a body of the enemy is close at hand—"
The aides lifted the wounded general. "No one," said Hill, "must tell the troops who was wounded." The other opened his eyes. "Tell them simply that you have a wounded officer. General Hill, you are in command now. Press right on."