If he had told me they were fifteen-inch shells he couldn’t have startled and astonished me more. Here I had been in imminent danger for ten minutes, and I had not known anything about it. Instinctively I debated whether I could get out of the way without being detected and disgraced, and the same impulse turned my eyes towards my Captain. There he sat, as cool as a cucumber, reading a man a lecture as to the proper method of advancing his carbine, forcing two or three others to dress themselves more accurately upon the right sergeant, and all the while looking straight at me. There was no use in my trying to dodge away then.
Presently a horse in front of me reared a little and dropped to the ground, and one or two men on foot came straggling through the wood from the front. Then there came slowly forth a mounted man leaning forward on his saddle, his hand pressed to his side, and red with blood. Then a squad of ten or fifteen burst through the branches, slinging their empty carbines, and rallying in a disorderly fashion upon our flank. With a deadlier fury the whir of the bullets swept above our line. “Steady there, men!” sang out the Captain. “Get your carbines ready, boys!” An old infantry soldier, who was my front rank man, turned round to me, and said, “I say, you take care to fire over my head, and don’t blow my brains out with your shooting, d’ye hear?” I was in the act of promising to pay the most exact attention to his order, when I was startled by a burst of laughter behind me. That ubiquitous Captain was there listening. “Fire over your head, you goose!” he exclaimed. “I don’t want him to bring down a star or a turkey-buzzard. You keep your fire, Dan, until I tell you to shoot; and don’t let me see a man in the rear rank fire while I keep him standing there. Mind that now.”
While he was talking I could tell from the shouts that our men had repelled the rebel charge, and I was able to bear with composure the sight of a dead officer carried sadly past us by some of his men. Then all at once along the enemy’s line crashed a volley, lighting up the closing night with a glare of fire whose length startled and amazed me. Horses fell on either side of me, and here and there a man’s face would change, and he would slide from his saddle or draw his horse back from the line. It was dreadful sitting there inactive, waiting helplessly for death; and my hand half-consciously drawing upon my rein, my horse fell back about a foot from his place in line. At that instant the Captain cried out, “Attention, there!” and looking round, I saw his eyes fixed on me again. Again he cried, “Attention! Squadron into single rank, march!” and as I obeyed the order I saw our skirmishers slowly falling back through the wood and forming a line upon our extreme left and in our rear. Then there was a pause.
Presently I saw a movement among the trees, and I could make out a mass of men clustering together just upon their edge. With a thrill, I knew that for the first time I saw the enemy; and every sensation was merged in a frantic desire to shoot, while every nerve within my body was quivering with excitement. Then the Captain’s voice, steady and cheerful, sounded along the line, with some sympathetic power calming my shaking nerves and making every muscle as firm as iron. “Ready! Aim low. Front rank men, fire!” A blaze of light ran along our line, there was a deafening explosion, and a blinding smoke, through which I could hear the bullets of the enemy as they whistled past. I could see nothing, but I heard the voice of the Captain from my right command, “Rear rank men, fire!” and as our second volley crashed out, there came the order, “Load and fire at will.” And now it was crack! crack! as fast as we could get the cartridges into our guns, shouting and cheering as we did so, in answer to the rebel yells. At length our shouts met no response. I heard the officer’s command, “Cease firing!” the smoke swept away, and I found it was black night, through which I could just see that I was one of about forty men, the remnant of the squadron. I could hear a few slowly trotting back to the rear. I could make out others on foot crossing the hill-top beyond, and could see a mass of dead horses and one or two dead men still lying at my feet. For a few minutes the Captain let us remove the corpses and destroy the equipments of the dead animals, and then we withdrew triumphantly to our comrades, the Captain telling us once that we had done well, and then bewailing his fate that he commanded men who did not know how to wheel by fours. That was my first acquaintance with rebel bullets, and even the old soldiers said that it was the closest affair in which they had ever been engaged.
Two days afterwards I heard, for the first time, the sound of a shell; and I might as well make a clean breast of it, once for all, by describing my sensations.
We were in the rear of the army as it fell back upon Centreville, formed in line as a reserve. The rest of the cavalry had moved on after the infantry, leaving us to hold a hill from which the enemy might have annoyed them with artillery. We sat there without seeing anything in particular, wondering why the rebels did not come out of the woods beyond us; when suddenly there was a big puff of smoke at the edge of the trees, a loud bang, and a tremendous screech in the air above our heads, so close that the sound almost took my head off. I looked at the Captain, expecting to hear him say, “By fours, do something or other”; but he only said, “Steady!” as there was another puff, another bang, and another screech, as a big black mass of iron struck the ground ten yards in front of us, bounded over our heads, and burst almost above us. It gave such a shock to my nerves that I could not do anything but shake, and I felt as if I should have much preferred to be under the ground rather than above it.
Those rebels banged away at us for half a dozen rounds, each time striking close to us, before I saw our skirmish-line come riding back at a walk, and heard the Captain give the order, “By fours, march! Right counter-march!” and back we started. Two files in front of me marched Dan E—, one of those fellows who always has his retort ready. I heard the man next to him scolding at Dan’s crowding him out of place: “Why can’t you follow your file-leader?” “Hang the file-leader,” answered Dan, pushing him harder yet; “they’ve got the range of him.” And as he spoke a shell came down and buried itself in the earth just where he would have been if he had kept in his place. I need not say that we all turned aside after that, and pretty soon we got safely out of reach.
Now I know what artillery and musketry are both like; and I sincerely hope that I shall not face it again.
VIII
HOW CUSHING DESTROYED THE “ALBEMARLE”
One of the Bravest Deeds in Naval History