“‘I am sorry to have put you to trouble,’ I returned, checking my horse. ‘What is it?’
“‘The General has sent me to hurry you up.’
“‘That’s the second message of the kind in ten minutes. I don’t understand it.’
“‘Where are you going, anyhow?’
“‘To join Sherman.’
“‘Sherman!’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Come to one side with me.’ We went a little out of the road.
“‘Great God!’ he said, ‘don’t you know that Sherman has been driven from his camp? And that the whole army is now within half a mile of the landing, and it’s a question if we are not all to be driven into the river?’
“To my exclamations Captain Rowley went into details. There are kinds of fear; but nothing of that nature can shoot one’s marrow so to the core as the dread of making a mistake in a situation such as Rowley then flung me. Yet I could see with astonishing distinctness that I had led my division into the rear of the rebel army, or rather that the whole victorious army was between me and Grant.