“Suddenly the awesome silence was broken by the sound of a deep, full voice rolling over the black void like the billows of a great sea, directly in line with our guns. It was singing the old hymn, ‘Jesus, Lover of My Soul.’
“I have heard that grand old music many times in circumstances which intensified its impressiveness, but never had it seemed so solemn as when it broke the stillness in which we waited for the order to fire. Just as it was given there rang through the night the words:
‘Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.’
“‘Ready, aim! Fire to the left, boys!’ I said.
“The guns were shifted, the volley that blazed out swerved aside, and that ‘defenseless head’ was ‘covered’ with the shadow of His wing.”
A Federal veteran who listened to this story spoke up and said, “I remember that night, Colonel, and that midnight attack which carried off so many of my comrades. I was the singer.”
Such confirmation produced a deep impression, and after a silence “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” was again sung as on the fatal night in 1864 when it rang across the lines at Bermuda Hundred.
The reference to the same leader is brought out under exceptional circumstances in