action."
"General Jackson's compliments, and I will support him."
The 65th entered the wood. The trees were small—bundles of hard, bright green needles aloft on slender trunks, out of which, in the strong sunshine, resin was oozing. They were set well apart, the grass beneath dry and slippery, strewn with cones. The sky was intensely blue, the air hot and without moisture, the scent of the pines strong in the nostril. Another step and the 65th came upon the wounded of Evans's brigade. An invisible line joined with suddenness the early morning picture, the torn and dying mule, the headless driver, to this. Breathless, heated, excited, the 65th swept on, yet it felt the cold air from the cavern. It had, of course, seen accidents, men injured in various ways, but never had it viewed so many, nor so much blood, and never before had it rushed past the helpless and the agonizing. There were surgeons and ambulances—there seemed to be a table of planks on which the worst cases were laid—the sufferers had help, of course, a little help. A Creole from Bayou Têche lay writhing, shot through the stomach, beneath a pine. He was raving. "Mélanie, Mélanie, donnez-moi de l'eau! Mélanie, Mélanie! donnez-moi de l'eau!"
Stragglers were coming over the hilltop—froth and spume thrown from a great wave somewhere beyond that cover—men limping, men supported by their comrades, men gasping and covered with sweat, men livid with nausea, men without arms, men carrying it off with bluster, and men too honestly frightened for any pretence. A number were legitimately there, wounded, ill, exhausted, useless on the field of battle; others were malingerers, and some were cowards—cowards for all time, or cowards for this time only. A minority was voluble. "You all think yo' going to a Sunday-school picnic, don't you? Well, you ain't. Just you all wait until you get to the top of the hill! What are you going to see? You're going to see hell's mouth, and the devil wearing blue! We've been there—we've been in hell since daybreak—damned if we haven't! Evans all cut to pieces! Bee and Bartow have gone in now. They'll find it hell, jest like we did. Twenty thousand of them dressed in blue." A man began to weep. "All cut to pieces. Major Wheat's lying there in a little piney wood. He was bleeding and bleeding—I saw him—but I reckon the blood has stopped. And we were all so hungry. I didn't get no breakfast. There's a plateau and the Henry House, and then there's a dip and Young's Branch, and then there's a hill called the Mathews Hill. We were there—on the Mathews Hill—we ain't on it now." Two officers appeared, one on foot, the other mounted, both pale with rage. "You'll be on it again, if you have to be dragged by the heels! Get back there, you damned, roustabout cowards!" The mounted man laid about him with his sabre; the lieutenant, afoot, wrenched from a strapping fellow his Belgian musket and applied the stock to the recreant's shoulders. The 65th left the clamour, swept onward between the pines, and presently, in the narrow road, met a braver sort, men falling back, but without panic. "Hot as hell, sir, on the other side of the hill! No, we're not running. I'll get the men back. It's just that Sykes was in front of us with his damned Regulars. Beg your pardon, general—? General Jackson. I'll get the men back—damned—blessed—if I don't, sir! Form right here, men! The present's the best time, and here's the best place."
At the crest of the hill the 65th came upon Imboden's battery—the Staunton Artillery—four smoothbore, brass six-pounders, guns, and caissons drawn by half the proper number of horses—the rest being killed—and conducted by wounded, exhausted, powder-grimed and swearing artillerymen. Imboden, in front, was setting the pitch. "————!————!——————!" Jackson checked Little Sorrel and withered the battery and its captain. "What are you doing here, sir, blaspheming and retreating? Outfacing your God with your back to the enemy! What—"
Imboden, an entirely gallant man, hastened to explain. "Beg pardon, general! Bad habit, I acknowledge, but the occasion excuses—My battery has spent the morning, sir, on the Henry Hill, and damn me, if it hasn't been as lonely there as the Ancient Mariner! No support—not a damned infantryman in sight for the last half hour! Alone down there by the Robinson House, and Ricketts and Griffin—Regulars by the Lord!—and the devil knows how many batteries beside playing on us with Parrotts and twelve-pounder howitzers like all the fountains at Versailles! The ground looks as though it had been rooted by hogs! No support, and no orders, and on the turnpike a bank of blue massing to rush my guns! And my ammunition out, and half my horses down—and if General Bee sent me orders to move I never got them!" He stamped upon the ground, wiping the blood from a wound in his head. "I couldn't hold the Henry Hill! I couldn't fight McDowell with one battery—no, by God, not even if 't was the Staunton Artillery! We had to move out."
Jackson eyed him, unmollified. "I have never seen the occasion, Captain Imboden, that justified profanity. As for support—I will support your battery. Unlimber right here."
Imboden unlimbered, placing his guns below the pine wood upon the summit. The First Brigade wheeled into line to the left. Here it was met by an aide. "General Jackson, hold your troops in reserve until Bee and Bartow need support—then give it to them!" The First Brigade deployed in the wood. About the men was still the pine thicket, blazed upon by the sun, shrilled in by winged legions; before them was the field of Bull Run. A tableland, cut by gullies, furred with knots of pine and oak, held in the middle a flower garden, a few locust trees, and a small house—the Henry House—in which, too old and ill to be borne away to safety, lay a withered woman, awaiting death. Beyond the house the ground fell sharply. At the foot of the hill ran the road, and beyond the road were the marshy banks of a little stream, and on the other side of the stream rose the Mathews Hill. Ranged upon this height Ricketts and Griffin and Arnold and many another Federal battery were sending shrieking shells against the Henry Hill. North and east and west of the batteries ran long radii of blue, pointed with bright banners, and out of the hollow between the hills came a smoke and noise as of the nethermost pit. There, beneath that sulphurous cloud, the North and the South were locked in an embrace that was not of love.
CHAPTER VIII
A CHRISTENING
Imboden had been joined by the Rockbridge Artillery and the Alexandria and Loudoun batteries. A little later there came up two of the New Orleans guns. All unlimbered in front of the pine wood where was couched the First Brigade, trained the sixteen guns upon the Mathews Hill and began firing. Griffin and Ricketts and Arnold answered with Parrotts and howitzers, throwing elongated, cylindrical shell that came with the screech of a banshee. But the Federal range was too long, and the fuses of many shells were uncut. Two of Rockbridge's horses were killed, a caisson of Stanard's exploded, scorching the gunners, a lieutenant was wounded in the thigh, but the batteries suffered less than did the infantry in the background. Here, more than one exploding horror wrought destruction. Immediately in rear of the guns were posted the 4th, the 27th, and the 65th. To the right hand was the 5th, to the left the 2d and the 33d. In all the men lay down in ranks, just sheltered by the final fringe of pines. The younger officers stood up, or, stepping into the clearing, seated themselves not without ostentation upon pine stumps, to the laudable end that the enemy should know where to find them. Jackson rode back and forth behind the guns.
The thundering voices grew louder, shaking the hills. The First Brigade could not see the infantry, swept now from the Mathews Hill and engaged about the turnpike and the stream. By stretching necks it saw a roof of smoke, dun-coloured, hiding pandemonium. Beneath that deeper thunder of the guns, the crackling, unintermittent sound of musketry affected the ear like the stridulation of giant insects. The men awaiting their turn beneath the pines, breathing quick, watching the shells, moved their heads slightly to and fro. In front, outdrawn upon a little ridge, stood the guns and boomed defiance. Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alexandria, and New Orleans did well this day. The guns themselves were something ancient, growing obsolete; but those striplings about them, beardless, powder-grimed, bare of arm and chest, silent and swift and steady of eye and hand, sponging, ramming, priming, aiming, firing, showed in the van of Time a brood of Mars, a band of whom foe-quelling Hector might