第31章

All seemed wild with one idea: To get as far as possible from the terrors raging around the mountain top.They rushed through the regiment and disordered its ranks.

"Who are you a-shovin', young fellow--say?" demanded Abe Bolton, roughly collaring a strapping hulk of a youth, who, hatless, and with his fat cheeks white with fear came plunging against him like a frightened steer.

"O boys, let me pass, and don't go up there! Don't! You'll all be killed.I know it, I'm all the one of my company that got away--Iam, really.All the rest are killed."

"Heavens! what a wretched remnant, as the dry-goods man said, when the clerk brought him a piece of selvage as all that the burglars had left of his stock of broadcloth," said Kent Edwards."It's too bad that you were allowed to get away, either.You're not a proper selection for a relic at all, and you give a bad impression of your company.You ought to have thought of this, and staid up there and got killed, and let some better-looking man got away, that would have done the company credit.Why didn't you think of this?""Git!" said Abe, sententiously, with a twist in the coward's collar, that, with the help of an opportune kick by Kent, sent him sprawling down the bank.

"Captain Bennett," shouted the Colonel angrily, "Fix bayonets there in front, and drive these hounds off, or we'll never get there."A show of savage-looking steel sent the skulkers down a side-path through the woods.

The tumult of the battle heightened with every step the regiment advanced.A turn in the winding road brought them to an opening in the woods which extended clear to the summit.Through this the torrent of noise poured as when a powerful band passes the head of a street.Down this avenue came rolling the crash of thousands of muskets fired with the intense energy of men in mortal combat, the deeper pulsations of the artillery, and even the firece yells of the fighters, as charges were made or repulsed.

Glen felt the blood settle around his heart anew.

"Get out of the road and let the artillery pass! Open up for the artillery!" shouted voices from the rear.Everybody sprang to the side of the road.

There came a sound of blows rained upon horses bodies--of shouts and oaths from exited drivers and eager officers--of rushing wheels and of ironed hoofs striking fire from the grindng stones.Six long-bodied, strong-limbed horses, their hides reeking with sweat, and their nostrils distended with intense effort, tore past, snatching after them, as if it were a toy, a gleaming brass cannon, surrounded by galloping cannoneers, who goaded the draft horses on with blows with the flats of their drawn sabers.Another gun, with its straining horses and galloping attendants, and another, and another, until six great, grim pieces, with their scres of desperately eager men and horses, had rushed by toward the front.

It was a sight to stir the coldest blood.The excited infantry boys, wrought up to the last pitch by the spectacle, sprang back into the road, cheered vociferously, and rushed on after the battery.

Hardly had the echoes of their voices died away, when they heard the battery join its thunders to the din of the fight.

Then wounded men, powder-stained, came straggling back--men with shattered arms and gashed faces and garments soaked with blood from bleeding wounds.

"Hurrah, boys!" each shouted with weakened voice, as his eyes lighted up at sight of the regiment, "We're whipping them; but hurry forward! You're needed.""If you ain't pretty quick," piped one girl-faced boy, with a pensive smile, as he sat weakly down on a stone and pressed a delicate hand over a round red spot that had just appeared on the breast of his blouse, "you'll miss all the fun.We've about licked 'em already.

Oh!--"

Abe and Kent sprang forward to catch him, but he was dead almost before they could reach him.They laid him back tenderly on the brown dead leaves, and ran to regain their places in the ranks.

The regiment was now sweeping around the last curve between it and the line of battle.The smell of burning powder that filled the air, the sight of flowing blood, the shouts of teh fighting men, had awakened every bosom that deep-lying KILLING instinct inherited from our savage ancestry, which slumbers--generally wholly unsuspected--in even the gentlest man's bosom, until some accident gives it a terrible arousing.

Now the slaying fever burned in every soul.They were marching with long, quick strides, but well-closed ranks, elbow touching elbow, and every movement made with the even more than the accuracy of a parade.Harry felt himself swept forward by a current as resistless as that which sets over Niagara.

They came around the little hill, and saw a bank of smoke indicating where the line of battle was.

"Let's finish the canteen now," said Kent."It may get bored by a bullet and all run out, and you know I hate to waste.""I suppose we might as well drink it," assented Abe--the first time in the history of the regiment, that he agreed with anybody."We mayn't be able to do it in ten minutes, and it would be too bad to 've lugged that all the way here, just for some one else to drink."An Aide, powder-grimed, but radiant with joy, dashed up."Colonel,"he said, "you had better go into line over in that vacant space there, and wait for orders; but I don't think you will have anything to do, for the General believes that the victory is on, and the Rebels are in full retreat."As he spoke, a mighty cheer rolled around the line of battle, and a band stationed upon a rock which formed the highest part of the mountain, burst forth with the grand strains of "Star-spangled Banner."The artillery continued to hurl screaming shot and shell down into the narrow gorge, through which the defeated Rebels were flying with mad haste.