e front of the batteries, so at about two
o'clock he and I started. We went along the lines of the infantry as
they lay there flat upon the earth, a little to the front of the
batteries. They were suffering little, and were quiet and cool. How glad
we were that the enemy were no better gunners, and that they cut the
shell fuses too long. To the question asked the men, "What do you think
of this?" the replies would be, "O, this is bully," "We are getting to
like it," "O, we don't mind this." And so they lay under the heaviest
cannonade that ever shook the continent, and among them a thousand times
more jokes than heads were cracked.

We went down in front of the line some two hundred yards, and as the
smoke had a tendency to settle upon a higher plain than where we were,
we could see near the ground distinctly all over the fields, as well
back to the crest where were our own guns as to the opposite ridge where
were those of the enemy. No infantry was in sight, save the skirmishers,
and they stood silent and motionless--a row of gray posts through the
field on one side confronted by another of blue. Under the grateful
shade of some elm trees, where we could see much of the field, we made
seats of the ground and sat down. Here all the more repulsive features
of the fight were unseen, by reason of the smoke. Man had arranged the
scenes, and for a time had taken part in the great drama; but at last,
as the plot thickened, conscious of his littleness and inadequacy to the
mighty part, he had stepped aside and given place to more powerful
actors. So it seemed; for we could see no men about the batteries. On
either crest we could see the great flaky streams of fire, and they
seemed numberless, of the opposing guns, and their white banks of swift,
convolving smoke; but the sound of the discharges was drowned in the
universal ocean of sound. Over all the valley the smoke, a sulphury
arch, stretched its lurid span; and through it always, shrieking on
their unseen courses, thickly flew a myriad iron deaths. With our grim
horizon on all sides round toothed thick with battery flame, under that
dissonant canopy of warring shells, we sat and heard in silence. What
other expression had we that was not mean, for such an awful universe of
battle?

A shell struck our breastwork of rails up in sight of us, and a moment
afterwards we saw the men bearing some of their wounded companions away
from the same spot; and directly two men came from