We thought that Hill's Corps "owed us one" for this job. We certainly
saved them a lot of trouble by thus protecting their flank. They had to
stand a heavy assault by Hancock's Corps, and had very hot work as it
was. If these strong columns, that we were taking care of, had gotten
into that gap, and taken them at disadvantage, they would have had a
hard time, to say the least. Our work left them to deal with Hancock's
Corps alone, which they did to their credit, and with entire success, as
will appear.

That little scheme of our long-range guns on the hill behind, firing
over our heads at the enemy acted very well, for a while. It came to
have its very decided inconvenience to _us_, as well as to the enemy.
When the Federal infantry had retired, those guns turned their fire on
the Federal artillery which was hammering us. They meant to divert their
attention, and do us a good turn. They had better have left us to "the
ills we had." Their line of fire, at that artillery, was exactly over
our position. Very soon their shells got tired travelling over, and
began to stop _with us_. Our Confederate shells were often very badly
made, the weight in the conical shells not well balanced. And so, very
often, instead of going quietly, point foremost, like decent shells,
where they were _aimed_, they would get to _tumbling_, that is, going
end over end, or "swappin' ends" as the Tar Heels used to describe it,
and _then_, there was no telling _where_ they would go, except that they
would _certainly go wrong_. And, they went very wrong, indeed, on this
occasion, in our opinion.

The sound of a tumbling Parrott shell in full flight, is the most
horrible noise that ever was heard!--a wild, venomous, fiendish scream,
that makes every fellow, in half a mile of it, feel that it is looking
for _him particularly_, and _certain_ that it's _going to get him_. I
believe it would have made Julius Caesar, himself, "go for a tree," or
want to, anyhow!

Well! these blood-curdlers came crashing into us, from the rear,
knocking up clouds of dirt, digging great holes, bursting, and raining
fragments around us in the field. We were not firing, and had leisure
to realize the fix we were in. With the enemy hotly shelling us from the
front, and our friends from the rear, obliged to stay by our guns,
expecting an infantry assault every minute, we certainly were in a
pretty tight fix, "'Tween the devil and the deep sea."

It was the only time I ever sa