out on the right." We all looked! There, pouring out of the woods,
yelling like mad men, came the Federal infantry, fast as they could run,
rushing straight upon our line. The whole field was blue with them! When
we first saw them, the foremost were already within one hundred yards of
our works, and aiming for a point about two hundred yards to our right.
The breath was about knocked out of us by the suddenness of the
surprise! It was not Hill's men charging _them_, but these fellows
charging us,--whose yells we had heard, and here they were, right upon
us! In two jumps we were at our gun. We had to turn it more to the
right, and, with the first shot, blow away a light traverse, which was
higher than the level of the gun, before we could bear on their columns.
We sent two or three canisters tearing through their ranks; the Texans
were blazing away, but, they had got too close to be stopped. The next
instant, they surged over our works like a great blue wave, and were
inside.

="Texas Will Never Forget Virginia"=

So sudden was the surprise that they bayonetted two of the Texan
infantry, asleep upon the ground. Soon as they got over they turned, and
began to sweep down the works, on the inside, upon our guns. As the
Texans forced to retire streamed past our guns, leaving us all alone
and unsupported to face the enemy, Lieutenant Anderson said, "Men, the
road is only a little way back of us; we must stay here, and stop these
people, or the Army is cut in two. Run the guns back and open on them.
We can hold them until help comes." We turned the guns round so as to
command the approaching enemy, and chocked them with rails; several men
snatched up the pile of ammunition, and piled it down before the guns in
their new place, then we opened, with double canister.

If ever two guns were worked for all they were worth, those were! I
don't believe any two guns, in the same time, ever fired as many shots
as those two "Napoleons" did. We kept them just _spouting canister_!
Several times _three canisters_ were fired. Billy White, "No. 2," had
only to reach down for them, and he would have loaded the guns _to the
muzzle_ if "No. 1" had given him time. The gun got so hot that, once, in
jumping in to put in the friction primer, the back of my left hand
touched it, and the skin was nearly taken off. The sponge was entirely
worn off the rammer, so "No. 1" stopped sponging out the gun, and only
rammed shot home. We fired so fast that t