ing, helpless comrades, and the line be taken in
two minutes! What could we do to save them? Wake them up? No time to get
a dozen men roused up before the fatal peril would be upon us. Suddenly!
the same thought seemed to flash into our minds. Fire the gun! that will
wake up the line instantly. Come boys! There was a case-shot in the gun.
I remembered I had not fired it out, and I had my friction primer box
on, and a primer hooked to the lanyard. We jerked the trail loose from
the limber, and let the gun run to its place! Before it stopped, I
think, I had the primer in, while Dan pulled the trail round to get the
aim. He sprung aside as I let drive.

The crash of that Napoleon, and the scream of the shell there, in the
deep stillness of day-dawn, sounded as if it might be heard all over
Virginia! The effect was instant! You ought to have seen the boys, lying
all about, "tumble up." They flirted up from the ground like snap bugs!
"Gabriel's trumpet" couldn't have jerked them to their feet quicker.

Ned Barnes had lain down right where the gun had been, at the work. When
we ran it back to its place, in our excitement, we did not notice him.
Fortunately the wheels went on either side of him. He was lying flat on
his back, and right under the gun, when it fired. Ned went on like a
chicken with its head off. There was a scuffle, a yell, the whack of a
bumped head under the gun. Ned came tumbling out, all in a heap,
perfectly dazed, and wanting to know, in indignant tones, "What in the
thunder we were doing that way _for_?"

Before the sound of our gun had died away the whole line was up,
shooting like mad, and both guns were going hard. A few minutes of this
sent that sneaking line back to the woods, with a good deal more noise,
and faster, than it came. We learnt, afterwards, that the idea was to
surprise us, if possible. If so, to take, and sweep our line. If not,
_not_ to press the attack. The "surprise" was all they could have
wished. Not a picket fired on them. They were in one hundred and fifty
yards of our sleeping men, and could have simply walked over them, and
captured the whole line at that point. And, _if they had_--fixed as our
Army was, a half hour later--it would, I am sure, have meant disaster.
The only thing that averted it was, _humanly_ speaking, the _accident_
that three young "Howitzers" sat up talking all night, and, happened to
look over at that wood at the break of day,--and _had a cannon handy_!