and.
There are various reports."

Langdon, who had been listening, whistled.

"It doesn't look like a picnic for the Invincibles," he said. "When I
volunteered for this war I didn't volunteer to fight a pitched battle
every day. What did you volunteer for, Harry?"

"I don't know."

The three laughed. Jackson's famous order certainly fitted well there.

"And you don't know, either," said Happy Tom, "what all that thunder
off there to the south and east means. It's the big guns, but who are
fighting and where?"

"There's to be a general attack on McClellan along the line of the
Chickahominy river," said Harry, "and our army is to be a part of the
attacking force, but my knowledge goes no further."

"Then I'm reckoning that some part of our army has attacked already,"
said Happy Tom. "Maybe they're ahead of time, or maybe the rest are
behind time. But there they go! My eyes, how they're whooping it up!"

The cannonade was growing in intensity and volume. Despite the sunset
they saw an almost continuous flare of red on the horizon. The three
boys felt some awe as they sat there and listened and looked. Well they
might! Battle on a far greater scale than anything witnessed before in
America had begun already. Two hundred thousand men were about to meet
in desperate conflict in the thickets and swamps along the Chickahominy.

Richmond had already heard the crash of McClellan's guns more than once,
but apprehension was passing away. Lee, whom they had learned so quickly
to trust, stood with ninety thousand men between them and McClellan, and
with him was the redoubtable Jackson and his veterans of the valley with
their caps full of victories.

McClellan had the larger force, but Lee was on the defensive in his own
country, a region which offered great difficulties to the invader.

Harry and his comrades wondered why Jackson did not move, but he
remained in his place, and when Harry fell asleep he still heard the
thudding of the guns across the vast reach of rivers and creeks, swamps
and thickets. When he awoke in the morning they were already at work
again, flaring at intervals down there on the eastern horizon. The whole
wet, swampy country, so different from his own, seemed to be deserted
by everything save the armies. No rabbits sprang up in the thickets and
there were no birds. Everything had fled already in the presence of war.

But the army marched. After a brief breakfast the brigades moved down
the road,