e
had the stringers across, when there was a half dozen shots heard down
the stream, and bullets began "zipping" all around the bridge, and
we knew the rebels were onto the scheme, and wanted it stopped. I got
behind a tree when the bullets began to come, to think it over. My first
impulse was to leave the bridge and go back and tell the general that I
couldn't build no bridge unless everything was quiet. That I had never
built bridges where people objected to it. I asked the private what we
had better do. He said his idea was to knock off work on the bridge for
just fifteen minutes, cross the stream on the stringers, and go down
there in the woods and scare the life out of those rebels, drive them
away, and make them think the whole army was after them, then cross back
and finish the bridge. That seemed feasible enough, so about a dozen of
us squirreled across the stringers with our carbines, and the rest went
down the stream on our side, and all of us fired a dozen rounds from our
Spencer repeaters, right into the woods where the rebels seemed to be.
When we did so, the rebels must have thought there was a million of us,
for they scattered too quick, and we had a quiet life for two hours. We
had got the bridge nearly completed, when there was a hissing sound
in the air, a streak of smoke, and a powder magazine seemed to explode
right over us. I suppose I turned pale, for I had never heard anything
like it. Says I, "Jim, excuse me, but what kind of a thing is that?"

[Illustration: Xcuse me, but what kind of a thing is that? 175]

Jim kept on at work, remarking, O, nothing only they are a shellin on
us. And so that was a shell. I had read of shells and seen pictures
of them in _Harper's Weekly_, but I never supposed I would hear one.
Presently another came, and I wanted to pack up and go away. I looked at
my pioneers, and they did not pay any more attention to the shells than
they would, to the braying of mules. I asked Jim if there wasn't more or
less danger attached to the building of bridges, in the South, and he,
the old veteran, said:

"Corp, don't worry as long as they hain't got our range. Them 'ere shell
are going half a mile beyond us, and we don't need to worry. Just let
em think they are killing us off by the dozen, and they will keep on
sending shells right over us. If we had a battery here to shell back,
they would get our range, and make it pretty warm for us. But now it is
all guess work with them, and