er
the cut! Says, 'Come on!' Says, 'Cross the bridge and get into battery
in the field beyond,' Says, 'Hurry up!'"

The siege-piece and the engine hurried. With a wild rattle and roar, the
crew all yelling, black smoke everywhere, and the whistle screaming like
a new kind of shell, the whole came out of the wood upon the railroad
bridge. Instantly there burst from the blue batteries a tremendous,
raking fire. Shot and shell struck the engine, the iron penthouse roof
over the siege-piece, the flat car, the bridge itself. From the car and
the bridge slivers were torn and hurled through the air. A man was
killed, two others wounded, but engine and gun roared across. They
passed Magruder standing on the bank. "Here we are, general, here we
are! Yaaih! Yaaaih!"

"Th' you are. Don't thop here! Move down the track a little. Other
Richmond howitthers coming."

The other howitzers, four pieces, six horses to each, all in a gallop,
captain ahead, men following in a mad run, whips crackling, drivers
shouting, came all in thunder on the bridge and across. The blue shells
flew like harpies, screaming, swooping, scattering ruin. A red gleam
from the declining sun bathed the wild train. In a roar of sound the
whole cleared the bridge and plunged from the track to the level field.
_Forward into battery, left oblique, march!_

McLaws on the right, hard pressed, sent to Magruder for reinforcements.
The 13th and 21st Mississippi answered. Kershaw, supported by Semmes and
Kemper, advancing under an iron hail by deserted camp and earthwork,
ordered the 2d, 3d and 7th South Carolina to charge. They did so, with a
high, ringing cry, through the sunset wood into the fields, by the farm
and the peach orchard, where they and the blue lines stubbornly engaged.
On both sides, the artillery came furiously into action.

The long twilight faded, the stars began to show. The firing slackened,
died to occasional sullen outbursts, then to silence. On both sides the
loss was heavy; the action remained indecisive. The grey rested on the
field; the blue presently took up again their line of retreat toward
White Oak Swamp. They left in the hands of the grey their dead, several
hundred prisoners, and twenty-five hundred men in hospital. In the hot
and sultry night, dark, with presage of a storm, through a ruined
country, by the light of their own burning stores, the blue column
wound slowly on by the single road toward White Oak Swamp and its single
br