Look out! Look out! Oh, good Lord!"

First there was seen a horrible dust cloud, heard a great thunder of
hoofs. Then out of all came bloodshot eyes of horses, stiffened manes,
blue figures downward bent on the sweat-gleaming necks, oaths, prayers,
sounds of unnerved Nature, here and there of grim fury, impotent in the
torrent as a protesting straw. Into the blue infantry rode the blue
cavalry. All down the soldier-crammed road ensued a dreadful confusion,
danger and uproar. Men sprang for their lives to this side and that.
They caught at jutting roots and pulled themselves out of the road up
the crumbling banks. Where they could they reached the rail fences,
tumbled over them and lay, gasping, close alongside. The majority could
not get out of the road. They pressed themselves flat against the
shelving banks, and let the wedge drive through. Many were caught,
overturned, felt the fierce blows of the hoofs. Regardless of any wreck
behind them, on and over and down the Winchester road tore the maddened
horses, the appalled troopers.

The luckless infantry when, at last, their own had passed, had no time
to form before the Confederate charge was upon them. At the highest key,
the fiercest light, the extremest motion, sound and sight procuring for
them a mighty bass and background, came Jackson's charging squadrons.
They swallowed the road and the fields on either hand. Kenly, with the
foremost company, fired once, a point-blank volley, received at twenty
yards, and emptying ten saddles of the central squadron. It could not
stay the unstayable; in a moment, in a twinkling of the eye, with
indescribable noise, with roaring as of undammed waters, with a lapse of
all colours into red, with smell of sweat and powder, hot metal and
burning cloth, with savour of poisoned brass in furred mouths, with an
impact of body, with sabre blow and pistol shot, with blood spilled and
bone splintered, with pain and tremendous horror and invading nausea,
with delirium, with resurgence of the brute, with jungle triumph,
Berserker rage and battle ecstasy came the shock--then, in a moment, the
melee.

Kenly, vainly striving to rally a handful about the colours, fell, all
but mortally wounded. In the wild quarter of an hour that elapsed before
the surrender of the whole, many of the blue were killed, many more
wounded. Far and wide the men scattered, but far and wide they were
ridden down. One of the guns was taken almost at once, the other a