on their cartridge-boxes, seized their guns, and
took their places in the ranks before they were fairly awake. The
drummers beat the long-roll, the buglers sounded the signal for saddling
horses, the artillery-men got their guns ready, cavalry-men leaped into
their saddles, baggage-wagons went thundering towards the river. There
was a volley of musketry, and then a deeper roar from the artillery, and
the terrible contest of the day began, which became more terrific from
morning till noon, from noon till night, with deafening rolls of
musketry, with the roaring of a hundred cannon, with the yelling of the
Rebels and the cheering of the soldiers of the Union, as the tempest
surged through the forest, up and down the ravines, around Shiloh
church, in the old cotton-fields, up to the spring where the country
people were accustomed to eat their Sunday dinners, down to the
Tennessee River, where the gunboats were waiting for the hour when they
could open with their great guns.

Paul was in the storm, riding through the leaden hail which fell all
around him, pattering upon the dead leaves, cutting down the twigs of
the hazel-bushes, and scarring the trees,--riding along the lines
carrying messages to General Sherman, who was fighting like a tiger by
the church, with the bullets piercing his clothes,--to McClernand, who
was near by,--to Wallace, to Prentice, to Hurlburt, to Stuart,--riding
where shells were bursting, where solid shot cut off great branches from
the trees, splintered the trunks, ploughed the ground, whirled men and
horses into the air, tearing them limb from limb, and then passed away
with weird howlings. He breathed the thick smoke as it belched from the
cannon's mouth, and felt the hot flashes on his face. He stood beside
his commander, General Grant, while waiting for orders, and beheld him
when tidings of disaster were brought in,--that General Prentice and
hundreds of his men were captured,--that the line was broken, and the
men were falling back. He could hear the triumphant shouts of the
Rebels.

Yet amid it all he saw that General Grant was cool and collected. "We
will whip them yet," he said. Paul felt stronger after that, and
resolved to die rather than be beaten. But how slowly dragged the hours!
The sun seemed to stand still in the western sky. How hard to see the
poor wounded men, thousands of them, borne to the rear, their feet
crushed, their legs broken, their arms torn and mangled, and to know