wild-eyed Georgian, who stood directly in my front,
seemed to have singled me out for sacrifice. The stampede began. I
tried to lead the command in the rout by placing myself in the front
of the boldest and stoutest squad in the ranks, all the while shouting
to the men to "turn boys turn." But they continued to charge to the
rear, and in the nearest cut to our camp, then a mile off, I saw
the only chance to save myself from the clutches of that wild-eyed
Georgian was in continual and rapid flight. The idea of a boy
seventeen years old, and never yet tipped the beam at one hundred, in
the grasp of that monster, as he now began to look to me, gave me the
horrors. One by one the men began to pass me, and while the distance
between us and the camp grew less at each step, yet the distance
between me and my pursuer grew less as we proceeded in our mad race.
The broad expanse that lay between the men and camp was one flying,
surging mass, while the earth, or rather the snow, all around was
filled with men who had fallen or been overtaken, and now in the last
throes of a desperate snow battle. I dared not look behind, but kept
bravely on. My breath grew fast and thick, and the camp seemed a
perfect mirage, now near at hand then far in the distance. The men
who had not yet fallen in the hands of the reckless Georgians had
distanced me, and the only energy that kept me to the race was the
hope that some mishap might befall the wild-eyed man in my rear,
otherwise I was gone. No one would have the temerity to tackle the
giant in his rage. But all things must come to an end, and my race
ended by falling in my tent, more dead than alive, just as I felt
the warm breath of my pursuer blowing on my neck. I heard, as I lay
panting, the wild-eyed man say, "I would rather have caught that
d----n little Captain than to have killed the biggest man in the
Yankee Army."

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVI

Campaign of 1863--Battle of Chancellorsville.

On the morning of April 29th the soldiers were aroused from their
slumbers by the beating of the long roll. What an ominous sound is
the long roll to the soldier wrapped in his blanket and enjoying the
sweets of sleep. It is like a fire bell at night. It denotes battle.
It tells the soldier the enemy is moving; it means haste and active
preparation. A battle is imminent. The soldiers thus roused, as if
from their long sleep since Fredericksburg, feel in a touchous moo