Part 43 (1/2)

”We're going into our first battle, aren't we?”

”Praise G.o.d, we are!”

”And we may come out a corpse?”

”Yis----”

”I'm going to be a decent one.”

”Ah, go'long wid ye--ye b.l.o.o.d.y young spalpeen--ye're no more afraid than I am!”

”Maybe not, Haggerty, but it's a solemn occasion, and I'm going to look my best.”

”Ye'll live ter see many a sc.r.a.p, me bye!”

”Same to you, old man! But I'm going to be clean for this one, anyhow.”

The regiment marched toward Malvern Hill at the first streak of dawn. It was slow work. Always the artillery ahead were sticking in the mud and the halts were interminable.

The new company grew more and more nervous:

”What's up ahead?”

They asked it at every halt the first three hours. And then their disgust became more p.r.o.nounced.

”What in 'ell's the matter?” Ned groaned.

”Don't worry, Sonny,” an old corporal called, ”you'll get there in time to see more than you want.”

The regiment reached the battle lines at one o'clock. The morning hours had been spent in driving in the skirmishers and feeling the enemy's positions. Lee had given orders for a general charge on a signal yell from Armistead's brigade. He was now waiting the arrival of all his available forces before attacking.

Late in the afternoon General D. H. Hill heard a shout followed by a roar of musketry and immediately ordered his division to charge. No other General seemed to have heard it and the charge was made without support. It was magnificent, but it was not war, it was sheer butchery.

No army could have stood before the galling fire of those ma.s.sed batteries.

Ned's regiment had deployed in a wood on the edge of a wide field at the foot of the hill. Their movement caught the eye of a battery on the heights which opened with six guns squarely on their heads.

The struggling, shattered remnants of a regiment which had been all but annihilated fell back through these woods, stumbling against the waiting men.

Ned saw a soldier with a Minie ball sticking in the centre of his forehead, the blood oozing from the round, clean-cut hole beside the lead. He was walking steadily backward, loading and firing with incredible rapidity. The company halted behind the troops held in reserve, but the man with the ball in his forehead refused to go to the rear. He wouldn't believe that he was seriously hurt. He jokingly asked a comrade to dig the ball out. He did so, and the fellow dropped in his tracks, the blood gus.h.i.+ng from the wound in a stream.

The uncanny sight had sickened Ned. He looked at his hand and it was trembling like a leaf.

And this division was charging up that awful hill again. Ned saw a private soldier who belonged to one of its regiments deliberately walk across the field alone and join his comrades as if nothing of importance were going on. And yet the bullets were whistling so thickly that their ”Zip! Zip!” on the ground kept the air filled with flying dirt and tufts of gra.s.s--a veritable hail of lead through which a sparrow apparently couldn't fly.

The fellow was certainly a fool! No man with a grain of sense would do such a thing _alone_--maybe with a crowd of cheering men, but only a maniac _could_ do it alone--Ned was sure of that.

A sh.e.l.l smashed through the top of a tree, clipped its trunk in two and down it came with a crash that sent the men scampering.

A solid shot came bounding leisurely down the hill and rolled into the woods. A man just in front put out his foot playfully to stop it and it broke his leg.

The shriek of sh.e.l.l and the whistle of lead increased in terrifying roar each moment and Ned felt a queer sensation in his chest--a sort of shortness of breath. In a moment he was going to bolt for the rear! He felt it in his bones and saw no way to stop it. He lifted his eyes piteously toward the Colonel who sat erect in his saddle stroking the neck of a restless horse with his left hand.