He had lost sight of Colonel
Winchester, Warner and Pennington in the smoke and the dreadful confusion,
but he saw well enough that his fears were coming true.
The attack in front increased in violence, and the Northern army was
also attacked with fiery energy on both flanks. The men had the actual
physical feeling that they were enclosed in the jaws of a vise, and,
forced to abandon all hope of victory, they fought now to escape.
Two small squadrons of cavalry, scarce two hundred in number, sent
forward from a wood, charged the whole Southern army under a storm of
cannon and rifle fire. They equalled the ride of the Six Hundred at
Balaklava, but with no poet to celebrate it, it remained like so many
other charges in this war, an obscure and forgotten incident.
Dick saw the charge of the horsemen, and the return of the few. Then
he lost hope. Above the roar of the battle the rebel yell continually
swelled afresh. The setting sun, no longer golden but red, cast a
sinister light over the trampled wheat field, the slopes and the woods
torn by cannon balls.
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