"How many have we got here?" Dick heard himself asking Warner.
"Forty or fifty thousand, I suppose," he heard Warner replying, "and
before night there will be eighty thousand. Our line is two miles long
now. We ought to wrap around Jackson and crush him to death. Listen
to the bugles! What a mellow note! And how they draw men on to death!
And listen to the throbbing of the big cannon, too!"
Warner's face was flushed. He had become excited, as the two armies
stood there, and looked at each other a moment or two like prize fighters
in the ring before closing in battle. Then they heard the order to
charge and far up and down the line their own cannon opened with a crash
so great that Dick and his comrades could not hear one another talking.
Then they charged. The whole army lifted itself up and rushed at the
enemy, animated by patriotism, the fire of battle and the desire for
revenge. Among the officers were Milroy and Schenck and others who had
been beaten by Jackson in the valley. There, too, was the brigade of
Germans whom Jackson had beaten at Cross Keyes.
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