Still
no reply. Surely the sixty thousand Union men would now march over
everything. They were driving in the swarms of skirmishers. Dick could
see them retreating everywhere, in the wood over the hills and along an
embankment.
Warner was on his right and Pennington on his left. Dick glanced at them
and he saw the belief in speedy victory expressed on the faces of both.
It seemed to him, too, that nothing could now stop the massive columns
that Pope was sending forward against the thinned ranks of the
Confederates.
They were much nearer and he saw gray lines along an embankment and in a
wood. Then above the crash and thunder of their covering artillery he
heard another sound. It was the Southern bugles calling with a piercing
note to their own men just as the Northern trumpets had called.
Dick saw a great gray multitude suddenly pour forward. It looked to him
in the blur and the smoke like an avalanche, and in truth it was a human
avalanche, a far greater force of the South than they expected to meet
there. Directly in front of the Union column stood the Stonewall Brigade,
and all the chosen veterans of Stonewall Jackson's army.
Pages:
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176