[Illustration: A SURGEON WRITING UPON THE POMMEL OF HIS SADDLE AN ORDER FOR AN AMBULANCE.]
I have a very indistinct and cloudy recollection of that march. I can quite well remember the beginning of it, when at the early dawn the enemy's batteries drove us, under a sharp shell-fire, at a lively double-quick for the first four miles. And I can well recall how, at midnight, we threw ourselves under the great oak-trees near Chancellorsville, and were in a moment sound asleep amid the heaven-rending thunder of the guns, the unbroken roll of the musketry, and the shouts and yells of the lines charging each other a quarter of a mile to our front. But when I attempt to call up the incidents that happened by the way, I am utterly at a loss. My memory has retained nothing but a confused mass of images: here a farmhouse, there a mill; a company of stragglers driven on by the guard; a surgeon writing upon the pommel of his saddle an order for an ambulance to carry a poor exhausted and but half-conscious fellow; an officer's staff or an orderly dashing by at a lively trot; a halt for coffee in the edge of a wood; filling a canteen (oh, blessed memory!) at some meadow stream or roadside spring; and on, and on, and on, amid the rattle of bayonet-scabbards and tin cups, mopping our faces and crunching our hard-tack as we went,--this, and such as this, is all that will now come to mind.
But of events toward nightfall the images are clearer and more sharply defined. The sun is setting, large, red, and fiery-looking, in a dull haze that hangs over the thickly-wooded horizon. We are nearing the ford where we are to cross the Rappahannock. We come to some hilltop, and--hark! A deep, ominous growl comes, from how many miles away we know not; now another; then another!
On, boys, on! There is work doing ahead, and terrible work it is, for two great armies are at each other's throat, and the battle is raging fierce and high, although we know nothing as yet of how it may be going.
Turning sharp to the left, we enter the approach to the ford, the road leading, in places, through a deep cut,--great high pine-trees on either side of the road shutting out the little remaining light of day. Here we find the first actual evidences of the great battle that is raging ahead: long lines of ambulances filled with wounded; yonder a poor fellow with a bandaged head sitting by a spring; and a few steps away another, his agonies now over; here, two men, one with his arm in a sling supporting the other, who has turned his musket into a crutch; then more ambulances, and more wounded in increasing numbers; orderlies dashing by at full gallop, while the thunder of the guns grows louder and closer as we step on the pontoons and so cross the gleaming river.
