About two miles below us, near the river, we could plainly see the enemy's camp-fires. Early next morning we were astir, and crossed the other fork of the river on an improvised bridge made of boards laid on the running-gear of wagons.
We felt assured that Fremont and Shields had received ample satisfaction, and that we were done with them for the present at least. Still more were we of this opinion when the wagon-train took the Brown's Gap road leading across the Blue Ridge, we expecting, of course, to follow. We did not follow, however, but took instead the route Shields's forces had taken the day previous, along which lay the bodies of the men we had killed, their heads, with few exceptions, being shot entirely off.
Having gone about a mile, the enemy opened on us with artillery, their shells tearing by us with a most venomous whistle. Halted on the sides of the road, as we moved by, were the infantry of our brigade. Among them I recognized my old school-teacher, Alfonso Smith, who had just joined the army. I had many times quailed under his fierce eye and writhed under his birch rod. The strain to which he was subjected under these circumstances was doubly trying, waiting inactive for his first baptism of fire. His eye was restless as we passed; perhaps he had a presentiment, as he received his death-wound before the day was over.
Again our two Parrott guns were ordered forward. Turning out of the road to the left, we unlimbered and commenced firing. The ground on which we stood was level and very soft, and, having no hand-spike, we had to move the trail of the gun by main force. The enemy very soon got our range, and more accurate shooting I was never subjected to. The other four guns of the battery now came up, and, passing along a small ravine about forty yards behind us, halted for a time nearby. We were hotly engaged, shells bursting close around and pelting us with soft dirt as they struck the ground. Bob Lee came creeping up from his gun in the ravine, and called to me, "Ned, that isn't making batter-cakes, is it?" The constant recoiling of our gun cut great furrows in the earth, which made it necessary to move several times to more solid ground. In these different positions which we occupied three of the enemy's shells passed between the wheels and under the axle of our gun, bursting at the trail. One of them undermined the gunner's (Henry's) footing and injured him so as to necessitate his leaving the field. Even the old Irish hero, Tom Martin, was demoralized, and, in dodging from a Yankee shell, was struck by the wheel of our gun in its recoil and rendered _hors de combat_. We had been kept in this position for two or three hours, while a flank movement was being made by Taylor's Louisiana Brigade and the Second Virginia Regiment through the brush at the foot of the mountain on our right. When it was thought that sufficient time had been allowed for them to make the detour, our whole line moved forward, the rest of the battery several hundred yards to our left. When my gun moved up an eighth of a mile nearer to the enemy, they added two guns to the three occupying the site of an old coal-hearth at the foot of the rugged mountain, so that our gun had five to contend with for an hour longer.