rses. Robert Fulton rounded the limber, and threw himself down with
all his weight, right upon, and completely covering up, Ellis, and stuck
his face in the dirt over Ellis' shoulder, effectually pinning him down.
Ellis was a fiery, ugly-tempered fellow, but as brave as Julius Caesar,
and of all men in the battery he had the greatest contempt for Moore,
and especially for his present conduct. Ellis, upon finding Moore on top
of him, was in a perfect blaze of fury. The breath was nearly knocked
out of him by Moore's weight, and he was mashed into the narrow hole,
and embarrassed by the reins of his horses. He tried to throw Moore off,
and couldn't. Then he broke loose! He yelled, and swore, and bit, and
pulled Moore's hair, and socked his spurs into him, with both feet. He
would have broken a blood vessel if McCarthy, assisted by Moncure, who
had come to look after his driver, had not pulled Moore off, and taken
him back to his post.

Our attention was drawn to this scene by the noise. The terrific combat
going on in that hole, the sight of Ellis' legs and arms, tossing wildly
in the air, Moore not moving a muscle, but lying still, on top, the dust
kicked up by the fray,--it was more than flesh and blood could stand,
even under such a fire, and we could hardly work the guns for laughing.
After the fight, when Moore had time to look into his injuries, he found
that Ellis had nearly skinned him with his spurs. Some days after, we
heard Robert Fulton exhibiting his torn hat brim to some passing
acquaintance from his own neighborhood, as a trophy of his prowess in
this fight. No doubt he preserves it as a sacred relic yet.

=A Useful Discovery=

In this fight, necessity, the mother of invention, put us up to a device
that served us well here, and that we made fullest use of, in every
fight we had afterwards. When we had kept up that rapid fire, with a
scant gun detachment, in plowed ground, and under a hot sun, for an
hour, we were nearly exhausted. After Hardy was wounded, and left us, it
was still worse. The hardest labor, and what took most time, was running
up the guns from the recoil. We had stopped a moment to rest, and let
the gun cool a little, and were discussing the difficulties, when the
idea occurred to us. There was an old rail fence near by. Somebody said
"let's get some rails and chock the wheels to keep them from running
back." This struck us all as good, and in an instant we had piled up
rails behind the w