ows that it is at once the earnest of deadly
battle and the preparation for it! The few details which we could gather
from the deck hands concerning the fight were meagre and unsatisfactory.
They told us of disaster that befell our army in the morning, and which
it seemed very doubtful if the afternoon had yet seen remedied; and
their testimony was borne out by evidences to which our own unwilling
senses were the sufficient witnesses. The roar of battle sounded
appallingly near, and two or three of our guns were in vigorous play
upon the enemy so close on the crest of the bluff that every flash could
be seen distinctly. Several shells from the enemy's artillery swept by,
cleaving the air many feet above us with that peculiar, fierce, rushing
noise, which no one, I believe, can hear for the first time without a
quickened beating of the heart and an instinctive impulse of dismay and
awe.

At the landing--but how shall I attempt, in words only, to set that
picture forth? The next day's fight was my first experience in actual
battle, except so much of bushwacking as five months in Western Virginia
had brought us, but those hours have no such place in my memory as have
the scenes and sounds of this evening at the landing. I have never yet
seen told in print the half of that sad, sickening story. Wagons, teams,
and led horses, quartermaster's stores of every description, bales of
forage, caissons--all the paraphernalia of a magnificently appointed
army--were scattered in promiscuous disorder along the bluff-side. Over
and all about the fragmentary heaps thousands of panic-stricken wretches
swarmed from the river's edge far up toward the top of the steep; a mob
in uniform, wherein all arms of the service and wellnigh every
grade--for even gilt shoulder-straps and scarlet sashes did not lack a
shameful representation there--were commingled in utter, distracted
confusion; a heaving, surging herd of humanity, smitten with a very
frenzy of fright and despair, every sense of manly pride, of honor, and
duty, completely paralyzed, and dead to every feeling save the most
abject, pitiful terror. A number of officers could be distinguished amid
the tumult, performing, with violent gesticulations, the pantomimic
accompaniments of shouting incoherent commands, mingled with threats and
entreaties. There was a little drummer boy, I remember, too, standing in
his shirt sleeves and pounding his drum furiously, though to what
purpose we could