.

Dick came up to Jack out of breath with great news, just as the Caribees
were aligning themselves to move forward.

"General Tyler just told Richardson"--a brigade commander--"that the
rebels had retreated from Manassas, and he (Tyler) is going to have the
glory of occupying the works: that McDowell thought the army would have
to fight a big battle to get--"

"Glory!" the group shouted, near enough to hear; and the delightful
story ran up and down the lines by a telephone process that was much
swifter than Edison's electric invention. A roar of gratulatory triumph
broke--a roar so loud and inspiring that for a moment the densely packed
masses did not distinguish an ear-splitting outburst just in front of
them. But on the instant piercing shrieks among the huddled
cheerers--cries of death and agony--changed the paeans of triumph into
wails of anguish and mortal pain. A panic--instant, unreasoning,
irresistible--fell upon the mass, a breath before so confident. A third
of the regiment seemed to wither away. The colors fell in the struggling
group in the center. Hoarse shouts, indistinguishable and ominous, could
be vaguely heard from the staff and line.

Direr still, hideous clamor of masked cannon, right in their very faces,
added the horror of surprise to the disorder of attack, and the thick
blue lines broke in irrestrainable confusion. The terror of the unknown
seized officers and men alike. In five minutes the crest was cleared,
and the ignoble vanity, ignorance, and self-sufficiency of one man had
undone in an hour the splendid work of the commander-in-chief. A _melee_
of miserable, disgraceful disorder ensued. The rebel sharpshooters,
hurrying to the flank, poured in hurtling, murderous volleys, filling
the minds of the panic-stricken mob with the idea, the most awful that
can enter a soldier's mind, that his line is surrounded. Hundreds threw
away guns and everything that could impede flight. Other hundreds fired
wildly wherever they saw moving men, and thus aided the rebels in
killing their own comrades, for it was into the supporting Union forces
they directed their random shots. The fire grew every instant more
bewildering. Shots came in volleys from every direction, and the
helpless hordes darted wildly together--sometimes toward, instead of
from the enemy. Had the rebels been as numerous as they were crafty, the
brigade could have been seized _en masse_. But now Sherman is at hand
with fresh regiments,