part of his face shot away. Si felt himself growing
white around the mouth and sick at the stomach, but he looked the other
way, and drew in a long, full breath.

The storm now seemed to be rolling toward them at railroad speed.
Suddenly the woods became alive with men running back, some with their
guns in their hands, many without. Some were white with fear, and
silent; some were in a delirium of rage, and yelling curses. Officers,
bareheaded, and wildly excited, were waving their swords, and calling
regiments and companies by name to halt and rally.

The Adjutant came galloping back, his horse knocking the fugitives right
and left. He shouted, to make himself heard in the din:

"The whole division is broken and going back. Our brigade is trying to
hold the rebels. They need us at once."

The Colonel turned calmly in his saddle, and his voice rang out clear,
distinct, and measured, as if on parade:

"Attention, 200th Indiana!"

"Load at will LOAD!"

A windrow of bright ramrods flashed and weaved in the air. A wave of
sharp, metallic clicks ran from one end of the line to the other.

"Shoulder ARMS!"

"Right FACE!"

"Forward MARCH!"

What happened immediately after emerging from the cedars Si could never
afterward distinctly recall. He could only vaguely remember as one does
the impression of a delirium seeing, as the regiment swung from column
into line, a surging sea of brown men dashing forward against a bank of
blue running along a rail fence, and from which rose incessant flashes
of fire and clouds of white smoke. The 200th Ind. rushed down to the
fence, to the right of the others; the fierce flashes flared along its
front; the white smoke curled upward from it. He did not remember
any order to begin firing; did not remember when he began. He only
remembered presently feeling his gun-barrel so hot that it burned his
hand, but this made him go on firing more rapidly than before. He was
dimly conscious of his comrades dropping around him, but this did not
affect him. He also remembered catching sight of Shorty's face, and
noticing that it was as black as that of a negro, but this did not seem
strange.

He felt nothing, except a consuming rage to shoot into and destroy those
billows of brown fiends surging incessantly toward him. Consciousness
only came back to him after the billows had surged back ward into the
woods, leaving the red mud of the field splotched with brown lumps which
had lately been m