To the north, immense quantities of stores—­clothing, provisions, material of every description were on fire, darkening the sky with rolling, inky clouds; an entire army corps with heavy artillery and baggage crossed the river enveloped in the pitchy, cinder-laden smoke from two bridges on fire.  The forests, which had been felled from the Golden Farm to Fair Oaks to form an army’s vast abattis, were burning in sections, sending roaring tornadoes of flame into rifle pits, redoubts, and abandoned fortifications.  Cannon thundered at Ellison’s Mills; shells rained hard on Gaines’s Farm; a thousand simultaneous volleys of musketry mingled with the awful uproar of the cannon; uninterrupted sheets of light from the shells brightened the smoke pall like the continuous flare of electricity against a thundercloud.  The Confederacy, victorious, was advancing wrapped in flame and smoke.

At Savage’s Station the long railroad bridge was now on fire; trains and locomotives burned fiercely; millions of boxes of hard bread, barrels of flour, rice, sugar, coffee, salt pork, cases of shoes, underclothing, shirts, uniforms, tin-ware, blankets, ponchos, harness, medical stores, were in flames; magazines of ammunition, flat cars and box cars loaded with powder, shells, and cartridges blazed and exploded, hurling jets and spouting fountains of fire to the very zenith.

And through the White Oak Swamp rode the Commander-in-chief of an army in full retreat, followed by his enormous staff and escort, abandoning the siege of Richmond, and leaving to their fate the wretched mass of sick and wounded in the dreadful hospitals at Liberty Hall.  And the red battle flags of the Southland fluttered on every hill.

Claymore’s mixed brigade, still holding together, closed the rear of Porter’s powder-scorched corps d’armee.

The Zouaves of the 3rd Regiment—­what was left of them—­marched as flankers; McDunn’s battery, still intact, was forced to unlimber every few rods; and the pouring rain turned to a driving golden fire in the red glare of the guns, which lighted up the halted squadrons of the Lancers ranged always in support.

Every rod in retreat was a running combat.  In the darkness the discharge of the Zouaves’ rifles ran from the guns’ muzzles like streams of molten metal spilling out on the grass.  McDunn’s guns spirted great lumps of incandescence; the fuses of the shells in the sky showered the darkness with swarming sparks.

Toward ten o’clock the harried column halted on a hill and bivouacked without fires, food, or shelter.  The Zouaves slept on their arms in the drenched herbage; the Lancers, not daring to unsaddle, lay down on the grass under their patient horses, bridle tied to wrist.  An awful anxiety clutched officers and men.  Few slept; the ceaseless and agonised shrieking from an emergency hospital somewhere near them in the darkness almost unnerved them.

At dawn shells began to plunge downward among the Dragoons.  McDunn’s battery roused itself to reply, but muddy staff-officers arrived at full speed with orders for Claymore to make haste; and the starving command staggered off stiffly through the mud, their ears sickened by the piteous appeals of the wounded begging not to be abandoned.