CHAPTER VIII.

AN INCIDENT OF THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS.

These facts were related to me by a Virginia soldier, and woven by me into a story for the Southern Bivouac.

On the night of May 11, 1864, Lee had withdrawn his forces from a salient point called the “Horseshoe,” in consequence of a retrograde or flank movement of the enemy opposite that point.  A battery of artillery, consisting of four companies, which was to have occupied that point, was removed some two miles back.  At early dawn, word was brought that Grant’s forces had again advanced, and the artillery was ordered to return with all speed.  Faster and faster they advanced until they reached the top of the hill, in the very toe of the Horseshoe, to find themselves in the jaws of the enemy.  It fell to the lot of a non-commissioned officer of Captain W.P.  Carter’s Battery to prepare the ammunition.  He first cut the fuse for one second’s time.  After preparing several shells and receiving no word from his general he made ready several charges of canister, knowing the enemy to be close at hand.  Still nobody came for the ammunition.  He observed next that the drivers of the limber-chest had dismounted and left their horses, and the horses being without a driver, backed the wheels of the limber over the ammunition.  To prevent damage, he seized the off-leader by the bridle, turning them back to a front position.  While doing this, he distinctly heard the minie-balls crashing through the bones of the horses.  They did not fall at once, however, and he had just gotten them to a front position, when a forcible blow upon the right shoulder, made by the enemy’s color-bearer with the point of his staff, showed him that they were upon him.  There was no time to say “good-morning,” so he beat a hasty retreat around his limber, “Sauve que peut.”  He had scarcely commenced to run when he felt a heavy blow about the middle of his back.  His thought was, “Can that color-bearer have repeated his blow, or am I struck by a ball, which has deadened the sense of feeling?” There being no flow of blood, however, he concluded he was not much hurt.  After a run of forty yards he came to the dry bed of a stream between two hills.  Here he paused to reconnoitre.  The morning fog and the smoke of battle obscured the view, except close to the ground.  Crouching on all-fours, he peered below the cloud of smoke toward the crest of the hill where the battery was.  He soon saw that the case was hopeless, and the battery in possession of the enemy.  Looking to the left, he read in the anxious countenance of an aide-de-camp on horseback that matters at that point were in a desperate case.  Running up the bed of the stream, he reached the shelter of the woods on his left.  So far he had run parallel to the line of battle.  When well in the woods, turning at right angles, it seemed that he had made his escape.  Meeting just then with an officer