They accepted.

A dozen voices shouted, “We are for the Union!” and half a dozen rifles cracked.

They must have fired into the fence-row.  I heard no bullet—­but then, no bullet can be heard at such a nearness.

I kept my post—­flat on my face.  It would not be best for me to rise and run.  Perhaps I could get off by doing so, but I could manage better.  I would remain quiet until they should think I had gone.  Then I would crawl away.

Two or three minutes passed.  I was making up my mind to start.  Suddenly a gruff voice spoke.  It was near me.  It was in the fence-row.  A Yankee had crept toward me.  He said, at an ordinary pitch, but very gruffly, “Who are you, anyhow?”

If he is yet alive, these lines may inform him that I was Jones.  It was my time to be silent.  I feared that he would continue to come, but the next instant I knew that he was in doubt as to how many I was, and I stuck fast.

I heard nothing more.  No doubt he had given it up—­had gone back and reported that the enemy had disappeared from the immediate front.

Five minutes more, and I had picked up my gun and was walking back to our line.  I struck it in front of Company C, whose men had been warned that I was out, but who now had to be restrained from firing on me.  They had heard the voices up the hill, and bullets had whistled over them, and they had thought me a prisoner, so when they saw a man coming toward them they were itching to shoot.

We remained all night as we were, with a gap in the skirmish-line at the left of Pender’s division.

XXXIII

HELL

     “Each volley tells that thousands cease to breathe;
      Death rides upon the sulphury Siroc,
      Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock.” 
          
                                              —­BYRON.

The morning came—­the morning of Friday, the 3d of July.  Just as the sun was rising in our faces the Federal skirmishers advanced.  Down the hill they came at the run.  Lieutenant Sharpe ordered a countercharge, and the battalion rushed to meet the enemy.  We were almost intermixed with them before they ran.  And now our lieutenant of Company A showed his mettle.  He sprang before his company, sword in his left hand and revolver in the other, and led the fight, rushing right up the hill, and, when near enough, firing every barrel of his pistol.  We took a few prisoners.  Both lines settled back to their first positions.

We had lost some men.  A detail of infirmary people came from the rear to carry off the wounded.  Hutto had been shot badly.  As four men lifted the stretcher, one of them was killed, and Hutto rolled heavily to the ground.  Another of the litter bearers was shot, leaving but two; they raised their stretcher in the air and moved it about violently.  The Yankees ceased firing.