The party had begun work before I went forward.  Passing Thompson, I skirted the edge of the woods, and went some thirty or forty yards to my right oblique in the open, and then lay flat, with my eyes to the front.  Soon I heard muffled sounds behind me; the men were filling the sand-bags.  My position cramped me, my neck became stiff.  No sound reached me from the front; I supposed that the nearest rebel vedette was not nearer than two hundred yards, unless at a point more advanced from his lines there was some natural protection for him.  But what prevented my being surprised from the woods on my left?  I lay flat and stiffened my neck; light was beginning to show.

At length I heard Willis call me, and I didn’t make him call twice.  The ravine, as the light became greater, showed itself almost impregnable against an equal force of skirmishers.  Just where an angle in the western edge presented a flank of wall toward the north, Willis and his gang had cut away the earth into a shelf some three feet beneath the top.  Ten sand-bags filled with earth surmounted the summit, with open spaces between, in order that a musket might be fired through, these handy port-holes, and the sand-bags were covered with, sedge from the open field.  I congratulated our commander on his engineering feat.

The sun had risen, perhaps, but the fog had not lifted; we could yet see neither enemy nor friend.  Willis put me on the right, and reserved the centre for his own piece; the centre happened to be about two feet nearer the enemy.  From left to right the line was manned by Freeman, Holt, Willis, Thompson, Berwick.

“Men, attention!” says Willis.

“Take the caps off of your pieces!”

The order was obeyed, the men looking puzzled.  Willis condescended to explain that we must fire a volley into a crowd as Act First; that any man who should yield to the temptation to fire without orders, was to be sent back to the line at once.

Slowly the fog began to break; the day would be fair.  Suddenly a bullet whistled overhead; then the report came from the rebel side.

“Be quiet, men!” says Willis.

Everybody had rushed to his place.

“Eat your breakfast,” says Willis.

We had no coffee; otherwise we fared as usual.

“The rebels have no coffee, neither,” says Willis.

The breakfast was being rapidly swallowed.

“Hello, there!” shouts Willis, and springs for the spade.

Another bullet had whistled above us, this one from our own line in the rear.

The spade was wielded vigorously by willing hands, passing from one to another, until a low rampart, but thick, would protect our heads from the fire of our skirmish line.  Meantime the fusillade from both sides continued.

Willis was at the parapet.

“Look out!” he cries.

A shell passed just above us, and at once a shower of bullets from the rebels.