horses, tangled and still hitched, rearing and kicking like mad, using all their strength to unloosen themselves from the matted mass of vehicles, animals, and men, for the stock had caught up the spirit of the panic, and were eager to keep up the race.  As by intuition, the flying soldiers felt that the roadway would be blocked at the bridge over Cedar Creek, so they crossed the turn-pike and bore to the left in order to reach the fords above.  As I reached the pike, and just before entering a thicket beyond, I glanced over my shoulder toward the rear.  One glance was enough!  On the hill beyond the enemy was placing batteries, the infantry in squads and singly blazing away as rapidly as they could load and fire, the grape and cannister falling and rattling upon the ground like walnuts thrown from a basket.  The whole vast plain in front and rear was dotted with men running for life’s sake, while over and among this struggling mass the bullets fell like hail.  How any escaped was a wonder to the men themselves.  The solid shot and shell came bouncing along, as the boys would laughingly say afterwards, “like a bob-tailed dog in high oats”—­striking the earth, perhaps, just behind you, rebound, go over your head, strike again, then onward, much like the bounding of rubber balls.  One ball, I remember, came whizzing in the rear, and I heard it strike, then rebound, to strike again just under or so near my uplifted foot that I felt the peculiar sensation of the concussion, rise again, and strike a man twenty paces in my front, tearing away his thigh, and on to another, hitting him square in the back and tearing him into pieces.  I could only shrug my shoulders, close my eyes, and pull to the rear stronger and faster.

The sun had now set.  A squadron of the enemy’s cavalry came at headlong speed down the pike; the clatter of the horses hoofs upon the hard-bedded stones added to the panic, and caused many who had not reached the roadway to fall and surrender.  About one hundred and fifty of the Third Regiment had kept close at my heels (or I had kept near their front, I can’t say which is the correct explanation), with a goodly number of Georgians and Mississippians, who had taken refuge in a thicket for a moment’s breathing spell, joining our ranks, and away we continued our race.  We commenced to bend our way gradually back towards the stone bridge.  But before we neared it sufficiently to distinguish friend from foe, we heard the cavalry sabering our men, cursing, commanding, and yelling, that we halted for a moment to listen and consult.  In the dim twilight we could distinguish some men about one hundred yards in front moving to and fro.  Whether they were friends, and like ourselves, trying to escape the cavalry in turn and creep by and over the bridge, or whether they were a skirmish line of the enemy, we could not determine.  The Captain of a Georgia regiment (I think his name was Brooks), with four or five men, volunteered to go forward and investigate.  I heard the command