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He sent word to Morris, the coachman, to have the carriage brought to the door, loitered about doing nothing while his mother packed his valise, and in twenty minutes more was on his way to Newbern, which he reached without any mishap, not forgetting, however, to send a telegram on from Boydtown informing Beardsley that his orders had been received, and that the pilot was on his way to join the Osprey.
The dispatch ran as follows: Arrived from Nassau this morning with a valuable cargo after a running fight with the Yankees. Had two men slightly injured. Will leave for Boydtown by first train. "After mother reads that she will not be so very much shocked when she sees me with my arm in a sling," was what he told himself as he passed the dispatch over to the operator.
The infantry which had marched at 2½ P. M. from the house of Boisseau, on the Boydtown plank-road, was drawn up in four battle lines, a mile or more in length, and in the beginning facing the White Oak road obliquely; the left or pivot was the division of General Ayres, Crawford had the center and Griffin the right.
Crawford's men do not seem to have retrieved the character of their predecessors, but made a feint to go in, and, falling by dozens beneath the murderous fire, gave up the ground. Griffin's division, past which the fugitives ran, halted awhile before taking the doubtful way; the whole corps was now back to the Boydtown plank-road, and nothing had been done to anybody's credit particularly.
After carrying the enemy's lines in his front, and reaching the Boydtown plank road, Major-General Wright turned to his left and swept down the enemy's line of intrenchments till near Hatcher's run, where, meeting the head of the Twenty-fourth corps, General Wright retraced his steps and advanced on the Boydtown plank road toward Petersburgh, encountering the enemy in an inner line of works immediately around the city."
These advanced from the Boydtown plank-road, at ten o'clock, while Sheridan was thundering away with the cavalry, mounted and dismounted, and deluding the Rebels with the idea that he was the sole attacking party; they lay concealed in the woods behind the Gravelly Run meeting-house, but their left was not a half-mile distant from the Rebel works, though their right reached so far off that a novice would have criticized the position sharply.
This is one of the series of parallel public ways running east and west, south of the Southside, the Vaughan road being the first, the Boydtown plank-road the second, and the old Court-House road the third. It became evident to the Rebels that we had two direct objects in view: the severing of their railway, and the occupation of the "Five Forks." The latter is a magnificent strategic point.
Before the train had left Boydtown a mile behind, a young man, dressed in a neat, clean uniform that had never seen a minute's service at the front, stopped in the aisle and laid his hand heavily on Jack's shoulder. "Look here, my lad," said he, in a tone that was as offensive as his manner, "you are strong and able-bodied, are you not?"
Old Morris, whom they found waiting for them at Boydtown depot, was both surprised and disappointed because they did not ride on the box with him, as they usually did; but as the boys wanted to be alone, they went inside. "You haven't done much talking since we started," said Marcy, when Morris cracked his whip and drove away from the depot. "What's the matter?"
The Fifth Army Corps of General Warren, has had all of the flank fighting of the week to do. It lost five or six hundred men in its victory of Thursday, and on Friday rested along the Boydtown plank-road, at the house of one Butler, chiefly, which is about seven miles from Five Forks.
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