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Updated: May 21, 2025
The smoke rolls away, and now he can see streams of gray-coats hurrying to the edge of the plateau, where, two hours before, he had encountered Porter's brigade. Can it be possible that Porter's troops do not see these on-rushing hordes?
It was St. Valentine's Day; and as the swarthy sailors, stripped to the waist, begrimed with powder, and stained with blood, rammed huge iron balls down the muzzles of the guns, they said with grim pleasantry, "There's a valentine for the gray-coats." And right speedily did the gray-coats return the gift. Shot and shell from the batteries came in volleys against the sides of the gunboats.
But just then the gray-coats got together, again turned at the edge of the wood, and dashed back on their pursuers, and the smoke and bushes on the stream hid everything. In a second more both emerged on the other side of the smoke and went into the woods on the further edge of the field, all in confusion, and leaving on the ground more horses and men than before.
Again she went up into leagues of clear pine forest, with stems as straight as lances; meeting now a farmer, and now a school-girl or two, and once a squad of scouts, ill-mounted, worse clad, and yet more sorrily armed; bivouacking with the jolly, tattered fellows, Mary and one of the other women singing for them, and the "boys" singing for Mary, and each applauding each about the pine-knot fire, and the women and children by and by lying down to slumber, in soldier fashion, with their feet to the brands, under the pines and the stars, while the gray-coats stood guard in the wavering fire-light; but Mary lying broad awake staring at the great constellation of the Scorpion, and thinking now of him she sought, and now remorsefully of that other scout, that poor boy whom the spy had shot far away yonder to the north and eastward.
Suddenly some startled deer came bounding into camp, gray-coats swarming from the woods hard behind. Almost at the first charge the whole corps broke and flee! But the victory cost the Confederates dear; Jackson was fatally wounded, probably by his own men. All the next day the Union army fought on the defensive.
When the morning broke, however, the sea had calmed sufficiently to allow the gunners to again set about their terrible work. The second day's firing was even more accurate than that of the first; and the gray-coats were soon compelled to retire to the bomb-proofs, and abandon all attempt to return the fire of the ships.
Queed saw one of them wave hers frantically toward a drooping little knot of passing gray-coats, and then fall back into a chair, the same handkerchief at her eyes. Sharlee, who was explaining everything that anybody wanted to know, happened to be standing near him; she followed his glance and whispered gently: "Her husband and two of her brothers were killed at Gettysburg.
They had possession of some of our pits, and now they hoped to turn our flank and rout the army; but the small force replied to the desperate charge of the whole of Ewell's corps with the most stubborn resistance. Charge after charge was made, but to no avail. At length Neill's brigade passed far to the right of the rebel line, and poured an enfilading volley into the gray-coats.
Just to the eastward is Cranbrook, the chief market-town of the Weald, the ancient sanctuary of the Anabaptists and the historical centre of the Flemish cloth-trade, which used to be carried on by the "old gray-coats of Kent." Their descendants still live in the old-time factories, which have been converted into handsome modern houses.
In five minutes the tale was retold, and the guns, snatched from the worsted gray-coats, are safe in the hands of their masters. Again the smoke obscures the picture; again it clears away, and now the gray are in greater force than before, and the horseless batteries are again the prize of this rapacious grapple. Swarming in from three sides, the gray again hold the contested pieces.
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