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While this was in progress their infantry advanced, but, after a brief but rapid fire of musketry, almost perfect quiet was restored. While working at my gun I received what I thought to be a violent kick on the calf of my leg, but, turning to discover whence the blow came, saw a Minie-ball spinning on the ground. It was very painful for a time, but did not interrupt my service at the gun.
I lay there on the pilot-house floor, while the shots came faster and faster. I crept in behind the big stove, in the middle of the pilot-house. Presently a minie-ball came through the stove, and just grazed my head, and cut my hat. I judged it was time to go away from there. The captain was on the roof with a red-headed major from Memphis a fine-looking man.
He had scarcely struck three blows before he fell dead, pierced by a Minie-ball. In this battle, known as First Winchester, two of the battery were killed and twelve or fourteen wounded. The fighting was soon over and became a chase.
Two others followed in sharp succession, and there went close by Mary's ear the waspish whine of a minie-ball. At the same moment she recognized, once, twice, thrice, just at her back where the hoofs of her companion's horse were clattering, the tart rejoinders of his navy-six. "Go!" he cried again. "Lay low! lay low! cover the child!" But his words were needless.
The owner of the Bible, then a youth of nineteen, now a minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church, cherishes the book and the minie-ball, not only as a memento of the war, but with feelings of deepest gratitude, which find appropriate expression in the consecration of his life to Him who "protected his head in the day of battle."
Strong, who was very sensitive to this kind of disaster, was complaining bitterly one morning, because he had lost three "pieces" the night before. "There's Quite So, now," said Strong, "when a Minie-ball comes ping! and knocks one of his guns to flinders, he merely smiles, and does n't at all see the degradation of the thing." Poor Bladburn!
On the occasion of my visit to McPherson on the 30th of May, while standing with a group of officers, among whom were Generals McPherson, Logan, Barry, and Colonel Taylor, my former chief of artillery, a Minie-ball passed through Logan's coat-sleeve, scratching the skin, and struck Colonel Taylor square in the breast; luckily he had in his pocket a famous memorandum-book, in which he kept a sort of diary, about which we used to joke him a good deal; its thickness and size saved his life, breaking the force of the ball, so that after traversing the book it only penetrated the breast to the ribs, but it knocked him down and disabled him for the rest of the campaign.
The last man left on the shore was unable to swim; and Chaplin, taking him on his shoulders, bore him safely to the boat. Though the fire of the enemy was concentrated on the two, neither was hurt, although a minie-ball passed through the lieutenant's cap. Two months later this same locality was the scene of another bloody disaster to the Union arms.
He was a model soldier, active and wiry as a cat and tough as a hickory sapling. He had seen infantry service before joining our battery, and, as already mentioned, had "rammed home" one hundred and seventy-five shells in the first battle of Fredericksburg. Another member of our company, Launcelot Minor, a boy of less than eighteen years, was shot through the lungs by a Minie-ball.
The blacksmith's shop, the centre of the primitive civilization, had soon an expectant group in its widely flaring doors, for the smith had had enough of the war, and had come back to wistfully, hopelessly haunt his anvil like some uneasy ghost visiting familiar scenes in which he no more bears a part; a minié-ball had shattered his stanch hammer-arm, and his duties were now merely advisory to a clumsy apprentice.
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