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Ferragut, always running, remained behind the negro sharpshooters, the stevedores, the harbor guard, the seamen that were hastening from all sides crowding in the alleyways between the boxes and bundles.... They were like the greyhounds that follow the windings of the forest, making the stag come out in the open field, like the ferrets that slip along through the subterranean valleys, obliging the hare to return to the light of day.
July 11, early in the morning, an attack was made on the lines around Hagerstown, which developed a hornets' nest of sharpshooters armed with telescopic rifles, who could pick a man's ear off half-a-mile away.
Owing to the lack of percussion caps, Pemberton had ordered his men to use their rifles sparingly, but evidently a considerable body of sharpshooters near Dick were attempting a flanking movement of some kind, and meant to carry it out with bullets.
We were under fire in that fight about forty-eight hours, and were without food and with but little water. We had been cut off from our pack train, as the Spanish sharpshooters shot our mules as soon as they came anywhere near the lines, and it was impossible to move supplies.
The bullets whizzed most unpleasantly near, killing one man of the Thirteenth Connecticut. We thought that after being relieved we should get some rest. But about as soon as we got into camp we were ordered to fall in again. We marched out of the woods, over the hill and the entrenchments taken the day before, immediately coming under a sharp fire from the Rebel sharpshooters.
"But I have called for volunteers." "It is the work of soldiers to do whatever is to be done," replied the cavalry officer, who was not pleased with the growl, or the tone in which it had been made. "It is not exactly the work of sharpshooters to work in the mud," returned Butters, apparently unwilling to have his men ordered away from his immediate command.
Many sharpshooters might lurk there, and the three colonels were anxious to reach Sheridan with their force intact, at least without further loss after the battle with Colonel Talbot's command. The column was halted and it was decided to send out another scouting party to see if the way was clear.
Henry was quite sure that the Senecas to whom it belonged had not yet abandoned it, and with the aid of the other tribes might make a stand there. It was more than likely, too, that the Senecas had sharpshooters and sentinels well to the south of their town, and it behooved the riflemen to be extremely careful lest they run into a hornet's nest.
Johnny Reb evidently did not suspect that Tom was "playing 'possum," as the Tennessee sharpshooters would have expressed it. The voyager's efforts appeared to be made in good faith; and certainly he applied himself with a degree of zeal and energy which ought to have overcome the inertia of a small gunboat.
As they advanced through the forests and passes they were harassed incessantly by sharpshooters on the slopes, who melted away before them, but who returned on the very heels of the vain pursuit to vex them again with bullets. They heard soon that the most daring of these bands was led by a man named Slade, and Dick's pulse took a jump.
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