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Meanwhile Pegram's battery dashed forward at a run, supported by the infantry, and unlimbering, devoted a furious fire upon the place. Three times we advanced, each time nearer, until within good charging distance; but the artillery had it all to themselves.
Masses of Dutchmen, well-weaponed and thoroughly fed if insufficiently washed, gathering in all quarters marching to the assembly points, dismounting, unlimbering, going into laager.
Passing across the road by the tavern and entering the forest behind it, they left not in sight a single blue coat, save that a battery in the tavern yard was firing upon us. Two Confederate batteries galloped up to our line, and, unlimbering, opened upon the battery in the yard at close range.
I took my stand in the center of the tipsy boat; and Luke shoved off, and slowly paddled towards some lily-pads, while I began casting, unlimbering my tools, as it were. The fish had all disappeared. I got out, perhaps, fifty feet of line, with no response, and gradually increased it to one hundred.
Infantry appeared from nowhere in particular, the cavalry seemed suddenly to have increased considerably in numbers and to be massing as if for a charge, and before we realised it, we were unlimbering the guns and the horses were struggling through the mud back to the waggon-lines.
But Pennington came into position with a rush, and unlimbering two pieces, in less time than it takes to tell it, silenced the confederate artillery, firing over the heads of the Sixth Michigan skirmishers. Fitzhugh Lee pressed forward his dismounted line, following it closely with mounted cavalry, and made a desperate effort to cut off Custer's line of retreat by the bridge.
From the south and south-east came Anderson and McLaws, the batteries unlimbering on every eminence, and the infantry, hitherto held back, attacking with the vigour which their gallant commanders knew so well how to inspire. And from the west, formed in three lines, Hill's division to the front, came the Second Army Corps.
It was of this he was thinking more than of the merits of mountain batteries or the difficulties of limbering or unlimbering. "See! there they are!" exclaimed the general, suddenly pointing with his gloved hand. Fetherston strained his eyes towards the horizon, but declared that he could detect nothing.
Again there was something very spirited in the appearance of a battery rushed into position at a gallop the almost instantaneous unlimbering, the caissons moving to the rear, and the guns at the same moment thundering their defiance, while the smoke, lifting slowly on the heavy air, rises and blends with that of the other side, and hangs like a pall to leeward of the field.
An Austrian brigade of light cavalry issued forth as we came up, but soon fell back under the overwhelming pressure of our force. And now we came down upon the squares of the red-brown Russian infantry. Volley after volley sent back our leading squadrons, wounded and repulsed, when, unlimbering with the speed of lightning, the horse artillery poured in a discharge of grapeshot.
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