Dick came up to Jack out of breath with great news, just as the Caribees were aligning themselves to move forward.

“General Tyler just told Richardson”—­a brigade commander—­“that the rebels had retreated from Manassas, and he (Tyler) is going to have the glory of occupying the works:  that McDowell thought the army would have to fight a big battle to get—­”

“Glory!” the group shouted, near enough to hear; and the delightful story ran up and down the lines by a telephone process that was much swifter than Edison’s electric invention.  A roar of gratulatory triumph broke—­a roar so loud and inspiring that for a moment the densely packed masses did not distinguish an ear-splitting outburst just in front of them.  But on the instant piercing shrieks among the huddled cheerers—­cries of death and agony—­changed the paeans of triumph into wails of anguish and mortal pain.  A panic—­instant, unreasoning, irresistible—­fell upon the mass, a breath before so confident.  A third of the regiment seemed to wither away.  The colors fell in the struggling group in the center.  Hoarse shouts, indistinguishable and ominous, could be vaguely heard from the staff and line.

Direr still, hideous clamor of masked cannon, right in their very faces, added the horror of surprise to the disorder of attack, and the thick blue lines broke in irrestrainable confusion.  The terror of the unknown seized officers and men alike.  In five minutes the crest was cleared, and the ignoble vanity, ignorance, and self-sufficiency of one man had undone in an hour the splendid work of the commander-in-chief.  A melee of miserable, disgraceful disorder ensued.  The rebel sharpshooters, hurrying to the flank, poured in hurtling, murderous volleys, filling the minds of the panic-stricken mob with the idea, the most awful that can enter a soldier’s mind, that his line is surrounded.  Hundreds threw away guns and everything that could impede flight.  Other hundreds fired wildly wherever they saw moving men, and thus aided the rebels in killing their own comrades, for it was into the supporting Union forces they directed their random shots.  The fire grew every instant more bewildering.  Shots came in volleys from every direction, and the helpless hordes darted wildly together—­sometimes toward, instead of from the enemy.  Had the rebels been as numerous as they were crafty, the brigade could have been seized en masse.  But now Sherman is at hand with fresh regiments, others are at his heels, and the contest takes on some of the order of intelligent action.  The rebels, too, are re-enforced, but the dispositions made by the Union chiefs bring the combat to equal terms.  The clamor of cannon and musketry continues an hour, though the lines are now among the friendly undergrowth, and the losses are not serious.  But the Caribees, with the regiment supporting them, have been blotted from the scene as a factor.  For hours the scattering groups fled—­fled in ever-increasing panic, and it was long after dark before the remnants of the regiment came into camp at Centreville.