He scribbled a line on a sheet of his order-book, saying:  “This will be your authority.  It’s better not to write the rest for fear you should be captured.  In case you are in danger tell each man with you what to say, so that there will be more chances of getting the information where it will do good; and remember, sergeant, that this news in Hunter’s hands will be almost equivalent to victory.  Ah!”

He paused again.  Reverberating crashes came from the high grounds up the river.  “You will have no trouble in finding him now.  Those are Hunter’s guns.  Hurry.”

Glowing, grateful, big with the fate of the battle, Jack had Barney, Nick, and another, whom he charged with the duty of historian, detailed for this duty of glory.  The group set off with a fervent Godspeed from the company sheltered among the thick pines and oaks.

“Now, boys,” Jack said, every inch the captain, “we must spread out like skirmishers.  Our chief danger will be from the left, as no one will be likely to be in the water but our own men, and we must look as sharply for them as for the enemy.  I will take the center; you, Barney, the left, next to me; and you, Nick, four paces farther to the left.”  Jack looked at his watch.  It was just 9.30, Sunday morning, July 21, 1861.  The crash of musketry ahead now became one unbroken roar, with a crescendo of artillery that fairly shook the ground the messengers were darting over, for all were on a dead run.  The bushes grew thick on the hillside and their branches were stubborn as crab thorns.  Hell, as Barney afterward remarked, would have been cool in comparison to the heat as the adventurers tugged and wrestled forward.  Now guns were roaring on every side save the river.  Behind, before, to the left, the thunders played upon the parched land.  At the end of a half-hour the bullets and shells passed over the group as Jack and his squad pushed along the hilly way.  Twice, commands, and even the clicking, of what Jack knew must be rebel guns sounded not twenty paces away, but, thanks to the thick bushes, the scouts passed unseen, and, thanks to the noise of battle, unheard.  But now the danger is from friends, not enemies.  Balls come hurtling through the trees across the stream, and in a low voice Jack bids Barney summon Nick.  Then all slip down to the water’s edge, and make their way painfully through the marshy swamps, the cane-like rushes that fill the narrow valley.  The run has been a fearful strain upon Nick, and at length he falls, gasping, in a clump of cat-tails.

“What is it, old fellow?” Jack cries in alarm.

“O Jack!  I can’t go a step farther.  You go on and leave me.  I shall follow when I get breath.”

He was white and gasping.  Barney filled his canteen from the running water, and, wetting his handkerchief, laid it on Nick’s parboiled head and temples.