“Best a few minutes,” Jack said, soothingly.  “I will reconnoitre a bit.”  Stripping off his accoutrements, he clasped a tall sycamore growing at the crest of the ravine, and when far up brought his glass to bear.  A third of a mile to the left and southward, he could see a regiment with a flag bearing a single star, surrounding a small stone farm-house on the brow of a gentle hill.  They were firing to the west and toward the north, where the black clouds obscured his view.  But the red gleam in the smoke told of at least a dozen guns, and he knew that the main battle was there, though the fury of it reached far to the east, near the stone bridge which he had quit an hour before.  Then through the veil of smoke long, deep masses of blue emerge and make for the rebel front on the brow of the hill, fairly at Jack’s feet; the enemy redoubles the fire; two guns at their left pour canister into the advancing wall of blue.  It never wavers, but, as a group falls to the earth, the rest close together and the mass whirls on.

Jack feels like flying.  Oh, the grandeur of it, the fearlessness, the intoxication!  He almost falls from the tree in his excitement.  But he takes a last sweep of the belching hill.  Hark!  Loud cheers in the trees back of the rebels, far to the southeast, perhaps a mile and a half; then the flaunting Palmetto flag flying forward in the center of deep masses of gray.  Which will reach the hill first?  He can not quit the deadly sight.  Ah! the blue lines are pressing on now; the cannon-shots pass over their heads into the devoted line of gray, desperately thinned, but clinging to the key of the battle-field.  But, great God!  Perhaps his delay is aiding the enemy.  He sees the route now clear—­straight to the west—­and no rebels near enough to intervene.  He descends so fast that his hands and legs are blistered, but he is down.

“Look sharp, boys; you must follow me as best you can.  I know the route—­there is a forest path directly to our lines, and we shall be there in twenty minutes—­I shall, at least.”  He doesn’t stop to see whether he is followed or not, but dashes on, and the rest after him.  He is far out of sight in an instant.  It is only by the crackling of the branches that the others keep his course.  The way is between steep, precipitous hills, which explains how they could be so near the battle and yet not in it, nor harmed by the missiles flying sometimes very near them.  At a deep branch of the stream the three rearmost came in sight of Jack, up to his armpits in water and pushing for the shore.

While they are hailing him exultantly he sinks out of sight; an awful anguish almost stops the others, but Barney, flinging his musket and impediments off as he runs, leaps far into the stream, and when the rest reach the spot he has Jack by the hair, dragging him to the bank.  He is fairly worn out by the stress, and the others loosen his coat, stretch him on the brown sward and rub his hands, his body.