Then to these wrestling specters—­for in the dim smoke and Tartarean atmosphere the actions of loading and aiming take the shape of huge writhing, convulsing, monstrous, grappling—­come quick-moving lines of help.  They rush through them, over them.  The thirteen cannon behind the struggling hydra of gray seem one vortex—­sulphurous, flaming, spitting, as from one vast mouth, scorching fire, huge mouthfuls of granite venom.  Back—­back, the gray masses break in sinuous, definite, slow-yielding disruption.

Then a sudden inrush from the left of the broken gray, where smoke and space play fantastic tricks with the sunshine.  Miraculously a dark mass is projected on the shimmering spectrum, and a ringing voice is heard: 

“We are saved; we are re-enforced.  We will die here!” Then high above the din, in the exultant tumult of the deadly won ground, the nearest in blue hear a stentorian voice—­grim, deliberate, exultant: 

“Look where Jackson stands like a stone-wall!  At them, men!  Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer.”

Die he did, when the yelling horde in the sudden outrush grazed the edge of the Union besom sweeping over the plain in a rush of death.  Then behind these spectral shapes came others—­thousands—­with wild, fierce shouts.  The blue mass is thinned to a single line.  Men in command look anxiously to the rear.  Where is Burnside?  Where are the twelve thousand men whom Hunter and Heintzelman deployed in these woods two hours since?  Back, slowly, fiercely, but backward, the slender wall of blue is forced; not defeated, but not victorious.  All this Jack sees, and he turns heartsick from the sight.

When the straggling couriers reached the point designated as McDowell’s headquarters, he had gone to the eastward of the line, and, faithful to the command given him, Jack set out with Barney, leaving the others to deliver the message in case he missed the general.  They emerged presently on the edge of a plateau, whence nearly the whole battle could be seen.  Jack climbed a tall oak to reconnoitre the ground for McDowell, but, as his glass revealed the battling lines, he shouted to Barney to climb for a moment, to impress the frightful yet grandiose spectacle upon his mind.  Far off toward the stone bridge, now a mile or more northeast of them, they could see the Union flags waving, and mark the white puffs of smoke that preceded the booming of the cannon.  Every instant the clouds of smoke came southward, where the rebel lines were concealed by the thick copses.  But they were breaking—­always breaking back anew.  In twenty minutes more, at the same rate, the hill upon which the rebel lines nearest the tree held the Union right at bay would be surrounded on two sides.