“Good God, yes!  I forgot that; I think I can find the way back.  But we’ll have to be careful, the enemy are all around us.  I can hear them plainly, very near.  Follow me, and don’t speak above a whisper.”

Then, with swift movement, always as near the thick bushes as they could push, they fled faster and faster, as fear fell more and more heavily upon their quickened fancies.  The thought of the repute of deserters lent them endurance, or they must have broken down before the weary shiftings of that dreadful flight.  They are now near the spot where they had met Porter’s pickets in the morning.  The sounds of battle had died out at intervals, renewed now and again by an outcry of cheers, a quick fusillade, then more cheers, and then an ominous silence.  But now there is a continuous roll of musketry near the knoll, back of the Warrenton road.  The two wanderers, breathless, with torn uniforms, swollen faces, halt, gasping, to take their bearings.  They can see the turnpike far beyond the stone bridge half-way to Centreville:  they see crowds fleeing in zigzag lines over the open fields, see horses plunging wildly, laden down by two and even three men on their backs; they see vehicles overturned at the roadside, whence the horses have been cut or killed by the rebel shells; they see an army, in every sense a mob, swarming behind the deserted rebel forts; they see orderly ranks of shining black horses this side the stone bridge charging the fleeing lines of blue; they see shells whirling like huge blackbirds in the sky, suddenly falling among the skurrying thousands; they see a shell finally burst on the bridge, shiver a caisson to fragments, and then all sign of organized flight comes to an end.

But near them, meanwhile, a sullen fire replies with desperate promptitude to the rebel shots.

“If we can get over to the men fighting at the edge of the woods, we may be killed or captured, but we won’t be disgraced!” Jack cries.

Again they make a wide circuit through the woods, and now the firing is near at hand, coming slowly toward them.  They have only to wait and they will be among the forlorn hope.  Ah, with what fervent joy Jack marks the Union banner, flapping its twin streamers among the hurtling pines!  They are near it; they are under it!  Their own guns are no longer available; hundreds are lying at hand; they seize them.  The line is firing in retreat.  It is a sadly depleted battalion of Keyes’s regulars, steadfast, imperturbable, devoted.  A handful of them has been forgotten or misdirected.  The rebels, uncertain whether it was not a trap to snare them, move with caution, while far to the left a turning column is hurrying to hem the Union group in on every side.  There are hardly three hundred blue-coats in the mass, but their volleys are so swift, so regular, so steady, that they make the impression of a thousand.  The enemy felt sure, as was afterward learned, that there was at least a regiment.