Captain Haskell was not there.  He would have sent ten men to the left until something was found.  He would have filled the interval, even had it required the whole battalion to stretch to twenty steps apart, at least until he could report to Colonel Perrin, or General Pender.  Lieutenant Sharpe, in command of the battalion, was far to the right—­perhaps four hundred yards from us.  We should have sent word to him down the line, but we did not do it.  The night was growing.  How wide was the gap?  Why did not the pickets on the other side of this gap search for us?  If the enemy knew our condition, a brigade or more might creep through the gap; still the lieutenant did not propose anything.

At last I said that although the picket-line in front looked like a Yankee line, it was yet possible that it was ours, and that I thought I could get nearer to it than I had been before, and speak to the men without great danger.  Truth is, that I had begun to fear sarcasm.  What if, to-morrow morning, we should see a line of gray pickets in our front?  Should I ever hear the last of it?

Again the lieutenant approved.  He would have approved of anything.  He was a brave officer.  I verily believe that if I had proposed an advance of Company A up the hill, he would have approved, and would have led the advance.

The company stood still, and I started again.  I reached the place where I had been before, and crawled on a few yards farther.  Again the thought came that there would have been some communicating between that line and ours if that were Confederate.  If they were our men, we had been in their rear for three hours.  Impossible to suppose that nobody in that time should have come back to the rear.  Clearly it was a Federal line, and I was in its front.  Then it occurred to me that it was possible they had a man or two in the fence-row between me and their line.  There could be no need for that, yet the idea made me shiver.  At every yard of my progress I raised my head, and the black spots were larger—­and not less black.  They were very silent and very motionless—­the sombre night-picture of skirmishers on extreme duty; whoever they were, they felt strongly the presence of the enemy.

Ten yards in front, and ten feet to the right, I saw a post—­a gate-post, I supposed.  There was no gate.  This fence-row, along which I was crawling, indicated a fence rotted down or removed.  There had once been a gate hanging to that post and closing against another post now concealed by the bushes of the fence-row.  I would crawl to that post out there, and speak to the men in front.  They would suppose that I was in the fence-row, and, if they fired, would shoot into the bushes, while I should be safe behind the post—­such was my thought.

I reached the post.  It was a hewn post of large size—­post-oak, I thought.  I lay down behind it; I raised my head and looked.  The black spots were very near—­perhaps thirty or forty yards in front.  The line stretched on to my right.  I could not now see toward the left—­through the fence-row.