Owing to the darkness, the storm and the absence of a road, it had been impossible to move the artillery from the open ground about the Landing.  The privation was much greater in a moral than in a material sense.  The infantry soldier feels a confidence in this cumbrous arm quite unwarranted by its actual achievements in thinning out the opposition.  There is something that inspires confidence in the way a gun dashes up to the front, shoving fifty or a hundred men to one side as if it said, “Permit me!” Then it squares its shoulders, calmly dislocates a joint in its back, sends away its twenty-four legs and settles down with a quiet rattle which says as plainly as possible, “I’ve come to stay.”  There is a superb scorn in its grimly defiant attitude, with its nose in the air; it appears not so much to threaten the enemy as deride him.

Our batteries were probably toiling after us somewhere; we could only hope the enemy might delay his attack until they should arrive.  “He may delay his defense if he like,” said a sententious young officer to whom I had imparted this natural wish.  He had read the signs aright; the words were hardly spoken when a group of staff officers about the brigade commander shot away in divergent lines as if scattered by a whirlwind, and galloping each to the commander of a regiment gave the word.  There was a momentary confusion of tongues, a thin line of skirmishers detached itself from the compact front and pushed forward, followed by its diminutive reserves of half a company each—­one of which platoons it was my fortune to command.  When the straggling line of skirmishers had swept four or five hundred yards ahead, “See,” said one of my comrades, “she moves!” She did indeed, and in fine style, her front as straight as a string, her reserve regiments in columns doubled on the center, following in true subordination; no braying of brass to apprise the enemy, no fifing and drumming to amuse him; no ostentation of gaudy flags; no nonsense.  This was a matter of business.

In a few moments we had passed out of the singular oasis that had so marvelously escaped the desolation of battle, and now the evidences of the previous day’s struggle were present in profusion.  The ground was tolerably level here, the forest less dense, mostly clear of undergrowth, and occasionally opening out into small natural meadows.  Here and there were small pools—­mere discs of rainwater with a tinge of blood.  Riven and torn with cannon-shot, the trunks of the trees protruded bunches of splinters like hands, the fingers above the wound interlacing with those below.  Large branches had been lopped, and hung their green heads to the ground, or swung critically in their netting of vines, as in a hammock.  Many had been cut clean off and their masses of foliage seriously impeded the progress of the troops.  The bark of these trees, from the root upward to a height of ten or twenty feet, was so thickly pierced with bullets and grape that one could not have laid