With hands and faces blackened by the smoke and dust of battle those men stood devotedly to their posts, their ranks thinned by every assault, but their aim as fatal as ever.  But one dread possessed them:  ammunition ran short, and there were no supplies.  In the intervals between the enemy’s assaults the cartridge-boxes of dead comrades along the line and in the open field, where were the fierce struggles of the morning, were emptied of their contents to replenish the failing stock of the survivors.  More precious than food and water, though they were sorely needed, were these inheritances from the dead.

The long afternoon wore slowly away.  Night could not come too soon, but it seemed that never before was it so tardy.  Officers and men were tortured by thirst.  Their tongues were swollen and their lips black and distended, often to bursting.  Speech became difficult or absolutely impossible.  Officers mumbled their commands, and prayed silently for darkness to save them from enforced surrender or flight when the last cartridge should be spent.

Meantime, the relentless but cautious foe was carefully feeling his way around the flanks, apparently unwilling to venture boldly into the rear of the little army which he could not move by attack in front.  A group of officers stood by their horses in rear of Hazen’s brigade when the crack of an Enfield rifle was heard from the woods in rear across the open field.  A bullet came whizzing into the group and killed a colonel’s horse.  Other shots followed from the same direction.  The woods behind us were evidently occupied by the enemy’s skirmishers.  A captain volunteered to take his company and clear the woods, but ammunition was too scarce to waste on sharpshooters.

Word came at last, in some way, that Thomas, whose firing we heard far to the right and rear, was sorely pressed.  A consultation was held by the four division generals.  They needed a commander, but who should it be?  Who would take command of that beleaguered force and undertake to extricate it from its surrounding peril or deliver it over to Thomas?  Would Palmer?  No.  Would Reynolds?  No.  The stern duty of fighting their divisions until they could fight no longer, and doing then whatever desperate thing might be possible—­that they would not fail in; but that responsibility was as great as they cared to assume.  Up came Hazen then.  “I’ll take my brigade across that interval,” said he, “and find Thomas if he’s there.”  Palmer objected:  it would make a gap in his line; it would expose one of his brigades to a thousand chances of destruction—­for who could tell what forces of the enemy were in that interval or watching it?—­and finally, it would take away the brigade which had most ammunition, for Hazen had husbanded his store.  But something must be done.  If the four divisions could hold out until night, somebody must command them and take them out if it could be done.  Thomas was the proper commander, and he was needed.  It was agreed that Hazen should make the attempt.