The Raiders, though confident of success, were no less exercised.  They threw out pickets to all the approaches to their headquarters, and provided otherwise against surprise.  They had smuggled in some canteens of a cheap, vile whisky made from sorghum—­and they grew quite hilarious in their Big Tent over their potations.  Two songs had long ago been accepted by us as peculiarly the Raiders’ own—­as some one in their crowd sang them nearly every evening, and we never heard them anywhere else.  The first began: 

               In Athol lived a man named Jerry Lanagan;
               He battered away till he hadn’t a pound. 
               His father he died, and he made him a man agin;
               Left him a farm of ten acres of ground.

The other related the exploits of an Irish highwayman named Brennan, whose chief virtue was that

What he rob-bed from the rich he gave unto the poor.

And this was the villainous chorus in which they all joined, and sang in such a way as suggested highway robbery, murder, mayhem and arson: 

               Brennan on the moor! 
               Brennan on the moor! 
               Proud and undaunted stood
               John Brennan on the moor.

They howled these two nearly the live-long night.  They became eventually quite monotonous to us, who were waiting and watching.  It would have been quite a relief if they had thrown in a new one every hour or so, by way of variety.

Morning at last came.  Our companies mustered on their grounds, and then marched to the space on the South Side where the rations were issued.  Each man was armed with a small club, secured to his wrist by a string.

The Rebels—­with their chronic fear of an outbreak animating them—­had all the infantry in line of battle with loaded guns.  The cannon in the works were shotted, the fuses thrust into the touch-holes and the men stood with lanyards in hand ready to mow down everybody, at any instant.

The sun rose rapidly through the clear sky, which soon glowed down on us like a brazen oven.  The whole camp gathered where it could best view the encounter.  This was upon the North Side.  As I have before explained the two sides sloped toward each other like those of a great trough.  The Raiders’ headquarters stood upon the center of the southern slope, and consequently those standing on the northern slope saw everything as if upon the stage of a theater.

While standing in ranks waiting the orders to move, one of my comrades touched me on the arm, and said: 

“My God! just look over there!”

I turned from watching the Rebel artillerists, whose intentions gave me more uneasiness than anything else, and looked in the direction indicated by the speaker.  The sight was the strangest one my eyes ever encountered.  There were at least fifteen thousand perhaps twenty thousand—­men packed together on the bank, and every eye was turned on us.  The slope was such that each man’s face showed over the shoulders of the one in front of him, making acres on acres of faces.  It was as if the whole broad hillside was paved or thatched with human countenances.