had fought hand to hand like cave-dwellers.  Bullets hit the rocks with. stinging blows, and round shot screamed in the air.  Sometimes a dead man would be lifted from where he lay and hurled backward, while every instant men cried hoarsely and joined the dead.  In the midst of this thunder and carnage, Aladdin came suddenly upon Peter, smiling like a favorite at a dance, and shouted to him.  They grinned at each other, and as Aladdin grinned he looked about to see where he could be of use, and sprang toward a gun half of whose crew had been blasted to death by a bursting shell.  The sweat ran down his face, and already it was black with burning powder.  The flash of the guns set fire to the clothing of the dead and wounded who lay in front, and on the recoil the iron-shod wheels broke the bones of those lying behind.  It was impossible to know how the fight was going.  It was only possible to go on fighting.

There was a voice in front of the battery that kept calling so terribly for water that it turned cold the stomachs of those that heard.  It came from a Confederate, a general officer, who had been wounded in the spine.  Occasionally it was possible to see him through the smoke.  Sometimes a convulsion seized him, and he beat the ground with his whole body, as a great fish that has been drawn from the water beats the deck of a vessel.  It was terrible to look at and hear.  Bullets and shot tore the ground about the man and showered him with dust and stones.  Aladdin shook his canteen and heard the swish of water.  It seemed to him, and his knees turned to water at the thought, that he must go out into that place swept by the fire of both sides, and give relief to his enemy.  He did not want to go, and fear shook him; but he threw down the rammer which he had been serving, and drawing breath in long gasps, took a step forward.  His resolve came too late.  A blue figure slipped by him and went down the slope at a run.  It was Manners.  They saw him kneel by the dying Confederate in the bright sunlight, and then smoke swept between like a wave of fog.  The red flashes of the guns went crashing into the smoke, and on all sides men fell.  But presently there came a star-shaped explosion in the midst of the smoke, hurling it back, and they saw Manners again.  He was staggering about with his hands over his eyes, and blood was running through his fingers.  Even as they looked, a shot struck him in the back, and he came down.  They saw his splendid square chest heaving, and knew that he was not yet dead.  Then the smoke closed in, but this time another figure was hidden by the smoke.  For no sooner did Aladdin see Peter fall than he sprang forward like a hound from the leash.  Aladdin kneeled by Manners, and as he kneeled a bullet struck his hat from his head, and a round shot, smashing into the rocky ground a dozen feet away, filled his eyes with dirt and sparks.  There was a pungent smell of brimstone from the furious concussions of iron