Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 28.djvu/35

 The Last Days of Lee ml ///> /'./A//////X. L".'

your country's sake! For General Lee's sake! For God's sake! For my sake! " In the meantime I was so attracted by his earnest- n >s, if not moved by his elequence, that I did not as accurately note the situation as I should otherwise have done, and I was rather startled into a consciousness of the real condition of things by two or three of the enemy riding up in most disagreeable proximity, and the pop pop pop (not at the horses and mules this time) from their carbines, which purported to shoot only sixteen times without being reloaded, but seemed to me then, to shoot nearer sixteen hun- dred times. My quartermaster, I think, made fight somebody fired a gun. He soon went down, however, and I heard afterwards with a broken arm, though I never saw him again.

My mare, not relishing the situation, and having been for the first time, I suspect, under fire, whirled with me, and I discovered that, besides the quartermaster, I held the field alone. She discovered the same thing, and several things it seemed, which lent wings to her feet. Without at all consulting my wishes, but in full unison with my desires, she left incontinently, I lying down on her neck, and not knowing at what moment I should receive an inglorious wound in the most objective portion of my person. The fugitives who preceded me must have made good time also, for it seemed nearly a quarter of a mile before I overtook anybody. Then I ran into another quartenmaster whom I recognized by his expletives as an old friend from North Carolina, and into a gentlemen with three stars on his collar, whom I recognized as the president of a court- martial that I had attended some few months before. These, with one or two other officers, seemed to be bringing up the rear of the fugitives. Somebody called out "fall in company Q," but it was received as a piece of pleasantry not appropriate to the occasion. My quartermaster friend suggested that he and I take across the fields in a certain direction which he thought would bring us under the aegis of some of Lee's fighting men. We had only gone a few hundred yards, however, when we came upon Major Hill, a brother of General A. P. Hill, and one or two other officers, who seemed to be trying to find what we were looking for. And just as we had saluted each other a full regiment of infantry came out of a piece of woods a few hundred yards to our left, and with a yell and a double- quick made for our position.

With the peculiar reflection of the light in the little valley they were crossing, they seemed dressed in blue, and we took them for the enemy and awaited our fate with resignation. On coming up,