Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/736

710 instinctively did the same; and the regiment moved off in a style which we considered proper for the Twelfth Connecticut.

That night we bivouacked with mosquitoes, who drew more blood than the cannonade of the afternoon. Next morning the heavy guns of the opposing gunboats opened a game of long bowls, in which the Parrotts of the Twenty-first Indiana took a part, sending loud-whispering shells into the farthest retreats of the enemy. At ten, the whole army, three lines deep, and stretching across the river—a fine martial spectacle—advanced slowly through the canefields toward the entrenchments. Marching in my proper position, in the front rank of my company, and next to the regimental colors, I felt myself to be an undesirably conspicuous person, as we came out upon the open ground in view of the enemy, and received the first discharge of their artillery. It is a grand thing to take the lead in battle, but all the same it is uncomfortable. The first cannon-shot which I noticed struck the ground sixty or eighty feet in front of our color-guard, threw up the ploughed soil in a little cloud, leaped a hundred feet behind the regiment, and went bounding off to the rear.

"That's bad for the fellows behind us," I said to my men, with that smile which a hero puts on when he makes the best he can of battle, meantime wishing himself at home.

The next shot struck within thirty feet of the line, and also went jumping and whistling rearward. They were evidently aiming at the colors, and that was nearly equivalent to aiming at me.

"You'll fetch him next time," I thought, grimly; and so, doubtless, thought hundreds of others, each for himself.

But at this moment one of our own batteries opened with great violence, and evidently shook the nerves of the enemy's gunners, for their next shot screeched over the colors, and first struck the ground far in rear of the regiment, and thereafter they never recovered their at first dangerously accurate range. Now came an order to the infantry to halt and lie down, and no veteran will need to be told that we obeyed it promptly. I never knew that order to be disregarded on a field of battle, not even by the most inexperienced and insubordinate of troops, unless, indeed, they were already running.

The battle of Camp Beaseland was an artillery duel of fifteen or twenty pieces on a side, lasting hotly from eleven in the morning till six in the evening, with a dash of infantry charging and heavy musketry on either flank, and a dribble of skirmishing along the whole line. Where we were it was all artillery and skirmishing, noisy, and lively enough, but by no means murderous. Bainbridge's regular battery on our right pitched into a Louisiana battery on our front left, and a little beyond it a battery of the Twenty-first Indiana pounded away at the Confederate gunboats and at an advanced earthwork. The loud metallic spang of the brass howitzers, the dull thud of the iron Parrotts, and the shrieking and cracking of the enemy's shells, made up a charivari long to be remembered.

Meantime, companies had moved out here and there from the line of infantry deployed as skirmishers, advanced to within two or three hundred yards of the breastworks, and opened fire. This drew out the Rebel musketry, and made things hotter than ever. The order to lie low passed along, and we did the best we could with the cane-hills, wishing that they were bigger. As I lay on my side behind one of these six-inch fortifications, chewing the hard-tack which was my only present creature comfort, several balls cut the low weeds which overhung me. Yet, notwithstanding the stunning racket and the quantity of lead and iron flying about, our loss was very small.