'Twas a hell set free, with no
quarter asked or given, and where we stood, the Tory defenders of the
wagon barrier were presently dropping around us in heaps and windrows of
dead and dying, like men suddenly plague-smitten.
In such a time of asking you must not think we stood aloof and looked on
coldly. At the first fire Tybee stripped off his coat and fell to work
with the wounded, and I quickly followed his lead, praying that now my
work was done, some one of the flying missiles would find its mark in me
and let me die a soldier's death.
So it was that I saw little more of the battle detail, and of that
fierce frenzy-time I have memory pictures only of the dead and dying;
of the torn and wounded and bleeding men with whom we wrought, striving
as we might to stanch the ebbing life-tide or to ease the dying gently
down into the valley of shadows.
And as for my prayer, it went all unanswered. Once when I had a dying
Tory's head pillowed on my knee I saw a rifleman thrust his weapon
between the wheel-spokes of the outer wagon and draw a bead on me. I
heard the crack of the Deckard, the _zip_ of the bullet singing at my
ear, and the man's angry oath at his missing of me. Once again a
rifle-ball passed through my hair at the braiding of the queue and I
felt the hot touch of it on my scalp like a breath of flame. Another
time a mountaineer leaped the rock barrier to beat me down with the butt
of his rifle--and in the very act Tybee rose up and throttled him.
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