That which followed cannot be justly portrayed by the poor aid of words. On one hand was a solid column of infantry retreating at double quick from the face of the enemy, who were already crowding their rear; on the other was a dense mass of beings who had lost their reasoning faculties, and were flying from a thousand fancied dangers as well as from the real danger that crowded so close upon them, aggravating the fearfulness of their situation by the very precipitancy with which they were seeking to escape from it. On the hill were ten thousand of the enemy, pouring their murderous volleys in upon the National troops, yelling and hooting, to increase the alarm and confusion; hundreds of cavalry horses left riderless at the first discharge from the rebels, were dashing frantically about in all directions; a score of batteries of artillery were thrown into disorder, some properly manned, seeking to gain positions for effective duty, and others flying from the field; battery wagons, ambulances, horses, men, cannon, caissons, all jumbled and tumbled together in an apparently inextricable mass, and that murderous fire still pouring in upon them. To add to the terror of the occasion there was but one means of escape from the field, and that through a little narrow neck or ravine washed out by Scott’s Creek. Toward this the confused mass plunged headlong. For a moment it seemed as if no power could avert the frightful calamity that threatened the entire army. That neck passed, and this panic-stricken, disordered body of men and animals permitted to pass down through the other corps of the army, destruction was sure. But in the midst of that wildest alarm there was a cool head. That calamity was averted by the determined self-possession of Major-General Daniel E. Sickles. The disastrous flight of the Eleventh corps may here be concluded. They did not all fly across Sickles’s line. They dispersed and ran in all directions, regardless of the order of their going. They seemed possessed with an instinctive idea of the shortest and most direct line from the point whence they started to the United States Ford, and the majority of them did not stop until they had reached it.