--"Must I shoot the same time you do, or wait till you shoot?" asked Pete, who seemed less depressed by his surroundings than the others, and mainly eager to get a chance to shoot. "Don't watch me," cautioned Shorty. "Watch the fellers you are shootin' at, and try to hit 'em. Fire just as soon as you want to after you hear the others." "I'll bet I'll hit a rebel if anybody does," said Pete with hopeful animation. They tramped forward a few steps over the spongy ground, and through the dripping bushes. The musketry fire continued fitfully around the mill in the distance. They came to the summit of the little rise. "Hist--halt; lay down, quick," called the watchful Si, in a penetrating voice. "They've loaded agin', and are about to shoot." He and Shorty were down on their faces as he spoke. The others obeyed more slowly and clumsily. The rebel volley cut the limbs and bushes over their heads, and whistled viciously through the damp air and the darkness. As little Pete dropped to the ground, his nervous finger touched the trigger and his gun went off up in the air. The others took this as a cue, and banged away as rapidly as they could get their muskets off. Only Si and Shorty, in dropping, had kept the lay of the ground in view, and without rising they deliberately aimed their pieces whither the volley had come and fired. A suppressed yell of pain came from the other side. "We salted one of 'em, anyway," chuckled Shorty, as he raised on his knee to reload his gun. "Gosh all Chrismus," said Si, using his most formidable swear-word, for he was very angry. "What was you brats shootin' at? Squirrels or angels? A rebel'd had to be 80 cubits high, like old Haman, for one o' you to've hit him. Lots o' good o' your packin' around guns and cartridges, if you're goin' to waste your ammynition on the malaria in the clouds. Load agin, now, carefully, and when you shoot agin be sure to fetch something. I'll take my ramrod to the next boy that I ketch shootin' higher'n a man's head. This ain't no Fourth-o'-July business. Our job's te kill them whangdoodles over there, and I want you to 'tend strictly to that." The threat of a real boyish thrashing and the cool, matter-of-fact way that Si and Shorty conducted themselves--precisely as if chopping trees or mowing a field--steadied the boys wonderfully. "They're about ready to shoot agin," Si spoke down the line, in a penetrating whisper. "Everybody hug the ground, and watch the flashes. Each feller git a good line on the flash straight in front of him, and let the hound have a chunk o' lead just below his belt. If you're all real good, and shoot just right, I'll take you on a rush right at them fellers, and we'll scatter what's left like a flock o' quail. Lay low. There it comes agin. Lay low."