“See there,” said the sergeant, halting suddenly. “There’s the fleet, and bless my soul it’s putting to sea.” It was true enough. No attack was to be made after all. We had spent the night drowning horses, and nearly drowning ourselves for nothing. Why the fleet had steamed several miles up the creek before putting to sea, I have never been able to guess. But I vividly remember that its prank subjected me to a twelve miles’ walk that morning, and compelled me to substitute quinine and dogwood-root-bark bitters that day for the Christmas dinner I had planned. THE WOMEN OF PETERSBURG We went into Petersburg in June, 1864, with the horses at a brisk trot, and the men on foot at a double quick. The enemy’s battalions were already at the other end of Sycamore Street, and it was our task to drive them back before they should be reinforced. Nevertheless those good women of Petersburg ministered to us. They knew that we had been marching all night and that we were in a famishing condition. They knew also that we must not waste a moment if Petersburg, the key to Richmond, was not to be lost. So they formed themselves in platoons--God bless them!--bearing gifts of sandwiches and coffee. We could not stop even to take, much less to eat, the food they offered, so they thrust their platoons between ours and marched backward as fast as we marched forward, serving their food and drink to us as we went. Every now and then a Federal shell would come bowling down the street, but these alert women would jump it as nimbly as if its passage had been a prearranged figure in the dance. Not one of them showed the slightest fear. Not one of them faltered for a moment in her ministrations in consideration of herself. There was not one of them, I think, who would not have gone with us into the crash of the battle itself; but by the time we had refreshed ourselves a little, we were so near to the aggressive enemy’s lines, that we cried aloud with one voice the order for the womenkind to go back. A minute later we were in the thick of the struggle for Petersburg. The enemy was not in such force as we had supposed, and we had fortunately arrived some hours in advance of General Grant’s ponderous divisions. After fifteen minutes of hard fighting the enemy retired beyond the Jerusalem turnpike and we spent the night in beginning that thin line of earthworks which was destined for eight months to come to hold at bay a force two or three times as strong in numbers as our own. At any hour during all that eight months the Federal forces could have broken through our lines at any point they pleased, if they had been resolute.