Presently I saw a movement among the trees, and I could make out a mass of men clustering together just upon their edge. With a thrill, I knew that for the first time I saw the enemy; and every sensation was merged in a frantic desire to shoot, while every nerve within my body was quivering with excitement. Then the Captain’s voice, steady and cheerful, sounded along the line, with some sympathetic power calming my shaking nerves and making every muscle as firm as iron. “Ready! Aim low. Front rank men, fire!” A blaze of light ran along our line, there was a deafening explosion, and a blinding smoke, through which I could hear the bullets of the enemy as they whistled past. I could see nothing, but I heard the voice of the Captain from my right command, “Rear rank men, fire!” and as our second volley crashed out, there came the order, “Load and fire at will.” And now it was crack! crack! as fast as we could get the cartridges into our guns, shouting and cheering as we did so, in answer to the rebel yells. At length our shouts met no response. I heard the officer’s command, “Cease firing!” the smoke swept away, and I found it was black night, through which I could just see that I was one of about forty men, the remnant of the squadron. I could hear a few slowly trotting back to the rear. I could make out others on foot crossing the hill-top beyond, and could see a mass of dead horses and one or two dead men still lying at my feet. For a few minutes the Captain let us remove the corpses and destroy the equipments of the dead animals, and then we withdrew triumphantly to our comrades, the Captain telling us once that we had done well, and then bewailing his fate that he commanded men who did not know how to wheel by fours. That was my first acquaintance with rebel bullets, and even the old soldiers said that it was the closest affair in which they had ever been engaged. Two days afterwards I heard, for the first time, the sound of a shell; and I might as well make a clean breast of it, once for all, by describing my sensations.