An informal command to land was given us presently, but many had already anticipated it. How terribly significant becomes the simple mechanism of loading a rifle when one knows that it is at once the earnest of deadly battle and the preparation for it! The few details which we could gather from the deck hands concerning the fight were meagre and unsatisfactory. They told us of disaster that befell our army in the morning, and which it seemed very doubtful if the afternoon had yet seen remedied; and their testimony was borne out by evidences to which our own unwilling senses were the sufficient witnesses. The roar of battle sounded appallingly near, and two or three of our guns were in vigorous play upon the enemy so close on the crest of the bluff that every flash could be seen distinctly. Several shells from the enemy's artillery swept by, cleaving the air many feet above us with that peculiar, fierce, rushing noise, which no one, I believe, can hear for the first time without a quickened beating of the heart and an instinctive impulse of dismay and awe. At the landing--but how shall I attempt, in words only, to set that picture forth? The next day's fight was my first experience in actual battle, except so much of bushwacking as five months in Western Virginia had brought us, but those hours have no such place in my memory as have the scenes and sounds of this evening at the landing. I have never yet seen told in print the half of that sad, sickening story. Wagons, teams, and led horses, quartermaster's stores of every description, bales of forage, caissons--all the paraphernalia of a magnificently appointed army--were scattered in promiscuous disorder along the bluff-side. Over and all about the fragmentary heaps thousands of panic-stricken wretches swarmed from the river's edge far up toward the top of the steep; a mob in uniform, wherein all arms of the service and wellnigh every grade--for even gilt shoulder-straps and scarlet sashes did not lack a shameful representation there--were commingled in utter, distracted confusion; a heaving, surging herd of humanity, smitten with a very frenzy of fright and despair, every sense of manly pride, of honor, and duty, completely paralyzed, and dead to every feeling save the most abject, pitiful terror. A number of officers could be distinguished amid the tumult, performing, with violent gesticulations, the pantomimic accompaniments of shouting incoherent commands, mingled with threats and entreaties. There was a little drummer boy, I remember, too, standing in his shirt sleeves and pounding his drum furiously, though to what purpose we could none of us divine. Men were there in every stage of partial uniform and equipment; many were hatless and coatless, and few still retained their muskets and their accoutrements complete. Some stood wringing their hands, and rending the air with their cries and lamentations, while others, in the dumb agony of fear, cowered behind