“Know it! Well, I ought to know it. It's the booming of cannon, but it doesn't frighten these mosquitoes and flies a particle. A cannon ball whistling by my head would scare me half to death, but it wouldn't disturb them a bit. They'd look with an evil eye at that cannon ball as it flew by and say to it in threatening tones: 'What are you doing here? Let this fellow alone. He belongs to us.'” “Which way is McClellan coming, Harry?” asked St. Clair. “Off there to the east, where you hear the guns.” “How many men has he?” “Anywhere from a hundred thousand to a hundred and thirty thousand. There are various reports.” Langdon, who had been listening, whistled. “It doesn't look like a picnic for the Invincibles,” he said. “When I volunteered for this war I didn't volunteer to fight a pitched battle every day. What did you volunteer for, Harry?” “I don't know.” The three laughed. Jackson's famous order certainly fitted well there. “And you don't know, either,” said Happy Tom, “what all that thunder off there to the south and east means. It's the big guns, but who are fighting and where?” “There's to be a general attack on McClellan along the line of the Chickahominy river,” said Harry, “and our army is to be a part of the attacking force, but my knowledge goes no further.” “Then I'm reckoning that some part of our army has attacked already,” said Happy Tom. “Maybe they're ahead of time, or maybe the rest are behind time. But there they go! My eyes, how they're whooping it up!” The cannonade was growing in intensity and volume. Despite the sunset they saw an almost continuous flare of red on the horizon. The three boys felt some awe as they sat there and listened and looked. Well they might! Battle on a far greater scale than anything witnessed before in America had begun already. Two hundred thousand men were about to meet in desperate conflict in the thickets and swamps along the Chickahominy. Richmond had already heard the crash of McClellan's guns more than once, but apprehension was passing away. Lee, whom they had learned so quickly to trust, stood with ninety thousand men between them and McClellan, and with him was the redoubtable Jackson and his veterans of the valley with their caps full of victories. McClellan had the larger force, but Lee was on the defensive in his own country, a region which offered great difficulties to the invader. Harry and his comrades wondered why Jackson did not move, but he remained in his place, and when Harry fell asleep he still heard the thudding of the guns across the vast reach of rivers and creeks, swamps and thickets. When he awoke in the morning they were already at work again, flaring at intervals down there on the eastern horizon. The whole wet, swampy country, so different from his own, seemed to be deserted by everything save the armies. No rabbits sprang up in the thickets and there were no birds. Everything had fled already in the presence of war.