"Now we'll drop a few shells of our own among those Yankee gunners and see how they like it," said Dalton. The cannon were unlimbering rapidly, but the open space on the hillock was so small that only one gun could be brought up, and it sent a shot toward the Union lines. The Union artillery, superb as always, marked the spot whence the shot came, and in an instant two batteries, masked by the woods, poured a terrible fire upon the hillock and those about it. So deadly was the steel rain that the little force was put out of action at once. Harry had never beheld a more terrifying scene. Most of the horses and men around the first cannon were killed. One horse and one gunner fell dead across its wheels. Other horses, wounded and screaming with pain and fright, rushed into the dense undergrowth and were caught by the trailing vines and thrown down. Some of the cavalrymen themselves were knocked out of the saddle by the fleeing horses, but they quickly regained their seats. A second discharge from many guns sent another rain equally as deadly upon the hillock and its vicinity. More men and horses fell, and a scene of wild confusion followed. Attempting to turn about and escape from that spot of death, the cannon crashed together. There was not room for all the men and horses and guns. Most of them were compelled to plunge into the undergrowth and struggle desperately through it for shelter. But Harry did not forget the two generals who were worth so much to the South. It would be fate's bitterest irony if Jackson and Stuart were killed in a small flanking movement, when, as was obvious to everyone, a battle of the first magnitude was just before them. And yet, while fragments of steel, hot and hissing, fell all around them, Jackson and Stuart and all the members of their staffs escaped without hurt. The deadly fire followed them as they retreated, but the two generals rode on, unharmed. Harry and Dalton breathed deep sighs of relief when they were out of range. "If a bullet had gone through my left side," said Dalton, "it wouldn't have come near my heart." "Why not?" "Because my heart was in my mouth. In fact, I don't think it has gone back yet to its natural place. The Yankees certainly have the guns." "And the gunners who know how to use them. But doesn't it feel good, George, to be back on the plank road?" "It does. I'll take my chance in open battle, but when I'm tangled up among bushes and vines and briars, I do hate to have a hundred-pound shell fired from an invisible gun burst suddenly on the top of my head. What's all that firing off there to the left and farther on?" "It means that some of our people have got deeper into the Wilderness than we have, and are feeling out Hooker. I imagine we won't go much farther. Look how the night's dropping down. I'd hate to pass a night alone in such a place as this Wilderness. It would be like sleeping in a graveyard."