The Union men were giving ground, slowly, it is true, and leaving heaps of dead and wounded behind them, but nobody could stand the terrible rifle fire that was raking them at short range from side to side, and they were no longer able to advance. Now Dick heard once more that terrible and triumphant rebel yell, and it seemed to him that they were about to be destroyed utterly, when shell and shot began to shriek and whistle over their heads. The woods behind them were alive with the blaze of fire, and the great Union batteries were driving back the triumphant and cheering Confederates. The Union generals on the other side of the Antietam saw the fate that was about to overtake Hooker's valiant men, and Sumner, with another army corps, had crossed the river to the rescue, coming just in time. They moved up to Hooker's men and the united masses returned to the charge. The battle grew more desperate with the arrival of fresh troops. Again it was charge and repulse, charge and repulse, and the continuous swaying to and fro by two combatants, each resolved to win. There were the Union men who had forced the passes through the mountains to reach this field, and they were struggling to follow up those successes by a victory far greater, and there were the Confederates resolved upon another glorious success. The fire became so tremendous that the men could no longer hear orders. Here was a field of ripe corn, the stems and blades higher than a man's head, forty acres or so, nearly a quarter of a mile each way, but the corn soon ceased to hide the combatants from one another. The fire from the cannon and rifles came in such close sheets that scarcely a stalk stood upright in that whole field. Long this mighty conflict swayed back and forth. Dick had seen nothing like it before, not even at the Second Manassas. It was almost hand to hand. Cannons were lost and retaken by each side. Stuart, finding the ground too rough for his cavalry, dismounted them and put them at the guns. Jackson, with an eye that missed nothing, called up Early's brigade and hurled it into the battle. The North replied with fresh troops, and the combat was as much in doubt as ever. Every brigade commander on the Southern side had been killed or wounded. Nearly all the colonels had fallen, but Jackson's men still fought with a fire and spirit that only such a leader as he could inspire. It seemed to Dick that the whole world was on fire with the flash of cannon and rifles. The roar and crash came from not only in front and around him, but far down the side, where the main army of McClellan was advancing directly upon the Antietam, and the stone bridges which the Confederates had not found time to tear down. There stood Lee, supremely confident that if his lieutenant, Jackson, could not hold the Northern opening into the peninsula nobody could. His men, who knew the desperate nature of the crisis, said that they had never seen him more confident than he was that day.