I suggested that the left platoon of Company A extend intervals to ten paces and cover more ground. The lieutenant approved. The left platoon extended intervals to ten paces, moving silently from centre to left. This filled perhaps sixty yards of the unknown gap. Still no pickets could be seen. I made a semicircle far to my left and returned. Captain Haskell was not there. He would have sent ten men to the left until something was found. He would have filled the interval, even had it required the whole battalion to stretch to twenty steps apart, at least until he could report to Colonel Perrin, or General Pender. Lieutenant Sharpe, in command of the battalion, was far to the right--perhaps four hundred yards from us. We should have sent word to him down the line, but we did not do it. The night was growing. How wide was the gap? Why did not the pickets on the other side of this gap search for us? If the enemy knew our condition, a brigade or more might creep through the gap; still the lieutenant did not propose anything. At last I said that although the picket-line in front looked like a Yankee line, it was yet possible that it was ours, and that I thought I could get nearer to it than I had been before, and speak to the men without great danger. Truth is, that I had begun to fear sarcasm. What if, to-morrow morning, we should see a line of gray pickets in our front? Should I ever hear the last of it? Again the lieutenant approved. He would have approved of anything. He was a brave officer. I verily believe that if I had proposed an advance of Company A up the hill, he would have approved, and would have led the advance. The company stood still, and I started again. I reached the place where I had been before, and crawled on a few yards farther. Again the thought came that there would have been some communicating between that line and ours if that were Confederate. If they were our men, we had been in their rear for three hours. Impossible to suppose that nobody in that time should have come back to the rear. Clearly it was a Federal line, and I was in its front. Then it occurred to me that it was possible they had a man or two in the fence-row between me and their line. There could be no need for that, yet the idea made me shiver. At every yard of my progress I raised my head, and the black spots were larger--and not less black. They were very silent and very motionless--the sombre night-picture of skirmishers on extreme duty; whoever they were, they felt strongly the presence of the enemy.