Not a dream of danger; no thought of a foe. While the men were thus
pleasantly engaged, and the officers taking an afternoon nap, from out
in the thicket on the right came "bang-bang," and a hail of bullets
came whizzing over our heads. What a scramble! What an excitement!
What terror depicted on the men's faces! Had a shower of meteors
fallen in our midst, had a volcano burst from the top of the Blue
Ridge, or had a thunder bolt fell at our feet out of the clear blue
sky, the consternation could not have been greater. Excitement,
demoralization, and panic ensued. Men tumbled off the fences, guns
were reached for, haversacks and canteens hastily grabbed, and, as
usual in such panics, no one could get hold of his own. Some started
up the road, some down. Officers thus summarily aroused were equally
demoralized. Some gave one order, some another. "Pandemonium reigned
supreme." Those in the cherry trees came down, nor did the "cherry
pickers" stand on the order of their coming. The whole Yankee army was
thought to be over the hills. At last the officer commanding got the
men halted some little distance up the road; a semblance of a line
formed, men cocked their guns and peered anxiously through the cracks
of the rail fence, expecting to see an enemy behind every tree. A
great giant, a sergeant from the mountain section, who stood six feet,
three inches in his stockings, and as brave as he was big, his face
flushed with excitement, his whole frame trembling with emotion, in
his shirt sleeves and bareheaded, rushed to the middle of the road,
braced himself, as waiting for some desperate shock, and stood like
Horatio Cockles at the Bridge, waving his gun in the air, calling out
in defiant and stentorian voice, "Come on, I'll fight all of you; I'll
fight old Lincoln from here to the sea." Such a laugh as was set up
afterwards, at his expense! The amusing part of it was the parties who
fired the shots at the time the stampeding was going on with us,
were running for dear life's sake across the fields, worse scared, if