Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard; Even in the cannon's mouth." * * AS YOU LIKE IT.-Act II., Scene VII. UNDER FIRE. IF the grave-digger in Hamlet will communicate, in person or by post, with First Lieutenant William Jenkins, Adjutant, 3d Regiment District of Columbia Volunteers, he will hear of something very much to his advantage. I can teach him a thing or two. Shakspeare knew all about digging, as well as every thing else. I found this out at Yorktown. see. * * * * * Now, this operation of digging seems a very simple one, but it is really most complex. Spitting on the hands, hefting the spade, the thrust, the jam, the pry, the lift, the heave, and finally, patting the clod of fresh earth with the back of the spade before beginning anew, is really quite a mystery, you Nonsense? Well, perhaps. But this is one of the many wild, undigested fancies which my memory hiccoughs forth whenever I think of the night of May 4th, 1862. Such thoughts waltzed through my tired brain all night, as our regiment dug away on the boyau of the second parallel. It was an exciting night, what with the cracking of rifles from the enemy's advanced posts, scarce fifty yards distant, the incessant roar of the enemy's big guns, and the bursting of shells over our heads. Never before had I heard such a cannonade. We had become so used to these sights and sounds, that the extra firing only seemed to serve as a nervous stimulant, making the pick and spade more nimble, and bringing out the playful wit of the officers and men in stage whispers. It was disinal enough, though, to be so thundered at, and to hear no answer from behind us. It was rumored by the sanguine men, that our batteries were to open early in the morning, all along the line, hundred and two hundred pounder Parrotts, thirteeninch mortars, little guns and all, when we should see things smashed generally. Some of the incredulous were pleased to inquire whether the back-bone of the rebellion was to be broken, or the anaconda was to tighten its last coil, and so on, bandying about the hollow comforts that our newspaper friends used to keep standing on their galleys. Why was old Magruder treating us to such a diabolish salute, keeping the pickets out of their natural rest? "Short of transportation," our melancholy Quartermaster suggested, and was unanimously snubbed for his pains. The first thing we saw when the sun rose, at last (as it will rise even upon working parties in the trenches), was that arch humbug, the balloon, going up on what it used to call a reconnoissance. Well, it came down again presently, and, as I afterwards learned, reported every thing as usual in Yorktown; and sure enough, the very last files of the rear-guard were leaving the place at that very moment, and the works had been already taken possession of by one of the Flop Telegraph men (as we used to call the signal-officers), and claimed for the United States, by right of discovery, as one might say. He was even then flopping his news with his red and white rag to another red and white rag near the corps' head-quarters, where there was a grim rubbing of sleepy eyelids, I dare say, and a weak pretence of having expected the news, and being delighted to hear it. Soon the long-forbidden bands pealed forth their most stirring strains, and waked up the overgrown camp at army head-quarters, whence there presently issued orders for one of those vigorous pursuits for which the Army of the Potomac used to be famous. Pursuit! Our regiment waded through a sea of mud, kneedeep, till we got to a dense pine-wood, from beyond which came rattling sounds as of distant packs of fire-crackers let off in barrels, and the door-slamming noises which I have already described; and in the morning we heard that that was the battle of Williamsburg! A battle wherein one general ordered to command by the General-in-Chief, without special instructions for the contingency, was superseded in the dead of night by another general detailed by the Chief of Staff, with no particular orders for the emergency; fought, for this reason, without a tactical plan, and in violation of the strategical plans of the Commander-in-Chief; and resulting in the retreat of the enemy's rear-guard, after great loss on both sides, especially on ours. Followed up by going into camp near the battle-field on the next day, and there quietly remaining to await the news of the failure of the operations of another column. Meanwhile, the rebels quietly retired to the Chickahominy, and prepared to defend its crossing. And we trudged slowly after, nursing the idea that this procession was the very "driving to the wall" our General had promised us. We were in sight of Richmondso the rumor ran round the mess-tables-and, indeed, the New York Herald soon brought us, under the very largest headings, the news sent by its faithful correspondent "Scorpio," that a party of our generals (accompanied, we may suppose, by "our reporter," and the inevitable "brilliant staffs, among which we noticed," etc., etc.) had seen, from the top of a tall tree on the extreme front, the very spires of the DOOMED CITY. But in spite of large headings and the bill-poster literature of our "own correspondents;" in spite of the disgusting ana conda, and the broken back-bone, and the starving out, the flanking, the driving to the wall, the crushing, the telling blows in preparation by General A., as explained by his reporter; the plans for the "speedy suppression of the most wicked and unnatural rebellion ever waged against the best government ever framed by man," always being matured in the brain of General B., as narrated by his reporter; the preternatural vigilance of General C., as described by his reporter; the great things that Generals D., E., and F., might, could, would, or should have done, as recounted by their reporters; in spite of the glowing predictions of the intelligent contraband; the important revelations of the rebel surgeon who had just come into our lines; the valuable information obtained from the rebel major just captured by our pickets in front of such a division; in spite of Jeff. Davis's coachman, and even of the reliable gentleman of Louisville; yea, in spite of general orders to the contrary, the DOOMED CITY obstinately declined to accept the doom prepared for it. And so, as Mr. Murdoch used to say, in the "Inconstant," with his very best comedy manner, after describing the splendid way in which we fellows of the guards, you know, "danced" up to the breach at Badajos or Corunna, or some of those places-("Yes, yes; what did you do then?" interrupts the gruff military uncle, with the big stick), "and so-we danced back again." Pray do not suppose, my dear Major, that your friend William Jenkins intends to put his head into the lion's mouth this bright spring morning, by launching forth into a description of that memorable campaign. No, no. Do you remember, Major, the thing that used so to disgust F. M. the Duke of Wellington with his soldiers on his Peninsula? Stealing bee-hives. You don't catch me at that trick, I promise you. And so, leaving the strategy and grand tactics, and all the big moves to the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and the editors, and the ward politicians, and the village tavernkeeper, the barber who cuts your hair too short, and the Reverend who cuts your sermon too long, let me tell you what we little pawns did and felt while the Queens, and Castles, and Knights, and Bishops, were working out the game after their mighty fashion, and having their wicked will of us, and the poor Kings were getting in check and getting out again as best they could, to the discomfiture of the other pieces, their friends. Did not Miss Chloe ask you, almost the first thing, Captain Strephon, that time when you went home on a furlough and two crutches: "Were you ever in a battle? How many fights have you been in? How does it feel? How were you wounded? Oh, I should be so frightened!" And then, when you tried to describe to her, bumptiously, and looking as terribly military as you could, how this division, came up and that didn't; how the other division moved by the flank, and a fourth-yours, of course-charged splendidly, and drove the enemy through the woods at the point of the bayonet, did she not interrupt you, oh! so innocently, with that enormous question, "How does a battle look?" If she did not, she is not the Chloe I take her for, and you, sir, might as well have saved your postage-stamps and worn your old uniform on furlough, for all the interest she takes in you. Those are the questions I mean to answer here for the benefit of whom it may concern; and you, Captain Strephon, are at liberty to ridicule the replies at the mess, and use them for your own behoof, if it should so suit your pleasure, when next you see her; she never sees the Service Magazine, you may be certain. We were loafing quietly in camp, smoking, whittling, studying tactics, playing cards, mixing cocktails, writing letters, or what not, when suddenly there broke upon our ears the dull booming with which we had become so familiar as the sound of distant cannonade. Presently followed, in rolls and spirts, the rattling noise of musketry, again reminding us of our Fourth-ofJuly experiences with fire-crackers under a barrel. How heavy and ominous, and yet how clearly it sounded through the saturated air! Listen! what a roar that was, fellows! We never heard any thing like this before, surely. Now the bugle sounds from brigade head-quarters, and we fall in, under arms, all in a glow of excitement, wondering what is to come next. We have not long to wait, for already the rest of the division is in the muddy road, and soon our regiment files out also and takes its place in the column. The incessant roar of cannon and musketry grates horribly upon our untutored nerves. Where is the fight? Who is engaged? Are we whipping them? Or are we whipped again, as the growlers will have it? I don't half like this galloping past of young A.-D.-C's., and spattering orderlies, in such a hurry that they have never a word of news for us. And so the croakers make the most of it, and wet down our souls with their forebodings, until they are as heavy as our boots with the soggy mud. How it rains! It does not pour; the sky fairly leaks. Is this the Chickahominy? I thought it was a river. Others thought it was a swamp. It turns out to be a deluged bottom half a mile wide or more, and we are expected to cross it on that thing there they call a bridge. "Sumner's Upper Bridge," indeed! What must the lower one be like the comic men ask-if this raft of big, floating logs, which has almost to be held down as we tumbled over it, is the upper bridge? We are hardly across, when the rising freshet sweeps away a raft of the biggest logs, and breaks up the only mode of communication we know of with the other shore. About a mile or so farther on, through the quicksands and the pine-woods, we come to an opening, and, not far to our left, can see the smoke curling up over the trees, and the occasional flash of a gun from the battery just within the opening. Here we halt and commence that sickening delay which takes the starch out of your enthusiasm, and makes the poetry of war a dreadful prose. It is not all profanity when the men say, "This waiting is hell!" It is; and twice as terrible, too, as the allegorical cauldrons of brimstone. For my part, I think any amount of sizzling preferable to an hour of this horrible suspense. How long it has lasted I hardly know, when suddenly the roar begins to spread our way, the line of smoke from the opposite woods creeps along until it breaks into a sharp, rattling fire on us. The men jump to their feet hardly an instant too soon, and in great confusion. Some start to run one way, some another, even officers give way to the alarm of the moment; others commence firing wildly into the air. But a good deal of shouting and cursing, and some rough handling, and the example of a few energetic officers, and many cool hands in the ranks, and especially the great practical fact that only one or two of us are hit, in a very few seconds brings a wavy line of file-firing out of the confusion; the men cheer, the roar of their own muskets drowns the rattle of the enemy's; suddenly from somewhere, off on our right, joins in the banging of a friendly battery, with that screech of its rifled shells so peculiarly grateful when they are travelling the other way; the firing from the opposite woods patters out like the last of an April shower; the command is given for our regiment to cease firing, and we become aware, from the general silence, broken only by the bursting of a casual shell, that the fight is over: and so ends, for us, the battle of Fair Oaks. Why, or how it began, what has happened except what I have just told you, we officers, noncommissioned officers, musicians, and privates of the 3d District of Columbia Volunteers, know no more than that ignorant myth, the Man in the Moon. And now begins the bragging and chattering. Molony's hit. Where is Ferguson? Where is Jessup? Here, you fellows! Fight's over; come back! Musician Tappitt, with his great red bosom, wanders back sheepishly, trying to look as unlike as possible the straggler he has been. The skedaddlers return, some three or four score of them, feebly pretending they have been carrying the two killed and thirteen wounded men to the rear. It is remarkable, the penchant those big fellows have for running away, while your little runts stick to their work like wax. In his nimbleness of heel, Jack Falstaff is the type of the breed. "Say, Puffy," the funny men will cry, "how about that tree I saw you holdin' up?" "How are you, legs?" And the like. And night falling in the mean time, we fall to work cooking supper and trying to rest in the rain and mud as best we may, after our hard and |