They kept together very tolerably, however, while our assailants, dividing, rode along on each side through the open pine-barren, firing into our ranks, but mostly over the heads of the men.

My soldiers in turn fired rapidly,--too rapidly, being yet beginners,--and it was evident that, dim as it was, both sides had opportunity to do some execution.
I could hardly tell whether the fight had lasted ten minutes or an hour, when, as the enemy's fire had evidently ceased or slackened, I gave the order to cease firing.

But it was very difficult at first to make them desist: the taste of gunpowder was too intoxicating.

One of them was heard to mutter, indignantly, "Why de Cunnel order _Cease firing_, when de Secesh blazin' away at de rate ob ten dollar a day ?" Every incidental occurrence seemed somehow to engrave itself upon my perceptions, without interrupting the main course of thought.

Thus I know, that, in one of the pauses of the affair, there came wailing through the woods a cracked female voice, as if calling back some stray husband who had run out to join in the affray, "John, John, are you going to leave me, John?
Are you going to let me and the children be killed, John ?" I suppose the poor thing's fears of gunpowder were very genuine; but it was such a wailing squeak, and so infinitely ludicrous, and John was probably ensconced so very safely in some hollow tree, that I could see some of the men showing all their white teeth in the very midst of the fight.
But soon this sound, with all others, had ceased, and left us in peaceful possession of the field.
I have made the more of this little affair because it was the first stand-up fight in which my men had been engaged, though they had been under fire, in an irregular way, in their small early expeditions.