The steel ramrods clanked and clanged with incessant din as the men pounded them furiously into the hot rifle barrels.

The flaps of the cartridge boxes were all unfastened, and bobbed idiotically with each movement.
The rifles, once loaded, were jerked to the shoulder and fired without apparent aim into the smoke or at one of the blurred and shifting forms which upon the field before the regiment had been growing larger and larger like puppets under a magician's hand.
The officers, at their intervals, rearward, neglected to stand in picturesque attitudes.

They were bobbing to and fro roaring directions and encouragements.

The dimensions of their howls were extraordinary.
They expended their lungs with prodigal wills.

And often they nearly stood upon their heads in their anxiety to observe the enemy on the other side of the tumbling smoke.
The lieutenant of the youth's company had encountered a soldier who had fled screaming at the first volley of his comrades.