When they shouted to one another their voices came strained and husky from painful throats.

Half the time they were blinded by the smoke and blaze of the firing.

The crash did not seem so loud to them now, because they were partly deafened for the time by a cannonade of such violence and length.
Dick looked back once more at the great cloud of dust which was now much nearer, but there was nothing yet to indicate what it bore within, the bayonets of the North or those of the South.

His anxiety became almost intolerable.
Thomas himself stood at that moment entirely alone in a clump of trees on the elevation called Horseshoe Ridge, watching the battle, seeing the enemy in overpowering numbers on both his flanks and even in his rear.

Apparently everything was lost.