For an instant it obscured the sun.

In another moment a tremendous shock temporarily deprived me of my senses, and I think that more than an hour had elapsed before I recovered them.

Sitting up, somewhat confused, and looking around me, I became aware that some strange accident had occurred.

In every direction I saw such traces of havoc as I had witnessed more than once when a Confederate force holding an impenetrable woodland had been shelled at random for some hours with the largest guns that the enemy could bring into the field.
Trees were torn and broken, branches scattered in all directions, fragments of stone, earth, and coral rock flung all around.
Particularly I remember that a piece of metal of considerable size had cut off the tops of two or three trees, and fixed itself at last on what was now the summit of one about a third of whose length had been broken off and lay on the ground.

I soon perceived that this miraculous bombardment had proceeded from a point to the north-eastward, the direction in which at that season and hour the sun was visible.