He was walking steadily backward, loading and firing with
incredible rapidity. The company halted behind the troops held in
reserve, but the man with the ball in his forehead refused to go to the
rear. He wouldn't believe that he was seriously hurt. He jokingly asked
a comrade to dig the ball out. He did so, and the fellow dropped in his
tracks, the blood gushing from the wound in a stream.
The uncanny sight had sickened Ned. He looked at his hand and it was
trembling like a leaf.
And this division was charging up that awful hill again. Ned saw a
private soldier who belonged to one of its regiments deliberately walk
across the field alone and join his comrades as if nothing of importance
were going on. And yet the bullets were whistling so thickly that their
"Zip! Zip!" on the ground kept the air filled with flying dirt and tufts
of grass--a veritable hail of lead through which a sparrow apparently
couldn't fly.
The fellow was certainly a fool! No man with a grain of sense would do
such a thing _alone_--maybe with a crowd of cheering men, but only a
maniac _could_ do it alone--Ned was sure of that.
A shell smashed through the top of a tree, clipped its trunk in two and
down it came with a crash that sent the men scampering.
A solid shot came bounding leisurely down the hill and rolled into the
woods.
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