On the right ten thousand men under Hill slipped out into line as if on
dress parade--long lines of handsome boyish Southerners. The big guns
above saw and found them with terrible accuracy. A wide lane of death
was suddenly torn through them before they moved. They closed like clock
work and with a cheer swept forward to the support of the men who were
dying on the blood-soaked slope.
Ned's heart was thumping now. He felt it coming, that sharp low order
from the Colonel before the words rang from his lips. His hour had come
for the test--coward or hero it had to be now. It was funny he had
ceased to worry. He had entered a new world and this choking, blinding
smoke, the steady thunder of guns, the long sheets of orange fire that
flashed and flashed and blazed in three rings from the hill, the ripping
canvas of musketry fire in volleys, the dull boom of the great guns on
the boats below, were simply a part of the routine of the new life. He
had lived a generation since dawn. The years that had gone before seemed
a dream. The one real thing was Betty's laughing eyes. They were looking
at him now from behind that flaming hill. He must pass those guns to
reach her. Not a doubt had yet entered his soul that he would do it. Men
were falling around him like leaves in autumn, but this had to be.
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