How Few Remain

Brass Napoleons roared. Their cannonballs tore holes in the ranks of the advancing Confederates. Up ahead -- up not far enough ahead -- rifle muskets barked.

Rebel artillery thundered. Splashes in the Susquehanna said the guns were reaching for that one bridge offering escape from the gray-clad, barefoot fiends of the Army of Northern Virginia. Screams from the bridge said some of the guns were finding it.

"Longstreet is pounding our right with everything he has, and General Hooker -- General Hooker, sir, he won't do anything. It's as if he's stunned by a near miss from a shell, sir, but he's not hurt."

(fast forward to 1881)

He fired again at the Kiowas and shouted in exultation as one of them slid from his horse's back and thudded to the ground, where, after rolling a couple of times, he lay still.

"Why, on this very raid -- this raid you have the gall to deny -- the savages made two white women minister to their animal lusts, then cut their throats and worked other dreadful indignities upon their bare and abused bodies." "You think the Comanches don't do that in Texas?" Captain Weathers returned.

In the chase, one of the cavalrymen slid out of the saddle. Another trooper's horse went down, which meant the soldier was a dead man shortly thereafter. The cavalrymen, firing over their shoulders, hit two or three Indians and two or three horses.

Custer peered through the drifted smoke. The Kiowas might have run headlong into a stone fence. They'd been in easy range before the Gatlings opened up, and they hadn't had a prayer. More than half their band, more than half the horses, lay still and dead in front of the two guns. The rest were riding off as fast as they could go.

As they came galloping towards Custer's little detachment, the Gatlings began their deadly ripping noise again. Troopers and horses went down as if scythed. Custer and his companions added the fire of their carbines to the mechanical murder the Gatling guns dealt out. Like the Kiowas, the Confederates, meeting weapons they hadn't imagined, broke and ran.

A couple of blocks after that, as he was about to urge his horse up into a canter, a little girl of six or seven darted into the street in front of him. He brought the horse to a halt before any harm was done. The girl's mother hauled her back and spanked her, saying, "Be careful, Nellie! Watch where you're going!" "I'm sorry, Ma," the girl blubbered.

A ball slammed into the Queen of the Ohio's superstructure and tore through the boat's timbers as if they were made of pasteboard. A fusillade of screams -- some men's, some women's -- from the port side said the ball had torn through some of the passengers, too.

Boom! Wham! A cannonball slammed into the steamboat's starboard paddlewheel. Wood splinters flew. One of them stabbed a man, who shrieked like a damned soul. The wheel kept turning, though now it put Douglass in mind of a man smiling with a missing tooth.

More splashes around the Queen of the Ohio said the crews firing at her were not masters of their trade. But more crashes said that they didn't need to be masters to score hits.

After close to an hour's fighting, the first Confederate soldiers leaped down into the Yankee field works off to Jackson's left. That let them pour enfilading fire along the length of the U.S. line. Once the position began to unravel, it soon disintegrated. U.S. soldiers in dark blue emerged from their trenches and fled back towards Kernstown. Confederate small arms and artillery took a heavy toll on them. More Yankees threw down their rifles and threw up their hands in surrender. Guarded by jubilant Rebels, they shambled back towards the rear.

The U.S. troops retreated straight through Kernstown; the locals clapped their hands when Jackson rode through the hamlet. The Yankees tried to make a stand at Winchester, but pulled out just before sunset. The racket of rifle fire coming from the east said the volunteers were at hand.

Rosecrans flushed. "They have Stonewall, dammit," he muttered. He had an ugly expression on his face, to go with the ugly color he'd turned. Austrian generals -- and Prussian generals, too -- must have talked that way about Bonaparte. Austrian generals -- and French generals, too -- must have talked that way about Moltke.

She sighed and murmured when he kissed her, when he fondled her breasts and brought his mouth down to them, when his hand found the dampness at the joining of her thighs. As always, her excitement excited and embarassed him at the same time. Doctors swore on a stack of Bibles that most women knew little or nothing of sexual pleasure, and did not care to make its acquaintance.

One of those steamers, instead of receiving the boarding party, tried to flee into the harbor. The cannon boomed again, sounding angry this time. The steamer exploded, a thunderclap to dwarf the roar of the guns.

The warships turned their fire against the guns that he presumed to engage them. Puffs of smoke rose along the shore as their shells smashed into the emplacements of those guns -- and against whatever buildings happened to be close by. One by one, the cannon defending Rochester fell silent. The guns from the ships kept pounding the waterfront anyhow, as if to punish the city for having the effrontery to resist.

The warships methodically pounded the waterfront to bits. Neither the quays nor the vessels tied up at them could withstand the shells. Smoke climbed into a sky now rapidly darkening from the great profusion of fumes rising to block the rays of the sun. Not all of the smoke, nor even the greatest part of it, came from the gunpowder that propelled the shells and burnt inside them. Douglass could see the fierce yellow-orange of fire crawling along piers and over barges. A few stubborn guns still fired at the enemy vessels. Contemptuously, the warships ignored them. After the first steamer out on Lake Ontario was blown to bits, none of the others tried to make a break for it. They sat very still in the water, waiting to be boarded. Then, one after another, they steamed off. A couple of the warships shepherded them on their way.