We started instantly to our feet. The fire was
hastily smothered up, and the men snatching their arms, stood in line,
ready to act as circumstances might require. So dense, however, was the
darkness, and so dazzling the effect of the glare from the bivouac, that
it was not possible, standing where we stood, to form any reasonable
guess, as to the cause of this alarm. That an alarm had been excited,
was indeed perceptible enough. Instead of the deep silence which five
minutes ago had prevailed in the bivouac, a strange hubbub of shouts,
and questions, and as many cries, rose up the night air; nor did many
minutes elapse, ere first one musket, then three or four, then a whole
platoon, were discharged. The reader will _easily_ believe that the
latter circumstance startled us prodigiously, ignorant as we were of the
cause which produced it; but it required no very painful exertion of
patience to set us right on this head; flash, flash, flash, came from
the river; the roar of cannon followed, and the light of her own
broadside displayed to us an enemy's vessel at anchor near the opposite
bank, and pouring a perfect shower of grape and round shot into
the camp.
For one instant, and only for an instant, a scene of alarm and
consternation overcame us; and we almost instinctively addressed to each
other the question, "What can all this mean?" But the meaning was too
palpable not to be understood at once. "The thing cannot end here," said
we--"a night attack is commencing;" and we made no delay in preparing to
meet it.
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