Yet the condition of his army would have appalled a weaker will. It had been driven back three miles. His whole camp had been taken. His second line also had been driven in. Many thousands of men had fallen and other thousands had been taken. Thirty of his cannon were in the hands of the enemy, and although noon had now come and gone there was no sound to betoken the coming of the troops led by Wallace or Nelson. Well might Grant’s own stout heart have shrunk appalled from the task before him.
Wallace was held back by confused orders, pardonable at such a time. The eager Nelson was detained at Savannah by Buell, who thought that the sounds of the engagement they heard in the Shiloh woods was a minor affair, and who wanted Nelson to wait for boats to take him there.
It seemed sometimes to Dick long afterward, when the whole of the great Shiloh battle became clear, that Fortune was merely playing a game of chess, with the earth as a board, and the armies as pawns. Grant’s army was ambushed with its general absent. The other armies which were almost at hand were delayed for one reason or another. While as for the South, the genius that had planned the attack and that had carried it forward was quenched in death, when victory was at its height.
But for the present the lad had little time for such thoughts as these. The success of Sherman in holding the new position infused new courage into him and those around him. The men in gray, wearied with their immense exertions, and having suffered frightful losses themselves, abated somewhat the energy and fierceness of their attack.
The dissolved Northern regiments had time to reform. Grant seized a new position along a line of hills, in front of which ran a deep ravine filled with brushwood. He and his officers appreciated the advantage and they massed the troops there as fast as they could.
Now Fortune, after having brought Grant to the verge of the pit, was disposed to throw chances in his way. The hills and the ravine were one. Another, and most important it was, was the presence of guns of the heaviest calibre landed some days ago from the fleet, and left there until their disposition could be determined. A quick-witted colonel, Webster by name, gathered up all the gunners who had lost their own guns and who had been driven back in the retreat, and manned this great battery of siege guns, just as the Southern generals were preparing to break down the last stand of the North.
Meanwhile, a terrible rumor had been spreading in the ranks of the Southern troops. The word was passed from soldier to soldier that their commander, Johnston, whom they had believed invincible, had been killed, and they did not trust so much Beauregard, who was left in command, nor those who helped. Their fiery spirit abated somewhat. There was no decrease of courage, but continuous victory did not seem so easy now.
Confusion invaded the triumphant army also. Beauregard had divided the leadership on the field among three of his lieutenants. Hardee now urged on the center, Bragg commanded the right, and Polk, the bishop- general, led the left. It was Bragg’s division that was about to charge the great battery of siege guns that the alert Webster had manned so quickly. Five minutes more and Webster would have been too late. Here again were the fortunes of Grant brought to the very verge of the pit. The Northern gunboats at the mouth of Lick Creek moved forward a little, and their guns were ready to support the battery.
The Kentucky regiment was wedged in between the battery and a brigade, and it was gasping for breath. Colonel Winchester, slightly wounded in three places, commanded his men to lie down, and they gladly threw themselves upon the earth.
There was a momentary lull in the battle. Wandering winds caught up the banks of smoke and carried most of them away. Dick, as he rose a little, saw the Southern troops massing in the forest for an attack upon their new position. They seemed to be only a few yards away and he clearly observed the officers walking along the front of the lines. It flashed upon him that they must hold these hills or Grant’s army would perish. Where was Buell? Why did he not come? If the Southerners destroyed one Northern army today they would destroy another tomorrow! They would break the two halves of the Union force in the west into pieces, first one and then the other.