After a while Colonel Winchester wrote something on a slip of paper:
“Take this to our lieutenant-colonel,” he said. “It is an order for the regiment to hold itself in complete readiness, although no action may come for some time. Then return here at once.”
Dick rode back swiftly, but on his way he suddenly bent over his saddle bow. A shell from the fort screamed over his head in such a menacing fashion that it seemed to be only a few inches from him. But it passed on, leaving him unharmed, and burst three hundred yards away.
Dick instantly straightened up in the saddle, looked around, breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that no one had noticed his sudden bow, and galloped on with the order. The lieutenant-colonel read it and nodded. Then Dick rode back to the hill where the generals were yet watching in vain for those black plumes of smoke on the Cumberland.
They left the hill at last and the generals went to their brigades. General Grant was smoking a cigar and his face was impassive.
“We’re to open soon with the artillery,” said Colonel Winchester to Dick. “General Grant means to push things.”
The desultory firing, those warning guns, ceased entirely, and for a while both armies stood in almost complete silence. Then a Northern battery on the right opened with a tremendous crash and the battle for Donelson had begun. A Southern battery replied at once and the firing spread along the whole vast curve. Shells and solid shot whistled through the air, but the troops back of the guns crouched in hasty entrenchments, and waited.
The great artillery combat went on for some time. To many of the lads on either side it seemed for hours. Then the guns on the Northern side ceased suddenly, bugles sounded, and the regiments, drawn up in line, rushed at the outer fortifications.
Colonel Winchester and his staff had dismounted, but Dick and Pennington, keeping by the colonel’s side, drew their swords and rushed on shouting. The Southerners inside the fort fired their cannon as fast as they could now, and at closer range opened with the rifles. Dick heard once again that terrible shrieking of metal so close to his ears, and then he heard, too, cries of pain. Many of the young soldiers behind him were falling.
The fire now grew so hot and deadly that the Union regiments were forced to give ground. It was evident that they could not carry the formidable earthworks, but on the right, where Dick’s regiment charged, and just above the little town of Dover, they pressed in far enough to secure some hills that protected them from the fire of the enemy, and from which Southern cannon and rifles could not drive them. Then, at the order of Grant, his troops withdrew elsewhere and the battle of the day ceased. But on the low hills above Dover, which they had taken, the Union regiments held their ground, and from their position the Northern cannon could threaten the interior of the Southern lines.
Dick’s regiment stood here, and beside them were the few companies of Pennsylvanians so far from their native state. Neither Dick nor Pennington was wounded. Warner had a bandaged arm, but the wound was so slight that it would not incapacitate him. The officers were unhurt.
“They’ve driven our army back,” said Pennington, “and it was not so hard for them to do it either. How can we ever defeat an army as large as our own inside powerful works?”
But Dick was learning fast and he had a keen eye.
“We have not failed utterly,” he said. “Don’t you see that we have here a projection into the enemy’s lines, and if those reinforcements come it will be thrust further and further? I tell you that general of ours is a bull dog. He will never let go.”
Yet there was little but gloom in the Union camp. The short winter day, somber and heavy with clouds, was drawing to a close. The field upon which the assault had taken place was within the sweep of the Southern guns. Some of the Northern wounded had crawled away or had been carried to their own camp, but others and the numerous dead still lay upon the ground.