Harry saw the battle raging around the crest of Little Round Top. Then he uttered a cry of despair. The Southerners, with their ranks thin-woefully thin-were falling back slowly and sullenly. They had done all that soldiers could do, but the commanding towers of Little Round Top remained in Union hands, and the Union generals were soon crowding it with artillery that could sweep every point in the field below.
But Sickles himself was not faring so well. His men, fighting for every inch of ground about the Peach Orchard, were slowly driven back. Sickles himself fell, a leg shattered, and walked on one leg for more than fifty years afterwards. Hood, his immediate opponent, also fell, losing an arm then and a leg later at Chickamauga, but Longstreet still pushed the attack, and the Northern generals who had stood around Sickles resisted with the stubbornness of men who meant to succeed or die.
Early in the battle Harry had seen General Lee walk forward to a point in the center of his line and sit down on a smooth stump. There he sat a long time, apparently impassive. Harry sometimes took his eyes away from the combat for the Peach Orchard and Little Round Top to watch his commander-in-chief. But the general never showed emotion. Now and then General Hill or his military secretary, General Long, came to him and they would talk a little together, but they made no gestures. Lee would rise when the generals came, but when they left he would resume his place on the stump and watch the struggle through his glasses. Throughout the whole battle of that day he sent a single order and received but one message. He had given his orders before the advance, and he left the rest to his lieutenants.
“I wish I could be as calm as he is,” said Harry.
“I’ll risk saying that he isn’t calm inside,” said Dalton. “How could any man be at such a time?”
“You’re right. Duck! Here comes a shell!”
But the shell fell short and exploded on the slope.
“Now listen, will you!” exclaimed Harry. “That’s the spirit!”
Immediately after the shell burst a Southern band began to play. And it played the merriest music, waltzes and polkas and all kinds of dances. Harry felt his feet move to the tunes, while the battle below, at its very height, roared and thundered.
But he promptly forgot the musicians as he watched the battle. He knew that the Invincibles were somewhere in that volcano of fire and smoke, and it was almost too much to hope that they would again come unhurt out of such a furious conflict. But they, too, passed quickly from his mind. The struggle would let nothing else remain there long.
He saw that the Union troops were still in the Peach Orchard and that they were pouring a deadly fire also from Little Round Top. Hancock had come to take the place of Sickles, and he was drawing every man he could to his support. The afternoon was waning, but the battle was still at its height. Men were falling by thousands, and generals, colonels, majors, officers of all kinds were falling with them. The Southerners had not encountered such resistance in any other great battle, and the ground, moreover, was against them.
Yet the grim fighter, Longstreet, never ceased to push on his brigades. The combat was now often face to face, and sharpshooters, hidden in every angle and hollow of the earth, picked off men by hundreds. The great rocky mass known as the Devil’s Den was filled with Northern sharpshooters and for a long time they stung the Southern flank terribly, until a Southern battery, noticing whence the deadly stream of bullets issued, sprayed it with grape and canister until most of the sharpshooters were killed, while those who survived fled like wolves from their lairs.
The day was now passing, but Harry could see no decrease in the fury of the battle. Longstreet was still hurling his men forward, and they were met with cannon and rifle and bayonet. The Confederate line now grew more compact. The brigades were brought into closer touch, and, gathering their strength anew, they rushed forward in a charge, heavier and more desperate than any that had gone before. Generals and colonels led them in person. Barksdale, young, but with snow-white hair, was riding at the very front of the line, and he fell, dying, in the Union ranks.