CHAPTER IX.
THE BATTLE OF BALL'S BLUFF.
An Appetite for Fighting. The Sensations of the Battle-Field. My Second Battle. The Conflict at Ball's Bluff. My Arrival at General Evans's Headquarters. Meeting an old Acquaintance. Hospitalities of the Camp. The Morning of the Battle. Commencement of the Fight. A fierce Struggle. In Charge of a Company. A suspicious Story. Bob figures as a Combatant. Rout of the Enemy. The Federals driven over the Bluff into the River. I capture some Prisoners. A heart-rending Spectacle. Escape of Colonel Devens, of the Fifteenth Massachusetts Regiment, by swimming across the River. Sinking of the Boats with the wounded Federals in them. Night, and the End of the Battle.
T might be supposed that one battle would have been enough for me, and that after having seen, as at Bull Run, the carnage incident to a desperate conflict between thousands of infuriated combatants, I should have been glad to have abandoned a soldier's career, and to have devoted myself to the service of the Confederacy in some other capacity than that of a fighter. Indeed, it so turned out, that the most efficient services I did perform in behalf of the cause which I espoused, were other than those of a strictly military character, although quite as important as any rendered by the bravest fighters when standing face to face to the enemy. But it was, in a measure, due to necessity rather than to original choice, that I under took work of a different kind from that which I had in my mind when first donning my uniform. We are all of us, more or less, the creatures of circumstances ; and when I saw that the fact of my being a woman would enable nsje to play an other role from that which I had at first intended, I did not hesitate, but readily accepted what Fate had to offer.
The battle of Bull Run, however, only quickened my ardor
to participate in another affair of a similar kind, and the months of enforced inaction, which succeeded that battle, had
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