But it was not until the sun had mounted higher that it struck the
central horror of the field and seemed to linger there in dazzling
persistence, now and then returning to it in startling flashes that it
might be seen of men and those who brought succor. A tiny brook had run
obliquely near the battle line. It was here that, the night before
the battle, friend and foe had filled their canteens side by side with
soldierly recklessness--or perhaps a higher instinct--purposely ignoring
each other's presence; it was here that the wounded had afterwards
crept, crawled, and dragged themselves, here they had pushed, wrangled,
striven, and fought for a draught of that precious fluid which assuaged
the thirst of their wounds--or happily put them out of their misery
forever; here overborne, crushed, suffocated by numbers, pouring their
own blood into the flood, and tumbling after it with their helpless
bodies, they dammed the stream, until recoiling, red and angry, it had
burst its banks and overflowed the cotton-field in a broad pool that now
sparkled in the sunlight. But below this human dam--a mile away--where
the brook still crept sluggishly, the ambulance horses sniffed and
started from it.
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