It was about noon that the lull in the battle occurred, and it
lasted a couple of hours, while reinforcements were approaching the
mountain top from both sides. The enemy's artillery kept up a pretty
steady fire, answered occasionally by our few cannon; but the
infantry rested on their arms, the front covered by a watchful line
of skirmishers, every man at his tree. The Confederate guns had so
perfectly the range of the sloping fields about and behind us, that
their canister shot made long furrows in the sod with a noise like
the cutting of a melon rind, and the shells which skimmed the crest
and burst in the tree-tops at the lower side of the fields made a
sound like the crashing and falling of some brittle substance,
instead of the tough fibre of oak and pine. We had time to notice
these things as we paced the lines waiting for the renewal of the
battle.
Willcox's division reported to me about two o'clock, and would have
been up earlier, but for a mistake in the delivery of a message to
him. He had sent from Middletown to ask me where I desired him to
come, and finding that the messenger had no clear idea of the roads
by which he had travelled, I directed him to say that General
Pleasonton would point out the road I had followed, if inquired of.
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