Under Fire: A Tale of the Shenandoah Valley — page 44: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A TERRIBLE CATASTROPHE. 37 throughout the North; the fratricidal struggle, after all, was only just beginning. Royal and his friend Moses left Charleston on the morning of June rath. Their destination was Richmond, whence they pro- posed to make their way at the first favorable oppor- tunity to Fortress Monroe. As the trains hurried past smiling fields and pros- perous-looking villages basking in the early summer sun, war seemed so utterly inconsistent with their surroundings as to tempt one to believe that it really must be only the waking recollection of a frightful dream, and not the stern reality of the hour. They were by mutual consent silent upon the issue that concerned them, for the train was crowded, and watchful ears on the alert would have picked up any unfavorable word uttered by either. More than half of the passengers were going north- ward to enlist under Beauregard and Johnson. The greatest excitement pervaded the train. The gay uniforms of an entire company of Charles- ton militia lent a color to the motley assemblage that was exhilarating to a degree. | But as a whole it had more of the features of a mil- itary picnic, omitting that important part of such an affair—the ladies—than the serious nature involved. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and the train was mnaking good time along a more open part of the country, when a succession of ear-piercing screams from the locomotive startled everybody. They were rounding a sharp curve on the line at the moment. What followed those who escaped the disaster re- membered to their dying day. | It was a tremendous concussion. | In the car occupied by Royal and Moses everything movable, human and inanimate, was thrown about ~ - helter-skelter, (e(0) ek comicbooks