Dennison and Peel joined Starbuck. These, with Potter, were his only captains. After the battle, Starbuck thought, there would needs be wholesale promotions, but that could wait. Now he told the two men what he wanted, cut short their anxieties, and sent them away. A minute later their shrunken companies came to the tree line, where Starbuck concealed the men in the shadows and thick brush. He walked behind the line of men telling them what he expected of them. “You don’t fire till the gun has fired,” he said, “then you kill the gunners. Then you charge. One shot up your barrel, bayonets on, don’t stop to reload.” An excitement touched Starbuck’s voice and communicated itself to the men who, tired as they were, grinned at him. “They say we’re no good, lads,” Starbuck told them, “they say we’re the Yellowlegs. Well, we’re about to give the army a present of one gun. Maybe two. Remember, one shot only, don’t fire till the cannon’s fired, then charge like there was a score of naked whores serving that gun.”

“Wish there were,” a man said.

There was a sudden crashing in the timber behind Starbuck, who turned to see the drunken Colonel Maitland, who had somehow recovered his horse and now rode with drawn sword toward Starbuck’s battalion. “I’ll lead you, boys!” Maitland shouted. “Victory all the way! Up now! Get ready.”

Starbuck grabbed the bridle before Maitland had a chance to roust the men to a premature attack. He dragged the horse round, pointed it toward the heart of the woods, and slapped its rump. Maitland somehow kept his seat as he rode away shouting and brandishing the sword. The noise he made was drowned by the furious sound of the fighting farther south. “Wait, lads,” Starbuck calmed his men, “just wait.”

Sergeant Case stared at the unsuspecting gunners. He was tempted to fire at them as soon as the attack on the Dunker church opened, and so deny Starbuck his victory by alerting the gunners to their danger, but Case only had two bullets left for his Sharps rifle and he dared not waste one. His hatred of Starbuck was being fed by what he perceived as Starbuck’s unprofessionalism. Soon, Case reckoned, the battalion would be so shrunken that it would cease to exist, and what of Dennison’s promise then? Case wanted to be an officer, he wanted to command the Yellowlegs, whom he planned to drill and discipline into the finest battalion in the Confederate army, but now Starbuck was threatening to thin its emaciated ranks even further. It was amateurism, the Sergeant thought, sheer bloody amateurism.

A cheer sounded in the woods, then the rebel yell erupted. Swynyard’s voice shouted out of the shadows. “Go, Nate! Go!”

“Wait!” Starbuck shouted at his men. “Just wait!”

A splinter of rifle fire met the rebel charge, then a louder volley sounded as the charging rebels fired at the Yankees. The gunners had sprung to life. The barrel of the nearest gun was aimed roughly where Starbuck’s skirmishers were placed and Starbuck prayed it was not charged with canister. He watched the gun captain duck aside and yank the lanyard that scraped the friction primer across the tube. The gun bucked violently back, spitting its flame and smoke toward the trees.