four o'clock in the afternoon
The Caribees passed a mile or more of encampments , the men not yet aroused , and when at daylight the whole body was in motion they were in advance , with nothing before them but a few hundred cavalry . A delirious expectation , a rapturous sense of holding the post of danger , kept every sense in such a thrill of anticipation that the hours passed like minutes . The dusty roads , the intolerable thirst , and the nauseous , tepid water , the blistered feet , the abraded hips , where the cartridge-box began to wear the flesh -- all these woes of the march were ignored in the one impulse to see the ground ahead , to note the first sight of the enemy . It was not until four o'clock in the afternoon that the column was halted , and two companies , K and H , were marched out of the column and formed in platoons across the line of march , that the regiment learned with mortification that hitherto the route had been inside the Union lines ! They soon saw the difference in the tactics of the march . The company was spread out in groups of four ; these again were separated by a few yards , and in this order , sweeping like a drag-net , they advanced over the dry fields , through the clustering pines or into cultivated acres , and through great farm-yards . Back of them the long column came , slowly winding over the sandy highway which curved through the undulating land .