about one o'clock in the afternoon
You can see them wheeling guns into line . '' Lee , with Hill and Longstreet , had recently ridden along the lines followed by the older staff officers , and often shells and the bullets of sharpshooters had struck about them , but they remained unhurt . Now Lee stopped at one of his old points of observation . It was now about one o'clock in the afternoon , and as the last gun took its place the whole artillery of the Southern army opened with a fire so tremendous that Harry felt the earth trembling , and he was compelled to put his fingers in his ears lest he be deafened . A storm of metal flew across the valley toward the Northern ranks , but the guns there did not reply yet . The Union troops lay close behind their intrenchments and mostly the storm beat itself to pieces on the side of the hill . The smoke soon became so great that Harry could not tell even with glasses what was going on in the enemy 's ranks , but he inferred from the fact that they were not yet replying that they were not suffering much .