They met at Second Manassas. The new general ended his brief campaign ina disaster so complete, so appalling1 that it struck terror to the heartof the Nation. Lee had crushed him with an ease so amazing that Lincolnwas compelled to recall McClellan to supreme2 command. When the toll3 ofthe Blood Feud4 was again reckoned twenty-five thousand more of our braveboys lay dead or wounded beneath the blazing sun of the South.
The Confederate Government now believed its army invincible5, led by Lee.
In spite of poor equipment, with the men half clad and half barefooted,Lee was ordered to invade Maryland. It was a political move, undertakenwithout the approval of the Commander.
As the gray lines swept Northward6 to cross the Potomac into Maryland,Lincoln was jubilant. To Hay, his young secretary, he whispered:
"We've got them now, boy. We've got them! The war must speedily end. Leecan never get into Maryland with fifty thousand effective men. The riverwill be behind them. I'll have McClellan on him with a hundred thousandwell-shod, well-fed, well-armed soldiers and the finest equipment ofartillery that ever thundered into battle.
"McClellan's on his mettle8. His army will fight like tigers to show theirfaith in him. They were all against me when I removed him. Now they'llshow me something. Mark my words."Luck was with McClellan. By an accident Lee's plan of campaign hadfallen into his hands. Yet it was too late to forestall9 his first masterstroke. In the face of a hostile army of twice his numbers Lee dividedhis forces, threw Jackson's corps10 on Harper's Ferry, captured the town,Arsenal and Rifle Works, twelve thousand five hundred prisoners and vaststores of war material. Among the booty taken were new blue uniformswith which Jackson promptly11 clothed his men.
Lee met McClellan at Antietam and waited for Jackson to arrive fromHarper's Ferry.
When McClellan's artillery7 opened in the gray dawn, more than sixteenthousand of Lee's footsore men had fallen along the line of march unableto reach the battlefield. The union Commander was massing eighty-seventhousand men behind his flaming batteries. Lee could count on butthirty-seven thousand. He gave McClellan battle with his little armyhemmed in on one side by Antietam Creek12 and on the other by the sweepingPotomac.
The President in Washington received the news of the positions of thearmies and their chances of success with exultation13. As the sun rosea glowing dull red ball of fire breaking through the smoke of theartillery, Hooker's division swept into action and drove the first lineof Lee's men into the woods. Here they rallied and began to mow14 down thecharging masses with deadly aim. For two hours the sullen15 fight raged inthe woods without yielding an inch on either side. Hooker fell wounded.
He called for aid. Mansfield answered and fell dead as he deployed16 hismen. Sedgwick's Corps charged and were caught in a trap between twoConfederate brigades concealed17 and massed to meet them. Sedgwick waswounded and his command barely saved from annihilation.
While this struggle raged on the union right, the center saw a bloodiertragedy. French and Richardson charged the Confederate position. Asunken road crossed the field over which they marched. For four tragichours the men in gray held this sunken road until it was piled withtheir bodies. When the final charge of massed blue took it, they foundto their amazement18 that but three hundred living men had been holding itfor an hour against the assaults of five thousand. So perfect was thefaith of those gray soldiers in Robert E. Lee they died as if it werethe order of the day. It was simply fate. Their Commander could make nomistake.
Burnsides swung his reinforced division around the woods and pushed upthe heights against Sharpsburg to cut Lee's only line of retreat. Heforced the thin, gray lines before him through the streets of thevillage. On its outer edge he suddenly confronted a mass of men clad intheir own blue uniform.
How had these men gotten here?
He was not long in doubt. The blue line suddenly flashed a red wavesquarely in their faces. It was Jackson's Corps from Harper's Ferry intheir new uniforms. The shock threw the union men into confusion, adesperate charge drove them out of Sharpsburg, and Lee's army camped onthe field with the dead.
For fourteen hours five hundred guns and a hundred thousand musketsthundered and hissed19 their message of blood. When night fell more thantwenty thousand of our noblest men lay dead and wounded on the field.
Lee skillfully withdrew his army across the Potomac. Safe in Virginia herallied his shattered forces while he sent Stuart once more in a daringride around McClellan's army.
Again McClellan fell before the genius of Lee. Burnsides was put in hisplace.
They met at Fredericksburg. Burnsides, the courtly, polished gentleman,crossed the Rappahannock River and charged the hills on which Lee'sgrim, gray men had entrenched20. His magnificent army marched into a deathtrap. Lee's batteries had been trained to rake the field from threedirections.
Five times the union hosts charged these crescent hills and five timesthey were rolled back in waves of blood. A fierce freezing wind sprangup from the North. The desperate union Commander thought still to turndefeat into victory and ordered the sixth charge.
The men in blue pulled down their caps and charged once more into thejaws of death. The lines as they advanced snatched up the frozen bodiesof their comrades, carried them to the front, stacked the corpses21 intolong piles for bulwarks22, dropped low and fought behind them. In vain.
The gray hills roared and blazed, roared and blazed with increasingfury. Darkness came at last and drew a mantle23 of mercy over the scene.
The men in blue planted the frozen bodies of their dead along the outerline as dummy24 sentinels and crept through the shadows across the rivershattered, broken, crushed. They left their wounded. Through the longhours of the freezing night the pitiful cries came to the boys in grayon the wings of the fierce North winds. They crawled out into thedarkness here and there and held a canteen to the lips of a dying foe25.
At dawn they looked and saw the piles of the slain26 wrapped in whiteshrouds of snow. The shivering, ragged27, gray figures, thinly clad, sweptdown the hill, stripped the dead and shook the frost from the warmclothes.
Burnsides fell before the genius of Lee and Hooker was put in his place.
Fighting Joe Hooker they called him. At Chancellorsville a few monthslater he led his reorganized army across the same river and threw iton Lee with supreme confidence in the results. He led an army of onehundred and thirty thousand men in seven grand divisions backed by fourhundred and forty-eight great guns.
Lee, still on the hills behind Fredericksburg, had sixty-two thousandmen and one hundred and seventy guns. He had sent Longstreet's corpsinto Tennessee.
Hooker threw the flower of his army across the river seven miles aboveFredericksburg to flank Lee and strike him from the rear while theremainder of his army crossed in front and between the two he wouldcrush the Confederate army as an eggshell.
But the unexpected happened. Lee was not only a stark28 fighter. He was asupreme master of the art of war. He understood Hooker's move from themoment it began. His gray army had already slipped out of his trenchesand were feeling their way through the tangled30 vines and underbrush withsure, ominous31 tread. In this wilderness32 Hooker's four hundred guns wouldbe as useless as his own hundred and seventy. It would be a hand-to-handfight in the tangled brush. The gray veteran was a dead shot and he wascreeping through his own native woods. On this beautiful May morning,Lee, Jackson, and Stuart met in conference before the battle opened.
The plan was chosen. Lee would open the battle and hold Hooker at closerange. Jackson would "retreat." Out of sight, he would turn, marchswiftly ten miles around their right wing and smash it before sundown.
At five o'clock in the afternoon while Lee held Hooker's front,Jackson's corps crept into position in Hooker's rear. The shrill33 note ofa bugle34 rang from the woods and the yelling gray lines of death sweptdown on their unsuspecting foe. Without support the shattered right wingwas crushed, crumpled35 and rolled back in confusion.
At eight o'clock Jackson, pressing forward in the twilight37, was mortallywounded by his own men and Stuart took his command. The gay, youngcavalier placed himself at the head of Jackson's corps and chargedHooker's disorganized army. Waving his black plumed38 hat above hishandsome, bearded face, he chanted with boyish gaiety an improvisedbattle song:
"Old Joe Hooker, Won't you come out o' the Wilderness?"His men swept the field and as Hooker's army retreated Lee rode tothe front to congratulate Stuart. At sight of his magnificent figurewreathed in smoke his soldiers went wild. Above the roar of battle rangtheir cheers:
"Lee! Lee! Lee!"From line to line, division to division, the word leaped until thewounded and the dying joined its chorus.
The picket39 lines were so close that night in the woods they could talkto one another. The Southerners were chaffing the Yanks over their manydefeats, when a Yankee voice called through the night his defense40 of thewar to date:
"Ah, Johnnie, shut up--you make me tired. You're not such fighters as yethink ye are. Swap41 generals with us and we'll come over and lick hellout of you!"There was silence for a while and then a Confederate chuckled42 to hismate:
"I'm damned if they mightn't, too!"The morning dawned at last after the battle and they began to bury thedead and care for the wounded. Their agonies had been horrible. Somehad fallen on Friday, thousands on Saturday. It was now Monday. Throughmiles of dark, tangled woods in the pouring rain they still lay groaningand dying.
And over all the wings of buzzards hovered43.
The keen eyes of the vultures had watched them fall, poised44 high as thebattle raged. The woods had been swept again and again by fire. Many ofthe bodies were black and charred45. Some of the wounded had been burnedto death. Their twisted bodies and distorted features told the story.
The sickening odor of roasted human flesh yet filled the air.
It was late at night on the day after, before the wounded had all beenmoved. The surgeons with sleeves rolled high, their arms red, theirshirts soaked, bent46 over their task through every hour of the blacknight until legs and arms were piled in heaps ten feet high beside eachoperating table.
Thirty thousand magnificent men had been killed and mangled47.
The report from Chancellorsville drifted slowly and ominously48 northward.
The White House was still. The dead were walking beside the lonely, tallfigure who paced the floor in dumb anguish49, pausing now and then at thewindow to look toward the hills of Virginia.
Lee's fame now filled the world and the North shivered at the sound ofit.
Volunteering had ceased. But the cannon50 were still calling for fodder51.
The draft was applied52. And when it was resisted in fierce riots, thesoldiers trained their guns on their own people. The draft wheel wasturned by bayonets and the ranks of the army filled with fresh youngbodies to be mangled.
Hooker fell before Lee's genius and Meade took his place.
The Confederate Government, flushed with its costly53 victories, once moresought a political sensation by the invasion of the North. Lee marchedhis army of veterans into Pennsylvania.
At Gettysburg he met Meade.
The first day the Confederates won. They drove the blue army backthrough the streets of the village and their gallant54 General, John F.
Reynolds, was killed.
The second day was one of frightful55 slaughter56. The union army at itsclose had lost twenty thousand men, the Confederate fifteen thousand.
The moon rose and flooded the rocky field of blood and death with silentglory. From every shadow and from every open space through the hotbreath of the night came the moans of thousands and high above theirchorus rang the cries for water.
No succor57 could be given. The Confederates were massing their artilleryon Seminary Ridge58. The union legions were burrowing59 and planting newbatteries.
Fifteen thousand helpless, wounded men lay on the field through the longhours of the night.
At ten o'clock a wounded man began to sing one of the old hymns60 of Zionwhose words had come down the ages wet with tears and winged with humanhopes. In five minutes ten thousand voices, from blue and gray, hadjoined. Some of them quivered with agony. Some of them trembled with adying breath. For two hours the hills echoed with the unearthly music.
At a council of war Longstreet begged Lee to withdraw from Gettysburgand pick more favorable ground. Reinforced by the arrival of Pickett'sdivision of fifteen thousand fresh men and Stuart's Cavalry61, he decidedto renew the battle at dawn.
The guns opened at the crack of day. For seven hours the waves of bloodebbed and flowed.
At noon there was a lull63.
At one o'clock a puff64 of white smoke flashed from Seminary Ridge. Thesignal of the men in gray had pealed65 its death call. Along two miles onthis crest66 they had planted a hundred and fifty guns. Suddenly two milesof flame burst from the hills in a single fiery67 wreath. The Federal gunsanswered until the heavens were a hell of bursting, screaming, roaringshells.
At three o'clock the storm died away and the smoke lifted.
Pickett's men were deploying68 in the plain to charge the heights ofCemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand heroic men were forming their line torush a hill on whose crest lay seventy-five thousand entrenched soldiersbacked by four hundred guns.
Pickett's bands played as on parade. The gray ranks dressed on theircolors. And then across the plain, with banners flying, they swept andclimbed the hill. The ranks closed as men fell in wide gaps. Not a manfaltered. They fell and lay when they fell. Those who stood moved on andon. A handful reached the union lines on the heights. Armistead with ahundred men broke through, lifted his red battle flag and fell mortallywounded. The gray wave in sprays of blood ebbed62 down the hill, and thebattle ended. Meade had lost twenty-three thousand men and seventeengenerals. Lee had lost twenty thousand men and fourteen generals.
The swollen69 Potomac was behind Lee and his defeated army. So sure wasStanton of the end that he declared to the President:
"If a single regiment70 of Lee's army ever gets back into Virginia inan organized condition it will prove that I am totally unfit to beSecretary of War."The impossible happened.
Lee got back into Virginia with every regiment marching to quick stepand undaunted spirit. He crossed the swollen Potomac, his army infighting trim, every gun intact, carrying thousands of fat Pennsylvaniacattle and four thousand prisoners of war taken on the bloody71 hills ofGettysburg.
The rejoicing in Washington was brief. Meade fell before the genius ofLee, and Grant, the stark fighter of the West, took his place.
The new Commander was granted full authority over all the armies of theunion. He placed Sherman at Chattanooga in command of a hundred thousandmen and ordered him to invade Georgia. He sent Butler with an armyof fifty thousand up the Peninsula against Richmond on the line ofMcClellan's old march. He raised the army of the Potomac to a hundredand forty thousand effective fighting soldiers, placed Phil Sheridan incommand of his cavalry, put himself at the head of this magnificent armyand faced Lee on the banks of the Rapidan. He was but a few miles fromChancellorsville where Hooker's men had baptized the earth in blood theyear before.
A new draft of five hundred thousand had given Grant unlimited72 men forthe coming whirlwind. His army was the flower of Northern manhood. Hecommanded the best-equipped body of soldiers ever assembled under theflag of the union. His baggage train was sixty miles long and wouldhave stretched the entire distance from his crossing at the Rapidan toRichmond.
Lee's army had been recruited to its normal strength of sixty-twothousand. Again the wily Southerner anticipated the march of his foeand crept into the tangled wilderness to meet him where his superioritywould be of no avail.
Confident of his resistless power Grant threw his army across theRapidan and plunged73 into the wilderness. From the dawn of the first dayuntil far into the night the conflict raged. As darkness fell Lee hadpushed the blue lines back a hundred yards, captured four guns anda number of prisoners. At daylight they were at it again. As theConfederate right wing crumpled and rolled back, Long-street arrived onthe scene and threw his corps into the breach74.
Lee himself rode forward to lead the charge and restore his line. Atsight of him, from thousands of parched75 throats rose the cries:
"Lee to the rear!""Go back, General Lee!""We'll settle this!"They refused to move until their leader had withdrawn76. And then with asavage yell they charged and took the field.
Lee sent Longstreet to turn Grant's left as Jackson had done atChancellorsville. The movement was executed with brilliant success.
Hancock's line was smashed and driven back on his second defenses.
Wardsworth at the head of his division was mortally wounded and fellinto Longstreet's hands. At the height of his triumph in a movement thatmust crumple36 Grant's army back on the banks of the river, Longstreetfell, shot by his own men. In the change of commanders the stratagemfailed in its big purpose.
In two days Grant lost sixteen thousand six hundred men, a greater tollthan Hooker paid when he retreated in despair.
Grant merely chewed the end of his big cigar, turned to his lieutenantand said:
"It's all right, Wilson. We'll fight again."The two armies lay in their trenches29 watching each other in grimsilence.
点击收听单词发音
1 appalling | |
adj.骇人听闻的,令人震惊的,可怕的 | |
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2 supreme | |
adj.极度的,最重要的;至高的,最高的 | |
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3 toll | |
n.过路(桥)费;损失,伤亡人数;v.敲(钟) | |
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4 feud | |
n.长期不和;世仇;v.长期争斗;世代结仇 | |
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5 invincible | |
adj.不可征服的,难以制服的 | |
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6 northward | |
adv.向北;n.北方的地区 | |
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7 artillery | |
n.(军)火炮,大炮;炮兵(部队) | |
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8 mettle | |
n.勇气,精神 | |
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9 forestall | |
vt.抢在…之前采取行动;预先阻止 | |
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10 corps | |
n.(通信等兵种的)部队;(同类作的)一组 | |
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11 promptly | |
adv.及时地,敏捷地 | |
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12 creek | |
n.小溪,小河,小湾 | |
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13 exultation | |
n.狂喜,得意 | |
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14 mow | |
v.割(草、麦等),扫射,皱眉;n.草堆,谷物堆 | |
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15 sullen | |
adj.愠怒的,闷闷不乐的,(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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16 deployed | |
(尤指军事行动)使展开( deploy的过去式和过去分词 ); 施展; 部署; 有效地利用 | |
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17 concealed | |
a.隐藏的,隐蔽的 | |
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18 amazement | |
n.惊奇,惊讶 | |
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19 hissed | |
发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 ); 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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20 entrenched | |
adj.确立的,不容易改的(风俗习惯) | |
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21 corpses | |
n.死尸,尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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22 bulwarks | |
n.堡垒( bulwark的名词复数 );保障;支柱;舷墙 | |
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23 mantle | |
n.斗篷,覆罩之物,罩子;v.罩住,覆盖,脸红 | |
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24 dummy | |
n.假的东西;(哄婴儿的)橡皮奶头 | |
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25 foe | |
n.敌人,仇敌 | |
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26 slain | |
杀死,宰杀,杀戮( slay的过去分词 ); (slay的过去分词) | |
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27 ragged | |
adj.衣衫褴褛的,粗糙的,刺耳的 | |
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28 stark | |
adj.荒凉的;严酷的;完全的;adv.完全地 | |
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29 trenches | |
深沟,地沟( trench的名词复数 ); 战壕 | |
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30 tangled | |
adj. 纠缠的,紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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31 ominous | |
adj.不祥的,不吉的,预兆的,预示的 | |
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32 wilderness | |
n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等,荒漠 | |
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33 shrill | |
adj.尖声的;刺耳的;v尖叫 | |
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34 bugle | |
n.军号,号角,喇叭;v.吹号,吹号召集 | |
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35 crumpled | |
adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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36 crumple | |
v.把...弄皱,满是皱痕,压碎,崩溃 | |
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37 twilight | |
n.暮光,黄昏;暮年,晚期,衰落时期 | |
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38 plumed | |
饰有羽毛的 | |
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39 picket | |
n.纠察队;警戒哨;v.设置纠察线;布置警卫 | |
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40 defense | |
n.防御,保卫;[pl.]防务工事;辩护,答辩 | |
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41 swap | |
n.交换;vt.交换,用...作交易 | |
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42 chuckled | |
轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43 hovered | |
鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 ); 靠近(某事物); (人)徘徊; 犹豫 | |
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44 poised | |
a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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45 charred | |
v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式);烧焦 | |
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46 bent | |
n.爱好,癖好;adj.弯的;决心的,一心的 | |
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47 mangled | |
vt.乱砍(mangle的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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48 ominously | |
adv.恶兆地,不吉利地;预示地 | |
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49 anguish | |
n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦,烦恼 | |
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50 cannon | |
n.大炮,火炮;飞机上的机关炮 | |
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51 fodder | |
n.草料;炮灰 | |
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52 applied | |
adj.应用的;v.应用,适用 | |
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53 costly | |
adj.昂贵的,价值高的,豪华的 | |
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54 gallant | |
adj.英勇的,豪侠的;(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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55 frightful | |
adj.可怕的;讨厌的 | |
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56 slaughter | |
n.屠杀,屠宰;vt.屠杀,宰杀 | |
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57 succor | |
n.援助,帮助;v.给予帮助 | |
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58 ridge | |
n.山脊;鼻梁;分水岭 | |
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59 burrowing | |
v.挖掘(洞穴),挖洞( burrow的现在分词 );翻寻 | |
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60 hymns | |
n.赞美诗,圣歌,颂歌( hymn的名词复数 ) | |
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61 cavalry | |
n.骑兵;轻装甲部队 | |
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62 ebbed | |
(指潮水)退( ebb的过去式和过去分词 ); 落; 减少; 衰落 | |
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63 lull | |
v.使安静,使入睡,缓和,哄骗;n.暂停,间歇 | |
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64 puff | |
n.一口(气);一阵(风);v.喷气,喘气 | |
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65 pealed | |
v.(使)(钟等)鸣响,(雷等)发出隆隆声( peal的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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66 crest | |
n.顶点;饰章;羽冠;vt.达到顶点;vi.形成浪尖 | |
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67 fiery | |
adj.燃烧着的,火红的;暴躁的;激烈的 | |
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68 deploying | |
(尤指军事行动)使展开( deploy的现在分词 ); 施展; 部署; 有效地利用 | |
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69 swollen | |
adj.肿大的,水涨的;v.使变大,肿胀 | |
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70 regiment | |
n.团,多数,管理;v.组织,编成团,统制 | |
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71 bloody | |
adj.非常的的;流血的;残忍的;adv.很;vt.血染 | |
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72 unlimited | |
adj.无限的,不受控制的,无条件的 | |
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73 plunged | |
v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 );暴跌;骤降;突降 | |
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74 breach | |
n.违反,不履行;破裂;vt.冲破,攻破 | |
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75 parched | |
adj.焦干的;极渴的;v.(使)焦干 | |
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76 withdrawn | |
vt.收回;使退出;vi.撤退,退出 | |
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