Two or three hundred feet back they stopped, a
confused mass. General Webb, Haskell and other officers rallied them. The
red flags gathered thicker, where the small units of many commands stood
fast under the shelter of a portion of the lost wall. Penhallow looked
back and saw the Massachusetts flags--our centre alone had given way.
The flanks of the broken regiments still held the wall and poured in a
murderous fire where the splendid courage of the onset halted, unwilling
to fly, unable to go on.
Webb, furious, rallied his men, while Penhallow, Haskell and Gibbon
vainly urged an advance. A colour-sergeant ran forward and fell dead. A
corporal caught up the flag and dropped. A Confederate general leaped
over the deserted wall and laid a hand on Cushing's gun. He fell
instantly at the side of the dead captain, as with a sudden roar of fury
the broken Pennsylvanians rolled in a disordered mass of men and officers
against the disorganized valour which held the wall.
The smoke held--still holds, the secret of how many met the Northern men
at the wall; how long they fought among Cushing's guns, on and over the
wall, no man who came out of it could tell. Penhallow emptied his
revolver and seizing a musket fought the brute battle with the men who
used fists, stones, gun-rammers--a howling mob of blue and grey.
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