ouragement enough. Colonel O'Neal, who
had led them, was mortally wounded; the barricade was too high and
dangerous; they had tried to fire it without success. Some of the forty
recruits, who were in front of the party, had climbed over it; and these
afterwards affirmed, that, had the others followed then, the barricade
had been gained; but the older soldiers had degenerated, possessed
little of these men's zeal or spirit, hesitated, and, their colonel
falling, gave back. Those who had gone over the barricade were killed
there, or came back with wounds,--one with a bayonet-thrust through the
arm,--a most remarkable wound, in which, perhaps, Central-Americans
fleshed a bayonet for the first time.

Our company, or part of it,--for most had been placed about on pickets
when the attack failed,--after a while fell farther back, turned the
corner before mentioned, faced about, and came to a stand in the street,
with an _adobe_ house on the left. The street in which we stood ran
straight forward, and crossed the one down which we had just receded at
right angles, a few feet ahead of us, so that there was here a junction
of four streets, or, I might better say, roads; for there were no more
than four disconnected houses in the immediate vicinity,--the one on the
corner beside us, one on the corner diagonally opposite, the one up the
street running left, on the far side, behind which we had a little while
ago taken shelter, and the square stone church, whither we had carried
the wounded man, and which stood on the far side of the street some
yards behind us. The rest of the space was covered with fruit-trees and
a heavy growth of hushes; and concealed behind these lay the barricades
and the _plaza_ of San Jorge. But all this was seen later; then the
whole was wrapped in thick darkness, it yet lacking some short time of
daybreak.

Whilst our detached company was standing there, with the foot drawn up
in the road a little way before us, a single horseman came out from the
enemy and galloped past our picket, stationed up the road some distance
ahead of the detachment. The picket fired upon him after he had passed;
he dropped under his horse's side, and galloped back, apparently
unharmed; but, from the direction of their fire, the picket was
naturally mistaken for the enemy by the detachment in front, who could
see only the flashes through the darkness. Some stood their ground, and
returned the fire, placing the picket in great dan