e of fire, and over the bodies of the dead, the British remnant
renew battle. Again, a deadly volley, and the shattered columns, in
spite of entreaty or command, speed back to the place of landing, and
the first shock of arms is over.

A lifetime, when it is past, is but as a moment. A moment, sometimes, is
as a lifetime. Onset and repulse. Three hundred lifetimes ended in
twenty minutes.

Putnam hastened to Bunker Hill to gather scattering parties in the rear
and urge coming reinforcements across the isthmus, where the fire from
British frigates swept with fearful energy, but nothing could bring them
in time. The men who had toiled all night, and had just proved their
valor, were again to be tested.

The British reformed promptly, in the perfection of their discipline.
Their artillery was pushed forward nearer the angle made by the
breastwork next the redoubt, and the whole line advanced, deployed as
before, across the entire American front. The ships-of-war increased
their fire across the isthmus. Charlestown had been fired, and more than
four hundred houses kindled into one vast wave of smoke and flame, until
a sudden breeze swept its quivering volume away and exposed to view of
the watchful Americans the returning tide of battle. No scattering shots
in advance this time. It is only when a space of hardly five rods is
left, and a swift plunge could almost forerun the rifle flash, that the
word of execution impels the bullet, and the entire front rank, from
redoubt to river, is swept away. Again, and again, the attempt is made
to rally and inspire the paralyzed troops; but the living tide flows
back, even to the river.

Another twenty minutes,--hardly twenty-five,--and the death angel has
gathered his sheaves of human hopes, as when the Royal George went down
beneath the waters with its priceless value of human lives.

At the first repulse the thirty-eighth regiment took shelter by a stone
fence, along the road which passes about the base of Breed's Hill; but
at the second repulse, supported by the fifth, it reorganized, just
under the advanced crest of Breed's Hill for a third advance.

It was an hour of grave issues. Burgoyne, who watched the progress from
Copp's Hill, says: "A moment of the day was critical."

Stedman says: "A continuous blaze of musketry, incessant and
destructive."

Gordon says: "The British officers pronounced it downright butchery to
lead the men afresh against those lines."

Ramsay