forts could urge
them further forward; and finding it impossible to run to the end that
gauntlet of iron and lead, they once more wavered and broke, faced about
and sought the shelter of the woods, leaving Carter's Field burdened
with its second terrible harvest of death for that day--the dead in
actual heaps and winrows, and the wounded one mere struggling, writhing
and groaning mass.

But why repeat the story that has no variety except in horror? Again and
again, with fresh troops flung every time to the front, that mad attempt
to carry Malvern Hill was repeated and repulsed. An attack--a repulse;
and each time with added but never-varied slaughter. The consumption of
raw spirits among the rebel ranks must have been enormous during the
day; for every rebel canteen found on the field had been filled with
that maddening compound, with or without the fiendish addition of the
sulphur and nitre of gunpowder. Their attacks were like the rolling of
billows toward a beach: their waves of battle swept up with raging
fierceness, but broke and receded at every dash; and, like the waves
when the tide is fast ebbing, the surging lines broke farther off at
each advance. The attack on Malvern Hill had failed--at what a fearful
expenditure of valor and courage on the part of the Union troops, only
those who participated can ever know;--and at what a cost of life to the
rebels, only that Eye which looked down from a greater height than that
of the signal-officer on the gable of the old mansion, could have power
to measure!

During the last of these rebel attacks, the gun-boats were signalled to
cease firing, lest their shells might prove equally fatal to friends and
foes; and the Union forces were ordered to prepare for an advance, as
Porter had determined to act, temporarily at least, on the offensive,
and thus crown the events of a day which had been virtually one of
splendid victory for the Union arms. Just when the rebels were halting
and wavering under the effects of the renewed artillery fire poured out
to meet them, Burns', Meagher's, Dana's and French's brigades, of the
right, were ordered to charge. The order did not come too soon for the
brave fellows who had been chafing like caged lions at the necessity of
fighting all day on the defensive. Right gallantly and with ringing
cheers did they spring forward, until within a hundred yards of the
enemy, when they halted and sent a scorching fire of musketry directly
into their