General Henningsen moved up by a straggling street, with an adobe here and there, and the intervals filled up with fruit-trees, bushes, and cactus-hedges.  Grape-shot, which may be the saddest thing, touching the body, on earth, made miserable noise above us and miserable work among us; and we couriers had leave to dismount and crawl nearer the ground.  General Henningsen gained respect from us by sitting his horse alone.  He was a soldier, it is said, from a boy, in European wars,—­where this were a feeble skirmish; yet he wore his life here, perhaps, more loosely than in many a noisier battle.  However, he seemed calm and easy enough,—­never moving his head, even slightly, when the shot whizzed nearest him.  General Walker, though a brave man, and cool in battle, will nevertheless dodge when a bullet hisses him fiercely.  So would almost all his officers or soldiers, that I had an opportunity to notice.  Yet, after all, it is a mere trick of the nerves, and only indicates familiarity and long service, or a deaf ear,—­and not want of self-possession or strength of heart.  The advance at length became so harassing that the party halted under cover on the roadside, whilst yet some distance from the plaza, and from this lodgment the couriers were sent off to report progress at Rivas.

My post thenceforward was, with that of others, at the head of a lane not far from the town, where we heard the voices of the combatants and the whistling of balls, but could see nothing.  After some hours’ comparative quiet, the drums began beating a charge again, and every gun on the ground seemed awakened and doing its best.  Then there was a loud, heart-lifted shout, which rose above the din, and gave us too much joy; and, a moment after, Colonel Casey, a hard-faced, one-armed man, spurred past towards Rivas, saying, as he went, that our men were in the plaza, the greasers were running, and “we had ’em, sure as hell!” I recollect some one observing, that it were of no use to believe Colonel Casey, for he was the greatest liar in the army of Nicaragua.  And shortly after, the firing having ceased, another officer, Baldwin, I think it was, came past and told us, with curses of vexation, that the men had been checked, by command, in the heat of the assault, when the greasers were already wavering,—­and that the latter, recovering, had rebarricaded so strongly, that we might now all go back to Rivas and whistle.

However, this failure was not the end.  Towards evening, another detachment renewed the assault, and the uproar commenced again.  It seems, that, during the whole day, there was no simultaneous attack by all the detachments.  Now, it was the infantry who charged,—­with the riflemen in reserve, probably to prevent a rout, in case the enemy pursued a repulse; then, it was the riflemen, with the infantry in reserve; and so alternating through three or four charges;—­so that there never could have been more than a very contemptible force facing the enemy at one time.