enough doubtless.  After some delay here, part of us rangers, led by Colonel Waters, recrossed the street, and advanced, crouching, toward the barricade spitting flames in front.  We crept, double file, along a palisade of tall cactus which bordered this part of the street, against whose thorns my neighbor on the right would frequently thrust me, as the shot nipped him closely,—­inconvenient, but without pain, so intense was the distraction of the moment.  We had crept within a few rods of the barricade, where we had glimpse of faces through embrasures, amidst the smoke and flame, and our leader, as he afterwards said, had it on his lips to order the forward rush,—­when the party attacking on our right, behind the trees, gave back, and our own mere handful was checked, and retraced its steps running.  A moment later, and we had gone upon that high barricade, some score of us, without backers in the street, to draw on us the enemy’s whole fire,—­and very likely—­unless they had foolishly fled at our first rush—­to be all killed there.

On the retreat, I with some others was ordered out of the ranks to pick up a wounded officer and carry him off the ground.  We took him down the street, turned a corner, and laid him on the floor of a church some distance beyond.  He had an arm broken and a bad wound in his body,—­a hopeless man; but upborne and defiant through aguardiente and native strength.  After getting him off our hands, we returned to our company, which we found sheltering behind the adobe where we had halted when on the advance.  Here we remained some time, with instructions from General Walker (whom, at this time, we seemed to follow as personal guard) to keep ourselves out of reach of the missiles flying on either side of the house.  The darkness was so thick that we could see only what was passing immediately around us, and therefore were ignorant as to the position of the foot, and what was now doing amongst them.  It was said, however, afterwards, that their officers strove to rally and bring them up to another charge, but that they proved mutinous, and refused to move.

They had suffered, indeed, discouragement 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.