hurling us back, stumbling, fighting, cursing, until they also gained foothold with us on the bloody floor.  The memory of it is but hellish delirium, a recollection of fiends battling in a strange glare, amid stifling smoke, their faces distorted with passion, their muscles strained to the uttermost, their only desire to kill.  Uniform, organization, were alike blotted out; we scarcely recognized friend or foe; shoulder to shoulder, back to back we fought with whatever weapon came to hand.  I heard the crack of rifles; saw the leaping flames of discharge, the dazzle of plunging steel, the downward sweep of musket stocks.  There were crash of blows, the thud of falling bodies, cries of agony, and yells of exultation.  I was hurled back across the table by the rush, yet fell upon my feet.  The room seemed filled with dead men; I stepped upon them as I struggled for the door.  There were others with me—­who, or how many, I knew not.  They were but grim, battling demons, striking, gouging, firing.  I saw the gleam of knives, the gripping of fingers, the mad outshooting of fists.  I was a part of it, and yet hardly realized what I was doing.  I had lost all consciousness save the desire to strike.  I know I shouted orders into the din, driving my carbine at every face fronting me; I know others came through the smoke cloud, and we hurled them back, fairly cleaving a lane through them to the hall door.  I recall stumbling over dead bodies, of having a wounded man clutch at my legs, of facing that mob with whirling gun stock until the last fugitive was safely behind me, and then being hurled back against the wall by sudden rush.

How I got there I cannot tell, but I was in the hall, my clothing a mass of rags, my body aching from head to foot, and still struggling.  About me were men, my own men—­pressed together back to back, meeting as best they could the tide pouring against them from two sides.  Remorselessly they hurled us back, those behind pushing the front ranks into us.  We fought with fingers, fists, clubbed revolvers, paving the floor with bodies, yet inch by inch were compelled to give way, our little circle narrowing, and wedged tighter against the wall.  Mahoney had made the stairs, and fought there like a demon until some one shot him down.  I saw three men lift the great log which had barricaded the door, and hurl it crashing against the gray mass.  But nothing could stop them.  I felt within me the strength of ten men; the carbine stock shattered, I swung the iron barrel, striking until it bent in my hands.  I was dazed by a blow in the face, blood trickled into my eyes where a bullet had grazed my forehead, one shoulder smarted as though burned by fire, yet it never occurred to me to cease fighting.  Again and again the men rallied to my call, devils incarnate now, only to have their formation shattered by numbers.  We went back, back, inch by inch, slipping in blood, falling over our own dead, until we were pinned against the wall.  How many were