“Ral-ly on the right!”—­and they came in at a run, fixing bayonets and forming loosely on the man at that end of the line.

“Forward... to save the Gov-ern-or of your State... doub-le quick... maaarch!”

Only one man disobeyed this astonishing command!  He was dead.  With a cheer they sprang forward over the twenty or thirty paces between them and their task.  The captain having a shorter distance to go arrived first—­simultaneously with the enemy.  A half-dozen hasty shots were fired at him, and the foremost man—­a fellow of heroic stature, hatless and bare-breasted—­made a vicious sweep at his head with a clubbed rifle.  The officer parried the blow at the cost of a broken arm and drove his sword to the hilt into the giant’s breast.  As the body fell the weapon was wrenched from his hand and before he could pluck his revolver from the scabbard at his belt another man leaped upon him like a tiger, fastening both hands upon his throat and bearing him backward upon the prostrate Governor, still struggling to rise.  This man was promptly spitted upon the bayonet of a Federal sergeant and his death-gripe on the captain’s throat loosened by a kick upon each wrist.  When the captain had risen he was at the rear of his men, who had all passed over and around him and were thrusting fiercely at their more numerous but less coherent antagonists.  Nearly all the rifles on both sides were empty and in the crush there was neither time nor room to reload.  The Confederates were at a disadvantage in that most of them lacked bayonets; they fought by bludgeoning—­and a clubbed rifle is a formidable arm.  The sound of the conflict was a clatter like that of the interlocking horns of battling bulls—­now and then the pash of a crushed skull, an oath, or a grunt caused by the impact of a rifle’s muzzle against the abdomen transfixed by its bayonet.  Through an opening made by the fall of one of his men Captain Armisted sprang, with his dangling left arm; in his right hand a full-charged revolver, which he fired with rapidity and terrible effect into the thick of the gray crowd:  but across the bodies of the slain the survivors in the front were pushed forward by their comrades in the rear till again they breasted the tireless bayonets.  There were fewer bayonets now to breast—­a beggarly half-dozen, all told.  A few minutes more of this rough work—­a little fighting back to back—­and all would be over.

Suddenly a lively firing was heard on the right and the left:  a fresh line of Federal skirmishers came forward at a run, driving before them those parts of the Confederate line that had been separated by staying the advance of the centre.  And behind these new and noisy combatants, at a distance of two or three hundred yards, could be seen, indistinct among the trees a line-of-battle!

Instinctively before retiring, the crowd in gray made a tremendous rush upon its handful of antagonists, overwhelming them by mere momentum and, unable to use weapons in the crush, trampled them, stamped savagely on their limbs, their bodies, their necks, their faces; then retiring with bloody feet across its own dead it joined the general rout and the incident was at an end.