Webb, furious, rallied his men, while Penhallow, Haskell and Gibbon vainly urged an advance.  A colour-sergeant ran forward and fell dead.  A corporal caught up the flag and dropped.  A Confederate general leaped over the deserted wall and laid a hand on Cushing’s gun.  He fell instantly at the side of the dead captain, as with a sudden roar of fury the broken Pennsylvanians rolled in a disordered mass of men and officers against the disorganized valour which held the wall.

The smoke held—­still holds, the secret of how many met the Northern men at the wall; how long they fought among Cushing’s guns, on and over the wall, no man who came out of it could tell.  Penhallow emptied his revolver and seizing a musket fought the brute battle with the men who used fists, stones, gun-rammers—­a howling mob of blue and grey.  And so the swaying flags fell down under trampling men and the lost wall was won.  The fight was over.  Men fell in scores, asking quarter.  The flanking fires had been merciless, and the slope was populous with dead and wounded men, while far away the smoke half hid the sullen retreat of the survivors.  The prearranged mechanism of war became active.  Thousands of prisoners were being ordered to the rear.  Men stood still, gasping, breathless or dazed.  As Penhallow stood breathing hard, from the right wing, among the long silent dead of Cemetery Hill, arose a wild hurrah.  It gathered volume, rolled down the long line of corps after corps, and died away among the echoes of the Pennsylvania hills.  He looked about him trying to recover interest.  Some one said that Hancock and Gibbon were wounded.  The rush of the melee had carried him far down the track of the charge, and having no instant duty he sat down, his clothes in tatters.  As he recovered strength, he was aware of General Meade on horseback with an aide.  The general, white and grave, said to Haskell, “How has it gone here?”

An officer cried, “They are beaten,” showing two flags he held.

Meade said sharply:  “Damn the flags!  Are the men gone?”

“Yes, sir, the attack is over.”

He uncovered, said only, “Thank God!” gave some rapid orders and rode away beside the death-swath, careful, as Penhallow saw, to keep his horse off of the thirty scattered flags, many lying under or over the brave who had fought and lost in this memorable charge.

Penhallow could have known of the battle only what he had seen, but a few words from an officer told him that nowhere except at this part of the line of the Second Corps had the attack been at all fortunate.

On the wide field of attack our ambulance corps was rescuing the hundreds of wounded Confederates, many of them buried, helpless, beneath the bodies of the motionless dead.  Two soldiers stood near him derisively flaunting flags.

“Quit that,” cried the Colonel, “drop them!” The men obeyed.

“Death captured them—­not we,” said Penhallow, and saw that he was speaking to a boyish Confederate lieutenant, who had just dragged himself limping out of the ghastly heap of dead.