When within about six hundred yards of the fort it was halted at the head of the regiments already stationed, and the line of battle formed.  The prospect was such as might daunt the courage of old and well-tried veterans, but these soldiers of a few weeks seemed but impatient to take the odds, and to make light of impossibilities.  A slightly rising ground, raked by a murderous fire, to within a little distance of the battery; a ditch holding three feet of water; a straight lift of parapet, thirty feet high; an impregnable position, held by a desperate and invincible foe.

Here the men were addressed in a few brief and burning words by their heroic commander.  Here they were besought to glorify their whole race by the lustre of their deeds; here their faces shone with a look which said, “Though men, we are ready to do deeds, to achieve triumphs, worthy the gods!” here the word of command was given:—­

“We are ordered and expected to take Battery Wagner at the point of the bayonet.  Are you ready?”

“Ay, ay, sir! ready!” was the answer.

And the order went pealing down the line, “Ready!  Close ranks!  Charge bayonets!  Forward!  Double-quick, march!”—­and away they went, under a scattering fire, in one compact line till within one hundred feet of the fort, when the storm of death broke upon them.  Every gun belched forth its great shot and shell; every rifle whizzed out its sharp-singing, death-freighted messenger.  The men wavered not for an instant;—­forward,—­forward they went; plunged into the ditch; waded through the deep water, no longer of muddy hue, but stained crimson with their blood; and commenced to climb the parapet.  The foremost line fell, and then the next, and the next.  The ground was strewn with the wrecks of humanity, scattered prostrate, silent, where they fell,—­or rolling under the very feet of the living comrades who swept onward to fill their places.  On, over the piled-up mounds of dead and dying, of wounded and slain, to the mouth of the battery; seizing the guns; bayoneting the gunners at their posts; planting their flag and struggling around it; their leader on the walls, sword in hand, his blue eyes blazing, his fair face aflame, his clear voice calling out, “Forward, my brave boys!”—­then plunging into the hell of battle before him.  Forward it was.  They followed him, gathered about him, gained an angle of the fort, and fought where he fell, around his prostrate body, over his peaceful heart,—­shielding its dead silence by their living, pulsating ones,—­till they, too, were stricken down; then hacked, hewn, battered, mangled, heroic, yet overcome, the remnant was beaten back.

Ably sustained by their supporters, Anglo-African and Anglo-Saxon vied together to carry off the palm of courage and glory.  All the world knows the last fought with heroism sublime:  all the world forgets this and them in contemplating the deeds and the death of their compatriots.  Said Napoleon at Austerlitz to a young Russian officer, overwhelmed with shame at yielding his sword, “Young man, be consoled:  those who are conquered by my soldiers may still have titles to glory.”  To say that on that memorable night the last were surpassed by the first is still to leave ample margin on which to write in glowing characters the record of their deeds.