A sudden darkness succeeded to the bright glare, but from the midst of the gloom the agonizing cries of the wounded and the dying rent our very hearts.
"Make way there! make way! here comes Mackie's party," cried an officer in the front, and as he spoke the forlorn hope of the Eighty-eighth came forward at a run; jumping recklessly into the ditch, they made towards the breach; the supporting division of the stormers gave one inspiring cheer, and sprang after them.

The rush was tremendous; for scarcely had we reached the crumbling ruins of the rampart, when the vast column, pressing on like some mighty torrent, bore down upon our rear.

Now commenced a scene to which nothing I ever before conceived of war could in any degree compare: the whole ground, covered with combustibles of every deadly and destructive contrivance, was rent open with a crash; the huge masses of masonry bounded into the air like things of no weight; the ringing clangor of the iron howitzers, the crackling of the fuses, the blazing splinters, the shouts of defiance, the more than savage yell of those in whose ranks alone the dead and the dying were numbered, made up a mass of sights and sounds almost maddening with their excitement.

On we struggled; the mutilated bodies of the leading files almost filling the way.
By this time the Third Division had joined us, and the crush of our thickening ranks was dreadful; every moment some well-known leader fell dead or mortally wounded, and his place was supplied by some gallant fellow who, springing from the leading files, would scarcely have uttered his cheer of encouragement, ere he himself was laid low.

Many a voice with whose notes I was familiar, would break upon my ear in tones of heroic daring, and the next moment burst forth in a death-cry.