Victory! None but those who have fought a stern foe to the bloody close, and seen his ranks break and fly, and the charging columns pursue, ranks of bristling steel rushing in through clouds of battle smoke, know what pride and exultation are in that word.
Victory! Reno's column, that had outflanked the rebels on the west side, fighting valiantly, charged simultaneously with the Zouaves. The whole line followed the example, and went in with colors flying, and shouts of joy filling the welkin which had been shaken so lately with the jar of battle. Over fallen trees, over pits and ditches, through brush, and bog, and water, the conquering hosts poured in; Frank's regiment with the rest, and himself among the foremost that planted their standard on the breastwork.
There were the abandoned cannon, still warm and smoking. There lay a deserted flag, bearing the Latin inscription "Aut vincere aut mori,"—Victory or death,—flung down in the precipitate flight.
"They couldn't conquer, and they didn't want to die; so they split the difference, and run," observed Seth Tucket.
There too lay the dead and dying, whom the boastful enemy had forsaken where they fell. One of these who had not run was an officer—handsome and young. He was not yet dead. A strange light was in his eyes as he looked on the forms of the foemen thronging around him, saw the faces of the victors, and heard the cheering. Success and glory were for them—for him defeat and death.
"Lift me up," he said, "and let me look at you once."
They raised him to a sitting posture, supported partly by a gun-carriage, and partly by the arms of his conquerors. And they pressed around him, their voices hushed, their triumphant brows saddened with respect for the dying.
"Though we have been fighting each other," he said, solemnly, "we are still brothers. God forgive me if I have done wrong! I too am a northern man,—I too——"
As he spoke, a figure in the uniform of his foes sprang through the crowd to his feet.
"O, my brother! O, my brother George!"