He had scarcely disappeared when the whole air became horribly vocal, as, with a long-drawn, screaming battle-yell, the second brigade of Texans moved to the assault, and the "thunders of fort and fleet" replied. Taking the same direction as before, but pushing forward with superior solidity and energy, the living wave swept up to the fortifications, howled along the course of the ditch, and surged clamorously against the palisade. Colburne was there with half the other officers and half the strength of the garrison, silent for the most part, but fighting desperately. Suddenly there was a shout of, "Back! back! They are coming round the palisade."
There was a stumbling rush for the cover of the fortification proper; and there the last possible line of defence was established instinctively and in a moment. Officers and men dropped on their knees behind the low bank of earth, and continued an irregular, deliberate fire, each discharging his piece as fast as he could load and aim. The garrison was not sufficient to form a continuous rank along even this single front, and on such portions of the works as were protected by the ditch, the soldiers were scattered almost as sparsely as sentinels. Nothing saved the place from being carried by assault except the fact that the assailants were unprovided with scaling ladders. The adventurous fellows who had flanked the palisade, rushed to the gate, and gave entrance to a torrent of tall, lank men in butternut or dirty grey clothing, their bronzed faces flushed with the excitement of supposed victory, and their yells of exultation drowning for a minute the sharp outcries of the wounded, and the rattle of the musketry. But the human billow was met by such a fatal discharge that it could not come over the rampart. The foremost dead fell across it, and the mass reeled backward. Unfortunately for the attack, the exterior slope was full of small knolls and gullies, beside being cumbered with rude shanties, of four or five feet in height made of bits of board, and shelter tents, which had served as the quarters of the garrison. Behind these covers scores if not hundreds sought refuge, and could not be induced to leave them for a second charge. They commenced with musketry, and from that moment the great peril was over. The men behind the rampart had only to lie quiet, to shoot every one who approached or rose at full length, and to wait till daylight should enable the gunboats to open with grape. In vain the rebel officers, foreseeing this danger, strove with voice and example to raise a yell and a rush. The impetuosity of the attack had died out, and could not be brought to life.
"They don't like the way it works," laughed the Louisiana lieutenant in high glee. "They ain't on it so much as they was."
For an hour the exchange of close musketry continued, the strength of the assailants steadily decreasing, as some fell wounded or dead, and others stole out of the fatal enclosure. Daylight showed more than a hundred fallen and nearly two hundred unharmed men; all lying or crouching among the irregularities of that bloody and bullet-torn glacis. Several voices cried out, "Stop firing. We surrender."
An officer in a lieutenant-colonel's uniform repeated these words, waving a white handkerchief. Then rising from his refuge he walked up to the rampart, leaped upon it, and stared in amazement at the thin line of defenders, soldiers and negroes intermingled.
"By ——! I won't surrender to such a handful," he exclaimed. "Come on, boys!"
A sergeant immediately shot him through the breast, and his body fell inside of the works. Not a man of those whom he had appealed to followed him; and only a few rose from their covers, to crouch again as soon as they witnessed his fate. The fire of the garrison reopened with violence, and soon there were new cries of, "We surrender," with a waving of hats and handkerchiefs.
"What shall we do?" asked the Louisiana lieutenant. "They are three to our one. If we let the d—n scoundrels in, they will knock us down and take our guns away from us."
Colburne rose and called out, "Do you surrender?"
"Yes, yes," from many voices, and a frantic agitation of broadbrims.