Penhallow said, turning to Gibbon, "They have—I think—they have no supporting batteries—that is strange." Haskell and Gibbon had gone as he spoke and the low crest was free at this point of all but the artillery force. To left, the projecting clump of trees and the lines of the Second Corps—all he could see—were ominously quiet.
Gibbon came back to the crest. He said, "We may need backing if they concentrate on us; here our line is too thin." And still the orderly grey columns came on silently, without their usual charging-yell.
"Ah!" exclaimed Penhallow without lowering his glass, as he gazed to our left. The clamour of cannon broke out from little Round Top.
"Rifles!" exclaimed Gibbon. "Good!" Their left made no reply, but seemed to draw away from the fire.
"I can see no more," said the Colonel, "but they stopped at the
Emmitsburg road."
The acrid odour of musketry drifted across the field as he turned to gaze at the left wing of the fast coming onset. Far to our right they came under the fire of Cemetery Hill and of an advanced Massachusetts regiment. He saw the blue flags of Virginia sway, fall, and rise no more, while scattered and broken the Confederates fled or fell under the fury of the death messages from above the long-buried dead of the village graves. "Now then, Cushing!" cried Hunt, and the guns on the Crest opened fire.
It was plain that the long Confederate lines, frayed on each flank, had crowded together making a vast wedge of attack. Then all along our miles of troops a crackle of musketry broke out, the big guns bellowing. The field was mostly lost to view in the dense smoke, under which the charging-force halted and steadily returned the fire.
"I can't see," cried Cushing near by.
"Quite three hundred yards or more," said the colonel, "and you are hurt,
Cushing. Go to the rear." The blood was streaming down his leg.
"Not I—it is nothing. Hang those fellows!" A New York battery gallantly run in between disabled guns crowded Cushing's cannon. He cried, "Section one to the front, by hand!"