now lost a moment in the woods, now
flashing again in the open. They paused and the artillery dashed to the
front, spread their guns in line and roared their call of death to the
struggling, fleeing, demoralized army. Another shout and the charging
hosts swept on again to a new point of vantage from which to fire.
Through clouds of smoke and dust the red tongues of flame from a hundred
big-mouthed guns flashed and faded and flashed again.

The charging men slipped on the wet grass where the dead lay thickest.
Waves of white curling smoke rose above the tree-tops and hung in dense
clouds over the field lighted by the red glare of the sinking sun.

The relief corps could be seen dashing on, with stretchers and
ambulances following in the wake of the victorious army.

The hum and roar of the vast field of carnage came now on the ears of
the listener--the groans of the wounded and the despairing cry of the
dying. And still the living waves of gray-tipped steel rolled on in
relentless sweep.

Again the fleeing Federal soldiers choked the waters of Bull Run. Masses
of struggling fugitives were pushed from the banks into the water and
pressed down. Here and there a wounded man clung to the branch of an
overhanging tree until exhausted and sank to rise no more.

The meadows were trampled and red. Hundreds of weak and tired men were
ridden down by cavalry and crushed by artillery. On and on rushed the
remorseless machine of the Confederacy, crushing, killing, scarring,
piling the dead in heaps.

It was ten o'clock that night before the army of Lee halted and Pope's
exhausted lines fell into the trenches around Centreville for a few
hours' respite. At dawn Jackson was struggling with his tired victorious
division to again turn Pope's flank, get into his rear and cut off his
retreat.

A cold and drenching rainstorm delayed his march and the rabble that was
once Pope's army succeeded in getting into the defenses of Washington.

Davis' army took seven thousand prisoners and picked up more than two
thousand wounded soldiers whom their boastful commander had left on the
field to die. Thirty pieces of artillery and twenty thousand small arms
fell into Lee's hands.

Pope's losses since Jackson first struck his advance guard at Culpeper
Court House had been more than twenty thousand men and his army had been
driven into Washington so utterly demoralized it was unfit for further
service until reorganized under an abler man.