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attle on Breed's hill, there would never have been a red-coated soldier show his head above our line of works and lived to tell of it. It seemed to me as if all the space between the fortification and the foot of the hill was covered with lobster backs swarming upon us, and I know that if perchance they were twenty musket-charges left among us, it was what might be called, in such desperate straights, rare good fortune. Then the enemy clambered up over the parapet, while we met them with a volley of stones, throwing the missiles with as good aim as we had discharged our muskets, and while one might have counted thirty, held them in check. I have often wondered since, if we had had at our hand as many stones as could have been used, what would have been the result? But even that poor method of warfare was denied us, for the supply we had gathered was speedily expended, and, what was worse, the fact that we had ceased to shoot bullets showed the Britishers plainly the plight into which we had fallen. The first officer who appeared above the parapet was that same Major Pitcairn who had led the troops at Lexington when our people were slaughtered there, and although I was no longer assailed by the fever of battle, and could not well look upon the death of a human as being a reason for rejoicing, yet I shouted aloud in glee when a negro soldier among us shot that dastard through the head. My cry of triumph was speedily swallowed up by the shouts of the lobster backs as they leaped into the redoubt from all sides, coming at us fearlessly with their bayonets, knowing full well we could not make reply save with the butts of our muskets, and these we used, so desperate had our people become, until a score of the king's men had fallen before such crude weapons. Again and again as we thus fought hand to hand, we Americans retreating backwards step by step, striving to keep the red-coated enemy from spitting us like larks on a toasting fork, I saw the muskets of our people shattered, the butt breaking from the barrel with the force of a blow upon the head of an enemy. "Are we ordered to retreat?" I shouted wildly in Hiram's ear as we fought side by side, Archie and Silas just behind us. "Some one has said that Colonel Prescott gave the order; but whether he did or not there is no longer any chance to make resistance," Hiram replied as he crushed the head of a Britisher much the same as you would shatter an egg. "
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