Page:Into Mexico with General Scott (1920).djvu/160

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JERRY JOINS THE RANKS

El Telegrapho Hill—Cerro Gordo, the Big Hill—had been taken. When Jerry, lugging his precious drum, joined the Fourth Infantry the blue coats were swarming over the flat top, taking prisoners, and the Mexican rout was tearing down in the south making for the Jalapa road.

From the northwest edge of the hill another storming column had entered. This was the Second Infantry and Fourth Artillery, under Colonel Bennet Riley, of the Second Brigade, who had been ordered to make a half circuit. But they had arrived too late. Colonel Harney, the dragoon, and his Third and Seventh Infantry and First Artillery had captured the hill themselves. Those were the flags of the Third, the Seventh and the First. The flag of the Seventh had been raised first. Quartermaster-Sergeant Henry, of the Seventh, had been the man who had hauled down the Mexican flag from the flagpole on the stone tower, and the Seventh's color-bearers had instantly raised their own standards.

The battle was won, but not all over. Colonel Riley at once launched his column in pursuit of the fleeing Mexicans. General Shields' Volunteers—the Third and Fourth Illinois and the New Yorkers—were attacking in the west, to seize the batteries there and cut in to the Jalapa road. Cannon were booming in the south, where General Pillow's Tennesseeans and Pennsylvanians and a company of Fourth Ken