eight o'clock
`` Come back and we 'll whip hell out o ' you ! '' Slowly the shattered regiment fell back down the bloody slope , stumbling over their dead and wounded . The dim smoke-bound valley was a slaughter pen . Where magnificent lines of blue had marched with flashing bayonets and streaming banners at eight o'clock , the dead lay in mangled heaps , and the wounded huddled among them slowly freezing to death . John saw a magnificent gun a heap of junk with four dead horses and every cannoneer on the ground dead or freezing where they fell . A single shell had done the work . Riderless horses galloped wildly over the field , shying at the grim piles of dark blue bodies , sniffing the blood and neighing pitifully .