The smoke from the long rifles hung so heavy in that misty morning that Jackson, slightly to the right of center, could not ascertain the result of the militiamen’s blast. So with Abner Duncan and Tom Overton he rode to Coffee’s end of the line. A few moments later there was another sharp, ringing volley, and Jackson increased his horse’s gallop. When he was within 100 yards of Coffee, the smoke lifted just enough for the surprised commander to see the British “falling back in a confused mass with the first ranks of their column ... blown away.”[31] So far as Coffee was concerned, the grape and canister were “nothing to the carnage of our rifles and muskets when they (the British) reached them.” General Carroll also caught the force of the attack when nearly 2,000 men bore down upon the center of his line. As before, his rifles answered with an authority which inspired one officer to write: “The determined firmness of the men, silent as death at their posts, convinced me that on that day they would add fresh laurels to those already won by Tennessee.”[32] Regrouping, the British line advanced a second time only to be cut down again. It was now apparent that Pakenham’s well devised plans had gone awry. The depleted columns which did reach the works could not scale them because an Irish regiment and a West Indian regiment, entrusted with the responsibility of carrying the fascines and scaling ladders, had failed in their duty. A major, a lieutenant, and twenty men finally pressed across the ditch on the American left, and the two officers started up the works. The major was riddled immediately with bullets, but the lieutenant managed to scale the top and demanded the surrender of a couple of militia officers facing him. To this demand they suggested that he look behind him, which he did and discovered to his consternation that the men whom he thought were following him “had vanished as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up.”[33] Of greater consequence to the British, however, was the death of General Pakenham, who had been cut down as he attempted to arouse his stricken troops for another assault. During the struggle, several Tennesseans became mixed with the Kentuckians and one of them was accidentally killed by a Kentucky sharpshooter when a gun discharged prematurely. One Tennessean, remembered only as Paleface, remained with the Kentuckians throughout the battle. A gaunt little man, Paleface received the sword of a surrendering British officer and, in the closing minutes of the fight, killed at nearly 300 yards a retreating Redcoat who was making obscene gestures at the defenders.