They should reflect: The theory, not to say the eye, which aims a squirrel rifle will point a cannon.
Colonel Rennie, when his English recoil, keeps on--face red with grief and rage.
“It's my time to die!” says he to Captain Henry. “But before I die, I shall at least see the inside of those mud walls.”
Colonel Rennie is wrong. A bullet finds his brain as he lifts his head above the breastworks, and he slips back dead in the ditch outside. Major King and Captain Henry die with him, pierced each by a handful of bullets.
When the English flinch and Colonel Rennie falls, the bugler--a boy of fourteen--climbs a tree, not one hundred yards from the General's line. Perched among the branches, he sounds his dauntless charges. The General gives orders to let the boy alone. And so the little bugler, protected by the word of the General, sings his shrill onsets to the last.
Finally an artillery-man goes out to him.
“Come down, my son!” says the cannoneer. “The war's about over!”
The little bugler comes down, and is at once taken to the fatherly heart of Papa Plauche, who declares him to be a sucking Hector, and is for adopting him as his son on the spot, but is restrained by thoughts of Madam Plauche.
Sir Edward's main assault, with General Gibbs, meets no fairer fortune than falls to Colonel Rennie by the river. Confusion prevails on the threshold of the movement; for Colonel Mullins with his Forty-fourth refuses to go forward. Later he will be courtmartialed, and dismissed in disgrace. Just now, however, the recreant makes a shameful tangle of the English van. As a quickest method of setting the tangle straight, General Gibbs, as did Colonel Rennie, orders a charge. The column moves forward, the mutinous Forty-fourth on the right flank, led by its major.
General Gibbs advances, brushing with the shoulder of his corps, the cypress swamp. Behind the mud walls in his front, the steady hunting-shirt men are waiting. The General is there, to give the latter patience and hold them in even check.
“Easy, boys!” he cries. “Remember your ranges! Don't fire until they are within two hundred yards!”
On rush the English. At six hundred yards they are met by the fire of the artillery. They heed it not, but press sullenly forward, closing up the gaps in their ranks, where the solid shot go crashing through, as fast as made. Five hundred yards, four hundred, three hundred! Still they come! Two hundred yards!