The solemn fear in which the English hold the hunting-shirt men finds pathetic evidence. As the columns wheel into position, Colonel Dale of the Highlanders gives a letter and his watch to the surgeon.
“Carry them to my wife,” says he.
“I'll peel for no American!” and twenty-four hours later he is buried in that cloak.
The English stand to their arms, and wait the breaking of day. Slowly the minutes drag their leaden length along; morning comes at last.
With the first streaks of livid dawn, a Congreve rocket flashes skyward from Sir Edward's headquarters. The rocket is the English signal to advance. In a moment, General Gibbs, General Keane, and Colonel Dale with his “praying” Highlanders are in motion.
The signal rocket uncouples thousands upon thousands of fellow rockets; the air is on fire with them as they blaze aloft in mighty arcs, to fall and explode among the hunting-shirt men.
“Toys for children, boys,” cries the General, as he observes the hunting-shirt men watching the flaming shower with curious, non-understanding eyes; “toys for children! They'll hurt no one!”
The General is right. Those congreve rockets are supposed to be as deadly as artillery. Like many another commodity of war, however, meant primarily to fatten contractors, they prove as innocuous as so many huge fireflies. The hunting-shirt men laugh at them. The battery of eighteen-pounders, wherewith the English second that flight of rockets, is a more serious affair.
As the sun shoots up above the cypress swamp and rolls back the mists of morning, the English make a gallant picture. The dull yellow of the stubble in front of the General's line is gay with splotches of red and gray and green and tartan, the colors of the various English corps.
The hunting-shirt men, however, are not given much space for admiration; for, with one grand crash, the big guns go into action and the red-green-gray-tartan picture is swallowed up in powder smoke. Also, it is now that Papa Plauche's band blares forth “Yankee Doodle,” while those anticipatory hot shot set fire to the plantation buildings. As the latter burst out at door and window in smoke and flames, Colonel Rennie and his riflemen are driven into the open. The conflagration gets much in the English way, and spoils the drill-room nicety of Sir Edward's onset as he has it planned.