“You will see,” said La Croix, affecting mystery; he knew no more than the other.
Presently off went Long Tom on the top of the bastion, and the shot came roaring over the heads of the speakers.
The flags were changed, and off went Long Tom again at an elevation.
Ten seconds had scarcely elapsed when a tremendous explosion took place on the French right. Long Tom was throwing red-hot shot; one had fallen on a powder wagon, and blown it to pieces, and killed two poor fellows and a horse, and turned an artillery man at some distance into a seeming nigger, but did him no great harm; only took him three days to get the powder out of his clothes with pipe clay, and off his face with raw potato-peel.
When the tumbril exploded, the Prussians could be heard to cheer, and they turned to and fired every iron spout they owned. Long Tom worked all day.
They got into a corner where the guns of the battery could not hit them or him, and there was his long muzzle looking towards the sky, and sending half a hundredweight of iron up into the clouds, and plunging down a mile off into the French lines.
And, at every shot, the man on horseback made signals to let the gunners know where the shot fell.
At last, about four in the afternoon, they threw a forty-eight-pound shot slap into the commander-in-chief’s tent, a mile and a half behind trenches.
Down comes a glittering aide-de-camp as hard as he can gallop.
“Colonel Dujardin, what are you about, sir? YOUR BASTION has thrown a round shot into the commander-in-chief’s tent.”