“Sartin. Dat’s what. A coht-martial done try ’em, an’ done say dey’s to be hanged up, fo’ desartin’ in face ob the innimy an’ shootin’ deir own men.”
“Whew!” Jerry whistled. He hastened on.
He did not find Lieutenant Grant; Corporal Finerty had learned little, Hannibal did not come back, and Sergeant Mulligan kept mum. But all the remainder of the afternoon the excitement in the camp increased; the old soldiers there “smelled powder.” The reconnoitring group returned, and there was a council of general officers at commander-in-chief’s headquarters. Furthermore, in the early evening General Cadwalader’s brigade of the Voltigeurs and the Eleventh and Fourteenth Infantry with Captain Drum’s battery of the Fourth Artillery had marched in from the General Pillow’s Third Division camp, three miles south.
After retreat old Sergeant Mulligan plumped himself down at the supper mess with the words:
“We attack at daylight to-morrow, lads.”
“Where, man?”
“The King’s Mill an’ the Casa-Mata.”
“And Chapultepec?”
“Not as I know of. The Mill an’ the Casa-Mata be the First Division’s job, helped out by the Cadwalader brigade. Sure, the ould man—an’ I’m manin’ no disrayspect—had been a-lookin’ at yon mill from headquarters, an’ he says, snappin’ his glass together, says he: ‘I must daystroy that place.’ Whereby he sends in the First Division, o’ course, wid the Cadwalader troops to watch an’ see how it’s done.”
“An’ what does he want of those old buildin’s, when we might better be takin’ Chapultepec?”