"Ah, it is you who would presume to silence my Carmagnole, stump-nose! I'll show you that you were never cast to clip my sweetheart's words!"
Just then, in response to a sign from the captain, the trumpeter of the battery sounded the signal to "Fire!"
"Come, my cadet," cried Duchemin to the soldier with the burning match, "the soup is ready—all we need is to serve it! Light her! light her! Let her go!"
The cannonier touched off the fuse with his match, and Carmagnole's discharge rang out several seconds ahead of the general volley of the battery. Gazing again through his field-glass to watch the effect of his shell, Duchemin cried out: "There she is! The stump-nose is knocked off one wheel, and two of her flunkies are keeled over. Long live the Republic!"
In fact, Carmagnole's ball had crushed one of the wheels of the howitzer and knocked down two of the Austrian artillerists an instant before the hostile battery had gotten in its first shot. But almost immediately the enemy's guns were crowned with several little clouds of white smoke, lighted up with streaks of flame. A prolonged roar reached the Frenchmen, and Duchemin exclaimed, turning towards the stone wall where the volunteer infantrymen were entrenched:
"Citizens, look out for the shells!"
Hardly had Duchemin sounded the warning when the rain of iron was upon them; the balls screamed, the shells rebounded and burst. The commander of the little republican battery was cut in two by a flying shell; horse and rider went down mangled before the shot. Another shell burst between two cannon, killing one of their crew and wounding two others so severely that they fell and with difficulty dragged themselves to the ambulance sheltered behind the farmhouse.
"Cannoniers! Load at will! Aim for the howitzers!" cried the first lieutenant, assuming command. The trumpet repeated the order through its metal throat. The artillerymen vied with one another in haste to charge their pieces. Then cries of "Fire! Fire!" rang out from the farmhouse, which suddenly became enveloped in thick black smoke. A shell exploding in a hay loft had set the blaze.
"In one way that little bonfire isn't bad," said Castillon, "for it is deuced cold. But too much is too much, and now we're going to roast." And catching sight of the volunteer Duresnel, pale, propping himself up with his gun, his lips working as though he would talk, though no sound proceeded from them, Castillon continued: "Well, neighbor, here we are, 'wo'd of honor;' but what the devil do you see back there to make your eyes pop out so?" So saying, Castillon followed Duresnel's fixed and frightened stare, and what he saw made him pull the young volunteer toward him, with the words: "Come, comrade, do not look that way. You haven't got the hang of the thing yet. That is the fortune of war."
"My heaven," stammered Duresnel, as he followed Castillon's advice. "My heaven, it is horrible! Poor victims!"