The work went quickly. The bullets flew wide of the mark. The fog suddenly lifted and a steady fusillade from the men hidden in the hills of Fredericksburg began to pick off the bridge builders with cruel accuracy. At times every man was down. New men were rushed to take their places and they fell.
The signal was given to the artillery and a hundred and forty-seven great guns suddenly began to sweep the doomed town. Houses crumpled like egg-shells and fires began to blaze.
The sharpshooters fell back. The bridges were laid and the grand army of a hundred and thirteen thousand began to pour across. The caissons, with their huge black, rifled-barrel guns rumbling along the resounding boards in a continuous roar like distant thunder.
On the southern shore the deep mud cut hills put every team to the test of its strength and the utmost skill of their drivers. Hundreds of men were in the mud at the wheels and still they would stick.
And then the patient heavens above heard the voices of army teamsters in plain and ornamental swearing! Such profanity was probably never heard on this earth before and it may well be hoped will not be heard again.
The driver whose wheels had stuck, cracked his whip first and yelled. He yelled again and cracked his whip. And then he began to swear, loudly, and angrily at first and then in lower, steadier, more polite terms—but always in an unending nerve-racking torrent.
He cursed his mules individually by name and the whole team collectively, and consigned it to the lowest depth of the deepest hell and then the devil for not providing a deeper one. Each trait of each mule, good and bad, he named without fear or favor and damned each alike with equal emphasis. He named each part of each mule's anatomy and damned it individually and as a whole, with full bill of particulars.
He swore in every key in the whole gamut of sound and last of all he damned himself for his utter inability to express anything he really felt.
The last big gun up the hill and the infantry poured into the town of Fredericksburg, halting in regiments and brigades in its streets. Only a few shots had been exchanged with the men in grey. They had withdrawn to the heights a mile beyond. The assault had been a mere parade. Many of the inhabitants had fled in terror at the approach of the men in blue. Some of the lower types of soldiers in the Northern army broke into these deserted houses and began to rob and pillage.
Julius "found" many delicacies lying about on lawns and in various unheard-of places. His master never pressed him with rude questions when his zeal bore such good results for their table.