“You, Captain, have most cause to be grateful for the character of the missile.”
“By my sowl, I don’t know about that!—a shell or a twenty-four would have grazed me all the same; but a big shot would have been mighty inconvanient to the head of my friend Haller, here!”
This was true. My head was nearly in range; and had the shot been a large one, it would have struck me upon the left temple. As it was, I felt the “wind” of the bullet, and already began to suffer a painful sensation over the eye.
“I’m mighty curious to know which of us the fellow has missed, Captain,” said Hennessy, turning to me as he spoke.
“If it were not a ‘bull’ I should say I hope neither of us. I’m inclined to think, with Colonel Harding, that it was altogether an accident.”
“By the powers! an ugly accident too, that has spoiled five dollars’ worth of an illigant cap, and a pint of as good brandy as ever was mixed with hot water and lemon-juice.”
“Plenty left, Captain,” cried the major. “Come, gentlemen, don’t let this damp us; fill up! till up! Adge, out with the corks! Cudjo, where’s the screw?”
“Never mind the screw, Mage,” cried the adjutant, repeating his old trick upon the neck of a fresh bottle, which, nipped off under the wire, fell upon a heap of others that had preceded it.
And the wine again foamed and sparkled, and glasses circled round, and the noisy revelry waxed as loud as ever. The incident of the shot was soon forgotten. Songs were sung, and stories told, and toasts drunk; and with song and sentiment, and toast and story, and the wild excitement of wit and wine, the night waned away. With many of those young hearts, old with hope and burning with ambition, it was the last “Twenty-second” they would ever celebrate. Half of them never hailed another.