"Halt, you tarriers!" says Captain Bob Shorty, in a voice trembling with bravery. "Form yourselves into a square according to Hardee, while I stir up this here bush. There's something in that bush," says he, "and it's either the Southern Confederacy, or some other cow."
The captain then leaned up to a tree to make him steady on his pins, my boy, and rammed his sword into the bushes like a poker into a fire—thus:
Nobody hurt on our side.
What followed, my boy, can be easily told. At an early hour on the evening of the same day, a solitary horseman might have been seen approaching Washington. It was Captain Bob Shorty, with his hat caved in, and a rainbow spouting under his left eye. He went straight to the head-quarters of the General of the Mackerel Brigade, and says he:
"General, I've reconnoitered in force, and found the enemy both numerious and cantankerous."
"Beautiful!" says the general; "but where is your company?"
"Well, now," says Captain Bob Shorty, "you'd hardly believe it; but the last I see of that ere company, it was engaged in the pursuit of happiness at the rate of six miles an hour, with the rebels at the wrong end of the track. Dang my rations!" says Captain Bob Shorty, "if I don't think that ere bob-tailed company has got to Richmond by this time."
"Thunder!" says the general, "didn't they kill any of the rebels?"
"Nary a Confederacy," says Captain Bob Shorty. "The bullets all rolled out of them ere muskets of theirs before the powder got fairly on fire. Them muskets," continued Captain Bob Shorty, "would be good for a bombardment. You might possibly hit a city with them at two yards' range; but in personal encounters they are inferior to the putty-blowers of our innocent childhood."