Captain Bob Shorty and I had got ready our bits of smoked glass, to preserve our eyes from the too-great glitter of the dazzling achievement about to come off, when we noticed that Villiam motioned with his famous sword, Escalibar, for the spectacled warriors to pause a moment.
"If any of you martial beings happen to have any small change about you at this exciting moment," says Villiam, paternally, "I will take charge of it, for safety."
This noble proposition, my boy, might have been accepted unanimously, had not the discharge, at that instant, of a horse-pistol from the ramparts of Fort Bledandide caused the entire regiment to partially disappear! That is to say, every man went down upon his stomach, according to the latest principles of regimental strategy.
"Ah!" says Villiam, "how are the mighty fallen!"
Loudly rang a tremendous horse-laugh from the Confederacies in the Fort, several of whom were seen making off toward Paris with Orange County howitzers under each arm. I could see, by the aid of my smoked glass, that the Chivalry on the ramparts was sitting on a chest, with his discharged horse-pistol across his knee, and a series of feeble winks chasing each other around his Confederate eyelids.
"By all that's Federal!" says Captain Bob Shorty, "the scorpion surrenders!"
At the word, up sprang Regiment 5, like the men of Roderick Dhu, and straightforward they swept into Fort Bledandide, as a wave of the angry sea will sometimes sweep into a doomed barrel on the beach. Such was the shock of this dare-devil charge, that the winking Confederacy on the ramparts incontinently rolled off his chest and was captured without much carnage.
"Do you surrender to the United States of America?" says Villiam, with much star-spangled banner in his manner.
The Confederacy raised himself up on an elbow and hiccup'd gloomily.
"By all that's Federal!" says Captain Bob Shorty, "he's been drinking some of that air Commissary whiskey of ours."