I promised to do so, and then went out to get some oysters. The candles had made me quite light-headed.
From this, my boy, you will perceive that Russia "may be counted upon in an emergency;" as the man said of the bear-skin upon which he was reckoning his small change.
On Thursday, bright and early, I mounted my gothic steed Pegasus, and started for Duck Lake.
Upon reaching the Mackerel camp, I found all the spectacled warriors under arms for a fray, the unaccommodating Confederacies on the other side of Paris having urged some rifled objections to the construction of a pontoon bridge across Duck Lake. The chap who was building the bridge had only just untied his second paper of nails, when a potato from some Confederate marksman, in the second-story of Paris, hit him violently in the stomach. Simultaneously the cover of a dinner-pot cracked his knuckles, and, as he fell back in good order, a brick-bat tapped him on the head. Believing that hostilities had commenced, the new General of the Mackerel Brigade hastily put on all his dirty clothes, and ordered the Orange County Howitzers to commit incendiarism with Paris, simultaneously directing Rear Admiral Head to moor the "Secretary Welles" abreast of the nearest Confederacy and shell him with great slaughter.
Under command of Captain Samyule Sa-mith, the Howitzers were opened upon Paris, and commenced such a tornado of round shot and grape that the surrounding landscape was very much defaced. There was much noise, my boy,—there was much noise.
But the great sight of the hour was the manœuvring of the iron-plated Mackerel squadron on the tempestuous waters of Duck Lake. After hastily making a fire in the stove on the quarter-deck, and placing a tumbler where it could warm, the stern old Rear Admiral ordered the Mackerel crew to report how much water there was in the hold. The crew repaired to the stern-sheets and reported "One pitcherful and two lemons;" whereupon the hardy old sea-dog swore in his iron-plated manner, and ordered the swivel-gun amidships to be trained upon the basement windows of Paris. Everything being in readiness, the word was given to fire!
Bang! went the horrid instrument of carnage, and the hideous missile went crashing through the back basement windows, cutting a bow from the cap of a venerable Florence Nightingale, who was at that moment making a sponge-cake for some sick Confederacies, and driving the stove-pipe clear through the wall. The aged Nightingale thought that something had happened, and says she: "Well, I never did!"
Rear Admiral Head smiled; but it was the horrid smile of naval bloodthirstiness. "Revolve my turret!" says he, grimly, "I fight not against women; but the other window must be broken."
The venerable Neptune leaned over his columbiad to make sure of this shot, unconsciously pressing his stomach against the but-end of his gun. There was a report, my boy; the swivel-gun kicked, and the Rear Admiral fell upon the deck with a promiscuous violence.
Meanwhile, Company 3, Regiment 5, under Captain Villiam Brown, had waded across Duck Lake in as many divisions as there were Mackerels, and immediately commenced a tremendous fire of musketry at the upper windows of Paris, wounding a Confederacy who kept a shoe-store up there, and reducing two flower-pots to fragments.