Along the front, "Forward!" was the word, and the Conic Section swept to the assault, like a sea of bayonets dashed against a shore of adamantine rock from the hollow of an Almighty hand. Were it possible, my boy, for bullets to ascend perpendicularly until they just reached the top of mountain breastworks, and then slant down at an acute angle to where the foe lay hidden, it is possible that the frequent volleys from the Conic Section might have produced some carnage; but as the face of the hill before our troops was straight up and down, with the noisy Confederacies on the extreme summit, the Mackerel musketry simply occasioned a rise in Federal lead, without a fall in Confederate leaders.
Some Confederacies in their lofty intrenchments just tipped over a few cannon, so that the balls might roll out upon the mackerels, and, says one of them:
"If you mudsills will stay there a little longer, we'll manage it so as to drop the shells on you from our hands, without using the guns at all."
Captain Bob Shorty heard this jeer, and as he tied his handkerchief over a wound on his forehead, a sickly smile illustrated his ghastly face, and says he:
"We might as well all die here together. The grave, after all, is a softer bed than many of these Mackerel beings have been accustomed to."
Sergeant O'Pake who always takes things literally, turned to Bob, and, says he:
"What makes it soft?"
"Because," says Captain Bob Shorty, looking vacantly at the sergeant, "it is a bed of down. Did you never hear the old song of 'Down among the Dead Men?'" But let me not linger over the scene, my boy.
That night, the remaining Mackerels silently recrossed Duck Lake, and the General penned the following
DESPATCH.