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The kindly sentry aimed a smashing blow at my left foot, which I was luckily able to partially deflect by a slight movement of my knee. Things were certainly quite disturbing, for the next instant he stuck the bayonet almost through my right thigh.
I had just bought some bread of one of these venders, when Lieutenant H. Lee Clark, 2d Massachusetts H. A., came up and asked a woman the price of a pie, which she told him was five dollars; he handed her the five dollars, and was reaching through the fence for the pie, when one of the guard that had been placed in the camp, gave him a bayonet thrust in the back, without a word of warning or an order to fall back.
This thought gave him courage now. He suddenly remembered the broken bayonet upon the ledge against the wall. If he could reach it there might be a chance chance to strike one blow for life. As his eye glanced towards the wall he saw the steel flash in the light of the candle. The bear was between him and it. He made a feint towards the left, then as quickly to the right.
The spectacle of troops, who have perhaps carried a village with the bayonet and are holding it against a vigorous counter-attack, when every moment means loss of life and increase of danger, going round and carefully discriminating which houses are occupied by "guilty parties," and which by unoffending people, is sufficiently ridiculous.
Armed with a rifle and bayonet he simply ran amock and slaughtered some eight of the enemy by himself, while their leader he ran to the edge of the slag-heap and kicked over the side into the lake, where he broke his neck and was drowned. Altogether this Company took eight prisoners and destroyed three machine guns and two trench mortars. Meanwhile the attack on the left had failed.
The remaining German made a savage lunge, but Frank deftly caught the blade upon his own, and the next instant they were engaged in a deadly bayonet duel. It was fierce but also brief. A thrust, a parry, and Frank drove his weapon through the shoulder of his opponent. The latter reeled and fell.
Major Wagstaffe apologised most humbly, but the name stuck. Petit Jean is an enthusiast upon matters military. He possesses a little wooden rifle, the gift of a friendly "Écossais," tipped with a flashing bayonet cut from a biscuit-tin; and spends most of his time out upon the road, waiting for some one to salute.
At the rifle-pits there had been little use for the bayonet, for most of the Confederate troops, disconcerted by the sudden rush, lay close in the ditch and surrendered, though some few fled up the slope to the next line.
"Silence, sir," said Christian, sternly; "you know the reason well enough. Tie his hands, lads." Disregarding the order to be silent, Bligh shouted "murder!" at the top of his voice. "Hold your tongue, sir, else you're a dead man," said Christian, seizing him by the tied hands with a powerful grasp, and holding a bayonet to his breast.
In all the fighting that she had experienced this girl personally did her share, handling a rifle with skill and on several occasions using the bayonet with as much strength as a man. Her fame by this time had penetrated beyond her own regiment.
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