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Updated: May 28, 2025
Behind him wheeled cannon and caisson and men and horses, splashed with prophetic drops of red, wheeling at a gallop, halting, unlimbering, loading, and firing imaginary shells at imaginary Spaniards limbering and off with a flash of metal, wheel-spoke and crimson trappings at a gallop again; in the plain below were regiments of infantry, deploying in skirmish-line, advancing by rushes; beyond them sharpshooters were at target practice, and little bands of recruits and awkward squads were everywhere.
During his absence gun after gun had been disabled and a caisson exploded; the gun crews lay dead or wounded. What more horribly disturbed Penhallow was the hideous screams of the battery horses. "Ah! the pity of it. They had no cause to die for no duty no choice."
The first shot did no execution, but the next struck a caisson and exploded its contents. What more was done there I cannot say; for seeing that the Federal infantry were advancing to the charge, I hastily returned to my position in the regiment.
Then the guns thundered again, and by the blaze of the pieces, the clods and turf were revealed, fitfully strewn with men and horses. The vicinity of my position now exhibited traces of the battle. A caisson burst close by, and I heard the howl of dying wretches, as the fires flashed like meteors.
Before I was done speaking, the world seemed to make a sudden revolution and turn black as I collapsed with it. My brother, thinking I was shot, hurried for the vinegar, but found the canteen, which hung at the rear of a caisson, entirely empty; it, too, having been struck by a piece of shell, and even the contents of the little canteen demanded by this insatiable plain.
Of every man, gun, horse, and box of ammunition that came ashore they kept tally. On one side of the wharf stood "P. N. T. O.," principal naval transport officer, in gold braid, ribbons, and armlet, keeping an eye on every box of shell, gun-carriage, and caisson that was swung from a transport, and twenty feet from him, and keeping count with him, would be two dozen spies.
Many years before the period we are considering, there was employed, to save time in the lockages and to economize water, the system of inclined planes, where, either water-borne in a traveling caisson, as on the Monklands incline, or supported on a cradle, as in the incline at Newark, in the State of New Jersey, the barges were transferred from one level to another; but an important improvement on either of these modes of overcoming a great difference of level is the application of direct vertically lifting hydraulic power.
Batteries were waiting in the mud, and the men of them, exasperated by the bustle of this ambitious infantry, shook their fists from saddle and caisson, exchanging all manner of taunts and jests. The slanted guns continued to look reflectively at the ground. On the outskirts of the crumbled town a fringe of blue figures were firing into the fog.
"I love that arm," said Cleave. "There isn't a gun there that isn't alive to me." He turned in his saddle and looked back at the last caisson vanishing over the hill. "Shall you remain with the staff?" "No. Only through this campaign. I prefer the line." The snow fell so fast that the trampled and discoloured road was again whitening beneath it.
"Greasers or no greasers," cried Obed, "those are men of courage!" But he continued to shoot straight at them nevertheless, and the third group of cannoneers was fast melting away. "Some of you aim at the mules hitched to the caisson," cried the Ring Tailed Panther. "I hate to kill a mule, but it will be a help now."
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