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This was followed in a day or two later by an extraordinary exhibition of wearing apparel of divers colors, fluttering on lines like a display of bunting on ship-board, and whose flapping in the breeze was like irregular discharges of musketry. It was evident also that the court exercised a demoralizing influence over the whole neighborhood.
As they got near, the people on shore, balked in their first project, opened a hot fire of musketry on them. The boats had not come unarmed. The larger ones were immediately anchored, and, each having a gun of some weight, opened a hot fire on the beach. This was more than the slave-dealers had bargained for. They were ready enough to kill others, but had no fancy to be killed themselves.
Cigarette was a thorough democrat; when she was two years old she had sat on the topmost pile of a Parisian barricade, with the red bonnet on her curls, and had clapped her tiny hands for delight when the bullets flew, and the "Marseillaise" rose above the cannonading; and the spirit of the musketry and of the "Marseillaise" had together passed into her and made her what she was.
At the burial-place every mound and stone was occupied. Flowers were trampled under foot, shrubs broken or uprooted, and the grass all stamped into the mould. The whole crowd listened to the impressive tone—only a few could hear the words—of the funeral harangue, and to the solemn hymn which followed. The service closed with the military honour of musketry fired over the soldier’s grave.
His adjutant-general, Clark, Inspector-General Strong, and his aides, Captains Steele and Gile, were with him. Although the sound of musketry on our left grew in volume, I was not so much disturbed by it as by the sound of artillery back toward Decatur. The sound of musketry was there heard, and McPherson's horse came back, bleeding, wounded, and riderless.
A strong party has volunteered for the service; there is a cry for somebody to head them; you see a soldier step out from the ranks to assume this dangerous leadership; the party moves rapidly forward; in a few minutes it is swallowed up from your eyes in clouds of smoke; for one half hour, from behind these clouds, you receive hieroglyphic reports of bloody strife fierce repeating signals, flashes from the guns, rolling musketry, and exulting hurrahs advancing or receding, slackening or redoubling.
Most of the time his sufferings were very great, but no earthly skill could bring any relief. As death drew on, his mind wandered. He was fighting his battles over again. He was not the poor, crushed mortality that lay here. His spirit was over yonder, where the cannon's sullen roar and the awful din of musketry, the cheers of the struggling combatants, told of a deadly strife.
Of course we heard faintly the rattling crash of the musketry volleys, and were thus able to make a pretty shrewd guess as to what was happening, but it was not until the brigantine had cleared the convoy, and began to make sail, that we could form any idea of the extent to which she had been punished by the soldiers.
Constance herself began to await anxiously for the order from her father to quit the house; when suddenly, in addition to the other sounds, a chorus of wild warwhoops burst on their ears. The savage cries were replied to by the shouts and cheers of the French. The musketry rattled as loud as ever, but none of the shots came near them.
The dead leaves on the hill-side were inflamed in some way, in this close contest, and when artillery and musketry had ceased, helpless wounded lying on the hill-side were burned to death. Colonel Heiman's men, leaping over their works, were able to save some. General Buckner reported his loss in the assault on Hanson's position as thirty-nine killed and wounded.
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