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"Do as you like with the cuss. This is mostly your funeral, anyhow." "Yes, let the go," called out a dozen voices. By this time the close formation of the vigilantes was broken. From time to time, men had left the ranks in pursuit of skulkers, and finding the way back blocked by the crowd, had taken their own initiative thereafter.
Every Sunday afternoon the bands of all the regiments played, while the French amused themselves with dancing, many of them, both male and female, on stilts, which entertained us more than anything, and besides this there were all kinds of other jollities in which our soldiers freely joined. And now I will take the opportunity of saying a few more words as regards the skulkers.
Now lads, shew the red make ready to slip off with Long Tom's nightcap let out the skulkers take these children down below, and a dozen of you stand by to receive the captain and his friends." These somewhat peculiar orders, hurriedly given, were hastily obeyed, and in a few seconds more the gig of the Talisman ranged up alongside of the Foam.
"Spies hanging around, probably?" hazarded the major, in disgust. "We've been bothered with the slick beasts right along shot several, but even that didn't keep the coast clear." "There have been skulkers around for some time," continued the lieutenant. "Baxter tells me he'd warned them off until he grew tired, and threatened that the next one who was caught trying to peep would be fired upon.
"Not a word to either, as you value life. Look at the Sagamore, how like a grand Indian chief he sits by the fire. If there are any skulkers out in the darkness, they will never discover by his countenance that we suspect danger at hand." "But they may discover him, and it will prove his death.
When we appeared upon deck, the captain bade the doctor, who stood bowing at his right hand, look at these lazy lubberly sons of bitches, who were good for nothing on board but to eat the king's provision, and encourage idleness in the skulkers. The surgeon grinned approbation, and, taking the list, began to examine the complaints of each as they could crawl to the place appointed.
While there was no cessation of the rattling, crackling, and detonations on the fateful slope beyond, it had still been silent. Once or twice it had been crossed by timid, hurrying wings, and frightened and hesitating little feet, or later by skulkers and stragglers from the main column who were tempted to enter it from the hedges and bushes where they had been creeping and hiding.
The skulkers were loud-mouthed in their denunciations of General McDowell. Hundreds of them, who had in all probability not been near enough to the front during the whole retreat to know anything that was going on there, declared that they had seen him waving that mystic white hat as a signal to the rebels; and all knew that it was through his treachery that the army had been destroyed.
The service of society is, above all, a service of honor, and all its associations are what you used to call chivalrous. Even as in your day soldiers would not serve with skulkers, but drummed cowards out of the camp, so would our workers refuse the companionship of persons openly seeking to evade their civic duty." "But what do you do with such persons?"
After all is said, unhappily there is nothing so extraordinary in this, but strange indeed would it have been if many of these skulkers had come back into the fight, as Sheridan considerately declares they did. As to Early's force, the difficulty of coming to a positive conclusion is even greater. General Early himself says he went into the battle with but 8,800 muskets.
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