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The next two weeks passed all too quickly for the boy, for he got the fishing fever in his veins, and if he had not been held in check, he would have stayed on the water night and day. He made a very creditable record, getting a thirty-pound yellow-tail and several good-sized white sea-bass and bonito.
I have sent back to Chattanooga for two thirty-pound Parrotts, with which we can pick out almost any house in town. I am too impatient for a siege, and don't know but this is as good a place to fight it out on, as farther inland. One thing is certain, whether we get inside of Atlanta or not, it will be a used-up community when we are done with it.
While General Easton is collecting transportation for my troops to James River, I will throw to Port Royal Island all our means of transportation I can, and collect the rest near Fort McAllister, covered by the Ogeeehee River and intrenchments to be erected, and for which Captain Poe, my chief-engineer, is now reconnoitring the ground, but in the mean time will act as I have begun, as though the city of Savannah were my objective: namely, the troops will continue to invest Savannah closely, making attacks and feints wherever we have fair ground to stand upon, and I will place some thirty-pound Parrotts, which I have got from General Foster, in position, near enough to reach the centre of the city, and then will demand its surrender.
The only real severity is the chains, but these sturdy mountaineers soon accustom themselves to these thirty-pound trinkets, and when photographed take good care to arrange them tastefully and prominently.
At Rhodes' suggestion Labram manufactured a big gun capable of throwing a thirty-pound shell and it gave the besiegers a big and destructive surprise. This gun, which was called "Long Cecil," was built and booming in exactly twenty-eight days. Tragically enough, Labram was killed by a Boer shell while shaving in his room at the Grand Hotel exactly a week after the first discharge of his gun.
At last I witnessed a scene that had the aspect of war. A great thirty-pound Parrot gun unlimbered in the centre of the pike, and looked like a surly mastiff. In a moment an officer, who understood his business, sighted it.
On a Wednesday morning Glenmore's man arrived by stage from Starlight, instruments and all. His name was Pratt. He was a tall, slow-moving, blue-eyed man, nearly sixty years of age, but able still to carry a thirty-pound transit over the steepest mountain ever built. Glen met him by appointment at the transportation office and escorted him at once to Mrs. Dick's.
Take with you the twelve mortars, with their ammunition, and all the thirty-pound Parrotts the ordnance-officer will supply. Proceed to the mouth of Red River and confer with Admiral Porter. Consult with him, and in all the expedition rely on him implicitly, as he is the approved friend of the Army of the Tennessee, and has been associated with us from the beginning.
Click, click, went the needles all day long, and Kate wondered what a woman who lived in a thirty-pound house could want with a ten-pound dress. But that was no affair of hers, and as it was most important she should not disappoint her, Kate kept Hender to dinner; and as compensation for the press of work, she sent round to the public for three extra half-pints.
"It's enough to make the angels weep to see her try. Imagine, my boy, a one hundred and thirty-pound Romeo trying to hug his way around a two hundred and fifty-pound Juliet! Why, we'd have to prop up the balcony with a structural iron pillar and "
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