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Updated: June 16, 2025
The colonel, signing to his guests to follow, led the way to the apartment occupied jointly by himself and the major, which, although only a kind of casemate hollowed in the rock, nevertheless wore a general air of comfort. Major Oliphant accompanied them, and all four having taken their seats, the conversation was commenced.
Major J.C. Coit, who commanded Wright's Battery and Pegram's battery, had come up to look after the condition of the latter. He concluded that two officers and twenty men were destroyed. Subsequently he discovered that one man had gone to the spring before the explosion, that four men were saved by a casemate and captured.
And taking advantage of the confusion, during which the sentries on the casemate had withdrawn, he left his prison-chamber and got out into the main road. The fusilade was now close at hand; bullets whistled continually around and pinged with a dull thud as they flattened against the rocky ground. The assailants were making good progress.
The casemate having become necessary to the defenders of the fortress, we were taken to a little chapel, where they deposited for twenty-four hours those who had died in the hospital. There we were guarded by peasants who had come across the mountain, from various villages, and particularly from Cadaquès.
Then taking up the paper and reading from it: "One hundred and fifty thousand prisoners, one hundred and fifty-three eagles and standards, one hundred and forty-one field guns, seventy-six machine guns, eight hundred casemate and barbette guns, three hundred thousand muskets, two thousand military train wagons, material for eighty-five batteries "
Great drops of rain were beginning to fall, and lightning flashes rending the darkness disclosed the long, silent line of the fortifications, with telegraph poles at intervals, or the frowning door of a casemate. Now and then the footsteps of a patrol making the rounds, the clash of muskets or swords, reminded them that they were within the military zone.
Of Farragut's twenty-seven hundred men more than a seventh had fallen, victims mainly of the bear and her cubs, yet there she weltered, helpless. From her grim disjointed casemate her valorous captain let down the Southern cross, the white flag rose, and instantly, everywhere, God's thunder and man's alike ceased, and the merciful heavens smiled white and blue again.
These prisoners had been placed in Number Six Casemate. Further questions on the part of Louis Bonaparte, "What are these casemates?" And Morny had answered, "Cellars without air or daylight, twenty-four mètres long, eight wide, five high, dripping walls, damp pavements." Louis Bonaparte had asked, "Do they give them a truss of straw?" And Morny had said, "Not yet, we shall see by and by."
He spent the evening and the greater part of the night in the deepest agitation, hoping hourly, momentarily, for deliverance. None came, no news even; but that the struggle was being fought out strenuously he knew from the absence of the men that occupied his casemate, all of whom were doubtless engaged.
"Come with me," said the sergeant, as he led the way into an adjoining casemate. "No; nobody else will come," added he, motioning back other members of the mess who was disposed to follow. In the casemate to which Sergeant Porter conducted Fred, there was a pile of boxes, in which the muskets of one of the regiments had been packed.
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