Thomas A. Janvier

“ But the lieutenant in command of the battery had at least a little sense, even if he did not have much courage, and he looked towards where I pointed—and then he saw the shakos, as the mist lifted again, not a hundred feet away.
“‘Save yourselves, I will make the guns safe,’ he cried to his men—he was not all a coward, poor fellow—and as they ran for it he picked up the spikes and the hammer. Tap! tap! tap! one gun was spiked. Tap! tap! tap! another. Then we heard the Russians beginning to scramble up outside.
“He swore a great oath as he dropped the hammer. ‘It can’t be done. ”

“ Monsieur is very good. It is that my husband would smoke. He is an old soldier. He smokes all the time. Ciel! They are like chimneys, these old soldiers. This man of mine regrets that he cannot smoke when he is asleep! ”

“ For it was rather brave—eh, colonel?—to stay in that battery and spike those guns, while a hundred Russians were tumbling in upon him, and his own comrades had run off and left him to do his duty and to die for it there alone.’
“My colonel’s voice broke a little as he answered, ‘It was very brave, your Majesty.’
“‘Eh, well, Private Labonne,’ said the Emperor, turning again to me, ‘we won’t shoot you. Your colonel is right about your bravery; and to shoot a brave man, except in battle, is a mistake. The Russian officer who came so near to killing you was a major, I am told ”

“ As the train pulled out from the station—it was at Tarascon that they had joined me—he drew forth from his pocket a black little wooden pipe and a tobacco-bag. This was my opportunity. I also drew forth a pipe and a tobacco-bag. Would Monsieur accept some of my tobacco? I asked. I had brought it, I added, from America; it was tobacco of the Havana.
“Monsieur then is an American. That is interesting. And his tobacco is from the Havana, that is more interesting still. My cousin’s son has been for many years in America. His name is Marius Guiraud; he lives in San Francisco ”

“ Redoubt No. 11 was a good hundred yards, and Redoubt No. 15 was more than three times that distance outside of our lines; and everybody knew that these two advanced posts would be in great danger until our second parallel was well under way. So very possible was it that they might be surprised, and the guns turned on our own lines in support of a general attack, that in each of them spikes and hammers were kept in readiness against the need for spiking the guns before they fell into the enemy’s hands. ”

“ Presently my head began to buzz and the pain in it to get worse, and then for a week I had a fever that came near to taking me off. But I pulled through”—he squeezed his wife’s hand, that again had been laid in his—“and in three weeks I was back with the regiment again. It was all due to my having such a wonderfully thick skull, the doctors said, that the major’s sword had not broken it past all mending. When I came into camp the boys all cheered me, and I was as proud as a cock. And then, the first thing I knew, up came a corporal and a file of men and arrested me. ”