thing more than a murmur ran through the great mass. Harry knew
that every heart in the fifty thousand beat, like his own, with strained
expectancy.

A great gun in the battery was trained upon Sumter, and the gunner stood
ready at the lanyard, but the old man with the long white hair and the
keen, eager face, stepping forward, begged General Beauregard to allow
him the honor of firing the first shot. The General consented at once,
and the old man pulled the lanyard.

There was a terrific crash that almost deafened Harry, a gush of flame,
followed by smoke, and a shell, screaming in a curve, dropped upon
Sumter. For a few moments no one spoke, and Harry could hear the blood
pounding in his ears. In a sudden flash of insight he saw a long and
terrible road that they must tread. But neither he nor any other
present realized to the full what had happened. The first real shot in
the mightiest war of history had been fired, and the years of promises,
kept or broken, of mutual jealousies and mutual abuse had ended at the
cannon's mouth.

The silence was broken by a shout like the roar of a storm, that came
from the people in the town. A puff of smoke rose from Sumter and the
fort sent its answering shot, but it struck no enemy and again the shout
came from the town, now a cry of derision.

Then all the batteries in the wide curve about Sumter leaped into fiery
life. Cannon after cannon poured shot and shell against the black
walls. The fort was ringed with fire. It seemed to Harry that the
earth rocked. He tried to speak to his comrades, but he could not hear
his own voice. He thought he was about to be deafened for his whole
life, but Langdon handed him pieces of cotton which he quickly stuffed
in his ears. Langdon and St. Clair had already taken the precaution.
Happy Tom had proved himself the most forethoughtful of them all.
And yet Langdon, careless and easy, was aflame with the fire of battle.
It seemed to Harry that he thought little of consequences.

"Listen to it!" he shouted in excited tones to Harry and St. Clair.
"Hark to the thudding of the great guns! It's war, the greatest of all
games!"

Harry felt an intense excitement also. These were his people. He was
of their bone and sinew, and he was with them, heart and soul. He
did his part at the guns, and, although his excitement grew, he said
nothing. He saw that the return fire from the fort was far inferior
to that of the South Carolinians,