ence of death can be made indifferent to towmen?
No, you have n't. The matter goes this night precisely as it did last:
towmen vanishing in the horrible cannon tumult; steersmen shrieking, "We
will ground you on the Prussian shore;" very soldiers obliged to give it
up; and General Rutowski himself obliged to wash his hands of it, as
a thing that cannot be done. In fact, a thing which need not have been
tried, had Rutowski been rigorously candid with himself and his hopes,
as the facts now prove to be. "Twenty-four hours lost by this bad
business" (says he; "thirty-six," as I count, or, to take it rigorously,
"forty-eight" even): and now, Sunday morning instead of Friday, at what,
in sad truth, is metaphorically "the eleventh hour," Rutowski has to
bethink him of his copper pontoons; and make the impossible carting
method possible in a day's time, or do worse.

SUNDAY, MONDAY, OCTOBER 10th-11th, By unheard-of exertions, all hands
and all spent-horses now at a dead-lift effort night and day, Rutowski
does get his pontoons carted out of the Pirna storehouse; lands them
at Thurmsdorf,--opposite the Lilienstein,--a mile or so short of
Konigstein, where his Bridge shall be. It is now the 11th, at night. And
our pontoons are got to the ground, nothing more. Every man of us, at
this hour, should have been across, and trimming himself to climb, with
bayonet fixed! Browne is ready, expecting our signal-shot to storm in
on his side. And our bridge is not built, only the pontoons here. "All
things went perverse," adds Rutowski, for farther comfort: "we [Saxon
Home-Army] had with us, except Officers, only Four Pontoniers, or
trained Bridge-builders; all the rest are at Warsaw:" sad thought, but
too late to think it!

TUESDAY, TILL WEDNESDAY EARLY (12th-13th), Bridge, the Four Pontoniers,
with Officers and numb soldiers doing their best, is got built;--Browne
waiting for us, on thorns, all day; Prussians extensively beginning to
strengthen their posts, about the Lilienstein, about Lichtenhayn, or
where risk is; and in fact pouring across to that northern side, quite
aware of Rutowski and Browne.

That same night, 12th-13th, while the Bridge was struggling to complete
itself,--rain now falling, and tempests broken out,--the Saxon Army,
from Pirna down to Hennersdorf, had lifted itself from its Lines, and
got under way towards Thurmsdorf, and the crossing-place. Dark night,
plunging rain; all the elements in uproar. The worst roads i