all but one!" roared Dujardin.

And in they ran like rabbits.

"Quick! the elevation."

Colonel Dujardin and La Croix raised the muzzle to the mark--hoo, hoo,
hoo! ping, ping, ping! came the bullets about their ears.

"Away with you!" cried the colonel, taking the linstock from him.

Then Colonel Dujardin, fifteen yards from the trenches, in full blazing
uniform, showed two armies what one intrepid soldier can do. He kneeled
down and adjusted his gun, just as he would have done in a practising
ground. He had a pot shot to take, and a pot shot he would take. He
ignored three hundred muskets that were levelled at him. He looked
along his gun, adjusted it, and re-adjusted it to a hair's breadth. The
enemy's bullets pattered upon it: still he adjusted it delicately. His
men were groaning and tearing their hair inside at his danger.

At last it was levelled to his mind, and then his movements were as
quick as they had hitherto been slow. In a moment he stood erect in the
half-fencing attitude of a gunner, and his linstock at the touch-hole:
a huge tongue of flame, a volume of smoke, a roar, and the iron
thunderbolt was on its way, and the colonel walked haughtily but rapidly
back to the trenches; for in all this no bravado. He was there to make a
shot; not to throw a chance of life away watching the effect.

Ten thousand eyes did that for him.

Both French and Prussians risked their own lives craning out to see
what a colonel in full uniform was doing under fire from a whole line
of forts, and what would be his fate; but when he fired the gun their
curiosity left the man and followed the iron thunderbolt.

For two seconds all was uncertain; the ball was travelling.

Tom gave a rear like a wild horse, his protruding muzzle went up
sky-high, then was seen no more, and a ring of old iron and a clatter of
fragments was heard on the top of the bastion. Long Tom was dismounted.
Oh! the roar of laughter and triumph from one end to another of the
trenches; and the clapping of forty thousand hands that went on for full
five minutes; then the Prussians, either through a burst of generous
praise for an act so chivalrous and so brilliant, or because they would
not be crowed over, clapped their tea thousand hands as loudly, and thus
thundering, heart-thrilling salvo of applause answered salvo on both
sides that terrible arena.

That evening came a courteous and flattering message from the
commander-in-chief to Colonel Dujard