n who had smiled at their work smiled
no more, but performed it with a serious and feverish activity.

From his station at the parapet Captain Ransome now saw a great
multitude of dim gray figures taking shape in the mist below him and
swarming up the slope. But the work of the guns was now fast and
furious. They swept the populous declivity with gusts of grape and
canister, the whirring of which could be heard through the thunder of
the explosions. In this awful tempest of iron the assailants struggled
forward foot by foot across their dead, firing into the embrasures,
reloading, firing again, and at last falling in their turn, a little in
advance of those who had fallen before. Soon the smoke was dense enough
to cover all. It settled down upon the attack and, drifting back,
involved the defense. The gunners could hardly see to serve their
pieces, and when occasional figures of the enemy appeared upon the
parapet--having had the good luck to get near enough to it, between two
embrasures, to be protected from the guns--they looked so unsubstantial
that it seemed hardly worth while for the few infantrymen to go to work
upon them with the bayonet and tumble them back into the ditch.

As the commander of a battery in action can find something better to do
than cracking individual skulls, Captain Ransome had retired from the
parapet to his proper post in rear of his guns, where he stood with
folded arms, his bugler beside him. Here, during the hottest of the
fight, he was approached by Lieutenant Price, who had just sabred a
daring assailant inside the work. A spirited colloquy ensued between the
two officers--spirited, at least, on the part of the lieutenant, who
gesticulated with energy and shouted again and again into his
commander's ear in the attempt to make himself heard above the infernal
din of the guns. His gestures, if coolly noted by an actor, would have
been pronounced to be those of protestation: one would have said that he
was opposed to the proceedings. Did he wish to surrender?

Captain Ransome listened without a change of countenance or attitude,
and when the other man had finished his harangue, looked him coldly in
the eyes and during a seasonable abatement of the uproar said:

"Lieutenant Price, it is not permitted to you to know _anything_. It is
sufficient that you obey my orders."

The lieutenant went to his post, and the parapet being now apparently
clear Captain Ransome returned to it to have a l