"General! General Van Bummel!"
"Silence! or I'll march you to the guard-house," thundered the sentinel.
Luckily the General lay, like Irene, "with casement open to the skies." He
heard the noise. I recognized his martial tones. I hurriedly explained my
situation. He gave me the word; it was Eugene; countersign,
Marlborough. This satisfied the Coach-Cerberus, and I passed into bed
without further mishap.
The first sound I heard the next morning was the rat-tat-too of a
drum. "There goes that d----d coachman again," I said to myself, and turned
over for another nap; but a shrill bugle-call brought me to my seat.
Running to the window, I saw two men on horseback in dragoon equipments.
The horses were the artillery-nags of yesterday; the riders, the General
and his man-at-all-arms. Hurrying on my clothes, I got out of doors in time
to see them go at a gallop across the lawn, leap a low hedge at the end of
the grass-plot, and disappear in the orchard. Thither I followed fast to
see the sport. They reached the boundary-line of the Van-Bummel estate,
wheeled, and turned back on a trot. When the General espied me, he waved
his sabre and shouted, "Charge!" They galloped straight at me. I had barely
time to dodge behind an apple-tree, when they passed like a whirlwind over
the spot I had been standing on, and covered me with dirt from the heels of
their horses. I walked back to the house, very much annoyed, as men are apt
to be, when they think they have compromised their dignity a little by
dodging to escape danger from another's mischief or folly. At breakfast,
accordingly, I remonstrated with the chief; but he only laughed, and asked
me why I did not form a hollow square and let the front rank kneel and
fire.
"As soon as you have finished your coffee," he added, "I will take you into
the trenches, and there you will be out of danger."
I could not refuse. The trenches were at the bottom of the garden, near the
entrance-drive. I had seen them yesterday, and in my ignorance thought of
celery; now, I knew better. This morning, a tent was pitched a few yards
from a long low wall of sods; and between the tent and the sods there was a
small trench, about large enough to hold draining-tiles. Pointing to the
wall, the general said,--
"There is Sebastopol," (pronouncing it correctly, accent on the _to_,) "and
here," turning to the tent, "are my head-quarters. My sappers have just
established a mine under the Quarantine Battery. In a few moments I shall
blow it up, and storm the breach, if we make a practicable one."
Here the Protean coachman made his appearance with a leather apron and a
broad-axe. He signified that all was ready. A lucifer was rubbed upon a
stone, the train ignited, bang went the mine, and over went we all three,
prostrated by a shower of turf and mud. The mine had exploded backward, and
had annihilated the storming party. Fortunately, the General had economised
in powder. Gradually we picked ourselves up, considerably bewildered, but
not much hurt. Van Bummel attempted to explain; but I had had enough of
war's alarms, and yearned for the safety and peace of Nassau Street. So I
bade the warrior good-morning, and took the first down-train, _multa mecum
volvens_; "making a revolver of my mind," Van Bummel would have translated
it. I knew that our soil produced more soldiers even than France, the
fertile mother of red-legged heroes; but I did not expect, in the
Nineteenth Century and in the State of New York, to have beheld an avatar
of the God Mars.
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