The Doctor put the whole length of his barrel through one of the narrow port holes of the palisade and immediately became aware that some on the outside had seized it and was pulling downwards. "Let go of my gun!" he shouted instinctively, without considering the unreasonable nature of the request. "Let go yourself, you son of a bitch!" returned the outsider, not a whit more rational. The Doctor pulled trigger with a sense of just indignation, and drew in his gun, the barrel bent at a right angle and bursted. Whether he had injured the rebel or only startled him into letting go his hold, he never knew and did not then pause to consider. He felt his ruined weapon all over with his hands, tried in vain to draw the ramrod, and, after bringing all his philosophical acumen to bear on the subject, gave up the idea of reloading. Casting about for a new armament, he observed behind him a man lying in one of the many little gullies which seemed to slope between the fort and the river, his eyes wide open and fixed upon the palisade, and his right hand loosely holding a rifle. The Doctor concluded that he was sick, or tired, or seeking shelter from the bullets. "Would you be good enough to lend me your gun for a few moments?" he inquired. The man made no reply; he was perfectly dead. The Doctor being short-sighted and without his spectacles, and not accustomed, as yet, to appreciating the effects of musketry, did not suspect this until he bent over him, and saw that his woolen shirt was soaked with blood. He picked up the rifle, guessed that it was loaded, stumbled back to the palisade, insinuated the mere muzzle into a port-hole, and fired, with splintering effect on the woodwork. The explosion was followed by a howl of anguish from the exterior, which gave him a mighty throb, partly of horror and partly of loyal satisfaction. "After all, it is only a species of surgical operation," he thought, and proceeded to reload, according to the best of his speed and knowledge. Suddenly he staggered under a violent impulse, precisely as if a strong man had jerked him by the coat-collar, and putting his hand to the spot, he found that a bullet (nearly spent in penetrating the palisades) had punched its way through the cloth. This was the nearest approach to a wound that he received during the engagement. Meantime things were going badly with the assailants. Disorganized by the night, cut up by the musketry, demoralized by the incessant screaming and bursting of the one-hundred-pound shells, unable to force the palisade or cross the ditch, they rapidly lost heart, threw themselves on the earth, took refuge behind the levees, dropped away in squads through the covering gloom, and were, in short, repulsed. In the course of thirty minutes, all that yelling swarm had disappeared, except the thickly scattered dead and wounded, and a few well-covered stragglers, who continued to fire as sharpshooters.