The columns advance, and run headforemost into the hunting-shirt men. The sleety rain of lead which greets them rolls the columns up like two red carpets. The recoiling columns break, and the English take cover for a second time in those saving ditches. They declare among themselves that mortal man might more easily face the fires of hell itself, than the flame-filled muzzles of the hunting-shirt men, who seem to be Death's very agents upon earth. As the broken English crouch in those ditches the fire of Sir John Burgoyne's big guns begins to falter. The smoke is so thick that no one may tell the cause. At last the English volleys altogether end, and the General orders Dominique and Bluche, with their swarthy pirate crews from Barrataria, and what other artillerists are serving his quintette of guns, to cease their stormy work. With that a silence falls on both sides. The breeze from the river tears the smoky veil aside; and lo! that noble fortification of sugar hogsheads is heaped and piled in ruins. The General's solid shot go through and through those hogsheads of sugar, as though they are hogsheads of snow. Five of the thirty English guns are smashed. The proud work of Sir John Burgoyne presents a spectacle of desolation, while the English who serve the batteries go flying for their lives. Not all! The three-score dead remain--the only English whose honor is saved that day! Sir Edward's cheek is white as death. He blames Sir John Burgoyne, who has erred, he says, in constructing the works. Sir John did err, and Sir Edward is right. Forty years later, the same Sir John will repeat the same mistake at Sebastapol; which shows how there be Bourbons among the English, learning nothing, forgetting nothing. As the English skulk in clusters, and ragged, beaten groups for their old position beyond the General's long reach, the fear of death is written on their faces. It will take a long rest, and much must be forgotten, e'er they may be brought front to front with the General again. Among the hunting-shirt men are exultation and crowing triumph. Only Papa Plauche is sad. During the fight, the cotton bales in front of Papa Plauche and the “Fathers” are sorely knocked about. As though this be not enough, what must a felon hot shot do but set one of them ablaze! The smoke fills the noses of Papa Plauche and his “Fathers,” and makes them sneeze. It burns their eyes until the tears the “Fathers” shed might make one think them engaged upon the very funeral of Papa Plauche himself. In the tearful sneezing midst of this anguish, a vagrant flying flake of cotton, all afire, explodes an ammunition wagon to the heroic rear of Papa Plauche and the “Fathers,” and the shock is as the awful shock of doom.