The General thanks the band, but declines “'Possum up a Gum Tree.” It will not be understood by the English; whereas “Yankee Doodle” they have known and loathed for forty years. “Give 'em 'Yankee Doodle,'” says the General. “Since they are so eager to dance, we'll furnish the proper music.” Sir Edward is as soon afoot as is the General. He finds his English steady yet dull; they will fight, but not with spirit. As the General assured the conferring Coffee, the hunting-shirt men, with their long rifles like wands of death, have broken the English heart. The English are to advance in three columns; General Keane on the right with Rennie's Rifles, in the center Dale's Highlanders, on the left, where the main attack is to be launched, General Gibbs, with three thousand of the pride of England at his back. General Lambert is to hold himself in the rear of General Gibbs, with two regiments as a reserve. As the columns form, there are eighty-five hundred of the English; against which the-General opposes a scanty thirty-two hundred. And yet, upon those overpowering eighty-five hundred hangs a silence like a sadness, as though they are about to go marching to their graves. The solemn fear in which the English hold the hunting-shirt men finds pathetic evidence. As the columns wheel into position, Colonel Dale of the Highlanders gives a letter and his watch to the surgeon. “Carry them to my wife,” says he. “I'll peel for no American!” and twenty-four hours later he is buried in that cloak. The English stand to their arms, and wait the breaking of day. Slowly the minutes drag their leaden length along; morning comes at last. With the first streaks of livid dawn, a Congreve rocket flashes skyward from Sir Edward's headquarters. The rocket is the English signal to advance. In a moment, General Gibbs, General Keane, and Colonel Dale with his “praying” Highlanders are in motion. The signal rocket uncouples thousands upon thousands of fellow rockets; the air is on fire with them as they blaze aloft in mighty arcs, to fall and explode among the hunting-shirt men. “Toys for children, boys,” cries the General, as he observes the hunting-shirt men watching the flaming shower with curious, non-understanding eyes; “toys for children! They'll hurt no one!” The General is right. Those congreve rockets are supposed to be as deadly as artillery. Like many another commodity of war, however, meant primarily to fatten contractors, they prove as innocuous as so many huge fireflies. The hunting-shirt men laugh at them. The battery of eighteen-pounders, wherewith the English second that flight of rockets, is a more serious affair. As the sun shoots up above the cypress swamp and rolls back the mists of morning, the English make a gallant picture. The dull yellow of the stubble in front of the General's line is gay with splotches of red and gray and green and tartan, the colors of the various English corps.