The long-promised glory begun its reign.

While by now, our Base-Ball game was postponed on account of the rain of shells and roundshot and such. Cannonballs whizzed about, bouncing and bursting all around; and our own big guns roared back with showers of sparks as the copper "fuse" sprang and stroked the coils along the length of the gun, when eighteen pounds of powder in the annihilator cap flared, the shock of air pressure compressing the hot flicker in the muzzle of an unholy Voltage, electrically igniting a blue ball of lightning, which the air pressure and electrically rifled vector send careening outward.

- The Number 2 Battery gunners cheered, "Revenge!"

Their ball of lightning knocked the bejeesus out of a Fort Paredes cannon, sending fizzing pieces of it scattered across Plato's Crater, and burning tiny holes all through the Lunar gunners.

Martha Mule hooted in her ditch as choking white clouds of steaming acid-vapor rose up out of the sizzling batteries, buried to the wheel- rims of their caissons, and rolled down the slope into the yard, obscuring the score chalked on the side of the three-wheeled chuck wagon:

CALHOUNIAN CRAWDADS 0
H CLAY CHICKENHAWKS 1

"What should we do?" I cried, looking to Kelly.

"Keep your head down!" shouted Kelly, his face giving a little tic.

"What should we do?" I repeated.

"How should I know? Leave me alone!" answered Kelly, his eyes turning right to see a black spot swoosh over the fort.

"What should we do?" I kept repeating.

"Haven't you done enough? You had to get your base-ball, didn't you!" yelled Kelly. Sarah was running up the slope, skirts held high.

"Let's get'm to the surgeon!" she said, grabbing one of Wiegart's legs.

We didn't ask what for. With Sarah, Mallory, Tristani-Firouzi, and I carried Weigart's corpse. Kelly following, yelling at me:

" - You had to ask for your base-ball back, didn't you?"

"Shut up!"

"What!"

"Shut up, Lieutenant!"

"What!" Kelly yelled.

I was unfortunately unable to appreciate the full thrill of the glory that had finally, finally begun, because I was too busy carrying the torn corpse of a friend. I am ashamed to admit that I was too appalled by the banal mask of the all-conquering worm worn by that jack o'lanternless scarecrow in my hands to reap that ripe good corn, glory.

"What!" repeated Kelly angrily.

Although the Lunar cannonballs were shrieking around randomly overhead, or burying themselves in the earthworks of southern exposure, behind us, they were not landing inside the yard as of yet. Therefore, I did not hesitate, when we laid the corpse on the surgeon's table, set on the lee side of the Bomb-Proof mound, to shake my fist in my brother's face to lay his what-ing to rest.

"Aren't we missing something?" asked the surgeon, following us outside.

For just then, as the roundshot kept falling, drums, whistles, and trumpets blew their familiar commands, but with unfamiliar allegro. The Musics played "Fall In" on the run - they past the Infirmary Tent on their way to the Bomb-Proof. We ran into the yard. The sergeants bellered and the brave Cotton Balers fell in their neat rows. Once in our neat rows, the sergeants bellered again and the first row of men peeled off neatly into the company dugouts of the Bomb-Proof. All the while, roundshot kicked dirt in the air on the walls of the fort, sometimes bounding over, sometimes rolling down and plowing up showers of dust. Then came a different sound, a whistling sound, a sudden teakettle shriek from straight above, as if the clouds themselves were a-boil - and then a mortar shell crashed straight down inside the six-sided heap of dust we called a fort, right through the Infirmary Tent. It burst, a white dot, then red fire, and then black smoke, instantly, with a heavy crackle. And blown upward, Sergeant Weigart's headless corpse flopped in the air, dancing a glory- mocking jig, and slopped in a horrible, horrible heap.

The terrified men broke the last rows of neat ranks and mobbed and fought to get in the Bomb-Proof, just as wispy drips drifted down, gently, insubstantial ribboning - the red spark trail from the long lit mortar fuse.

Sarah whistled, standing by the wreckage. Tristani-Firouzi, Kelly, and I ran back to poor Weigart. The old, tired orderly, Rev McKnight, whom we all trusted with our money when we went swimming in the Frigoris back at Annex Agonies, stopped us as we tried to drag the corpse back into the wreckage of the Infirmary Tent. "Don't bother the surgeon!" he yelled over all the booming, shrieking, and smashing. Doctor Paine searched among the wreckage for his instruments. We Dough-Boys called him the Webster of the Scalpel, so prolific and eloquent was his parings of gangrened limbs. Actually, we called him that to his front; we called him the Barber-y Pirate to his back ( - never know when your arm or leg might suffer his apothecary carpentry.) He picked up a big hacksaw, blew off the dirt, and put it in his bag. Doing so, he accidentally stepped on the pint sized bottle of that funny new opium called ether, and broke it. "What? Oh. No loss, that perfume," he said, "Where's the Rupert's? Where's the leeches? Oh, my darlings, my poor little babies, save them!" A Music lad scrambled on his hands and knees, trying to catch the squirming critters. We stared wide-eyed all around like yesterday's drunks waking up today's swabbies. McKnight looked up at us and yelled, "Get out! Stick him in the dirt, you fools! You can have your ceremony later," he added, rushing past us to the Bomb-Proof with two big brown jugs of Rupert's Miracle Salve and Tonic.

Kneeling right there beside the Bomb-Proof entrance, with our hands we scratched a shallow ditch for the poor gunner. Something about it seemed all wrong to me. Seemed to me some congressman or general ought to say a lot of stuff about peace, god, and glory, and there should be some awfully pretty women crying and sniffing and needing comforting. However, I was the one sniffing, Sarah was telling me to quit whining, and the only speech Kelly gave was this:"Where's his head? His head, his head! We can't bury him without his head!" In all the excitement, we hadn't found that part. Kelly shook me:"Where is it?"

"I don't know!" I yelled. "It must have rolled off somewhere!" We glanced all around. Just then, a roundshot hit the sand ten yards shy of us, and bounded by.

"Looks like the Trankies found their range," said Sarah calmly.

The Major's aid, Lieutenant Frederickson, jumped out of a black cloud and growled, "Everyvun get in ze Bomb-Proof, fast! fast!" He disappeared into a white cloud.

"Let's just bury him as is," said Sarah. "And if the head turns up... Aw, heck!" She pushed big heaps of sand over the body with her heels. "It's just one less skull for the Devil to play marbles with!" She grabbed a water-bucket and ran to Gun Battery 2.

That's how I learned the second duty of the shovel-wielding Angry- Saxon army - to bury their dead. You can call me a Whig if you must, but for me it was an inauspicious introduction to the religion of glory, that first day of siege. Kelly took note of that, and, in big- brotherly fashion, - once we were safe inside the gloom of the Bomb-Proof, took it upon his dandified epithets to explain to all his Crawdads the principles of Progress, as bombs burst all around, and the corpse's head was never found...

( - until too late - )

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