"Honest?" I said. She explained that the score was four to three in the bottom of the 3rd Inning. It went like this, she explained:

Inning           1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  Score  Errors

Slow-Polks       1  2  1  *  *  *  *  *  *  4       1
Pesky Lunars     1  1  1  *  *  *  *  *  *  3       0  

"The next Innin', May Two," Sarah said as she brushed dirt out of her hair, "them pesky Lunars scored right away with a hum-dinger that knocked Sarge Weigart's head plumb off. - But by sundown, ha! Cappy Lowd's eighteen pounders hit two e-lectric hum-dingers, pow an' pow!, an two of them guns of Plato spilled upsy-daisy - an' more than that, it's plain that with each gun we knock, we're weakenin' them yonder Trankies' ability to score, as today's Innin' shows, the Lunars earnin' nothin' but a great big chicken egg, zero. An' once again the big guns of Cappy Lowd knocked the iron nose off a third cannon, pow! It woulda been, an' shoulda been the only score of the day, was it not for an Error on our part - that bein' Vincent Childer's part, desertin' an' swimmin' the river... Anyhow, it leaves us so far with a Third Inning score of Pesky Lunars 3, Slow-Polks 4." She kissed me and ran off to the next sentry-pit.

Maybe we were winning - I could see my wife's way of looking at it - but I knew that the game was far from over - we were still stuck under seige - we had only eight days' rations left - General Lunarista had ten Tranquil Musketeer for every one of us Cotton Balers, - more than enough if he wanted to assault us - meanwhile he still had a handful of twelve pounders and a mortar to rain hell on our Bomb- Proof roof.

Back in the good ole Bomb-Proof, there was nothing to do but listen to the screech of shells, and cough on the powder-smoke. I cleaned my boots and sewed on my buttons; then I cleaned my buttons and sewed up the toe of my boot. Then I tore off my buttons and sewed `em back on better. In fact I sewed my boots to the company pennant and Six-Finger's sleeve. I am a pretty good seamster but it was just too cheek by jowl down there.

Presently the men were all too silent, but for the prayers of the pious, the prayers of the terrified, the prayers of the gamblers - the latter mingled with shouts and groans and clicking dice. Besides that there was the snoring of the bored and some blasphamous language, I am sorry to report, from the sinners, in which category I belong... Still, it all seemed miserably quiet, compared to the bursting bombs and leaping eighteen pounders above us.

Some of the men sat crammed on the Roman Lounges, we called `em - splintery planks laid between crates of eighteen-pound canister and crates full of bibles. With the rise of the lead-colored sun like a slow swooping cannonball, I woke from my dreams of Joseph Bently's ghost, gasping, groaning, and he-hawing like Martha Mule's braying out in the yard. So I woke up all jittery. I wanted to make up for Bently's drowning, and my part and helping him drown, but all I could figure was that there was nothing I could do, ever. I was afraid of a sneaking thought that crept up on me like an Injun, telling me just forget it like everyone else. It wasn't like any lightning bolts were spearing evil men these days (or any days past far as I knew). Most evil men I knew of got bags of gold, promotions, honors, the admirations of women, and Penny Press editorials advertising the example of their virtues. Now, friend, you may accuse me of doubting the Triumph of Good over Evil, and therefore tossing the whole creed of Progress out the window (but our Bomb-Proof didn't have a window). Now, I grant you, that new kind of tree called Telephone Pole, which was sprouting up all over citiside, countryside, and tarnation, was a kind of fruit of Progress, but wasn't it just the same old tree of knowledge as in Eden, and that apple just ball-lightning? It seemed to me, then, that Progress and Evil could triumph at the same time. It seemed to me, also, then, that no lightning bolt ever would nor even could punish my awful transgression. Therefore, if it was going to be done at all, I'd have to do it myself. Trouble was, I wasn't sure what "it" meant. Maybe "it" meant, "stick your head in the bore of a electromagnetic cannon", and maybe it meant, "say you're sorry and leave off liquor for two weeks."

We were all kind of quiet and thinking too much when Half-Lip McCoy suddenly jumped up laughing.

"What's so funny?" we demanded.

"I dunno," he replied, and sat down all glum.

To cheer him up, I asked him to play his awful rat-chewed concertina. We all sang his little composition, "ALL THE MOON!" to the tune of "Hear Our Prayer, O Lord" -

I got a glorious expectation
For a sunny fun vacation, boys!
But you don't got to miss us
Cause we'll all be back by Christmas

So sing HURRAH for glory boys!
Sing HURRAH for glory! (&tc)

We're mighty fine ballooners
Gonna kill some pesky Lunars, boys!
And them Halls of Montamoona
Will be one big crater tomb-a -

So sing HURRAH for glory boys!
Sing HURRAH for glory! (&tc)

Don't got to mind our manners
Cause we fight for Freedom's banners, boys!
And Charity will guide our heart
To any old Lunar whore or tart -

So sing HURRAH for glory boys!
Sing HURRAH for glory! (&tc)

Damn them Whigs who make a fuss!
The MOON'S just the LONG hair of TEX-US, boys!
We know why the U. S. is so FREE and BRAVE
It's a-cause that ANY MAN can own a nigger slave -

So sing HURRAH for glory boys!
Sing HURRAH for glory! (&tc)

Soon the Moon will all be FREE!
We'll cross the Cold Sea with Rough `n' Ready, boys!
But if he tarries, back in Archie's Hole,
The Devil's Yule log will be our burning soul -

So sing HURRAH for glory boys!
Sing HURRAH for glory! (&tc)

So sang Half-Lip McCoy, who lost his other lip in a brawl with a bowie-knife fisted Ranger during the 4th of July celebration in Plato's Crater, I was told in `48, but not by him.

The guys what didn't have no gumption prayed like the devil, worrying them worry beads like they were diamonds or tart's garters. The hard luck men huddled beside a red lantern, slapping cards down on the dirt with brief little gestures and grunts. With their curses, their hard hollow-eyed faces, and that livid light underground, it was like a saloon run by Old Scratch himself.

Weird, the huddled card-sharps! They numbered their pips by the lurid storm-wash of a red lantern. It was so strange to see them wager wildly silent, shoving piles of Liberty's-head lucre about by rote and rhythm. They slapped down the cards in the dirt. A finger curled, "Hit me." A hand cut a throat:"Call." A palm spilled:"I'm out." A triumvirate of white beards, bitter and beaten cheaters, lost the last dregs of last month's wages to the one that played southpaw. They won their wages back just to lose them twice over again. The huddled card players played gamesome Fate, the tumbled cards a little paper fort, the coins, cannonballs, rolling to one rate, then back to the rival fate. The Metal Man traded the good gold for notes three times its value, alleged in dubious wildcat script, helot-profiled. He stuffed it down his esopho-chute, furnace food, intrinsically delicious to such gourmands of combustion as he, the prince of automatons, the president of bicameral steam engines, Franklin Stove.

The old-timers played about a thousand games with my dog-chewed checkers set. Harold Winston was taking apart and putting back together the lock of his musket, over and over again, like he was a wind-up blacksmithy. Bradly Abernathy, the Delaware kid pinning way over his sweetheart, left to the tender mercies of the less patriotic lads, he slept sitting with his head on his knees, sighing, "Oh, I am despair!" He made me cross. I was once just like him, but a half year of grubby, mean, and hard-hearted military life had squeezed me into a different shape:whereas he clenched the ignorance of his innocence with a discipline that was grubby, mean, and hard-hearted.

The men with beloved wives and little ones lay on their backs, half asleep. Without fully waking they opened their eyes every time a shell landed inside the fort, blowing fire and showering iron splinters and dirt clods against the Bomb-Proof roof. Then they closed their eyes again. Three or four thin and tired foreign-borns who'd signed up on the balloon ramps soon as their hungry bellies hit the States - they lay shivering and sweating with Lunar Fever. Already the infirmary dugout was full-up with men with their springs run down from the march from Annex Agonies. So, in order to make room for the boys with shell-splinters, Doctor Paine said all feverish Dough- Boys should stay put - seeing as he could as well treat `em here as there, with Rupert's Miracle Salve and Tonic.

"Well, since Sheehan swum-river, let's dice for his left-behinds," called out the red bearded gambler, "Kidney" Beanton. We diced for a burlap sack, a box of rotten snuff, and a miniature of Venus - unclad, of course - holding the staff of Old Glory. Miracle of miracles, I won Venus with double boxcars. I took Bradly Abernathy aside and tried to give it to him, but he made me trade it for a plug of dry tobaccy, so that he owed me nothing.

The next day there was a heap of excitement when a famous guest came a-knocking on the gate of Fort Slow-Polk -

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