"'Quick! the elevation.'

"Colonel Dujardin and La Croix raised the muzzle to the
mark,--hoo! hoo! hoo! ping! ping! ping' came the bullets about
their ears.

"'Away with you!' cried the Colonel, taking the linstock from him.

"Then Colonel Dujardin, fifteen yards from the trenches, in full
blazing uniform, showed two armies what one intrepid soldier can
do. He kneeled down and adjusted his gun, just as he would have
done in a practising-ground. He had a pot-shot to take, and a
pot-shot he would take. He ignored three hundred muskets that were
levelled at him. He looked along his gun, adjusted it and
readjusted to a hair's-breadth. The enemy's bullets pattered over
it; still he adjusted and readjusted. His men were groaning and
tearing their hair inside at his danger.

"At last it was levelled to his mind, and then his movements were
as quick as they had hitherto been slow. In a moment he stood
erect in the half-fencing attitude of a gunner, and his linstock
at the touch-hole: a huge tongue of flame, a volume of smoke, a
roar, and the iron thunderbolt was on its way, and the Colonel
walked haughtily, but rapidly, back to the trenches: for in all
this no bravado. He was there to make a shot,--not to throw a
chance of life away, watching the effect.

"Ten thousand eyes did that for him.

"Both French and Prussians risked their own lives, craning out to