m. I'm so puffed up with this yere exploit
that a pigeon looks all sunk in an' consumptif beside me.

"'Thar's one feacher of this dooel with the little gun boat which
displeases me, however. Old Butler's got Noo Orleans at the time, an'
among other things he's editin' the papers. I reads in one of 'em a
month later about me sinkin' that scow. It says I'm a barb'rous
villain, the story does, an' shoots up the boat after it surrenders,
an' old Butler allows he'll hang me a whole lot the moment ever he gets
them remarkable eyes onto me. I don't care none at the time much, only
I resents this yere charge. I shore never fires a shot at that gunboat
after it gives up; I ain't so opulent of amm'nition as all that. As
time goes on, however, thar's a day when I'm goin' to take the
determination of old Butler more to heart.

"'Followin' the gun-boat eepisode I'm more locoed than ever to get my
battery into a fight. An' at last I has my hopes entirely fulfilled.
It's about four o'clock one evenin' when we caroms on about three
brigades of Yanks. Thar's mebby twelve thousand of us rebs an' all of
fourteen thousand of the Lincoln people. My battery is all the big
guns we-all has, while said Yanks is strong with six full batteries.

"'The battle opens up; we're on a old sugar plantation, an' after
manooverin' about a while we settles down to work. It's that day I has
my dreams of carnage realised in full. I turns loose my six guns with
verve an' fervour, an' it ain't time for a second drink before I
attracts the warmest attention from every one of the Yankee batteries.
She's shore a scandal the way them gents in bloo does shoot me up!
Jest to give you-all a idee: the Yankees slams away at me for twenty
minutes; they dismounts two of my guns; they kills or creases forty of
my sixty-six men; an' when they gets through you-all could plant cotton
where my battery stands, it's that ploughed up.

"'It's in the midst of the _baile_, an' I'm standin' near my number-one
gun. Thar's a man comes up with a cartridge. A piece of a shell t'ars
him open, an' he falls across the gun, limp as a towel, an' then onto
the ground. I orders a party named Williams to the place. Something
comes flyin' down outen the heavens above an' smites Williams on top
the head; an' he's gone. I orders up another. He assoomes the
responsibilities of this p'sition jest in time to get a rifle bullet
through the jaw. He lives though; I sees him after