at the balls might roll out upon the mackerels, and, says
one of them:

"If you mudsills will stay there a little longer, we'll manage it so as
to drop the shells on you from our hands, without using the guns at
all."

Captain Bob Shorty heard this jeer, and as he tied his handkerchief
over a wound on his forehead, a sickly smile illustrated his ghastly
face, and says he:

"We might as well all die here together. The grave, after all, is a
softer bed than many of these Mackerel beings have been accustomed to."

Sergeant O'Pake who always takes things literally, turned to Bob, and,
says he:

"What makes it soft?"

"Because," says Captain Bob Shorty, looking vacantly at the sergeant,
"it is a bed of down. Did you never hear the old song of 'Down among
the Dead Men?'" But let me not linger over the scene, my boy.

That night, the remaining Mackerels silently recrossed Duck Lake, and
the General penned the following

DESPATCH.

"I have withdrawn the Brigade across Duck Lake. The position of the
Confederacies is impregnable. It was a Military Necessity to attack
the enemy or retire. I have done both.

"WOBERT WOBINSON."

Just as the spectacled veterans gained this side of Duck Lake again, my
boy, the Mackerel Chaplain was accosted by a Republican chap from
Boston, and says he: "This really looks like action at last my friend.
Our troops are evidently all enthusiasm to be led once more against the
foe."

The Chaplain shaded his eyes with his hand, to look at the speaker, and
says he:

"They are indeed enthusiastic, my friend. So enthusiastic, in fact,
that at least half of them would not come back to this side at all."

"Ah!" says the Republican chap; "the noble fellows."

"Yes," says the Chaplain, as softly as though he were speaking in a
sick-room; "they remain there sleeping upon their arms. And, oh, my
friend, they will never come back again."

He spoke truly, my boy: and may a kind Heaven see naught in the blood
welling from their loyal hearts but the blush of a soldier's honor; the
glow of a patriot fire in which all their human errors went up to God
as the smoke of a glorious sacrifice. They sleep their last sleep upon
the arms of their Country; and whether those arms, with which she folds
them into her heart, be white with the ermine of winter, or green with
the drapery of summer, the clasp shall be none the less strong with all
a Mother's immortality of love.

Yours, gravel