The world has never perhaps, before or since, heard
such an uproar. Fancy twenty-four thousand guns thundering at each
other. Fancy the sky red with the fires of hundreds of thousands of
blazing, brazen meteors; the air thick with impenetrable smoke--the
universe almost in a flame! for the noise of the cannonading was heard
on the peaks of the Andes, and broke three windows in the English
factory at Canton. Boom, boom, boom! for three days incessantly the
gigantic--I may say, Cyclopean battle went on: boom, boom, boom, bong!
The air was thick with cannon-balls: they hurtled, they jostled each
other in the heavens, and fell whizzing, whirling, crashing, back into
the very forts from which they came. Boom, boom, boom, bong--brrwrrwrrr!
On the second day a band might have been seen (had the smoke permitted
it) assembling at the sally-port of Fort Potato, and have been heard
(if the tremendous clang of the cannonading had allowed it) giving
mysterious signs and countersigns. "Tom," was the word whispered,
"Steele" was the sibilated response. (It is astonishing how, in the
roar of elements, THE HUMAN WHISPER hisses above all!) It was the
Irish Brigade assembling. "Now or never, boys!" said their leaders; and
sticking their doodeens into their mouths, they dropped stealthily into
the trenches, heedless of the broken glass and sword-blades; rose from
those trenches; formed in silent order; and marched to Paris.
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