The officers of the Invincibles had recovered from their wounds, and Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, sitting in a trench, resumed their game of chess.

Colonel Talbot took a pawn, the first man captured by either since early spring.

“That was quite a victory,” he said.

“Not important!  Not important, Leonidas!”

“And why not, Hector?”

“Because you’ve left the way to your king easier.  I shall promptly move along that road.”

“As Grant moved through the Wilderness.”

“Don’t depreciate Grant, Leonidas.  He never stops pounding.  We’ve fought two great battles with him in the Wilderness and a third at Cold Harbor, but he’s still out there facing us.  Can’t you see the Yankees with your glasses, Harry?”

“Yes, sir, quite clearly.  They’re about to fire a shot from a big gun in a wood.  There it goes!”

The deep note of the cannon came to them, passed on, and then rolled back in echoes like a threat.

Appendix:  Transcription notes: 

The following modifications were applied while transcribing the printed book to etext: 

 Chapter 1
   Page 6, para 1, change “criticise” to “criticize”, for consistency
   Page 20, para 6, fix typo, “calvaryman”
   Page 21, para 8, change “things” to “thing”

 Chapter 2
   Page 35, para 2, add missing hyphen in “commander-in-chief”

 Chapter 3
   Page 48, para 1, change “where-ever” to “wherever”
   Page 49, para 2, fix typo, period should be comma
   Page 49, para 2, change “gaints” to “giants”, which is my best guess
     as to what it should be

 Chapter 4
   Page 74, para 7, add missing period

 Chapter 7
   Page 124, para 6, fix typo “qouth”
   Page 132, para 14, “Pleasonton” should be “Pleasanton”

 Chapter 10
   Page 182, para 5, add missing close-quotes

 Chapter 11
   Page 208, para 6, add missing close-quotes

 Chapter 12
   Page 229, para 3, fix typo, “dulplicate”

 Chapter 13
   Page 245, para 3, change “with” to “was”

 Chapter 14
   Page 260, para 2, removed a badly-misplaced comma

 Chapter 16
   Page 301, para 4, moved a badly-misplaced comma

Chapter 2, page 34, para 3 contains the phrase “rest and realization”.  Probably should be “relaxation”, but maybe not, so I left it as is.

The following words were printed with accented vowels or with the “ae” ligature, but these few occurrences hardly warrant an 8-bit version of the text: 
  cooperation fete reentered Plataea Thermopylae

As with all the books in this series, there are many instances where commas seem to be missing or misplaced, but, except as noted above, I refrained from “fixing” these.