“‘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 the war.

“’As that’s no more men for the place, I steps for’ard myse’f.  I’m not thar a minute when I sinks down to the ground.  I don’t feel nothin’ an’ can’t make it out.

“‘While I’m revolvin’ this yere phenomenon of me wiltin’ that a-way an’ tryin to form some opinions about it, thar’s a explosion like forty battles all in one.  For a moment, I reckons that somehow we-all has opened up a volcano inadvertent, an’ that from now on Loosiana can boast a Hecla of her own.  But it ain’t no volcano.  It’s my ammunition waggons which, with two thousund rounds is standin’ about one hundred yards to my r’ar.  The Yanks done blows up the whole outfit with one of their shells.

“’It’s strictly the thing, however, which lets my battery out.  The thick smoke of the two thousand cartridges drifts down an’ blankets what’s left of us like a fog.  The Yanks quits us; they allows most likely they’ve lifted me an’ my six brass guns plumb off the earth.  Thar’s some roodiments of trooth in the theery for that matter.

“‘These last interestin’ details sort o’ all happens at once.  I’ve jest dropped at the time when my ammunition waggons enters into the sperit of the o’casion like I describes.  As I lays thar one of my men comes gropin’ along down to me in the smoke.

“’"Be you hurt, Major?” he says.

“’"I don’t know,” I replies:  “my idee is that you better investigate an’ see.”

“’He t’ars open my coat; thar’s no blood on my shirt.  He lifts one arm an’ then the other; they’re sound as gold pieces.  Then I lifts up my left laig; I’ve got on high hoss-man boots.

“’"Pull off this moccasin,” I says.

“‘He pulls her off an’ thar’s nothin’ the matter thar.  I breaks out into a profoose sweat; gents, I’m scared speechless.  I begins to fear I ain’t plugged at all; that I’ve fainted away on a field of battle an’ doo to become the scandal of two armies.  I never feels so weak an’ sick!