A flag of truce came from the fort:  the dead were removed on both sides and buried.  Some Prussian officers strolled into the French lines.  Civilities and cigars exchanged:  “Bon jour,” “Gooten daeg:”  then at it again, ding dong all down the line blazing and roaring.

At twelve o’clock the besieged had got a man on horseback, on top of a hill, with colored flags in his hand, making signals.

“What are you up to now?” inquired Dard.

“You will see,” said La Croix, affecting mystery; he knew no more than the other.

Presently off went Long Tom on the top of the bastion, and the shot came roaring over the heads of the speakers.

The flags were changed, and off went Long Tom again at an elevation.

Ten seconds had scarcely elapsed when a tremendous explosion took place on the French right.  Long Tom was throwing red-hot shot; one had fallen on a powder wagon, and blown it to pieces, and killed two poor fellows and a horse, and turned an artillery man at some distance into a seeming nigger, but did him no great harm; only took him three days to get the powder out of his clothes with pipe clay, and off his face with raw potato-peel.

When the tumbril exploded, the Prussians could be heard to cheer, and they turned to and fired every iron spout they owned.  Long Tom worked all day.

They got into a corner where the guns of the battery could not hit them or him, and there was his long muzzle looking towards the sky, and sending half a hundredweight of iron up into the clouds, and plunging down a mile off into the French lines.

And, at every shot, the man on horseback made signals to let the gunners know where the shot fell.

At last, about four in the afternoon, they threw a forty-eight-pound shot slap into the commander-in-chief’s tent, a mile and a half behind trenches.

Down comes a glittering aide-de-camp as hard as he can gallop.

“Colonel Dujardin, what are you about, sir?  Your bastion has thrown a round shot into the commander-in-chief’s tent.”

The colonel did not appear so staggered as the aide-de-camp expected.

“Ah, indeed!” said he quietly.  “I observed they were trying distances.”

“Must not happen again, colonel.  You must drive them from the gun.”

“How?”

“Why, where is the difficulty?”

“If you will do me the honor to step into the battery, I will show you,” said the colonel.

“If you please,” said the aide-de-camp stiffly.

Colonel Dujardin took him to the parapet, and began, in a calm, painstaking way, to show him how and why none of his guns could be brought to bear upon Long Tom.

In the middle of the explanation a melodious sound was heard in the air above them, like a swarm of Brobdingnag bees.

“What is that?” inquired the aide-de-camp.

“What?  I see nothing.”