Again the savory smell of the boiling chickens attracted sick boys, who begged for a little of the precious food. Having double the quantity, the Deacon was a little more liberal, but he had to restrain Shorty, who, despite his own great and gnawing hunger, would have given away the bigger part of the broth to those who so desperately needed it.
Let's get together for a talkand what's with the high-sounding guff? You sound sore about something: what?"I would have explained. But there wasn't any time."
TWO:It seemed to Si that he had hardly closed his eyes when the Orderly shook him and whispered an order to help arouse the men and get them into line.
TWO:FOR a short time a silence that seemed oppressive followed the fierce turmoil of the last charge of the rebels upon Snodgrass Hill and its repulse. Both sides had exhausted themselves in the awful grapple, and had to regain breath and thought. Then the night was pierced by the agonizing groans of the innumerable wounded, the stern commands of officers to their men to re-form, the calls of scattered men seeking their regiments and companies.
THREE:Never before, in all his countless millions of journeys around the globe, had he seen a human force of such tremendous aggressive power concentrated on such a narrow space. He may have seen larger armiesthough not manybut he had never seen 100,000 such veterans as thoseoriginally of as fine raw material as ever gathered under a banner, and trained to war by nearly three years of as arduous schooling as men ever knew, which sifted out the weaklings, the incompetents, the feeblewilled by the boisterous winnowing of bitter war.Si and Shorty rose promptly, and, experienced campaigners as they were, were in a moment ready to march anywhere or do anything as long as their rations and their cartridges held out.
THREE:"Aisy, now, aisy," said Jim. "We're to blame for that, so we are. Ye say, we wint over by Rossville last night and had a bit av a shindy and cleaned out a sutler's shop. We brought away some av the most illegant whisky that iver wet a man's lips, and hid it down there in the gulch, where we had jist come back for it. We sane you comin' and thought yez was the provo-guard after us. Ye say ye stopped there and talked to that peacock at the Provo-Marshal's quarters, and we thought yez was gittin' instructions. We sint these rookies out, who we thought nobody'd know, to give you a little fairy story about the rijimint being gone, to throw you off the scint, until we could finish the liquor."
