THK APRIL BOMBARDMENT. 145 entrusted with the arming of batteries. By Ar- chap. tillery officers chafing at all the protracted delay . — there seems to have been formed at this time an extremely high standard of duty for judging what ought to be done when at last the two advanced batteries should be armed and ready for fighting. As expressed in the language of its apparent & & r . . , effect. friendly intercourse not aiming at rigid exact- ness, men plainly enounced the opinion that, when once in action, these batteries ' should not 1 be silenced, whatever the odds against them.'* Those speakers might think they were exercis- ing their faculties of military judgment; yet in truth, they were rather expressing the genuine old fighting sentiment that bases itself on just pride — on the personal pride of the man, on the aggregate pride of the corps. Hence seem- ingly sprang the instruction for the fight of the 13th of April, to which we shall presently come. The officer destined soon afterwards to execute a coin- . , cidencs that grave instruction was the one, as it chanced, now directed to try to conquer the obstacles which had hitherto baffled all efforts. Before evening on the 11th of April, the ground had become much more firm than it was on the clays last preceding; and when our Left siege - train commander directed Captain
- I give what I believe to have been the purport of inter-
changed words, and do not undertake to supplement them by attempting to show what the speakers may have really desired to inculcate. VOL. VIII, K
