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a call whose tones at a later period sent the blood of artillerymen and cavalrymen coursing more rapidly through the veins when it denoted that danger was nigh, and seeking encounter.
Battery drill was an enterprise requiring ample territory.
When the vicinity of the camp would not furnish it, the battery was driven to some place that would.
If cannoneers as a class were more devout than the other members of a light-artillery company, it must have been because they were stimulated early in their military career to pray — to pray that the limits of the drill-ground should be so contracted that the battery could not be cantered up and down a plain more than half a mile in extent, with cannoneers dismounted and strung along in the rear at intervals varying with their running capacity or the humor of the commanding officer; or, if mounted, clutching at the handles or edge of the limber-chest, momently expecting to be hurled headlong as the carriages plunged into an old sink or tent ditch or the gutter of an old company street, or struck against a stump or stone with such force as to shake the ammunition in the chests out of its packing, making it liable to explode from the next concussion-at least so feared the more timid of the cannoneers, when their fears of being thrown off were quieted so that they could think of anything else.
On such occasions they appreciated the re-enforced trousers peculiar to artillerymen, and wished government had been even more liberal in that direction.
But this mental state of timidity soon wore off, and the men came to feel more at home while mounted on these noisiest and hardest-riding of vehicles; or else sulked in the rear, with less indifference to consequences.
Notwithstanding the monotony that came of necessity to be inseparable from them, battery drills were often exhilarating occasions.
It was in the nature of things for them to be so, as when the artillery in action moved at all it must needs move promptly.
A full six-gun battery going across
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