You may have made up your mind that the besiegers
were an advance guard of the rebels; but they were not. They were
nothing less than an army of fierce musquitoes, who made such a
persistent attack on the general and his staff as to make his
position almost untenable. In truth, they so harassed the corpulent
engineer, in rear and flank, that he mounted his horse and returned
to the city, where he spent a comfortable night at Willard's Hotel,
and went back in the morning refreshed. My authority for this is the
distinguished engineer himself.
A little after midnight, the two orderlies became seriously alarmed
(I ought to mention that one was recently from Cork, and the other
from Kerry), and reported to the general that a conversation was
being carried on in an unknown language by two persons in the woods
beyond, and whom they verily believed to be spies of the enemy. The
general was not a little perplexed at this intelligence, for the
better informed orderly declared, that while one shouted in very bad
Irish, the other seemed to answer him in Dutch. The general listened
attentively for a minute or more, when the noise was again heard.
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