the lost rail. Plump into the water went a little wiry chap and grappled the rail. “When I come up,” says the brave fellow afterwards to me, “our officer out with a twenty-dollar gold-piece and wanted me to take it. ‘That a’n’t what I come for,’ says I. ‘Take it,’ says he, ‘and share with the others.’ ‘That a’n’t what they come for,’ says I. But I took a big cold,” the diver continued, “and I’m condemned hoarse yit,” — which was the fact.
Farther on we found a whole length of track torn up, on both sides, sleepers and all, and the same thing repeated with alternations of breaks of single rails. Our howitzer-ropes came into play to hoist and haul. We were not going to be stopped.
But it was becoming a Noche Triste to some of our comrades. We had now marched some sixteen miles. The distance was trifling. But the men had been on their legs pretty much all day and night. Hardly any one had had any full or substantial sleep or meal since we started from New York. They napped off, standing, leaning on their guns, dropping down in their tracks on the wet ground, at every halt. They were sleepy, but plucky. As we passed through deep cuttings, places, as it were, built for defence, there was a general desire that the tedium of the night should be relieved by a shindy.
During the whole night I saw our officers moving about the line, doing their duty vigorously, despite exhaustion, hunger, and sleeplessness.
