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 VII

HURRAH FOR THE RED, WHITE AND BLUE!

"A truce! A truce! They've surrendered!"

It was afternoon again. All this morning the cannon of both sides had been hammering away; but the new army battery, Number 4, of four twenty-four-pounders and two sixty-eight-pounder shell guns or Paixhans, had joined with the naval battery. The fire seemed to be battering the walls to pieces. The men from the trenches, and the officers who watched through their spy-glasses, declared that the shells and solid shot were dismounting the Mexican guns and tumbling the casemates and parapets upon the heads of the gunners. The mortars were still blowing up the buildings and the streets. The Mexican fire was growing weaker.

Lieutenant Grant had come back just after reveille, from all-night work in the quartermaster department, overseeing the landing of stuff on the beach from the transports in the offing. He had gone to bed and had slept until noon.

"Do you think we'll charge on Vera Cruz today?" Jerry asked at his first opportunity; for Pompey had been prophesying, and the waiting infantry appeared to be a little nervous, and the old sergeants would say neither yes nor no.

"That's not for me to answer," Lieutenant Grant replied. "We'll obey orders."

"Vera Cruz has got to surrender, though, hasn't