In a moment he stood erect in the half-fencing attitude of a gunner, and his linstock at the touch-hole: a huge tongue of flame, a volume of smoke, a roar, and the iron thunderbolt was on its way, and the colonel walked haughtily but rapidly back to the trenches; for in all this no bravado.

He was there to make a shot; not to throw a chance of life away watching the effect.
Ten thousand eyes did that for him.
Both French and Prussians risked their own lives craning out to see what a colonel in full uniform was doing under fire from a whole line of forts, and what would be his fate; but when he fired the gun their curiosity left the man and followed the iron thunderbolt.
For two seconds all was uncertain; the ball was travelling.
Tom gave a rear like a wild horse, his protruding muzzle went up sky-high, then was seen no more, and a ring of old iron and a clatter of fragments was heard on the top of the bastion.

Long Tom was dismounted.
Oh! the roar of laughter and triumph from one end to another of the trenches; and the clapping of forty thousand hands that went on for full five minutes; then the Prussians, either through a burst of generous praise for an act so chivalrous and so brilliant, or because they would not be crowed over, clapped their tea thousand hands as loudly, and thus thundering, heart-thrilling salvo of applause answered salvo on both sides that terrible arena.
That evening came a courteous and flattering message from the commander-in-chief to Colonel Dujardin; and several officers visited his quarters to look at him; they went back disappointed.

The cry was, "What a miserable, melancholy dog! I expected to see a fine, dashing fellow." The trenches neared the town.

Colonel Dujardin's mine was far advanced; the end of the chamber was within a few yards of the bastion.