the hour of
three
At other times other amenities were indulged in . Hand-grenades were thrown and shells with lighted fuses rolled down on the heads of acquaintances of the night before , who replied from wooden coehorns hooped with iron . The Union generals learned -LRB- common item in a siege -RRB- that the citizens of Vicksburg were eating mule meat . Not an officer or private in the Vicksburg armies who does not remember the 25th of June , and the hour of three in an afternoon of pitiless heat . Silently the long blue files wound into position behind the earth barriers which hid them from the enemy , coiled and ready to strike when the towering redoubt on the Jackson road should rise heavenwards . By common consent the rifle crack of day and night was hushed , and even the Parrotts were silent . Stillness closed around the white house of Shirley once more , but not the stillness it had known in its peaceful homestead days .