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Blasphemy is the little breast-work behind which hypocrisy hides; behind which mental impotency feels safe. There is no blasphemy but the avowal of thought, and he who speaks what he thinks blasphemes. That I have had the hardihood it doesn't take much to attack the sacred scriptures.
The cannonade was returned by the Bavarians with equal vivacity for two hours, though with less effect, as the Swedish batteries swept the lower opposite bank, while their height served as a breast-work to their own troops.
The Indians had posted themselves at a place called, in their language, Talapoosie, and by the Americans, the Horse-shoe; a position of great natural strength, the advantages of which they had improved to the best of their skill, by a breast-work seven feet high, extending across the neck of land which formed the only approach to their encampment.
"Yes, sergeant, to shoot down those men." "No, no, my lads; what you've got to do is to put those torches out, and the way to do it is with the bayonet. Stand ready there to slip over the breast-work, all of you, then a sharp run, and meet them as they come, and then back again under cover."
The French regulars in the front began the attack from behind a breast-work, while the Indians kept up an irregular and scattered fire from the dark thickets on each side, which surprized and confounded the British soldiers, who were utter strangers to such methods of attack.
He had volunteered to take the command of a floating battery, which was a raft, consisting merely of a number of beams nailed together, with a flooring to support the guns: it was square, with a breast-work full of port-holes, and without masts carrying twenty-four guns, and one hundred and twenty men.
No satisfactory explanation was ever made of this singular delusion, but it was general throughout the ranks, and in that superstitious age was as effective as truth. The wavering Spaniards rallied once more under the guidance of their phantom leader, and again charged the breast-work of the patriots.
What followed was one scene of wild confusion. It seemed that my father and his men came dashing out of the back room, and we were seized and dragged over the heap of broken wood-work and plaster, to be placed behind it, where we struggled to our feet, and then, in the midst of the clouds of blinding dust and choking gunpowder smoke, everybody made a breast-work of the damaged wood, and received the charge of the French sailors with pistol-shots and blows from the cutlasses.
No satisfactory explanation was ever made of this singular delusion, but it was general throughout the ranks, and in that superstitious age was as effective as truth. The wavering Spaniards rallied once more under the guidance of their phantom leader, and again charged the breast-work of the patriots.
There was not a man behind the breast-work whose breath did not come thick and fast at the sight of the lights; for brave as they were, they knew that once the building they defended caught fire, the dry, sun-baked wood must flare away like so much paper; and there were women shut in there with them, whom it was their duty to defend.
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