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Natty stood all this time in a menacing attitude, with his rifle pointed over the breastwork, watching with a quick and cautions eye the least movement of the assail ants. The outcry unfortunately tempted the ungovernable curiosity of Hiram to take a peep from behind his cover at the state of the battle.
The trees that covered the ground were hewn down by thousands, the tops lopped off, and the trunks piled one upon another to form a massive breastwork. The line followed the top of the ridge, along which it zig-zagged in such a manner that the whole front could be swept by flank-fires of musketry and grape.
We came to the conclusion that the enemy had hoped to surprise the village, and were approaching for that object when Duppo had discovered them. John advised that a breastwork should be thrown up, extending from the igarape across the path the Majeronas were likely to come by. After some time, our friends seemed to comprehend what we wanted.
As no one would advance to the attack in the quarter where the Scotch fought, the duke himself led on the troops, with a javelin in his hand, and up to his breast in water. At last, after a protracted struggle, the forces of Count Mansfeld succeeded with their halberds and pikes in making a breach in the breastwork, and by raising themselves on one another's shoulders scaled the parapet.
Lieutenant Adrian Searing, in command of the picket-guard on that part of the line through which his brother Jerome had passed on his mission, sat with attentive ears in his breastwork behind the line. Not the faintest sound escaped him; the cry of a bird, the barking of a squirrel, the noise of the wind among the pines all were anxiously noted by his overstrained sense.
Fortunately, however, an hour or two before the men were to start, the news arrived that the Ashantis were advancing to attack the camp. A breastwork had been thrown up round the village, and the church was converted into a sort of keep, platforms having been raised inside to the level of the upper windows, through which the marines and seamen could fire at the advancing enemy.
The room had been arranged with a view to the dancing, the large oak table having been moved back till it stood as a breastwork to the fireplace. At each end, behind, and in the chimney-corner were grouped the guests, many of them being warm-faced and panting, among whom Eustacia cursorily recognized some well-to-do persons from beyond the heath.
"Then we'd better make our field of battle and fortify as fast as we can." The horses and mules were tethered in the lowest ground they could find among the cottonwoods near the edge of the creek, where the four hoped they would escape the bullets. Then they built in all haste a circular breastwork of fallen wood and of their own packs.
Lewis left his sick and wounded in the camp at the Point, protected by a rude breastwork, and with an adequate guard. With the remainder of his forces, over a thousand strong, he crossed the Ohio, and pushed on to the Pickaway plains. When but a few miles from the earl's encampment he was met by a messenger informing him that a treaty of peace was being negotiated with the Indians.
I shall take every man who can carry arms, and leave ten at the breastwork to defend it; but there is no chance whatever of their attempting to come up here while we are attacking them, so you need have no fear."
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