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Five companies, each numbering but six men, in order not to present too big a target to our sharpshooters, were to charge the fort from different points, their advance being covered by a heavy fire from the gunners posted in the rear. Each scaler was provided with only two rounds of ammunition, which were not to be used until he had mounted the breastwork and could deliver his shots on our heads.
About halfway down he suddenly came to a stop, for, in front of him, rose a bank breast high. Here, if anywhere, a sentry should have been placed, and, holding his companion's arm, James listened intently for some time. "Mind what you are doing," he said in a whisper. "This is a breastwork and, probably, the path is cut away on the other side.
In one of the onsets a man named Mugridge, more valorous than his peers, threw himself upon the parapet, when he was seized by twenty pairs of hands, and dragged inside the breastwork, where fifteen boys sat down on him to keep him quiet. Perceiving that it was impossible with their small number to dislodge us, the watch sent for reinforcements.
As a mere instance of the wide extent of modern ideas of utility, and of the possibilities of application of the laws that were discovered and formulated by those whose names the units of electrical measurements bear, it may be briefly stated how a group of gunners may work behind an iron breastwork, and never see the enemy's hull, and yet aim at him with a hundred times the accuracy possible in the day of the Old Ironsides and the Guerriere.
We became mixed up Highlanders, Grenadiers, Light Troops, Rangers and all, and we beat against that mass of logs and maze of fallen timber and we beat in vain. I was once carried right up to the breastwork, but we were stopped by the bristling mass of sharpened branches, while the French fire swept us front and flank.
While the former endeavored to relieve the Pile battery, which was hotly pressed by the enemy, both by sea and land, the latter threw themselves on the breastwork, between the St. George and the Pile batteries, with a fury which carried everything before it. Here the flower of the Belgian troops fought behind a well-fortified rampart, and the guns of the two fleets covered this important post.
Every Norman who attempts to scale the breastwork is slain on the instant, and his body cast forth under the hoofs of the baffled steeds. The sun sinks near and nearer towards the red horizon. "Courage!" cries the voice of Harold, "hold but till nightfall, and ye are saved. Courage and freedom!" "Harold and Holy Crosse!" is the answer.
With the first light of the dawn which followed the battle, he had commenced throwing up a rude breastwork, one end resting on the river, the other on a swamp, and by nightfall, it was nearly done. Mud and logs had been used, and bales of cotton, until it formed a fairly strong position.
The cloud of rocking, writhing arms and shoulders was neither going forward nor backward. Its movement was that of a vortex, while the gray stream kept on pouring through the breach as if it were only the first flood from some gray lake on the other side of the breastwork.
The soldiers forced their way through the breach or sprang over the breastwork, and surprised at last in its sleep the city which had so long and vigorously defended itself. The burghers, startled from their slumber, bewildered, unprepared, found themselves engaged in unequal conflict with alert and savage foes.
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