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"See!" cried Lajonquière, "at last we have hold of the Barbets we have been so long looking for!" With his dragoons in the centre, flanked by the grenadiers and foot, the Royalists advanced with confidence to the charge. At the first volley, the Camisards prostrated themselves, and the bullets went over their heads.
All morning the firing was very heavy, many of the bullets coming right over the hill and dropping near the town. Our men kept very still, only firing when they saw their mark. Three of them were killed, thirteen wounded. Before noon a field battery came up to support the battalion, and against that terrifying shrapnel of ours the Boers attempted no further advance.
There was stern work ahead of them this night, and Sam was becoming uneasy. When he at length rose to his feet and picked up his gun, the visitors did likewise. They examined the priming of their weapons, the bullets in their pouches, and the quantity of powder in their powder-horns.
But the bullets reached us; soldiers fell with yells. The chiefs shouted louder: "Forward, forward!" The rear ranks, which they pushed on, compelled us to march. Then, closing our eyes, we made a fresh dash and entered the smoke. We were seized with furious rage. When the cry of "Halt!" resounded, we experienced difficulty in coming to a standstill.
"You keep three bullets you'll need them when the green water is spilling in here," and he gave me a significant look. Despair was upon him again, but I could not bring myself to feel that death awaited us. Weak and hungry and thirsty, life was still strong, and the desire to live, if only to have vengeance on Thirkle and his men, kept up my courage.
Upon entering, however, a narrow defile, at the bottom of which was the bed of a torrent, with large masses of rock brought down from the neighbouring precipices, they had reason to repent their negligence; for scarcely were the whole of the party engaged in the narrow pass, when they were startled by the whistling of bullets close to their heads, and by the echoed report of several guns.
In this new negro-soldier venture, loneliness was certain, ridicule inevitable, failure possible; and Shaw was only twenty-five; and, although he had stood among the bullets at Cedar Mountain and Antietam, he had till then been walking socially on the sunny side of life. But whatever doubts may have beset him, they were over in a day, for he inclined naturally toward difficult resolves.
Some were heading down, and others up the valley to cut off her escape; the majority were coming straight for the clumps of trees. Fresno burst out of cover mounted on Sandy's bay horse. He began to shoot. And the Indians fired in reply. All along the slopes rose white puffs of smoke, and bullets clipped dust from the ground in front of Allie. Fresno drew ahead. The bay horse was swift.
Success came at last through the courage of a little boy, called Pipita, who, using as a shield a flat tile torn from the pavement, and holding a blazing torch in his hand, crept through a shower of bullets up to the gate of the stronghold and set fire to it. As the flames spread upward, the insurgents broke in upon the frightened defenders, killing some and making prisoners of the others.
I chanced to be riding with Colonel Byng in rear, and looking round saw that we had good luck. For though bullets fell among the troopers quite thickly enough, the ground two hundred yards further back was all alive with jumping dust. The Boers were shooting short.
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