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Grant had meant to send the troops to join the Army of the James under Butler at Bermuda Hundred, but already the dust of Early's columns was in sight from the hills behind Washington, and the capital, though fully fortified, being practically without defenders, until the Sixth Corps should come to the rescue, in the stress of the moment the detachments of the Nineteenth Corps were hurried up the Potomac as fast as the transports entered the roads.

But he had been supported by his half civilized handful of creatures who well enough knew what mercy to expect from the enemy. And, anyway, they had been bred of a stock with a fighting history second to no race in the world. To a man, the defenders were prepared to sell their lives at a heavy price. And they would die rifle in hand and facing the enemy.

The Bois Brûlés bore down upon the settlement in menacing array. The colonists took what shelter they could find and prepared for battle. Fighting coolly, they made their shots tell. The advancing column hesitated and halted in dismay at the courage of the defenders. Then John M'Leod remembered a cannon which was rusting unused at the small post which the Hudson's Bay Company had on the river.

Could they have supplied the place of the fallen by fresh men, until they had wearied the defenders out, they would have succeeded, but they were evidently not in strength to do this so they slowly yielded, until the deadly struggle ceased, and silence resumed her empire, while the besieged repaired the damage the defences had sustained.

This view of the nature of the syllogism renders consistent and intelligible what otherwise remains obscure and confused in the theory of Archbishop Whately and other enlightened defenders of the syllogistic doctrine, respecting the limits to which its functions are confined.

Now, all these thoughts and many more passed through the minds of the defenders in a tenth of the time it has taken us to put them on paper. It was yet early in the evening, and the crisis in the siege must come before long. Jared Long peeped out of the rear entrance. A study of what he saw showed little change in the situation. He was convinced that the next demonstration would be from the front.

When ships made at the Snake from all sides yet the defenders so hasted to meet them that they even stepped over the bulwarks into the sea and sank with their weapons, heedless of all else save, as in a land fight, to press ever forwards. The men fell there first in the ship's waist, where the board was lowest, while forward about the prow and aft in the space next the poop they held out longest.

Then, though, they struggled to their feet and started without argument. But an hour after the start we reached the secret of the safety of Zeitoon, without which not even the valor of its defenders could have withstood the overwhelming numbers of the Turks for all those scores of years; and there was new delay.

Carmela had snatched a machete from the fingers of a dying soldier, and was fighting like one possessed of a fiend. Once, when a combined rush drove the defenders nearly on top of the non-combatants, Iris would have striven to draw the half-demented girl into the little haven with the other women. But Coke thrust her back, shouting: "Leave 'er alone. She'll set about you if you touch her!"

He stood in more danger from the men he would help, they who were the watchful defenders of the Castle. It must have been two o'clock when he crossed the King's Highway, a mile or more above the northern gates, and struck down into the same thick undergrowth that had protected him and Hobbs on a memorable night not long before.