United States or Côte d'Ivoire ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The powder was just as old-fashioned as the rest of the outfit. Common black stuff, large grained, coarser even than blasting powder. Once they got a bag open it did not take them long to lay the train to the lantern, which Ken placed in a little excavation kicked out right under the front wall of the earthwork.
It is surrounded by an earthwork fortification, having at one time undergone a siege during the war waged by Charles XII against Peter the Great. The corps commanded by Ney, Murat and Montbrun, in order to get from Drissa to Witepsk, had built a pontoon bridge across the Dvina, opposite Polotsk, which they left for Oudinot's corps, which was going to take the road for St.Petersburg.
Then the boy kissed the pretty Brenda and her cousins, and dropped into the cellar. Passing into the earthwork, he selected his saddle and bridle from a heap of others, buckled on his spurs, dropped with bowed head upon his knees a moment, and crept into the passage leading to the spring.
She turned toward the northwest, where the lines of earthwork were thinnest, where, in fact, a single person might slip between them in the darkness, and Prescott no longer had any doubt that his first surmise was correct. Moreover, she was wary to the last degree, looking cautiously on every side and stopping now and then to see that she was not followed.
The crew of the gun had been annihilated in less than a minute. For a while there was silence. Then the Mexicans, protected by the earthwork that they had thrown up, drew the battery back a hundred yards. Even in the farther batteries the men were very careful about exposing themselves. The Texans, seeing no sure target, held their fire.
The Maid came forth as she had said with the last of the daylight, and at her command a great mound was speedily raised, of earth, brushwood, faggots, stones anything that the soldiers could lay hands upon; and when this hillock was of height sufficient to satisfy the young General, the great guns were brought and set upon it in such masterly fashion, and in such a commanding way, that La Hire, Dunois and Xantrailles, who came to see, marvelled at it, and we could note from the top of this earthwork that within the city great commotion reigned, and that it was as busy as a hive that has been disturbed.
He saw the Northern officers on the earthwork disappear, dropping down behind, and the young Southern soldiers raised a great shout of triumph which, as it sank on its dying note, was merged into a tremendous crash. The whole fort seemed to Harry to blaze with red fire, as the heavy guns were fired straight into the faces of the Invincibles.
On some there were still standing the ruins of rudely constructed cabins, or the semblance of fortification equally rude and incomplete. A fox stealing along a half-filled ditch, a wolf slinking behind an earthwork, typified the human abandonment and desolation.
"Bloody Mary" flung two over his head and one into his earthwork, but he paid no attention to her protests. The fact was, the 5th Dragoon Guards, trusting to Boer principles, had left their horses fully exposed to view instead of leading them away under cover as usual at sunrise.
With many instructions from our friends and warnings from Mackaye, I started next day on my journey. I arrived in the midst of a dreary, treeless country, and a little pert, snub-nosed shoemaker met me, and we walked together across the open down towards a circular camp, the earthwork, probably, of some old British town.
Word Of The Day