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The men got under arms very quick and tractable, and I think wished to atone. The fire of the savages had no effect, the balls being buried in the earth of the escarp, or falling spent within the fort. But we were kept at it all night, the men tireless and dutiful. The savages now and then paused at first, expecting some token from the hostages. Then they fought with great persistence realizing.
It must not be overlooked that a gun is a machine which has to perform a certain quantity of work of a certain definite kind, and, like all other machines, must be formed specially for its purpose. The motive power is gunpowder, and the article to be produced is perhaps a hole in an armor-plate, perhaps a breach in a concealed escarp, or perhaps destructive effect on troops.
The two outworks are closed at the gorge with a loopholed wall, flanked by a small guard-house. They have no ditches, but an escarp of ten feet in the lava. The tower marked A in my plan is sixty yards in diameter, with a well in the centre. It has its gorge closed with a ditch and loopholed wall. It mounts fifteen guns on the top, and fifteen guns in casemate.
You may yet come to think the dearest boon that fate could have given her would have been a ball through her brain as she stood on the escarp so little her chances are worth!" This plain disclosure staggered MacLeod. He had thought the place amply victualed. A rising doubt of the officers' capacity to manage the situation showed in his face. Stuart interpreted the expression.
He need not pile up lofty citadels, escarp steep hills, cut away the sides of mountains, and fence himself about with many lines of walls and towers: clemency will render a king safe even upon an open plain. The one fortification which can not be stormed is the love of his countrymen....
Five times that gallant regiment charged the battery, and when the smoke of battle cleared away the sun shone down upon a piteous sight blood dyeing the green of that sodded escarp blood in great clots upon the rocks and stumps of the rugged hill below blood poured plenteously upon the dusty road, making it horrible with purple mire blood staining the bridge and gathering in little pools upon the planks, and dripping slowly down through the cracks between them into the sluggish stream, where it floated with the water in great red clouds, toward which creatures dwelling in slimy depths below came up lazily, but when they tasted it became furious and fought among themselves like demons blood drying in hideous networks and arabesques upon the railing of the bridge blood upon the fences, blood upon the trembling leaves of the bushes by the wayside blood everywhere!
The eastern front has an escarp fourteen feet high cut in the lava, and well flanked by the caponnière defending the entrances, mounting four guns. The bomb-proof barracks in the northern fronts have one tier of eight guns in casemate at the curtains, and three guns in each flank in casemates open to the rear.
A friend of mine described to me how he watched the tricolor on the parapet being carried slowly along, thus indicating exactly how our allies in the body of the work were gaining ground. The zouaves who crossed the ditch on the proper left of the Malakoff had some difficulty in climbing up, from the height and steepness of the escarp.
However, nothing daunted, the opposite side was scaled, and, mounting the escarp, the assailants, with shouts and cheers that could be heard above the din of battle, rushed up the two breaches. Without waiting for the charge of the British bayonets, the greater part of the rebels deserted the walls and bastions and ran pell-mell into the city, followed by our men.
Several of these pariahs have been so unfortunate as to get down into the rampart ditch; we can see the places where they have repeatedly made frantic rushes for liberty up the almost perpendicular escarp, only to fall helplessly back to the bottom of their roofless dungeon, where they will gradually starve to death.
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