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There was a stir and bustle about the square within the stone bastions; orderlies hurried from quarters to barracks, bugles sounded, and groups of ragged soldiers sat about, polishing muskets and belts, and setting new flints. Men of the commissary department were carrying boxes and bales from the fort to a cleared space on the beach.
First he thought he would talk to the grasshopper, or call to one of the swallows, but he had now got over the effort of climbing, and he could not sit still. Up he jumped, ran up the rampart, and then down again into the fosse. He liked the trench best, and ran along it in the hollow, picking up stray flints and throwing them as far as he could.
Linen Britanias, slops, spirits, tobacco, guns, swords, trade chests, cases, jars, powder, umbrellas, boats, canvas, cordage, pitch, tar, paints, oil, and brushes, empty kegs, kettles, pans, lead basons, earthenware, hardware, beads, coral, iron bars, lead bars, common caps, Kilmarnock ditto, flints, pipes, leg and hand manilloes, snuff boxes, tobacco boxes, cargo hats, fine ditto, hair trunks, knives, looking glasses, scarlet cloth, locks, shot, glass ware, stone ware, provisions, bottled ale and porter, &c. &c.
Forests clothed the mountain plateaus, heavy rains fell, and the water rushed down to the Nile, carving out the great watercourses which remain to this day, bearing testimony to the truth. And the flints, which the Palaeolithic inhabitants of the plateau-forests made and used, still lie on the now treeless and sun-baked desert surface. This is certainly a very weak conclusion.
While scarcely this my leading hand sustains, Tired with the way, and recent from her pains; For 'mid yon tangled hazels as we past, On the bare flints her hapless twin she cast, The hopes and promise of my ruin'd fold!
Even when playing in our house or yard, I could always tell when the millstones were being dressed, because the rumbling of the mill then stopped, and there were few pleasures I would not instantly forego, rushing at once to the mill, that I might spread out my hands near the mill-stones in the hope that the little hard flints flying form the miller's chisel would light upon their backs and make the longed-for marks.
If the weather is damp, or the native is in a hurry, they are pegged out near the fire; after drying, the smaller skins are rubbed with stones to make them flexible, or are scored or ornamented with various devices, cut with a flint or shell on the skin side; the larger skins have their inner layers shaved off by flints, shells, or implements of wood.
Where the moon held no lantern for him, he went on his knees, and groped for his lost treasure with a miser's eager patience of agony, drawing his hand slowly over the stony kerb and between the interstices of the thick-sown flints, like an acute-feeling worm. Despair grew heavy in his breast.
This did not so much matter, as the rain had poured down it like a sluice, washing the flints clean. Ruby's lantern swung to and fro, casting a yellow glare on the tall hedges, drawing queer gleams from the holly-bushes, and flinging an ugly, amorphous shadow behind, that dogged her like an enemy.
The action was noticed, and the snapping of the locks was heard by the soldiers, who returned their futile attempt with a laugh of derision, the captain crying aloud, "Ah! rascals, I knew you, and have taken away your flints." "You should have taken away that in my pouch, too," shouted the leader, firing his gun in the next instant.
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