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The Foreign Office will be presided over by a patriotic editor who has travelled in New South Wales and is thoroughly conversant with the language. Instead of bulwarks, the island will be fortified with Irish Bulls, our engineers being of opinion that no other horn-works are so efficient.
It appears, as I finally learned, that the sergeant believed I would have sufficient sense to understand it was at this place we must effect an entrance, if anywhere, and I ought to have known at the time, for, after waving his arms to attract attention, he walked along the wall, disappearing near what was known as the "horn-works," which as yet were enclosed only by a stockade of logs.
Exactly what happened during the next half-hour I am unable to state of my own knowledge, for I had no sooner entered the horn-works than it became necessary to put forth every effort in the saving of my own life.
Slop's sudden coming, and a discourse upon fortification; yet I fear'd it. Talk of what we will, brother, or let the occasion be never so foreign or unfit for the subject, you are sure to bring it in. I would not, brother Toby, continued my father, I declare I would not have my head so full of curtins and horn-works. That I dare say you would not, quoth Dr.
This, as I afterward came to know, was the "horn-works," which as yet was in an unfinished condition, and protected by a stockade of logs, between each of which last were spaces, in some cases two or three inches wide. By lying with our faces against these narrow openings, it was possible to hold converse with those on the inside almost as well as if we were within the walls.
From that day our people showed less aversion for the repentant deserter, and of a verity he did the work of three men during every four and twenty hours thereafter while we remained in Fort Schuyler. In just eight days after that assault when the Indians so nearly succeeded in gaining a foothold in the horn-works, another attack was threatened, and this time it was not unexpected.
They had a good deal to say about the need of somethin' to fill up their stomachs, an' I reckon that within four an' twenty hours sich a question as that won't give 'em any further trouble." "How did they go?" Jacob asked, eagerly. "Out through the horn-works, an' over the stockade." "How did it happen that only five started?"
At the beginning of the action no more than forty men had been stationed in the "horn-works," and it seemed to me as if the entire stockaded portion was surrounded by a dancing horde of howling, maddened Indians, who, bringing with them tree-trunks or stout branches, were throwing up such a heap of odds and ends as admitted of their gaining the top of the logs despite the fire which our people were pouring upon them.
These military compliments being finished, General Van Poffenburgh escorted his illustrious visitor, with great ceremony, into the fort, attended him throughout the fortifications, showed him the horn-works, crown-works, half-moons, and various other outworks, or rather the places where they ought to be erected, and where they might be erected if he pleased; plainly demonstrating that it was a place of "great capability," and though at present but a little redoubt, yet that it was evidently a formidable fortress in embryo.
Slop, the curtins my brother Shandy mentions here, have nothing to do with beadsteads; tho', I know Du Cange says, 'That bed-curtains, in all probability, have taken their name from them; nor have the horn-works he speaks of, any thing in the world to do with the horn-works of cuckoldom: But the Curtin, Sir, is the word we use in fortification, for that part of the wall or rampart which lies between the two bastions and joins them Besiegers seldom offer to carry on their attacks directly against the curtin, for this reason, because they are so well flanked.
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