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"There's a thatched barn that touches their Tower," said old Polo Griffo; "I'd set fire to it in a trice." Another man wanted to fetch the ladders out of the church steeple. A third proposed they should break in the doors of the house with a heavy beam intended for some house in course of building, which had been left lying in the square.
But the curses were as nothing beside those of the Portuguese officers striving to rally their men. "My word," said Teddy. "Hear them scandalous greasers! It's poor talk, is English." "On with you, lads" it was Walker himself who shouted. "Pick up the ladders, and on with you!"
Our turn was in three parts, and lasted half an hour. It was 10.45 when we climbed the silk ladders for the third part. High up in the roof, separated from each other by nearly the length of the great hall, Sally and I stood on two little platforms. I held the ends of the red and the blue ropes. I had to let the blue rope swing across the hall to her.
The Barbarians would dash on pell-mell; the ladders would break with a loud crash, and masses of men would tumble into the water, causing it to fly up in red waves against the walls. Finally the tumult would subside, and the soldiers would retire to make a fresh beginning.
I got up in an instant; and orders being given to clear the way before me, and it being likewise a moonshine night, I made a shift to get to the palace without trampling on any of the people. I found they had already applied ladders to the walls of the apartment, and were well provided with buckets, but the water was at some distance.
Not a morsel, not a mouthful remained either of yak-beef or food of any other kind and all three, Fritz making the fourth, had to go supperless to sleep. The exertions which they had made in carrying and erecting the ladders had so wearied them, that, despite their empty stomachs, all three were able to sleep.
The French fire never slackened. A cry arose that the enemy was making a sally from the distant flanks, and there was a rush towards the ladders.
I was standing between a communication trench and a crater left by a mine which was being "consolidated," as they have it in these days.... All around me soldiers of the third line swarmed and clambered over the débris, digging, hammering, shifting planks and sandbags from south to north, lugging new timbers, reels of barbed wire, ladders, cases of ammunition, machine guns, trench mortars.
The watershed between the Catarman and Calbayot is formed by the Salta Sangley already mentioned, a flat ridge composed of banks of clay and sandstone, which succeed one another ladder-wise downwards on both its sides, and from which the water collected at the top descends in little cascades. In the most difficult places rough ladders of bamboo are fixed.
Almost before he knows it, Corkey has cut loose the stern. The rope seems strong. Now he must unwind the bow line from its cleat, or he will lose his boat. He kicks at the cleat. He loosens a loop. He raises the boat and then lowers it. The tackle works. The other yawl and its tackle roll and creak in the gale. Nobody else comes up the ladders.
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