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The windows all looked outward, but were small, and strongly defended with stout iron bars built into the masonry, and with massive wood shutters inside, loop-holed for rifle firing. The doors giving access to the rooms all opened upon the court-yard, and were as high and wide as they could be made, so as to let in plenty of light and air.
Our walk was interesting, as it brought us unexpectedly upon several relics of antiquity, a loop-holed and battlemented gateway; and at various points fragments of the old Gothic stone-work, built in among more recent edifices, which themselves were old; grimness intermixed with quaintness and grotesqueness; old fragments of religious or warlike architecture mingled with queer domestic structures, the general effect sombre, sordid, and grimy; but yet with a fascination that makes us fain to linger about such scenes, and come to them again.
Colonel John's eye lightened as he recognised its points. With a sign to Bale he fell in behind the man and followed him through two or three ill-paved and squalid streets. Presently the rider passed through a loop-holed gateway, before which a soldier was doing sentry-go. The two followed.
One of them, as much as two miles out from his main line, was on a commanding elevation and defended by an intrenched battery with infantry supports. A heavy wood intervened between this work and the National forces. In rear to the south there was a clearing extending a mile or more, and south of this clearing a log-house which had been loop-holed and was occupied by infantry.
The interior, at all events, had a neat and clean appearance, but several blackened ruins, loop-holed walls, the upper part of which were thickly bespattered with bullet-marks, showed that it had been lately the scene of, perhaps, a brief but desperate encounter between the hostile forces. The inn where the British commissioner was said to be was pointed out to him.
Food, ammunition, wood, particularly planks, everything Captain Dyer thought likely to be of use; and soon a breastwork was made inside the gateway; such lower windows as looked outwards carefully nailed up, and loop-holed for a shot at the enemy, should any appear; and when night did come at last, peaceful and still, the old palace was turned into a regular little fort.
The huge wattled shields, adopted by the Achaemenian Persians from the Assyrians, still remained in use; and from behind a row of these, rested upon the ground and forming a sort of loop-holed wall, the Sassanian bowmen shot their weapons with great effect; nor was it until their store of arrows was exhausted that the Romans, ordinarily, felt themselves upon even terms with their enemy.
Wailly Keep was a fortified farm on the fringe of the village, with loop-holed walls and the adjacent roads barricaded. It was a relic of the French defence scheme and was sound. The strictest precautions were taken against a gas attack. Each man had two P.H. helmets which he had to keep with him at all times.
The great, black, barren rocks of porphyry and trachyte rose three hundred feet above our heads, their lower and nearer ledges being all so many natural parapets to fire over, loop-holed with chinks to fire through. There were ten rifles in our party. We ran them out, five on a side, ready to send the first red villain who peeped over the breastworks to quick perdition.
Not only these thick-walled buildings, but all the houses, were converted into forts, the doors and windows being built up, the fronts loop-holed, and openings for communication broken through the party-walls; while the streets were defended by trenches and earthen ramparts mounted with cannon.
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