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"Why, just now you were all going to tell him yourselves," said the bewildered boatswain. The two elder women rose and regarded him with looks of pitying disdain. Miss Polson's glance said "Fool!" plainly; Susan, a simple child of nature, given to expressing her mind freely, said "Blockhead!" with conviction. "I see 'ow it is," said the boatswain, after ruminating deeply.
Boom! said the gun from the Redoubt, and the earth spluttered between the collar of Sergeant Polson's jacket and his neck, and dribbled comfortlessly down his back, colder than any charity he had known of: lately-frozen earth, half thawed, with wet snow on the top of it, and a sulky boom behind to add a threat to its cold sting.
The triumphant progress was marred by the behaviour of the hall door, which, despite his efforts, refused to be opened, and, encumbered by his fair burden, he could not for some time ascertain the reason. Then, full of shame that so much deceit could exist in so fair and frail a habitation, he discovered that Miss Polson's foot was pressing firmly against it.
Then, returning with it to the poop, I placed the paper in Polson's hand, after reading it over to him, and requested him to obtain first the signatures of the crew to it, beginning with himself and the carpenter, and then those of the emigrants; afterwards returning the document to me.
Hate and interest and admiration alike prompted Polson's eyes to follow the slim, active figure with the waving sword which silently beckoned on his followers. The Redoubt opened, as it were, with an earthquake crash, and all the black front of it went fiery red and yellow, and at the first discharge of this inferno, the figure with the flourished sabre in his right hand fell prone.
The notes reached far, and fell on many a drowsy ear, conjuring up visions in the half-slumbering minds of humble whitewashed village steeples, far and far away. Polson's contingent, drawn from a distance of some two hundred yards, stuffed that ingenious musician with half-cold roast pork, and left him well rewarded for his toils.
This announcement, coming quite unexpectedly, fell like a bombshell among Polson's audience, who had dwelt upon the idea of life in an island where perpetual summer reigns, and where Nature offers many of her choicest gifts almost unsolicited, until it had taken such complete possession of them that it had come to represent to them the one desirable thing in the whole world, to lose which would be to lose everything.
By one of those surprising fatuities which distinguished this particular campaign almost above all others in which the English private soldier has been engaged, an attack which was ordered for black midnight was ready just in the grey of dawn, and Polson's ear caught a whispered word of command here and there, and a noise of careful footsteps.
"Then the best thing that you can do will be to go down and call the boatswain, and put the question to ah, here he is!" as Polson's head showed above the poop ladder. "Come up here, Polson!" I exclaimed; "you are just the man we want. That junk astern of us has just treated us to a broadside of langrage, and Chips's opinion of the pair of them is that they are a couple of piratical craft.
I thought his advice well given, and the very next day, to my great delight, found in Captain Polson's company John Langlade, the man of whom I had taken a dozen lessons at Williamsburg. He was very ready to accept the chance to add a few shillings to his pay, so for an hour every morning we exercised in a little open space behind the stockade.
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