United States or Bolivia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I hastened to obey his direction; and, climbing out of the canoe, sprawled up the sloping ridge. At the top was the entrance, just large enough to admit the body of a man; and, pressing through this, I stood inside the hollow tree. We had reached our destination I was in the lair of the runaway! The interior was dark, and it was some time before I could distinguish any object.
Coming here first, as a bride, the homely splendour of the house, and the gladness of its situation crowning the ridge of hill, appealed strongly to her imagination. Later it sheltered her long sorrow, following so hard on the heels of her brief joy.
We followed it, feeling carefully, and at length, when we had suffered all that we could bear, we stumbled on to a dry ridge. Here we spent another night of torture, with a second backwater facing us coated with a full inch of ice. And still there was nothing to eat.
The telephone had not then reached the countryside, and our driver brought the latest bulletins. The death of a horse in Little Boston, the burning of a barn in Sanfordtown, the elopement of an otherwise estimable lady with a peddler, marked the beginning of our intimacy with the affairs of Brook Ridge.
Beginning their advance at eight o'clock the 229th Brigade had reached the western edge of the famous Zeitun ridge in an hour, but from this time onwards they were exposed to incessant artillery and machine-gun fire, and the forward movement became very slow.
In the afternoon we got over into the Roumanian side of the frontier. The lofty limestone ridge of which I have spoken is in fact the boundary-line at this part. We were at an elevation of about 6000 feet, judging from the heights above us, when suddenly, or almost suddenly, the clouds were lifted which hitherto had enveloped us. It was like drawing up the curtain of a theatre.
At the time I was away on the Maritzburg road, which starts west from the town and gradually curves southward. The picket on the ridge called Range Post is a relic of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, now in the show-ground at Pretoria. Major Kincaid was there, only returned the night before from the Boer camp behind "Long Tom." He had been ill with fever and was exchanged.
On the southern, was a ridge strewn over with immense boulders of granite, one, near where I stood, measuring eighty feet in height, and resting with such apparent insecurity, that little seemed required to send it rolling and crashing into the valley below, along which a rivulet winds, and falls into the sea at the north end of a sandy beach, forming the head of Waterloo Bay.
Information was obtained, from a prisoner, that they would have to cross a spot where there was a stone shoot, down which an avalanche of rocks could be hurled by the defenders. They therefore advanced with great caution, while a party of the Pioneers crept along the crest of the ridge, and attacked from the rear the party gathered at the head of the stone shoot.
The battery had gone through the Battle of Vimy Ridge and made a great name for itself. And now it was set down upon a spot that had seen some of the very bloodiest of the fighting on that day. I saw here, for the first time, some of the most horrible things that the war holds.
Word Of The Day