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"Make him a prisoner, sir; I tell you he's been communicating with the enemy. I saw him not a minute ago!" "What has he done?" asked Penrose. "I saw him take a piece of paper from his pocket which was fastened to something heavy; then he threw it over the sand-bags towards the German lines. I tell you, sir, I saw him do it! Make him a prisoner."
"I'm going deep into this," said Hawk he was a very skilful miner, and he knew his work. "None of your dead heroes for me," he said; "I don't hold with 'em we'll make it PRACtically shell-proof." We did. Each day we burrowed into the soft sandy layers, he swinging the pick, and I filling up sand-bags.
At last I took my sheets and the ticking that enclosed my straw, and cut them up for sand-bags, taking care to lie down on my bed, as if ill, when Bruckhausen paid his visit. The labour, towards the conclusion, became so intolerable as to incite despondency.
No attempt was made to carry out the threat of stopping all passing vessels. By the 14th of January our heavy guns were up; but by that time, too, the greater part of Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney were shielded from our direct fire by huge piles of sand-bags.
It is all going on very well, only as I said it will take time By the way, tell Joseph to get me one of your smokingcaps; once in dressing-gown and slippers a smokingcap is not out of the way, and I am getting bald, my dear Captain. How infernally cold it is here! These windows face the north, and there are no sand-bags. Mademoiselle de V.," he added, turning to my aunt, "you will catch cold."
Its double-headed shape was just what was needed in that swift and crooked stream; the exposed pilot-houses had been tolerably barricaded with the thick planks from St. Simon's; and we further obtained some sand-bags from Fort Clinch, through the aid of Captain Sears, the officer in charge, who had originally suggested the expedition after brick.
Here General Jackson, the American commander, had constructed a deep ditch and an entrenchment of earthworks, strengthened by sand-bags and cotton- bales, a thousand yards long, stretching from the Mississippi to an impassable swamp in the rear. Flanking batteries enfiladed the front. Behind these formidable works was posted an army of twelve thousand men.
They looked grave, almost sullen, staring at us as they passed, with brooding eyes. "The German trench-mortars are very evil," said the captain. We poked about the ruins, raising our heads cautiously above sand-bags to look at the German lines cut into the lower slopes of Vimy, and thrust out by communication trenches to the edge of the village in which we walked.
I was told all about it by a French sergeant who was in it. They were under the cover of that wall over there, about a hundred yards away, and fixing up a charge of high explosives to knock a breach in the wall. The chateau was a machine-gun fortress, with the Germans on the top floor, the ground floor, and in the basement, protected by sand-bags, through which they fired.
They are built up about six feet from the level of the ground, a solid wall of sand-bags, ten to twenty feet thick. This will stand the hit of all but the heaviest shells, but is an unmistakable target if the enemy artillery have observation at all.
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