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The crowd loves daring, and so it welcomed Stephen with bravos, but it knew, as he knew, that he was only doing his duty by the Company, only showing the Saco that man was master, only keeping the old Waterman name in good repute. "Ye can't drownd some folks," Old Kennebec had said, as he stood in a group on the shore; "not without you tie sand-bags to 'em an' drop 'em in the Great Eddy.
Marcial, where the Spaniards gave Soult such a dressing in 1813, passed a series of outer defences with their covering and working parties, and entered one of the gates of the town, and never a question was asked. Ditches had been dug round the place and earthworks thrown up; but the principal reliance of the garrison seemed to be in loophooled breastworks made of sand-bags superimposed.
He said, in a most pleasant even musical voice, but with quiet and cultured decision: "It's a charming town, with a hell of a hotel." I was astonished. It seemed so odd to hear a minister swear out loud. He went placidly on: "It's the worst hotel in Australia. Well, one may go further, and say in Australasia." "Bad beds?" "No none at all. Just sand-bags." "The pillows, too?"
On the walls, gaping landward as well as seaward, are thirty or thirty-five iron cannon, all en barbette, but protected toward the harbor by heavy piles of sand-bags, fenced up either with barrels of sand or palmetto-logs driven firmly into the rampart. Four eight-inch columbiads, carrying sixty-four pound balls, pointed at Fort Sumter.
As I calmly think of it now, the whole scene was grand. The rough room, with its low walls of sand-bags and logs, the Indian princess in her picturesque dress of skins and beads, the fair army officer in his uniform of blue, both looking in astonishment at the chief, whose square jaws and flashing eyes plainly told that he was accustomed to being obeyed, and expected to be obeyed then!
On March 28th the Royal Fusiliers and the Northumberland Fusiliers the old Fighting Fifth captured six hundred yards of German trenches near St.-Eloi and asked for trouble, which, sure enough, came to them who followed them. Their attack was against a German stronghold built of earth and sand-bags nine feet high, above a nest of trenches in the fork of two roads from St.-Eloi to Messines.
The Germans had taken possession of one of the mine-craters which formed the apex of a triangle across the Menin road, with trenches running down to it on either side, so that it was like the spear-head of their position. They had fortified it with sand-bags and crammed it with machine guns which could sweep the ground on three sides, so making a direct attack by infantry a suicidal enterprise.
Houses in commanding situations were taken and made secure from assault by defences of sand-bags. Great judgment was shown in these operations, and the losses in consequence were comparatively few; but the enemy as yet gave no signs of retreating from Delhi, and our leaders felt that great exertions would still be necessary before the city fell entirely into our hands. September 17.
As evening approached the Persians sought a suitable place for their camp. An open plain was preferred for the purpose, and the vicinity of water was a necessity. If an enemy was thought to be at hand, a ditch was rapidly dug, and the earth thrown up inside; or if the soil was sandy, sacks were filled with it, and the camp was protected with sand-bags.
There being no air-ships available for immediate charter, nor big balloons waiting for passengers, with sand-bags ready for instant unloading, nor any underground pneumatic tubes into which he could be pumped and with a puff landed on his own doorstep in Kennedy Square, the impatient lover was obliged to content himself with the back seat of the country stage and a night ride in the train down the valley.
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