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How anxiously we marked the line of bristling cannon as we passed along in front of it! At length, we had but a few more guns to pass. Suddenly there was a loud shouting in the fort. Lights were seen moving rapidly along. In an instant afterwards we could distinguish the small sparks of the slow-matches in the hands of the gunners. "Fire! fire quickly!"
When he went into a fight, three pairs of pistols hung from a scarf, and two slow-matches, alight and projecting under his hat, glowed above his cruel eyes. Certainly, the light of battle was not in his case a metaphor. On board his vessel, one day, Captain Teach, just combing upon strong-water, summoned his crew. "Go to, now, let us make a hell," he cried, "and get a little seasoned.
They had taken a look at the enemy, and aware from her superior size that the fight would be a desperate one, were coolly talking over the amount of work in store for them. Not a word was now spoken along the decks, for all jokes were silenced by command of the officers. The captains of the guns stood ready with their slow-matches in their hands, prepared to fire at the signal being given.
"If I show you my cannons, which are behind my first regiment, will you then surrender?" "I would have no alternative, for I would have no means of defence." The French general then brought to within thirty paces of the enemy a battery of six guns, the gunners with their slow-matches in their hands prepared to fire on the square.
Not until he had completed his work did they begin to suspect the truth that he was lighting slow-matches and then one of their officers rendered reckless by panic ordered a boarding-party on to the shop. The order came too late. Wolverstone had seen his six fellows drop overboard after the grapnels were fixed, and then had sped, himself, to the starboard gunwale.
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