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The acquisition of five or six hundred seamen as gunners was a great advantage to the Turks, whose spirits they revived, and whom they showed how to defend the fortress. But he committed a great fault in making sorties, which cost the lives of two or three hundred brave fellows without the possibility of success.
Bringing stones. Occupation of slaves. Shields. Protection against fire. Precautions. Attempts at resistance. Account of Kubru. His noble spirit. Kubru slain. Pusillanimity. Sorties by the garrisons. Desperation of the people. Mode of disposing of prisoners. Prodigious slaughter. Atrocities. The pearl. Genghis Khan's grandson killed. His mother's revenge. Principles of the Mohammedan faith.
And all the while, above and below the main battle-field, high up the slopes toward the sea, Ukiukiu and Naulu are continually sending out little wisps of cloud, in ragged skirmish line, that creep and crawl over the ground, among the trees and through the canyons, and that spring upon and capture one another in sudden ambuscades and sorties.
A few stolen races, and sorties up apple-trees, a few stolen slides had poor Ephraim Thayer had; they had been snatched in odd minutes, at the imminent danger of discovery; but now he had the wide night before him; he had broken over all his trammels, and he was free.
He lost no time in repairing the damages of the tempest, being ready to fight the west wind, the North Sea, and Spinola at any moment, singly or conjoined. He rebuilt the curtain of the Sand Hill, added fresh batteries to the Porcupine and Hell's Mouth, and amused and distracted the enemy with almost daily sorties and feints.
It did not travel in a set direction; one moment it raced westward, paused, smoldered, then burst forth again, running southward. A little later a flood of flame would come toward the east. These scattered sorties cut narrow swaths through the forest, flaming lanes that smoldered at the edges, widened and combined. The smoke cloud grew denser.
Perhaps, from simple boredom, one goes out to watch the bombs and redhot bullets flying. At first the French kept us amused with sorties, but they quickly subsided. We soon got sick of foraging expeditions too; we were overcome, in fact, by such deadly dulness that we were ready to howl for sheer ennui.
Between the 1st and 9th the French made no less than five attacks upon the breach; these were all beaten off with very heavy loss; while the defenders, on their part, made frequent sorties to compel the assailants to stand on the defensive, and to interfere with their attempts to carry the approaches up to the foot of the walls.
It was no good some of those old gentlemen saying, "We've got 'em beat!" when from Hooge to the Hohenzollern redoubt our men sat in wet trenches under ceaseless bombardment of heavy guns, and when any small attack they made by the orders of a High Command which believed in small attacks, without much plan or purpose, was only "asking for trouble" from German counterattacks by mines, trench-mortars, bombing sorties, poison-gas, flame-throwers, and other forms of frightfulness which made a dirty mess of flesh and blood, without definite result on either side beyond piling up the lists of death.
There is a good deal of excitement in an expedition of this kind, and soldiers themselves say that surprise sorties from the air have a demoralizing effect upon troops. But as a form of sport, there is little to be said for it. It is too unfair. For this reason, among others, I was glad when Davis turned homeward.
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