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They are mounted upon lame, decrepit-looking carriages, ready to sink under the useless burden of bearing them up. Indeed, two or three have given up the ghost altogether, and the pieces they sustained lie half buried among their bleaching bones. Several of the cannon are spiked; probably with a view of making them more formidable; as they certainly must be to anyone undertaking to fire them off.
Quentin took a few turns up and down the room before he remembered that he owed some sort of an explanation to his companion. "She wouldn't see me," he said, briefly. "What's the matter? Sick?" "No explanation. Just wouldn't see me, that's all." "Which means it's all off, eh? The prince got there first and spiked your guns. Well? What have you written to her?"
They made descents on the French coasts, captured; St.-Servan, a suburb of St.-Malo, and burned three ships of the line, twenty-four privateers, and sixty merchantmen; then entered Cherbourg, destroyed the forts, carried off or spiked the cannon, and burned twenty-seven vessels, a success partially offset by a failure on the coast of Brittany, where they were repulsed with some loss.
On the day before he had made a sally from the four gates of the city, had fallen upon the besiegers in great force, had wounded Biron and killed six hundred of his soldiers, had spiked several pieces of artillery and captured others which he had successfully brought into the town, and had in short so damaged the enemy's works and disconcerted him in all his plans, that he was confident of holding the place longer than the king could afford to stay in front of him.
Then, as soon as it was thoroughly saturated, it was dragged inboard, stretched athwart the deck, and dragged over the flaming hatchway, several men holding it in position while the carpenter rapidly spiked the head and foot of it to the deck.
The garrison having fired away all their shells and ammunition, spiked up the cannon, and deserting the fort, retired next day across the river into Oswego, which was even more exposed than the other, especially when the enemy had taken possession of Ontario, from whence they immediately began to fire without intermission.
The old man wore a shining silk hat and shining new black clothes. His expansive shirt-bosom was very white, but not glossy, and rumpled in places; and his collar was of the spiked and antique pattern known as a "dickey." His wrinkled, red face was edged by a white fringe of whisker. He wore large gold-bowed spectacles, and his jaws worked incessantly.
At either horn of the bay the railway line, cut just above high water-mark, ran round a shoulder of piled rocks, and disappeared. "You see there's always a breeze here," said Hooper, opening the door as the engine left us in the siding on the sand, and the strong south-easter buffeting under Elsie's Peak dusted sand into our tickey beer. Presently he sat down to a file full of spiked documents.
As I drove into the town I had to wait at the grade crossing while a wrecking train rumbled past, on its way back from Willdon. That meant that the line was clear again. I watched the grimy men on the cars, and shuddered to think what they had been doing. The Vigor county jail lies about a mile out of the town, an ugly, gray stone barracks with a high, spiked wall about it.
When Colonel Manning, who commanded the fort, called for volunteers, few came, and these not as friends but as enemies, for they spiked the cannon in front of the statehouse. The fleet came up broadside to the fort, and Manning, sending a messenger for Lovelace, opened fire on the enemy.
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