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I have built watch-towers, bridges, and giant monuments, and now, alas! as I approach the end of my days as ruler of the Middle Kingdom there is nothing more to be done for my people. Better far that I should even now close my tired eyes for ever and mount up on high to be the guest of the dragon, than live on in idleness, giving to my children an example of uselessness and sloth."
Everything being settled, and the watch-towers well supplied with food for the rifles, Stephen went to call Saidee and Victoria, who were in their almost dismantled room. The bedstead, washstand, chairs and table had ceased to be furniture, and had become part of the barricade. "Let me carry your things into the dining-room now," he said. "And your bed covering.
Signal fires burned that night on all the eminences of the county, which seemed as if they had been designed for so many watch-towers; horns resounded; horsemen galloped far and near; on the morrow of Whitsunday all Wexford arose, animated with the passions and purposes of civil war.
The night passed quietly, for even fifty miles beyond Peking the terror lies heavy on the land, and in the morning we wandered to the massive iron-clad gates and the tall watch-towers which stood sentinel on either side to see if there was anything to be had. How old these were, how very old!
They were guarded by watch-towers on the walls above. The watch-towers were built on both the inner and outer faces of the wall, and the wall itself was so broad that there was room between these watch-towers for a chariot and four to drive and turn. The river, of course, divided the city into two parts.
The cathedral, old as the days of Peter the Hermit, the grotesque street of the Jews, the many quaint, antiquated dwellings and the moldering watch-towers on the hills around, give it a more interesting character than any German city I have yet seen.
Among the first precautions Stephen had taken was that of locking the doors of all rooms except the dining-room, and pulling out the keys, so that, when the enemy got into the quadrangle, they would find themselves forced to stay in the open, or take shelter in the watch-towers vacated by the defenders. From the doorways of these, they could not do much harm to the men behind the barricade.
Of the walls of Newcastle only fragments remain, the most considerable portion being found between Westgate Road and St. Andrew's Churchyard; here are also remains of several of the watch-towers that stood at intervals around the walls the Heber Tower, the Mordaunt or Morden Tower, and the Ever Tower.
There were strong watch-towers at intervals and only one gate, and this was well protected by a wide and deep ditch, crossed by a bridge that could readily be removed.
Beyond the woods and the hills and the distant marshes which spread behind all these, there rose on the bluish horizon a sole tall chimney, with its long black streak of smoke. Below it and about it spread a vast rectangular structure with watch-towers at its corners.
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