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Neroweg's chin and cheeks are closely shaven, but his long reddish moustache droops down to his chest, which is covered by a doe-skin jacket, shines with grease, and is dotted with wine spots. Long leathern straps criss-cross over his lower hose from his coarse iron-spiked shoes up to his knees.

The sentry in the gate-house above, his firelock ready leveled to his shoulder, gazed down at the officer, as he stood with his back to the heavy iron-spiked oaken gates; there was light enough in the reflection of the snow, that made a yellow moon, rising higher and higher into the blue night and above the brown, shadowy woods, seem strangely intense of color, and in the melancholy radiation from its weird, gibbous disk to show the officer's calm, impassive face; his attitude, with his arms folded, the rejected hand withdrawn; even the gold lace on his red coat and the color of his hair in the thick braid that hung down under his cocked hat.

Then, just as his disengaged hand was clinging to a pinnacle of rock, his hat blew off, exactly as she had predicted, and his dark curls mixed with hers in wild confusion. Thus, foot by foot, they won their way, and reached at last the iron-spiked door, the only work of modern hands on that gray rock.

The walls or inner planking of the ship were thickly covered with seal, walrus, and white bear skins, evidently hung there to prevent, as far as possible, the penetration of the extreme cold through the ship's sides; and upon large nails, driven through these and into the planks, were hung various trophies of weapons, such as long two-handed swords, small shields or targets, maces with heavy iron-spiked heads, short-handled battle-axes, spears, unstrung bows, and quivers of arrows.

The greatest difficulty consisted in driving the smashed pieces under the floes in order to open up a free passage for the ship, and to thrust them away they were compelled to use long iron-spiked poles.

Instead of following the road to the village, the horses turned abruptly into a bridle-path branching off to the left, and in the course of a few minutes passed through an iron-spiked gateway in a high brick wall surrounding the large red structure which had puzzled Lynde on first discovering the town.

My father was not at all nervous about allowing me to wander about freely even here. Some way below our house there stretched a spur thickly wooded with Deodars. Into this wilderness I would venture alone with my iron-spiked staff. These lordly forest trees, with their huge shadows, towering there like so many giants what immense lives had they lived through the centuries!

"Driving of them, and they won't go," thought the watcher; and the speaker, a stunted-looking Malay with a short, iron-spiked implement, somewhat like the iron of a boat-hook, in his hand, came into sight between the huge pachyderms and the door, shouting and growling at his charge as he waved the hook and progged the nearest beast as if trying to drive them away.

He, however, signed the articles of capitulation, as recommended by the Council of War summoned, and the British marched in through the iron-spiked gates, when, had he held out only twenty-four hours longer, Canada might have been saved for France, as the British could not for any length of time have maintained their position on the Plains of Abraham.

Seeing my situation, Leet slid to me the sharp iron-spiked oerstel, which is used to check the speed of a sledge in descending hills, and by digging this into the ice at short intervals I crept back to shore, only a short distance above the open water at the mouth of the river, into which my mittens had already gone.