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We got there in time, and aided the townspeople to repulse the first assault. After two days they brought up a reinforcement of four hundred infantry and some cannon. As the place is a small one, with but about two hundred and fifty fighting men of all ages, we deemed it impossible to defend the town, and while they were breaching the walls fell back to the castle.
Long as they were in sight, the bulky form of the captive was seen at times swayingly towering over the flashing bayonets and cutlasses, like a great whale breaching amid a hostile retinue of sword-fish. Now and then, too, with barbaric scorn, he taunted them with cramped gestures of his manacled hands.
After a continued series of engagements and skirmishes the army got within cannon shot of Algiers, where they broke ground and began entrenching, and the French works being completed, the heavy breaching cannon were all mounted; and at day-break on the 4th of July, General Lahitte, having assured himself by personal inspection that all was ready, ordered the signal rocket to be thrown, and at the same moment the whole French batteries opened their fire within point blank distance, and with a report which shook the whole of Algiers, and brought the garrison, who were little expecting so speedy an attack, running to their posts.
No more did I; and indeed the whistling of the wind and the breaching of the sprays made it no time for speech; and our crew not only toiled excessively but made extremely little way, so that the Rose had got her anchor and was off again before we had approached the harbour mouth.
The princes soon conferred about how to accomplish the breaching of the wall quickly, and ordered a messenger to announce throughout the army that anyone who carried three stones into the ditch would certainly receive a penny. In the space of scarcely three days the moat was filled in, since night did not prevent them from carrying out their project.
But here on a sudden the slope below them opened with a roar as the breaching battery gun after gun renewed its fire on the sea-wall. Amid the din, and while the earth shook underfoot, the sergeant was the first to recover himself. 'Another breach! he shouted between the explosions, putting up both hands like a pair of spectacles and peering through the smoke.
Then as the ship passed on it slowly sank from sight, even as the school of whales, diving and breaching, also fell astern, still pursued by their savage enemies. "Well," said Captain Zim, "I've sailed these waters thirty years, but that's the first time I ever struck a whale." "I've promised these boys plenty of exciting things," commented Uncle Dick.
When a whale thus leaps his whole length out of the water, the sailors say he "breaches", and breaching is a common practice. They seem to do it often for amusement as well as from terror. But the most deadly of the three enemies is the killer. This is itself a kind of small whale, but it is wonderfully strong, swift, and bold.
A sea, breaching across from windward, settled the matter and sent them leaping over the rail in heaps. I gained the captain's shoulder, and, holding on to him, I shouted in his ear that if he would board the boat and prevent the men from casting off, I would attend to the provisioning. Little time was given me, however.
The efficacy of cannon in breaching solid masonry was taught Europe by the Turks a few years afterward, at the memorable siege of Constantinople. In our French wars, as in the wars of the classic nations, famine was looked on as the surest weapon to compel the submission of a well-walled town; and the great object of the besiegers was to effect a complete circumvallation.
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