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We made full sail; we hoped to escape it: but a cannon-shot, a ball from which went through our sails, taught us that she was a much better sailer than we were. We obeyed an injunction thus expressed, and awaited the great boat from the corsair.
Being again repulsed they destroyed the vessels they had taken and returned to their former station. The day after the battle of Stillwater General Burgoyne took a position almost within cannon-shot of the American camp, fortified his right, and extended his left to the river.
Rogers that the first interview should take place within Ostend itself, thought it necessary to apologize to his sovereign for so nearly keeping his word as to send the envoys within cannon-shot of the town. "The English commissioners," said he, "begged with so much submission for this concession, that I thought it as well to grant it."
Suddenly a flag was run up to the peak, a little cloud of white smoke rose from the schooner's side, and before we could guess their intentions, a cannon-shot came crashing through the bushes, carried away several cocoa-nut trees in its passage, and burst in atoms against the cliff a few yards below the spot on which we stood.
He further added that many ridiculous tales had been propagated about the strength of the sides of these ships, and their being impenetrable to cannon-shot; that these fictions had been principally invented to palliate the cowardice of those who had formerly engaged them; but he hoped they were none of those present weak enough to give credit to so absurd a story.
"That you do your duty!" he exclaimed. Fray Fernandez straightened up that reply sounded to him like a cannon-shot. "That we do our duty!" he repeated, holding himself erect. "Don't we, then, do our duty? What duties do you ascribe to us?" "Those which you voluntarily placed upon yourselves on joining the order, and those which afterwards, once in it, you have been willing to assume.
My father heard, and faced about, but his eyes were already failing him; they missed the friendly smile with which Sir John Moore turned, and cantered off along the brigade, to encourage the 50th and 42nd regiments, and to receive, a few minutes later, the fatal cannon-shot. Every one has heard what miseries the returning transports endured in the bitter gale of January, 1809.
The property of Verdugo, royal stadholder of the province, was to be respected, and to remain in the city, or to be taken thence under safe conduct, as might be preferred. Ten thousand cannon-shot had been fired against the city. The cost of powder and shot consumed was estimated at a hundred thousand florins. Four hundred of the besiegers had been killed, and a much larger number wounded.
A cannon-shot away, the grim puritan nobles who had come forth from their mountain fastnesses to do battle for king and law and for the rights of conscience against the Holy League men seasoned in a hundred battle-fields, clad all in iron, with no dainty ornaments nor holiday luxury of warfare knelt on the ground, smiting their mailed breasts with iron hands, invoking blessings on themselves and curses and confusion on their enemies in the coming conflict, and chanting a stern psalm of homage to the God of battles and of wrath.
We might have taken immediate steps, on the reception of this news, but it was indispensable that the safety of our consuls, and our fellow- countrymen resident in Tangier, whom the first cannon-shot would expose to all the violence of Mussulman fanaticism, should be ensured first of all. Then there was the presence of the British Consul-General at the Emperor's court to be considered.
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