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To this interrogation the officer made no immediate reply, but rang the bell, and called for the bill, which being brought, he threw down his proportion of the reckoning, and, telling the company he would show them an epaulement when his majesty should think fit to entrust him with the command of our army abroad, strutted away with great dignity.
The guns had breached a new epaulement on Thornhill's Kop to the left of Surprise Hill and a few hundred yards nearer and perhaps knocked over a Boer or two, perhaps not. None of our people hurt, and a good appetite for breakfast. In the afternoon one of our guns on Cæsar's Camp smashed a pompom. Fiddling Jimmy has been waved away, it seems.
A road with an epaulement to protect it must first be made to the spot; and as the way was over a tract of deep mud covered with water-weeds and moss, the labor was prodigious. A thousand men worked at it day and night under the fire of the town and ships. When the French looked landward from their ramparts they could see scarcely a sign of the impending storm.
"This was immediately put into execution, and in twenty-four hours Mareschal Boufflers was fain to capitulate." Here he made a full stop, and the old gentleman repeated the question, "But pray what is an epaulement?"
At the two extremities of the port, in order that their fires should converge upon the great axis of the ellipsis formed by the basin, in the first place, two batteries had been raised, evidently destined to receive flank pieces, for D'Artagnan saw the workmen finishing the platform and making ready the demi-circumference in wood upon which the wheels of the pieces might turn to embrace every direction over the epaulement.
The soldiers were tearing up the pavement and constructing with the stones a small, low wall, a sort of side-work not more than eighteen inches high, and facing the barricade. In the angle at the left of this epaulement, there was visible the head of the column of a battalion from the suburbs massed in the Rue Saint-Denis.
On either side, from behind a sandbag epaulement, a 12-pounder and a Maxim thrust forth vigilant eyes. The sandbag plating of the conning-tower was six feet thick and shoulder-high; the rivets were red earth, loose but binding; on the parapets sprouted tufts of grass, unabashed and rejoicing in the summer weather.
At the two extremities of the port, in order that their fires should converge upon the great axis of the ellipse formed by the basin, in the first place, two batteries had been raised, evidently destined to receive flank pieces, for D'Artagnan saw the workmen finishing the platform and making ready the demi-circumference in wood upon which the wheels of the pieces might turn to embrace every direction over the epaulement.
At the extremity of this beach is a battery of two or three guns; on the beach of the landing-place, is an epaulement, with embrasures which commands it. The town stands on this sand bank, and a little fort, built on the ridge of the rock, commands and defends it. In its present state, Goree could not resist a ship of the line.
Among other topics, the subject of war was introduced, on which the general declaimed with great eloquence, recounting many of his own exploits by way of illustration. In the course of his harangue he happened to mention the word epaulement, upon which the testy gentleman asked the meaning, of that term.
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