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They had hoped to knock mysteriously at a back door in a lane, and to be shown, after investigating through a loopholed wicket, into a narrow staircase, which, again, should open on halls of light, full of blazing wax candles and magnificent lacqueys, while a small mysterious man would point out the secret hiding-room, and the passages leading on to the roof or into the next house, in case of a raid by the police.
This strong place of arms had now been in their practically undisputed occupation for twenty years; from out of its loopholed walls and castellated battlements the undaunted garrison had looked forth while the tide of war both by land and sea had swept by. They had been unmolested so far, but now their day was to come.
As their magazine-fire slackened, dwindled to a desultory popping, and ceased, the mob with a howl of triumph surged forward to the gaping gateway, trampled and scattered the glowing remnants of the fire, swarmed yelling through, and found themselves face to face with a stout semicircular rampart of stone, earth and sandbags, which, loopholed, embrasured and strongly manned, spanned the gateway in a thirty-yard arc.
It was generally remarked as being a particularly strong place, the approach leading through orchards surrounded by mud walls six or seven feet high and loopholed, the lanes intersecting them being barricadoed as if to be held to the last extremity.
Gilbert himself probably knew that his appointment had been made in pursuance of the emperor's policy of road and rail. For Corsica was to be opened up by a railway, and would have none of it. And though to-day the railway from Bastia to Ajaccio is at last open, the station at Corte remains a fortified place with a loopholed wall around it. But Colonel Gilbert kept his own counsel.
Knowing the storm that was preparing to burst upon their heads, they had neglected no means for strengthening their position. Great lines of fortifications had been thrown up; enormous quantities of guns placed in position; every house barricaded and loopholed, and the Kaiserbagh transformed into a veritable citadel.
Well, on the knoll, and enclosing the spring, they had clapped a stout log-house, fit to hold two-score people on a pinch, and loopholed for musketry on every side. All round this they had cleared a wide space, and then the thing was completed by a paling six feet high, without door or opening, too strong to pull down without time and labour, and too open to shelter the besiegers.
The great towers or bastions were loopholed in such way as to permit a flanking fire in the event of an armed assault; and the whole building, when viewed from the river, presented an impressive facade. The grim Frontenac, who was not over-given to eulogy, praised it in one of his dispatches and said that it reminded him of the embattled chateaux of old Normandy.
Cavendish, after having had his wound bound up, ordered a stockade to be at once built, and loopholed for guns and muskets, for their future defence, in the improbable event of the savages not having already received a severe enough lesson. The seamen were now divided into two parties.
The Japanese have at least a thousand feet of loopholed and unloop-holed wall, and are quite ready to take another thousand if some one would be kind enough to give it to them. In posts of three and four men, distant sometimes hundreds of feet apart, the little Japanese takes his two hours on and his four hours off night and day without a murmur or without ever a break.
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