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Updated: June 5, 2025
Here, just within the open door of a stable, were men polishing their musket-barrels, or repairing their accoutrements; in another place a group, more idly disposed, had collected in some shady nook, and were playing at cards or morra; whilst others, wrapped in their grey capotes, their heads resting upon a knapsack or doorstep, indulged in the sound and unbroken slumber which their usually restless and dangerous existence allowed them but scanty opportunity of enjoying.
His eyes now sought the positions of the different vedettes, and all was so brilliant and clear that he saw where the men had stood up their muskets against bush or tree, noted the flash from bayonets and the duller gleam from musket-barrels.
On either bank of the black trench a thick line of dead, brown on the one side, and scarlet on the other, served as a screen to their companions, who sheltered themselves behind them and rested their musket-barrels upon their prostrate bodies.
And yet, it stirs my heart; their regular advance, their nodding plumes, the sunflash on their bayonets and musket-barrels, the roll of their drums ascending past me, and the fife ever and anon piercing through, these things have wakened a warlike fire, peaceful though I be.
The citizens join against the invaders, the 'prentices rush from their attics, hasty barricades of carts and harrows are formed in the streets, long musket-barrels are thrust from the windows, dark groups cluster on the roofs, and stones begin to rattle on the heads below, together with phrases more galling than stones, hurled down by women, "cursed dogs," "devilish Cavaliers," "Papist traitors."
Their regular advance, their nodding plumes, the sun-flash on their bayonets and musket-barrels, the roll of their drums ascending past me, and the fife ever and anon piercing through, these things have wakened a warlike fire, peaceful though I be.
But spit in his hands he did, and then he was down on his hands and knees, crawling on to the mattress very slowly, and you could hear the bayonets creaking and gritting, as they played in and out of the musket-barrels but they held firm, and the next minute Measles was as far as the tree, but only to get his load hitched somehow in a ragged branch, when there was a loud crack as of dead-wood snapping, a struggle, and Measles growled out an oath he would swear, that fellow would, in spite of all Mrs Bantem said, so you mustn't be surprised at his doing it then.
The shop behind us is quite dark so dark that not the keenest observer passing by could detect the dusky group of soldiers sitting on the counter within, or the gleaming of the musket-barrels which rest between their knees.
While we were looking down and hesitating how best to go to his succor, one of old Sammons's sons came bounding down the side-hill, all excitement, crying: "Help is here from the fort!" Sure enough, close behind him were descending some fourscore men, whose musket-barrels and cocked hats we could distinguish swaying above the bushes, as they advanced in regular order.
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