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Updated: June 21, 2025
He rolled sundry powder-barrels under the palaver-hall, and stationed there a boy with a match to be applied when he stamped on the floor. He then flung open the gates, hung out a flag of trace, and invited the bloodthirsty savages, who were bent on killing him by torture, to take the hoard of gold for which the attack was made.
Beneath them the Parson was climbing out of the creek, making for the mouth of the drain. "That's a dear man," said the Gentleman. "He's so English true as steel, and thick as mud." He rolled his head round. Kit caught the ghost of the old gay twinkle in his eyes. "Shall I tell you a secret?" "Yes." "What d'you think was in those powder-barrels?" "Beer," flashed the boy.
The enemy's shouts also were loud and terrible, and the bursting of shells, and of grenades, and the roaring of guns from the flanks, answered by the iron howitzers from the battery of the parallel, the heavy roll, and horrid explosion of the powder-barrels, the whizzing flight of the blazing splinters, the loud exhortations of the officers, and the continual clatter of the muskets, made a maddening din.
We rushed to the trap-door. All our thirst, which vanished when the terror came, now returned with the lapping of the water. The water rose in the cellar, above the barrels, the powder-barrels "Barrels! ... Barrels! Any barrels to sell?" and we went down to it with parched throats. It rose to our chins, to our mouths. And we drank. We stood on the floor of the cellar and drank.
That this place had been visited a little time previously, was proved by two burnt out fires with some broken calabashes, fragments of earthenware vessels, cocoa-nut shells, staves of powder-barrels, &c., which the travellers picked up with some emotion, for they proved that the natives had had dealings with Europeans.
How we opened the main-deck hatch, rigged up tackles, clapping purchases on to the falls, as the capstan was hard frozen and immovable; how we hoisted the powder-barrels on deck and then, by tackles on the foreyard, lowered them over the side; how we filled a number of bags which we found in the forecastle with powder; how we measured the cracks in the ice and sawed a couple of spare studding-sail booms into lengths to serve as beams whereby to poise the barrels and bags; would make but sailor's talk, half of which would be unintelligible and the rest wearisome.
Our first business was to hunt among the boatswain's stores in the run for tackles to hoist the powder-barrels up with.
"I regret to say, messieurs," observed the seigneur, with no abatement of his courtly manner, "that it is my belief that they have learned a lesson from our young friend here, and that they are knocking out the heads of the powder-barrels in the store-room." But Du Lhut shook his head at the suggestion. "It is not in a Redskin to waste powder," said he.
It must have failed, even after five hours' fighting, but for an accident. A line of powder-barrels collected behind the traverses by the great breach took fire and blew up, driving back all the French grenadiers but the nearest, whom it scattered in mangled heaps. As explosion followed explosion, the bright flame spread and ran along the high curtain.
"First of all," said I, "we shall have to break the powder-barrels out of the magazine and hoist them on deck. There are tackles, I suppose?" "You should be able to find what you want among the boatswain's stores in the run," he replied.
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