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She turned her face to the north as if she thought she could see or hear the siege-guns. "But you said Jimmy was in Ghent." "Jimmy," I said, "is probably in Ghent. If he isn't, he's in Antwerp. Do you know that the battlefields are down there no there to the south, where I'm pointing? There's fighting going on there now."
The reconnoissance made by General Hamilton showed the necessity of having siege-guns. The troops were put into camp about two miles back from the river; urgent request was sent to Cairo for heavy artillery, and parties were pushed forward every day to harass the garrison and keep them occupied.
At times shells would strike in the villages of Breuil and Vauxbain, and houses would burst into flames, the gale fanning the fire to great height and hiding the village in smoke. Some three hundred yards ahead of us the shells of German siege-guns were trying to destroy the road, which the poplars clearly betrayed. But their practice was at fault, and the shells fell only on either side.
On the 5th of July, 1601, the Archduke Albert began the siege of Ostend with 20,000 men and 50 siege-guns. Ostend had been completely rebuilt and fortified eighteen years previously, and was defended by ramparts, counterscarps, and two broad ditches. The sand-hills between it and the sea were cut through, and the water filled the ditches and surrounded the town.
The arm had but just begun to develop itself, and it was cultivated as a special trade by the guild of the holy Barbara existing in all the principal cities. This system furnished a powerful element of defence at a period when every city had in great measure to provide for its own safety. The two first were called battering pieces or siege-guns. All the guns were of bronze.
About six o'clock two deserters reported that the fort had been hastily abandoned in the night, after a portion of the guns had been spiked. Captain Mower and Lieutenant Fletcher, commanding the two companies in charge of the siege-guns, were dispatched into the fort to hoist the American flag.
Sitting comfortably at some cafe table, reading the papers with morning coffee, one saw the dawn coming up over the Oise and Aisne, heard the French "seventy-fives" and the heavy German siege-guns resume their roar; saw again, for the hundredth time, some hitherto unheard-of little man flinging away his life in one brief burst of glory.
In the course of a few months he had fifty siege-guns in position, and had constructed a practicable road all around the place, connecting his own fortifications on the west and south with those of Bucquoy on the east. Albert's leading thought however was to cut off the supplies.
Far away was heard a continuous, steady, low-keyed, advancing hum, like the rushing of wild horses, their hoofbeats lost in one mighty, throbbing, tumultuous roar; then a deeper darkness fell upon the scene, and swift as the swoop of an eagle the tornado was upon them. The advancing wall of rain struck the building with terrific force. The lightning broke forth, savage as the roar of siege-guns.
The engineers had such success in repairing the road, and the artillery in conducting the pieces, that all arrived in good order about sunset of the 12th. Major Lathrop, commanding the artillery, had, on the 11th, reconnoitered the ground and selected a position about eight hundred yards in front of Fort Thompson, for batteries to contain the siege-guns.
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