Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 17, 2025
'Come, said I, 'mayhap the miller will take ruth on me. Near the mill was a haystack, and scattered about were store of little barrels; but lo they were not flour-barrels, but tar-barrels, one or two, and the rest of spirits, Brant vein and Schiedam; I knew them momently, having seen the like in Holland. I knocked at the mill-door, but none answered.
Between the anticipation of this event, and the din of the rejoicings for the "capture of Sebastopol," I slept very little on the night before leaving Toronto, and was by no means sorry when the cold grey of dawn quenched the light of tar-barrels and gas-lamps.
The European populations everywhere hailed the omen; with shouting and rejoicing leading articles and tar-barrels; thinking people listened with astonishment, not with sorrow if they were faithful or wise; with awe rather as at the heralding of death, and with a joy as of victory beyond death!
Bells, trumpets, and the brazen throats of men and of cannons had made a sufficient din, torches and tar-barrels had made a sufficient glare, to confirm so far as noise and blazing pitch could confirm the decorous proceedings of church and town-house, but time was soon to show the value of such demonstrations. Meantime, the "muzzle" had been fastened with solemnity and accepted with docility.
"I was thinking we might spoil their fun." "And get caught, as we did with the tar-barrels," grumbled Gus Coulter. "We'll take good care that nobody sees us this time." "What are you thinking of doing?" asked Coulter, curiously. "Come with me and I'll tell you," answered Reff Ritter, and took his crony by the arm.
And Willie Willders followed him like his shadow! clad in a coat and helmet borrowed from a friend in the Salvage Corps. Willie fought in that great fight as if he had been a trained fireman. On the fourth day, towards evening, Frank was ordered down into a cellar where some tar-barrels were burning. He seized the branch, and was about to leap down the stair when Dale stopped him.
A wild, stormy, rainy night then set in, but still the royalist party citizens and soldiers intermingled all armed to the teeth, and uttering fierce cries, while the whole scene was fitfully illuminated with the glare of flambeaux and blazing tar-barrels, kept watch in the open square around the city hall. A series of terrible Rembrandt-like nightpieces succeeded grim, fantastic, and gory.
The mate's fears seemed to be well grounded, for no answering signal was seen to rise from the land, towards which every eye was anxiously strained. One hour passed, then another, and another, but still no help came. Then the tide began to rise, and with it, of course, the danger to increase. All this time rockets had been sent up at intervals, and tar-barrels had been kept burning.
Through the thick, driving, murky atmosphere nothing but utter blackness could be seen, though the blazing of their own tar-barrels revealed, with awful power, the seething breakers around, which, as if maddened by the obstruction of the sands, leaped and hissed wildly over them, and finally crushed their vessel over on its beam-ends.
The interior was long, low, and quite unfurnished, but filled, almost from end to end, with sugar- cane, tar-barrels, old tarry rope, and other incongruous and highly inflammable material; and not only was the door locked, but the solitary window barred with iron. I was by this time so exceedingly bewildered and afraid, that I would have given years of my life to be once more the slave of Mr.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking