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This time the darkness held for an unusual length of time, and the stakes were planted, the wires fastened, and cross-pieces of wood with interlacings of barbed wire all ready were rolled out and pegged down without another light showing. The word passed down and the men scrambled back into safety. 'Better shoot a light up quick, said the Engineer officer to the infantry commander.
There were about one hundred and thirty cabins within the walls; the streets and squares were laid out regularly and were kept remarkably neat and clean. The smooth, wide ramparts were built of timber strengthened with cross-pieces. At each corner was a bastion, and the fort was surrounded by a ditch fifteen feet deep and from fifteen to eighteen feet wide.
A more idle people are not to be found, except with regard to spinning, which is their constant occupation, every man and woman carrying a bundle of wool in the breast of their garments, which is spun by hand with a spindle, and wound off on two cross-pieces at its lower end.
A blanket was arranged across these in such a manner that there would not be the slightest danger of its slipping, after the two poles had been held a certain distance apart with a couple of cross-pieces. When finally the litter was completed it was pronounced first-class by every one. "I'm proud of the way you boys grapple with an emergency," said Mr. Witherspoon, enthusiastically.
Dismissing the nautical hypothesis, your next effort to relieve your perplexity results in the conjecture that the prodigious masts and booms may be nothing more than curious gibbets, the cross-pieces to which, conforming rigidly to the Washington rule of contrariety, are fastened to the bottom instead of the top of the upright.
Had I not still had a post to cling to after the strain my muscles had so long endured, I could not have stood upright. Several cross-pieces secured the top of the cask to the post. I shoved my head through them, and could now look down on the wild and raging waters with which I was surrounded.
The top should be closely secured with heavy cross-pieces of parallel logs, well weighted with big stones. The rear of this trap should be partitioned with bamboo cross-bars to form a cage, in which either a goat or a village dog should be tied as a living bait.
Cross-pieces of wood at the top kept the upper framework in its place. The hair of the skin was outward, the inner glistened with the fat that had been rubbed into it. "They are strong indeed," Tom said. "They ought to stand anything, uncle." "Yes, I think they would stand a blow against any rock if it hadn't a cutting edge. They would just bound off as a basket would.
"Out with your knife, Tom," cried Uncle Richard; "cut a piece three feet long off one of those ropes, and unravel it into string." Tom set to work, while the carpenter cut off a couple of straight fir-boughs, which David trimmed quickly with the axe, and a few cross-pieces were sawn off about thirty inches long.
The joint was made stronger by a light pole fifteen feet long being firmly lashed across the junction. Thus the two poles for the ladder forty-five feet long were ready for use. It needed only to lash cross-pieces for steps, and in little over an hour from the time that work was begun the ladder was complete.
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