Escaping from a wreck at seaFrom the Painting by A. Marlon. Carbon by Braun, Clement & Co. Engraved by Walter Aikman.The Shipwreck.
From the Painting by A. Marlon. Carbon by Braun, Clement & Co. Engraved by Walter Aikman.The Shipwreck.
"A schooner, from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine. Make haste, sir, if you want to see her! Its thought she'll go to pieces every moment."
The excited voice went clamoring along the staircase; and I wrapped myself in my clothes as quickly as I could, and ran into the street. Numbers of people were there before us, all running in one direction, to the beach. I ran the same way, outstripping a good many, and soon came facing the wild sea.
The wind might by this time have lulled a little, though not more sensibly than if the cannonading I had dreamed of had been diminished by the silencing of half a dozen guns out of hundreds. But the sea, having upon it the additional agitation of the whole night, was infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last. Every appearance it had then presented bore the expression of beingswelled; and the height to which the breakers rose, and, looking over one another, bore one another down, and rolled in, in interminable hosts, was most appalling.
In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves, and in the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless attempts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads of the great waves. A half-dressed boatman standing next me pointed with his bare arm (a tattooed arrow on it, pointing in the same direction) to the left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it, close in upon us!
One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a mazeof sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat,—which she did without a moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable,—beat the side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being made to cut this portion of the wreck away; for as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure, with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But a great cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the shore at this moment: the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge.
The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a rent sail, and a wild confusion of broken cordage, flapping to and fro. The ship had struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear, and then lifted in and struck again. I understood him to add that she was parting amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for the rolling and beating were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long. As he spoke, there was another great cry of pity from the beach: four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost, the active figure with the curling hair.
There was a bell on board; and as the ship rolled and dashed, like a desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of her deck, as she turned on her beam ends towards the shore, now nothing but herkeel, as she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea, the bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy men, was borne towards us on the wind. Again we lost her, and again she rose. Two men were gone. The agony on shore increased. Men groaned and clasped their hands; women shrieked, and turned away their faces. Some ran wildly up and down along the beach, crying for help where no help could be. I found myself one of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew, not to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes.
They were making out to me, in an agitated way, that the lifeboat had been bravely manned an hour ago, and could do nothing; and that as no man would be so desperate as to attempt to wade off with a rope, and establish a communication with the shore, there was nothing left to try; when I noticed that some new sensation moved the people on the beach, and saw them part, and Ham come breaking through them to the front.
I ran to him, as well as I know, to repeat my appeal for help. But distracted though I was by a sight so new to me and terrible, the determination in his face, and his look out to sea, awoke me to a knowledge of his danger. I held him back with both arms, and implored the men with whom I had been speaking not to listen to him, not to do murder, not to let him stir from off that sand.
Another cry arose from the shore; and, looking towards the wreck, we saw the cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men, and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast.
Against such a sight, and against such determinationas that of the calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the people present, I might as hopefully have intreated the wind. "Mas'r Davy," he said cheerily, grasping me by both hands, "if my time is come, 'tis come. If't an't, I'll bide it. Lord above bless you, and bless all! Mates, make me ready! I'm a going off!"
I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the people around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived, that he was bent on going, with help or without, and that I should endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested. I don't know what I answered, or what they rejoined, but I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes from a capstan that was there, and penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then I saw him standing alone, in a seaman's frock and trowsers, a rope in his hand or slung to his wrist, another round his body; and several of the best men holding, at a little distance, to the latter, which he laid out himself, slack upon the shore, at his feet.
The wreck, even to my unpracticed eye, was breaking up. I saw that she was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary man upon the mast hung by a thread. Still he clung to it.
Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended breath behind him, and the storm before, until there was a great retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who held the rope, which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and in amoment was buffeting with the water—rising with the hills, falling with valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again to land. They hauled in hastily.
He was hurt. I saw blood on his face from where I stood; but he took no thought of that. He seemed hurriedly to give them some directions for leaving him more free, or so I judged from the motion of his arm—and was gone, as before.
And now he made for the wreck—rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, borne in towards the shore, borne on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly. The distance was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the strife deadly.
At length he neared the wreck. He was so near that with one more of his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it,—when a high, green, vast hillside of water, moving on shoreward from beyond the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!
Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in. Consternation was in every face. They drew him to my very feet—insensible, dead. He was carried to the nearest house; and, no one preventing me now, I remained near him, busy, while every means of restoration was tried; but he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous heart was stilled for ever.
—From "David Copperfield," by Charles Dickens.
The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for the residence of the Abyssinian princes was a spacious valley in the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains, of which the summits overhang the middle part. The only passage by which it could be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it has been long disputed whether it was the work of Nature or of human industry.
Author's portraitDr. Samuel Johnson.
Dr. Samuel Johnson.
The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth, which opened into the valley, was closed with gates of iron forged by the artificers of ancient days, so massy that no man could, without the help of engines, open or shut them.
From the mountains, on every side, rivulets descended, that filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl which Nature has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake discharged its superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and fell, with dreadful noise, from precipice to precipice, till it was heard no more.
The sides of the mountains were covered with trees. The banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers. Every blast shook spices from the rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground. All animals that bite the grass or browse the shrub, whether wild or tame, wandered in this extensive circuit, secured from beasts of prey by the mountains which confined them.
On one part were flocks and herds feeding in the pastures; on another, all the beasts of chase frisking in the lawns; the sprightly kid was bounding on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and the solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the diversities of the world were brought together; the blessings of nature were collected, and its evils extracted and excluded.
The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with the necessaries of life; and all delights and superfluities were added at the annual visit which the Emperor paid his children, when the iron gate was opened to the sound of music, and during eight days every one that resided in the valley was required to propose whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of attention, and lessen the tediousness of the time.
Every desire was immediately granted. All the artificers of pleasure were called to gladden the festivity; the musicians exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers showed their activity before the princes, in hope that they should pass their lives in this blissful captivity, to which those only were admitted whose performance was thought capable of adding novelty to luxury.
Such was the appearance of security and delight which this retirement afforded, that they to whom it was new always desired that it might be perpetual; and as those on whom the iron gate had once closed were never suffered to return, the effect of long experience could not be known. Thus every year produced new schemes of delight and new competitors for imprisonment.
*****
Dr. Samuel Johnson's "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," from which this selection is taken, was first published in 1759. "The late Mr. Strahan, the printer, told me," says Boswell, "that Johnson wrote it, so that with the profits he might defray the expenses of his mother's funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left. He told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he composed it in the evenings of one week, sent it to the press in portions as it was written, and had never since read it over. None of his writings have been so extensively diffused over Europe, for it has been translated into most, if not all, of the modern languages. This tale, with all the charms of oriental imagery, and all the force and beauty of which the English language is capable, leads us through the most important scenes of human life, and shows us that this stage of our being is full of 'vanity and vexation of spirit.'"
The peculiarities of style which distinguish all of Johnson's writings are well illustrated in this story. Notice the stately flow of high-sounding words; the dignified formality of many of the descriptive passages; and the richness and perfection which characterize the production as a whole.
John Græme of Claverhouse, whose title of Viscount Dundee had been given him in reward for his cruelties to the Western Covenanters, was the instigator and leader of a revolt of the Highland clans against the government of William III. in Scotland. General Mackay, with his loyal Scotch regiments, was sent out to suppress the uprising. But as they climbed the pass of Killiecrankie, on the 27th of July, 1689, Dundee charged them at the head of three thousand clansmen, and swept them in headlong rout down the glen. His death in the moment of victory broke, however, the only bond which held the Highlanders together, and in a few weeks the host which had spread terror through the Lowlands melted helplessly away.
The Græmes, or Grahams, were among the most noted of Scottish families, and included some of the most distinguished men of the country. Among them were Sir John the Græme, the faithful aid of Sir William Wallace, who fell in the battle of Falkirk, 1298, and the celebrated Marquis of Montrose, who died in 1650, and whose exploits are immortalized in Scott's "Legend of Montrose."
In the following stirring verses from "The Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," by W. E. Aytoun, the fight at Killiecrankie is described, presumably, by one of the adherents of Dundee. The title of the poem in its complete form is "The Burial March of Dundee." Our selection includes only so much as relates to the conflict in the pass.
On the heights of KilliecrankieYester-morn our army lay:Slowly rose the mist in columnsFrom the river's broken way;Hoarsely roared the swollen torrent,And the pass was wrapt in gloom,When the clansmen rose togetherFrom their lair amidst the broom.Then we belted on our tartans,And our bonnets down we drew,And we felt our broadswords' edges,And we proved them to be true;And we prayed the prayer of soldiers,And we cried the gathering cry,And we clasped the hands of kinsmen,And we swore to do or die!Then our leader rode before usOn his war horse black as night—Well the Cameronian rebelsKnew that charger in the fight!—And a cry of exultationFrom the bearded warriors rose;For we loved the house of Claver'se,And we thought of good Montrose,But he raised his hand for silence—"Soldiers! I have sworn a vow:Ere the evening star shall glistenOn Schehallion's lofty brow,Either we shall rest in triumph,Or another of the GræmesShall have died in battle harnessFor his country and King James!Think upon the Royal Martyr—Think of what his race endure—Think of him whom butchers murderedOn the field of Magus Muir:—By his sacred blood I charge ye,By the ruined hearth and shrine—By the blighted hopes of Scotland,By your injuries and mine—Strike this day as if the anvilLay beneath your blows the while,Be they Covenanting traitors,Or the brood of false Argyle!Strike! and drive the trembling rebelsBackwards o'er the stormy Forth;Let them tell their pale ConventionHow they fared within the North.Let them tell that Highland honorIs not to be bought or sold,That we scorn their prince's angerAs we loathe his foreign gold.Strike! and when the fight is over,If ye look in vain for me,Where the dead are lying thickest,Search for him that was Dundee!"Loudly then the hills reëchoedWith our answer to his call,But a deeper echo soundedIn the bosoms of us all.For the lands of wide BreadalbaneNot a man who heard him speakWould that day have left the battle.Burning eye and flushing cheekTold the clansmen's fierce emotion,And they harder drew their breath;For their souls were strong within them,Stronger than the grasp of death.Soon we heard a challenge trumpetSounding in the pass below,And the distant tramp of horses,And the voices of the foe:Down we crouched amid the bracken,Till the Lowland ranks drew near,Panting like the hounds in summer,When they scent the stately deer.From the dark defile emerging,Next we saw the squadrons come,Leslie's foot and Leven's troopersMarching to the tuck of drum;Through the scattered wood of birches,O'er the broken ground and heath,Wound the long battalion slowly,Till they gained the field beneath;Then we bounded from our covert.—Judge how looked the Saxons then,When they saw the rugged mountainStart to life with armèd men!Like a tempest down the ridgesSwept the hurricane of steel,Rose the slogan of Macdonald,—Flashed the broadsword of Lochiell!Vainly sped the withering volley'Mongst the foremost of our band—On we poured until we met them,Foot to foot, and hand to hand.Horse and man went down like driftwoodWhen the floods are black at Yule,And their carcasses are whirlingIn the Garry's deepest pool.Horse and man went down before us—Living foe there tarried noneOn the field of Killiecrankie,When that stubborn fight was done!And the evening star was shiningOn Schehallion's distant head,When we wiped our bloody broadswords,And returned to count the dead.There we found him gashed and gory,Stretched upon the cumbered plain,As he told us where to seek him,In the thickest of the slain.And a smile was on his visage,For within his dying earPealed the joyful note of triumph,And the clansmen's clamorous cheer:So, amidst the battle's thunder,Shot, and steel, and scorching flame,In the glory of his manhoodPassed the spirit of the Græme!
On the heights of KilliecrankieYester-morn our army lay:Slowly rose the mist in columnsFrom the river's broken way;Hoarsely roared the swollen torrent,And the pass was wrapt in gloom,When the clansmen rose togetherFrom their lair amidst the broom.Then we belted on our tartans,And our bonnets down we drew,And we felt our broadswords' edges,And we proved them to be true;And we prayed the prayer of soldiers,And we cried the gathering cry,And we clasped the hands of kinsmen,And we swore to do or die!Then our leader rode before usOn his war horse black as night—Well the Cameronian rebelsKnew that charger in the fight!—And a cry of exultationFrom the bearded warriors rose;For we loved the house of Claver'se,And we thought of good Montrose,But he raised his hand for silence—"Soldiers! I have sworn a vow:Ere the evening star shall glistenOn Schehallion's lofty brow,Either we shall rest in triumph,Or another of the GræmesShall have died in battle harnessFor his country and King James!Think upon the Royal Martyr—Think of what his race endure—Think of him whom butchers murderedOn the field of Magus Muir:—By his sacred blood I charge ye,By the ruined hearth and shrine—By the blighted hopes of Scotland,By your injuries and mine—Strike this day as if the anvilLay beneath your blows the while,Be they Covenanting traitors,Or the brood of false Argyle!Strike! and drive the trembling rebelsBackwards o'er the stormy Forth;Let them tell their pale ConventionHow they fared within the North.Let them tell that Highland honorIs not to be bought or sold,That we scorn their prince's angerAs we loathe his foreign gold.Strike! and when the fight is over,If ye look in vain for me,Where the dead are lying thickest,Search for him that was Dundee!"Loudly then the hills reëchoedWith our answer to his call,But a deeper echo soundedIn the bosoms of us all.For the lands of wide BreadalbaneNot a man who heard him speakWould that day have left the battle.Burning eye and flushing cheekTold the clansmen's fierce emotion,And they harder drew their breath;For their souls were strong within them,Stronger than the grasp of death.Soon we heard a challenge trumpetSounding in the pass below,And the distant tramp of horses,And the voices of the foe:Down we crouched amid the bracken,Till the Lowland ranks drew near,Panting like the hounds in summer,When they scent the stately deer.From the dark defile emerging,Next we saw the squadrons come,Leslie's foot and Leven's troopersMarching to the tuck of drum;Through the scattered wood of birches,O'er the broken ground and heath,Wound the long battalion slowly,Till they gained the field beneath;Then we bounded from our covert.—Judge how looked the Saxons then,When they saw the rugged mountainStart to life with armèd men!Like a tempest down the ridgesSwept the hurricane of steel,Rose the slogan of Macdonald,—Flashed the broadsword of Lochiell!Vainly sped the withering volley'Mongst the foremost of our band—On we poured until we met them,Foot to foot, and hand to hand.Horse and man went down like driftwoodWhen the floods are black at Yule,And their carcasses are whirlingIn the Garry's deepest pool.Horse and man went down before us—Living foe there tarried noneOn the field of Killiecrankie,When that stubborn fight was done!And the evening star was shiningOn Schehallion's distant head,When we wiped our bloody broadswords,And returned to count the dead.There we found him gashed and gory,Stretched upon the cumbered plain,As he told us where to seek him,In the thickest of the slain.And a smile was on his visage,For within his dying earPealed the joyful note of triumph,And the clansmen's clamorous cheer:So, amidst the battle's thunder,Shot, and steel, and scorching flame,In the glory of his manhoodPassed the spirit of the Græme!
It is a long time since much rain fell. The ground is a little dry, the road is a good deal dusty. The garden bakes. Transplanted trees are thirsty. Wheels are shrinking and tires are looking dangerous. Men speculate on the clouds; they begin to calculate how long it will be, if no rain falls, before the potatoes will suffer; the oats, the grass, the corn—everything! To be sure, nothing is yet suffering; but then—
Author's portraitHenry Ward Beecher.
Henry Ward Beecher.
Rain, rain, rain! All day, all night, steady raining. Will it never stop? The hay is out and spoiling. The rain washes the garden. All things have drunk their fill. The springs revive, the meadows are wet; the rivers run discolored with soil from every hill.
Smoking cattle reek under the sheds. Hens, and fowl in general, shelter and plume. The sky is leaden. The clouds are full yet. The long fleece covers the mountains. The hills are capped in white. The air is full of moisture.
The wind roars down the chimney. The birds are silent. No insects chirp. Closets smell moldy. The barometer is clogged. We thump it, but it will not get up. It seems to have an understanding with the weather.The trees drip, shoes are muddy, carriage and wagon are splashed with dirt. Paths are soft.
So it is. When it is clear we want rain, and when it rains we wish it would shine. But after all, how lucky for grumblers that they are not allowed to meddle with the weather, and that it is put above their reach. What a scrambling, selfish, mischief-making time we should have, if men undertook to parcel out the seasons and the weather according to their several humors or interests!
If one will but look for enjoyment, how much there is in every change of weather. The formation of clouds—the various signs and signals, the uncertain wheeling and marching of the fleecy cohorts, the shades of light and gray in the broken heavens—all have their pleasure to an observant eye. Then come the wind gust, the distant dark cloud, the occasional fiery streak shot down through it, the run and hurry of men whose work may suffer!
Indeed, sir, your humble servant, even, was stirred up on the day after Fourth of July. The grass in the old orchard was not my best. Indeed, we grumbled at it considerably while it was yet standing. But being cut and the rain threatening it, one would have thought it gold by the nimble way in which we tried to save it!
Blessed be horse rakes! Once, half a dozen men with half a dozen rakes would have gone whisking up and down, thrusting out and pulling in the long-handled rakes with slow and laborious progress. But no more of that. See friend Turner, mounted on the wheeled horse rake, riding about as if for pleasure. It is easy times whenmenride andhorsesrake.
Meanwhile, the clouds come bowling noiselessly through the air, and spit here and there a drop preliminary. Well, if one thing suffers, another gains! See how the leaves are washed; the grass drinks, even drinks; the garden drinks; everything drinks.
It is our opinion that everything except man is laughing and rejoicing. Trees shake their leaves with a softer sound. Rocks look moist and soft, at least where the moss grows. Even the solitary old pine tree chords his harp, and sings soft and low melodies with plaintive undulations!
A good summer storm is a rain of riches. If gold and silver rattled down from the clouds, they could hardly enrich the land so much as soft, long rains. Every drop is silver going to the mint. The roots are machinery, and, catching the willing drops, they array them, refine them, roll them, stamp them, and turn them out coined berries, apples, grains, and grasses!
When the heavens send clouds and they bank up the horizon, be sure they have hidden gold in them. All the mountains of California are not so rich as are the soft mines of heaven, that send down treasures upon man without tasking him, and pour riches upon his field without spade or pickax—without his search or notice.
Well, let it rain, then! No matter if the journey is delayed, the picnic spoiled, the visit adjourned. Blessed be rain—and rain in summer. And blessed be he who watereth the earth and enricheth it for man and beast.
—Henry Ward Beecher.
Author's portraitWilliam Dean Howells.
William Dean Howells.
It would not be easy to say where or when the first log cabin was built, but it is safe to say that it was somewhere in the English colonies of North America, and it is certain that it became the type of the settler's house throughout the whole middle west. It may be called the American house, the Western house, the Ohio house. Hardly any other house was built for a hundred years by the men who were clearing the land for the stately mansions of our day. As long as the primeval forests stood, the log cabin remained the woodsman's home; and not fifty years ago, I saw log cabins newly built in one of the richest and most prosperous regions of Ohio. They were, to be sure, log cabins of a finer pattern than the first settler reared. They were of logs handsomely shaped with the broadax; the joints between the logs were plastered with mortar; the chimney at the end was of stone; the roof was shingled, the windows were of glass, and the door was solid and well hung. But throughout that region there were many log cabins, mostly sunk to the uses of stables and corn cribs, of the kind that the borderers built in the times of the Indian War, from 1750 to 1800. They were framed of the round logs untouched by the ax exceptfor the notches at the ends where they were fitted into one another; the chimney was of small sticks stuck together with mud, and was as frail as a barn swallow's nest; the walls were stuffed with moss, plastered with clay; the floor was of rough boards called puncheons, riven from the block with a heavy knife; the roof was of clapboards laid loosely on the rafters, and held in place with logs fastened athwart them.
A small homeLog Cabin.
Log Cabin.
There is a delightful account of such a log cabin by John S. Williams, whose father settled in the woods of Belmont County in 1800. "Our cabin," he says, "had been raised, covered, part of the cracks chinked, and part of the floor laid, when we moved in on Christmas day. There had not been a stick cut except in building the cabin, which was so high from the ground that a bear, wolf, panther, or any animal less in size than a cow could enter without even a squeeze.... The green ash puncheons had shrunk so as to leave cracks in the floor and doors from one to two inches wide. At both the doors we had high, unsteady, and sometimes icy steps, made by piling the logs cut out of the walls, for the doors and the window, if it could be called a window, when perhaps it was the largest spot in the top, bottom, or sides of the cabin where the wind couldnotenter. It was made by sawingout a log, and placing sticks across and then by pasting an old newspaper over the hole, and applying hog's lard, we had a kind of glazing which shed a most beautiful and mellow light across the cabin when the sun shone on it. All other light entered at the doors, cracks, and chimneys. Our cabin was twenty-four by eighteen. The west end was occupied by two beds, the center of each side by a door.... On the opposite side of the window, made of clapboards, supported on pins driven into the walls, were our shelves. On these shelves my sister displayed in simple order, a host of pewter plates, and dishes and spoons, scoured and bright.... Our chimney occupied most of the east end; with pots and kettles opposite the window, under the shelves, a gun on hooks over the north door, four split-bottomed chairs, three three-legged stools, and a small eight by ten looking-glass sloped from the wall over a large towel and comb case.... We got a roof laid over head as soon as possible, but it was laid of loose clapboards split from a red-oak, and a cat might have shaken every board in our ceiling.... We made two kinds of furniture. One kind was of hickory bark, with the outside shaved off. This we would take off all around the tree, the size of which would determine the caliber of our box. Into one end we would place a flat piece of bark or puncheon, cut round to fit in the bark, which stood on end the same as when on the tree.... A much finer article was made of slippery-elm bark, shaved smooth, with the inside out, bent round and sewed together, where the end of the hoop or main bark lapped over.... This was the finest furniture in a lady's dressingroom," and such a cabin and its appointments were splendor and luxury beside those of the very earliest pioneers, and many of the latest. The Williamses were Quakers, and the mother was recently from England; they were of far gentler breeding and finer tastes than most of their neighbors, who had been backwoodsmen for generations.
When the first settlers broke the silence of the woods with the stroke of their axes, and hewed out a space for their cabins and their fields, they inclosed their homes with a high stockade of logs, for defense against the Indians; or if they built their cabins outside the wooden walls of their stronghold, they always expected to flee to it at the first alarm, and to stand siege within it.
The Indians had no cannon, and the logs of the stockade were proof against their rifles; if a breach was made, there was still the blockhouse left, the citadel of every little fort. This was heavily built, and pierced with loopholes for the riflemen within, whose wives ran bullets for them at its mighty hearth, and who kept the savage foe from its sides by firing down upon them through the projecting timbers of its upper story. But in many a fearful siege the Indians set the roof ablaze with arrows wrapped in burning tow, and then the fight became desperate indeed. After the Indian war ended, the stockade was no longer needed, and the settlers had only the wild beasts to contend with, and those constant enemies of the poor in all ages and conditions,—hunger and cold.
Winter after winter, the Williamses heard the wolves howling round them in the woods, and this music wasfamiliar to the ears of all the Ohio pioneers, who trusted their rifles for both the safety and support of their families. They deadened the trees around them by girdling them with the ax, and planted the spaces between the leafless trunks with corn and beans and pumpkins. These were their necessaries, but they had an occasional luxury in the wild honey from the hollow of a bee tree when the bears had not got at it.
In its season, there was an abundance of wild fruit, plums and cherries, haws and grapes, berries, and nuts of every kind, and the maples yielded all the sugar they chose to make from them. But it was long before they had, at any time, the profusion which our modern arts enable us to enjoy the whole year round, and in the hard beginnings the orchard and the garden were forgotten for the fields.
When once the settler was housed against the weather, he had the conditions of a certain rude comfort indoors. If his cabin was not proof against the wind and rain or snow, its vast fireplace formed the means of heating, while the forest was an inexhaustible store of fuel. At first he dressed in the skins and pelts of the deer and fox and wolf, and his costume could have varied little from that of the red savage about him, for we often read how he mistook Indians for white men at first sight, and how the Indians in their turn mistook white men for their own people.
The whole family went barefoot in the summer, but in winter the pioneer wore moccasins of buckskin, and buckskin leggins or trousers; his coat was a huntingshirt belted at the waist and fringed where it fell to his knees. It was of homespun, a mixture of wool and flax called linsey-woolsey, and out of this the dresses of his wife and daughters were made; the wool was shorn from the sheep which were so scarce that they were never killed for their flesh, except by the wolves, which were very fond of mutton, but had no use for wool.
For a wedding dress a cotton check was thought superb, and it really cost a dollar a yard; silks, satins, laces, were unknown. A man never left his house without his rifle; the gun was a part of his dress, and in his belt he carried a hunting knife and a hatchet; on his head he wore a cap of squirrel skin, often with the plume-like tail dangling from it.
The furniture of the cabins was, like the clothing of the pioneers, homemade. A bedstead was contrived by stretching poles from forked sticks driven into the ground, and laying clapboards across them; the bedclothes were bearskins. Stools, benches, and tables were roughed out with auger and broadax; the puncheon floor was left bare, and if the earth formed the floor, no rug ever replaced the grass which was its first carpet. The cabin had but one room where the whole of life went on by day; the father and mother slept there at night, and the children mounted to their chamber in the loft by means of a ladder.
The food was what has been already named. The meat was venison, bear, raccoon, wild turkey, wild duck, and pheasant; the drink was water, or rye coffee, or whisky which the little stills everywhere supplied only too abundantly. Wheat bread was long unknown, and corn cakesof various makings and bakings supplied its place. The most delicious morsel of all was corn grated while still in the milk and fashioned into round cakes eaten hot from the clapboard before the fire, or from the mysterious depths of the Dutch oven, buried in coals and ashes on the hearth. There was soon a great flow of milk from the kine that multiplied in the woods and pastures, and there was sweetening enough from the maple tree and the bee tree, but salt was very scarce and very dear, and long journeys were made through the perilous woods to and from the licks, or salt springs, which the deer had discovered before the white man or red man knew them.
The bees which hived their honey in the hollow trees were tame bees gone wild, and with the coming of the settlers, some of the wild things increased so much that they became a pest. Such were the crows which literally blackened the fields after the settlers plowed, and which the whole family had to fight from the corn when it was planted. Such were the rabbits, and such, above all, were the squirrels which overran the farms, and devoured every green thing till the people combined in great squirrel hunts and destroyed them by tens of thousands. The larger game had meanwhile disappeared. The buffalo and the elk went first; the deer followed, and the bear, and even the useless wolf. But long after these the poisonous reptiles lingered, the rattlesnake, the moccasin, and the yet deadlier copperhead; and it was only when the whole country was cleared that they ceased to be a very common danger.
—From "Stories of Ohio," by William Dean Howells.
Author's portraitCharles Reade.
Charles Reade.
Charles Reade, in his great romance entitled "The Cloister and the Hearth," has not only presented us with a story of absorbing interest, but has given us a vivid and accurate view of manners and customs during one of the most interesting periods of history. The following extract is particularly interesting because of its vivid portrayal of the methods of warfare in vogue at that time. There was a rebellion in Flanders. More than one knight had broken his oath of fealty to the Duke of Burgundy, who was the ruler of that country, and some of the strongest castles were fortified by rebels. To subdue these dissatisfied spirits and to reduce the country again to subjection, Counts Anthony and Baldwyn of Burgundy had entered Flanders at the head of a considerable army and were carrying fire and sword among the enemies of the Duke. One of their exploits at this time is thus narrated by the novelist:—
One afternoon they came in sight of a strongly fortified town; and a whisper went through the little army that this was a disaffected place. But upon coming nearer they saw that the great gate stood open, and the towersthat flanked it on each side were manned with a single sentinel apiece. So the advancing force somewhat broke their array and marched carelessly.When they were within a furlong, the drawbridge across the moat rose slowly and creaking till it stood vertical against the fort; and the very moment it settled, into this warlike attitude, down rattled the portcullis at the gate, and the towers and curtains bristled with lances and crossbows.A stern hum ran through the front rank and spread to the rear."Halt!" cried their leader. The word went down the line, and they halted. "Herald to the gate!"A herald spurred out of the ranks, and halting twenty yards from the gate, raised his bugle with his herald's flag hanging down round it, and blew a summons. A tall figure in brazen armor appeared over the gate. A few fiery words passed between him and the herald, which were not audible; but their import was clear, for the herald blew a single keen and threatening note at the walls, and came galloping back with war in his face.The leader moved out of the line to meet him, and their heads had not been together two seconds ere he turned in his saddle and shouted, "Pioneers, to the van!" and in a moment hedges were leveled, and the force took the field and encamped just out of shot from the walls; and away went mounted officers flying south, east, and west, to the friendly towns, for catapults, palisades, mantelets, raw hides, tar barrels, carpenters, provisions, and all the materials for a siege.The besiegers encamped a furlong from the walls, and made roads; kept their pikemen in camp ready for an assault when practicable; and sent forward their sappers, pioneers, catapultiers, and crossbowmen. These opened a siege by filling the moat and mining, or breaching the wall, etc. And as much of their work had to be done under close fire of arrows, quarrels, bolts, stones, and little rocks, the above artists "had need of a hundred eyes," and acted in concert with a vigilance, and an amount of individual intelligence, daring, and skill that made a siege very interesting, and even amusing,—to lookers-on.The first thing they did was to advance their carpenters behind rolling mantelets, and to erect a stockade high and strong on the very edge of the moat. Some lives were lost at this, but not many; for a strong force of crossbowmen, including Denys, rolled their mantelets[1]up and shot over the workmen's heads at every besieged person who showed his nose, and at every loophole, arrow slit, or other aperture, which commanded the particular spot the carpenters happened to be upon. Covered by their condensed fire, these soon raised a high palisade between them and the ordinary missiles from the walls.But the besieged expected this, and ran out at night their hoards or wooden penthouses on the top of the curtains. The curtains were built with square holes near the top to receive the beams that supported these structures, the true defense of mediæval forts, from which thebesieged delivered their missiles with far more freedom and variety of range than they could shoot through the oblique but immovable loopholes of the curtain. On this the besiegers brought up mangonels, and set them hurling huge stones at these wood works and battering them to pieces. At the same time they built a triangular wooden tower as high as the curtain, and kept it ready for use, and just out of shot.Being besiegedHoard, or Penthouse.This was a terrible sight to the besieged. These wooden towers had taken many a town. They began to mine underneath that part of the moat the tower stood frowning at; and made other preparations to give it a warm reception. The besiegers also mined, but at another part, their object being to get under the square barbican and throw it down. All this time Denys was behind his mantelet with another arbalester, protecting the workmen and making some excellent shots. These ended by earning him the esteem of an unseen archer, who every now and then sent a winged compliment quivering into his mantelet. One came and stuck within an inch of the narrow slit through which Denys was squinting at the moment."Ha! ha!" cried he, "you shoot well, my friend.Come forth and receive my congratulations! Shall merit, such as thine, hide its head? Comrade, it is one of those Englishmen, with his half ell shaft. I'll not die till I've had a shot at London wall."On the side of the besieged was a figure that soon attracted great notice by promenading under fire. It was a tall knight, clad in complete brass, and carrying a light but prodigiously long lance, with which he directed the movements of the besieged. And when any disaster befell the besiegers, this tall knight and his long lance were pretty sure to be concerned in it.My young reader will say, "Why did not Denys shoot him?"Denys did shoot him; every day of his life; other arbalesters shot him; archers shot him. Everybody shot him. He was there to be shot, apparently. But the abomination was, he did not mind being shot. Nay, worse, he got at last so demoralized as not to seem to know when he was shot. At last the besiegers got spiteful, and would not waste any more good steel on him.It was a bright day, clear, but not quite frosty. The efforts of the besieging force were concentrated against a space of about two hundred and fifty yards, containing two curtains and two towers, one of which was the square barbican, the other had a pointed roof that was built to overlap, and by this means a row of dangerous crenelets between the roof and the masonry grinned down at the nearer assailants, and looked not very unlike the grinders of a modern frigate with each port nearly closed. The curtains were overlapped with penthouses somewhat shatteredby the mangonels, and other slinging engines of the besiegers.On the besiegers' edge of the moat was what seemed at first sight a gigantic arsenal, longer than it was broad, peopled by human ants, and full of busy, honest industry, and displaying all the various mechanical science of the age in full operation. Here the lever at work, there the winch and pulley, here the balance, there the capstan. Everywhere heaps of stones, and piles of fascines, mantelets, and rows of fire barrels. Mantelets rolling, the hammer tapping all day, horses and carts in endless succession rattling up with materials.At the edge of the moat opposite the wooden tower, a strong penthouse, which they called "a cat," might be seen stealing towards the curtain, and gradually filling up the moat with fascines and rubbish, which the workmen flung out at its mouth. It was advanced by two sets of ropes passing round pulleys, and each worked by a windlass at some distance from the cat. The knight burnt the first cat by flinging blazing tar barrels on it. So the besiegers made the roof of this one very steep, and covered it with raw hides, and the tar barrels could not harm it.And now the engineers proceeded to the unusual step of slinging fifty-pound stones at an individual.This catapult was a scientific, simple, and beautiful engine, and very effective in vertical fire at the short ranges of the period.Imagine a fir tree cut down, and set to turn round a horizontal axis on lofty uprights, but not in equilibrium;three fourths of the tree being on the hither side. At the shorter and thicker end of the tree was fastened a weight of half a ton. This butt end just before the discharge pointed towards the enemy. By means of a powerful winch the long tapering portion of the tree was forced down to the very ground, and fastened by a bolt; and the stone placed in a sling attached to the tree's nose. But this process of course raised the butt end with its huge weight high in the air, and kept it there struggling in vain to come down. The bolt was now drawn; then the short end swung furiously down, the long end went as furiously up, and at its highest elevation flung the huge stone out of the sling with a tremendous jerk. In this case the huge mass so flung missed the knight, but came down near him on the penthouse, and went through it like paper, making an awful gap in roof and floor.A large war weaponA Catapult."Aha! a good shot!" cried Baldwyn of Burgundy.The tall knight retired. The besiegers hooted him. He reappeared on the platform of the barbican, hishelmet being just visible above the parapet. He seemed very busy, and soon an enormous Turkish catapult made its appearance on the platform, and, aided by the elevation at which it was planted, flung a twenty-pound stone two hundred and forty yards in the air. The next stone struck a horse that was bringing up a sheaf of arrows in a cart, bowled the horse over dead like a rabbit, and split the cart. It was then turned at the besiegers' wooden tower, supposed to be out of shot. Sir Turk slung stones cut with sharp edges on purpose, and struck it repeatedly, and broke it in several places. The besiegers turned two of their slinging engines on this monster, and kept constantly slinging smaller stones on to the platform of the barbican, and killed two of the engineers. But the Turk disdained to retort. He flung a forty-pound stone on to the besiegers' great catapult, and hitting it in the neighborhood of the axis, knocked the whole structure to pieces, and sent the engineers skipping and yelling.The next morning an unwelcome sight greeted the besieged. The cat was covered with mattresses and raw hides, and fast filling up the moat. The knight stoned it, but in vain; flung burning tar barrels on it, but in vain. Then with his own hands he let down by a rope a bag of burning sulphur and pitch, and stunk them out. But Baldwyn, armed like a lobster, ran, and bounding on the roof, cut the string, and the work went on. Then the knight sent fresh engineers into the mine, and undermined the place and underpinned it with beams, and covered the beams thickly with grease and tar.At break of day the moat was filled, and the wooden tower began to move on its wheels towards a part of the curtain on which two catapults were already playing, to breach the hoards and clear the way. There was something awful and magical in its approach without visible agency, for it was driven by internal rollers worked by leverage.On the top was a platform, where stood the first assailing party protected in front by the drawbridge of the turret, which stood vertical till lowered on to the wall; but better protected by full suits of armor. The besieged slung at the tower, and struck it often, but in vain. It was well defended with mattresses and hides, and presently was at the edge of the moat. The knight bade fire the mine underneath it.Then the Turkish engine flung a stone of half a hundredweight right amongst the knights, and carried two away with it off the tower on to the plain.And now the besieging catapults flung blazing tar barrels, and fired the hoards on both sides, and the assailants ran up the ladders behind the tower, and lowered the drawbridge on to the battered curtain, while the catapults in concert flung tar barrels, and fired the adjoining works to dislodge the defenders. The armed men on the platform sprang on the bridge, led by Baldwyn. The invulnerable knight and his men at arms met them, and a fearful combat ensued, in which many a figure was seen to fall headlong down off the narrow bridge. But fresh besiegers kept swarming up behind the tower, and the besieged were driven off the bridge.Another minute, and the town would have been taken; but so well had the firing of the mines been timed, that just at this instant the underpinnings gave way, and the tower suddenly sank away from the walls, tearing the drawbridge clear and pouring the soldiers off it against the masonry and on to the dry moat.The besieged uttered a fierce shout, and in a moment surrounded Baldwyn and his fellows; but strange to say, offered them quarter. While a party disarmed and disposed of these, others fired the turret in fifty places with a sort of hand grenades. At this work who so busy as the tall knight? He put fire bags on his long spear, and thrust them into the doomed structure late so terrible. To do this, he was obliged to stand on a projecting beam, holding on by the hand of a pikeman to steady himself. This provoked Denys; he ran out from his mantelet, hoping to escape notice in the confusion, and leveling his crossbow missed the knight clean, but sent his bolt into the brain of the pikeman, and the tall knight fell heavily from the wall, lance and all.The knight, his armor glittering in the morning sun, fell headlong, but turning as he neared the water, struck it with a slap that sounded a mile off.None ever thought to see him again. But he fell at the edge of the fascines, and his spear stuck into them under the water, and by a mighty effort he got to the side, but could not get out. Anthony sent a dozen knights with a white flag to take him prisoner. He submitted like a lamb, but said nothing.
One afternoon they came in sight of a strongly fortified town; and a whisper went through the little army that this was a disaffected place. But upon coming nearer they saw that the great gate stood open, and the towersthat flanked it on each side were manned with a single sentinel apiece. So the advancing force somewhat broke their array and marched carelessly.
When they were within a furlong, the drawbridge across the moat rose slowly and creaking till it stood vertical against the fort; and the very moment it settled, into this warlike attitude, down rattled the portcullis at the gate, and the towers and curtains bristled with lances and crossbows.
A stern hum ran through the front rank and spread to the rear.
"Halt!" cried their leader. The word went down the line, and they halted. "Herald to the gate!"
A herald spurred out of the ranks, and halting twenty yards from the gate, raised his bugle with his herald's flag hanging down round it, and blew a summons. A tall figure in brazen armor appeared over the gate. A few fiery words passed between him and the herald, which were not audible; but their import was clear, for the herald blew a single keen and threatening note at the walls, and came galloping back with war in his face.
The leader moved out of the line to meet him, and their heads had not been together two seconds ere he turned in his saddle and shouted, "Pioneers, to the van!" and in a moment hedges were leveled, and the force took the field and encamped just out of shot from the walls; and away went mounted officers flying south, east, and west, to the friendly towns, for catapults, palisades, mantelets, raw hides, tar barrels, carpenters, provisions, and all the materials for a siege.
The besiegers encamped a furlong from the walls, and made roads; kept their pikemen in camp ready for an assault when practicable; and sent forward their sappers, pioneers, catapultiers, and crossbowmen. These opened a siege by filling the moat and mining, or breaching the wall, etc. And as much of their work had to be done under close fire of arrows, quarrels, bolts, stones, and little rocks, the above artists "had need of a hundred eyes," and acted in concert with a vigilance, and an amount of individual intelligence, daring, and skill that made a siege very interesting, and even amusing,—to lookers-on.
The first thing they did was to advance their carpenters behind rolling mantelets, and to erect a stockade high and strong on the very edge of the moat. Some lives were lost at this, but not many; for a strong force of crossbowmen, including Denys, rolled their mantelets[1]up and shot over the workmen's heads at every besieged person who showed his nose, and at every loophole, arrow slit, or other aperture, which commanded the particular spot the carpenters happened to be upon. Covered by their condensed fire, these soon raised a high palisade between them and the ordinary missiles from the walls.
But the besieged expected this, and ran out at night their hoards or wooden penthouses on the top of the curtains. The curtains were built with square holes near the top to receive the beams that supported these structures, the true defense of mediæval forts, from which thebesieged delivered their missiles with far more freedom and variety of range than they could shoot through the oblique but immovable loopholes of the curtain. On this the besiegers brought up mangonels, and set them hurling huge stones at these wood works and battering them to pieces. At the same time they built a triangular wooden tower as high as the curtain, and kept it ready for use, and just out of shot.
Being besiegedHoard, or Penthouse.
Hoard, or Penthouse.
This was a terrible sight to the besieged. These wooden towers had taken many a town. They began to mine underneath that part of the moat the tower stood frowning at; and made other preparations to give it a warm reception. The besiegers also mined, but at another part, their object being to get under the square barbican and throw it down. All this time Denys was behind his mantelet with another arbalester, protecting the workmen and making some excellent shots. These ended by earning him the esteem of an unseen archer, who every now and then sent a winged compliment quivering into his mantelet. One came and stuck within an inch of the narrow slit through which Denys was squinting at the moment.
"Ha! ha!" cried he, "you shoot well, my friend.Come forth and receive my congratulations! Shall merit, such as thine, hide its head? Comrade, it is one of those Englishmen, with his half ell shaft. I'll not die till I've had a shot at London wall."
On the side of the besieged was a figure that soon attracted great notice by promenading under fire. It was a tall knight, clad in complete brass, and carrying a light but prodigiously long lance, with which he directed the movements of the besieged. And when any disaster befell the besiegers, this tall knight and his long lance were pretty sure to be concerned in it.
My young reader will say, "Why did not Denys shoot him?"
Denys did shoot him; every day of his life; other arbalesters shot him; archers shot him. Everybody shot him. He was there to be shot, apparently. But the abomination was, he did not mind being shot. Nay, worse, he got at last so demoralized as not to seem to know when he was shot. At last the besiegers got spiteful, and would not waste any more good steel on him.
It was a bright day, clear, but not quite frosty. The efforts of the besieging force were concentrated against a space of about two hundred and fifty yards, containing two curtains and two towers, one of which was the square barbican, the other had a pointed roof that was built to overlap, and by this means a row of dangerous crenelets between the roof and the masonry grinned down at the nearer assailants, and looked not very unlike the grinders of a modern frigate with each port nearly closed. The curtains were overlapped with penthouses somewhat shatteredby the mangonels, and other slinging engines of the besiegers.
On the besiegers' edge of the moat was what seemed at first sight a gigantic arsenal, longer than it was broad, peopled by human ants, and full of busy, honest industry, and displaying all the various mechanical science of the age in full operation. Here the lever at work, there the winch and pulley, here the balance, there the capstan. Everywhere heaps of stones, and piles of fascines, mantelets, and rows of fire barrels. Mantelets rolling, the hammer tapping all day, horses and carts in endless succession rattling up with materials.
At the edge of the moat opposite the wooden tower, a strong penthouse, which they called "a cat," might be seen stealing towards the curtain, and gradually filling up the moat with fascines and rubbish, which the workmen flung out at its mouth. It was advanced by two sets of ropes passing round pulleys, and each worked by a windlass at some distance from the cat. The knight burnt the first cat by flinging blazing tar barrels on it. So the besiegers made the roof of this one very steep, and covered it with raw hides, and the tar barrels could not harm it.
And now the engineers proceeded to the unusual step of slinging fifty-pound stones at an individual.
This catapult was a scientific, simple, and beautiful engine, and very effective in vertical fire at the short ranges of the period.
Imagine a fir tree cut down, and set to turn round a horizontal axis on lofty uprights, but not in equilibrium;three fourths of the tree being on the hither side. At the shorter and thicker end of the tree was fastened a weight of half a ton. This butt end just before the discharge pointed towards the enemy. By means of a powerful winch the long tapering portion of the tree was forced down to the very ground, and fastened by a bolt; and the stone placed in a sling attached to the tree's nose. But this process of course raised the butt end with its huge weight high in the air, and kept it there struggling in vain to come down. The bolt was now drawn; then the short end swung furiously down, the long end went as furiously up, and at its highest elevation flung the huge stone out of the sling with a tremendous jerk. In this case the huge mass so flung missed the knight, but came down near him on the penthouse, and went through it like paper, making an awful gap in roof and floor.
A large war weaponA Catapult.
A Catapult.
"Aha! a good shot!" cried Baldwyn of Burgundy.
The tall knight retired. The besiegers hooted him. He reappeared on the platform of the barbican, hishelmet being just visible above the parapet. He seemed very busy, and soon an enormous Turkish catapult made its appearance on the platform, and, aided by the elevation at which it was planted, flung a twenty-pound stone two hundred and forty yards in the air. The next stone struck a horse that was bringing up a sheaf of arrows in a cart, bowled the horse over dead like a rabbit, and split the cart. It was then turned at the besiegers' wooden tower, supposed to be out of shot. Sir Turk slung stones cut with sharp edges on purpose, and struck it repeatedly, and broke it in several places. The besiegers turned two of their slinging engines on this monster, and kept constantly slinging smaller stones on to the platform of the barbican, and killed two of the engineers. But the Turk disdained to retort. He flung a forty-pound stone on to the besiegers' great catapult, and hitting it in the neighborhood of the axis, knocked the whole structure to pieces, and sent the engineers skipping and yelling.
The next morning an unwelcome sight greeted the besieged. The cat was covered with mattresses and raw hides, and fast filling up the moat. The knight stoned it, but in vain; flung burning tar barrels on it, but in vain. Then with his own hands he let down by a rope a bag of burning sulphur and pitch, and stunk them out. But Baldwyn, armed like a lobster, ran, and bounding on the roof, cut the string, and the work went on. Then the knight sent fresh engineers into the mine, and undermined the place and underpinned it with beams, and covered the beams thickly with grease and tar.
At break of day the moat was filled, and the wooden tower began to move on its wheels towards a part of the curtain on which two catapults were already playing, to breach the hoards and clear the way. There was something awful and magical in its approach without visible agency, for it was driven by internal rollers worked by leverage.
On the top was a platform, where stood the first assailing party protected in front by the drawbridge of the turret, which stood vertical till lowered on to the wall; but better protected by full suits of armor. The besieged slung at the tower, and struck it often, but in vain. It was well defended with mattresses and hides, and presently was at the edge of the moat. The knight bade fire the mine underneath it.
Then the Turkish engine flung a stone of half a hundredweight right amongst the knights, and carried two away with it off the tower on to the plain.
And now the besieging catapults flung blazing tar barrels, and fired the hoards on both sides, and the assailants ran up the ladders behind the tower, and lowered the drawbridge on to the battered curtain, while the catapults in concert flung tar barrels, and fired the adjoining works to dislodge the defenders. The armed men on the platform sprang on the bridge, led by Baldwyn. The invulnerable knight and his men at arms met them, and a fearful combat ensued, in which many a figure was seen to fall headlong down off the narrow bridge. But fresh besiegers kept swarming up behind the tower, and the besieged were driven off the bridge.
Another minute, and the town would have been taken; but so well had the firing of the mines been timed, that just at this instant the underpinnings gave way, and the tower suddenly sank away from the walls, tearing the drawbridge clear and pouring the soldiers off it against the masonry and on to the dry moat.
The besieged uttered a fierce shout, and in a moment surrounded Baldwyn and his fellows; but strange to say, offered them quarter. While a party disarmed and disposed of these, others fired the turret in fifty places with a sort of hand grenades. At this work who so busy as the tall knight? He put fire bags on his long spear, and thrust them into the doomed structure late so terrible. To do this, he was obliged to stand on a projecting beam, holding on by the hand of a pikeman to steady himself. This provoked Denys; he ran out from his mantelet, hoping to escape notice in the confusion, and leveling his crossbow missed the knight clean, but sent his bolt into the brain of the pikeman, and the tall knight fell heavily from the wall, lance and all.
The knight, his armor glittering in the morning sun, fell headlong, but turning as he neared the water, struck it with a slap that sounded a mile off.
None ever thought to see him again. But he fell at the edge of the fascines, and his spear stuck into them under the water, and by a mighty effort he got to the side, but could not get out. Anthony sent a dozen knights with a white flag to take him prisoner. He submitted like a lamb, but said nothing.