The force immediately beneath the walls, and secure from the shots of the Skeleton Crew, were reinforced, and in so cautious a manner, that the Skeleton Crew were entirely ignorant of their increased strength in that quarter.
Creeping as they did from place to place, now lying prone and silent to the ground, in utter immobility; now rushing, as circumstances prompted, with all rapidity, they put themselves into cover, crossing the intervening space without the loss of a man.
Having thus gathered in force beneath the walls of the Block-House, the greater number, while the rest watched, proceeded to gather up in piles, as they had begun to do before, immense quantities of the dry pine trash and the gummy turpentine wood which the neighbourhood readily afforded.
This they clustered in thick masses around the more accessible points of the wooden walls.
The first intimation which the garrison had of this proceeding was a sudden gust of flame, blazing first about the gate of the area, on one side of the Block-house, then rushing from point to point with amazing rapidity, sweeping and curling widely around the building itself.
The gate, and the palings all around it, studiously made as they had been of strong pine, for its great durability, was as ready an ally of the destructive element as the citizens could have chosen, and licked greedily by the fire, were soon ignited.
Blazing impetuously, it soon aroused the Skeleton Crew to a more acute consciousness of the danger now at hand.
A fierce shout of their assailants, as they beheld the rapid progress of the experiment, warned them to greater exertion, if they hoped to escape the dreadful fate which threatened to engulf them.
To remain where they were was to be consumed in the flames.
To rush forth was to encounter the weapons of an enemy four times their number.