A Strong tower is our God--
A good defense and armor;
He keeps us free in every need
Which us has yet befallen;
The old and angry fiend,
Earnestly he means,
Great might and much craft
His dreadful armor is,
On earth there's nothing like him.
With our own might nothing's done;
We surely are quite helpless;
There fights for us the very Man,
Whom God himself has chosen.
Ask you who is He?
He's called Jesus Christ,
The Lord Sabaoth,
There is no other God;
The field he'll not surrender.
And were the world of devils full,
Would they us wholly swallow,
So fear we not so very much;
We yet shall surely prosper.
There they were, on every side, as though the creek and the prairie and the woods had spit them out at once. They came on in wild leaps, swinging axes and guns and brush-bundles. French and Indians, hunters and dogs, rushed on to battle. In a moment they flew across the narrow intervening space, down into the ditch, up the wall, in frenzied motion, digging with their nails, one on another's shoulder, up, up.
Up but not over--at least not the first.
As soon as a head emerged from behind the wall, a pair of elbows put firmly on it, a breast exposed, came the deadly bullet, and the venturesome enemy fell back into the ditch. This fate befalls the first, the second, the third and the fourth. The fifth at last succeeds and the sixth; and now half-a-dozen at once, and at another point also a couple. These are enough. The object is gained. Words of command are called out. Those who are still on the other side of the wall retire, forming about the house in a double circle and continually firing. Again, and then for the last time, to rush forward so soon as those who had pressed to the house should have finished their work.
It will to all appearance soon be finished. Sharp axes cut down the door. The ax-swingers understand their work. They have before opened breaches in many a barricaded house. And those on the other side, toward which the wind was blowing, understood their business equally well. They have often before placed a firebrand against a house they could not otherwise take. Those above shot well through the round holes in the bottom of the gallery, and one or two of those below must pay for their bravery with their lives. But the others are covered, and the rain of bullets which pours upon the house divides the force of the besieged who must turn to every side at once. Yet a few strokes and the door lies in fragments and out of the thick smoke which comes up over there the flame will soon burst forth.
The beleaguered know it. An attempt to avert the threatened danger must be made. They must risk a sally. Two of them must do it. Which two?
"I!" called out the brave minister. "Why is it not suitable for me?"
"I!" cried Conrad. "This is my business!"