Still crawling serpentwise, I dropped my ladder into the fosse, (which on my side was only twelve feet deep,) and descending crossed it, over splinters of fallen masonry and exploded shells. Placing the ladder against the sloping face of the bastion, which was sixteen feet in height, I easily reached the stone cordon that girdled it, and from thence, all wet and slippery though it was, by the drenching rain, I swung myself up to the cope; but not daring to cross it erect, I crept inwards, keeping close alongside the nearest cannon, and at length stood within the parapet of the dreaded Bastion de Louise!
My heart leaped within me!
The rain was still pouring downward or aslant as the gusts blew it; not a sentinel was visible; each was in his box, or stone turret, within a pistol shot of me, but the bellowing wind, and the rain that smoked along the parapet, and bubbled in the gorged gutters, concealed every sound, and with my spike nails and hammer (the face of which I had carefully covered with thick leather to preclude the faintest sound of clinking) I proceeded at once to remove the leaden aprons from the touch-holes, and to complete my dangerous task, by crawling from gun to gun, and keeping my figure as much as possible below the upper line of the parapet—a precaution almost needless, as the darkness was so great.
I had spiked four culverins, when suddenly a light flashed along the wet and shining pavement, and two dark figures drew near me. My pulses stood still—but relinquishing my hammer for a pistol, with the resolution to sell my poor life dearly and desperately, I shrank close under a gun-carriage and lay en perdu, while two officers, cloaked and helmeted, evidently making a nightly round, passed within a yard of me, responding to the challenges of the various sentinels. One was undoubtedly the Prince of Vaudemont; and the other, who bore the lantern, I discovered in a moment to be my acquaintance the Chevalier d'Ische.
'So M. le Governeur, you will only let him have this place as a pile of ruins,' said the Prince as they passed; but I did not hear the reply.
'Good,' said the Prince again, 'but the vivres—'
'O—the rats are good—the cats most excellent—we have no want of provision,' responded the gay Chevalier, and as they turned the angle of the works and disappeared, despite the rain and discomfort of the night, I heard him singing his invariable song—
'O vive le fils d'Harlette!
Normands,
Vive le fils d'Harlette!'
I resumed my task, and in less than five minutes, by twenty blows of my heavy hammer, had driven twenty spike nails home to the head, firmly and securely, in the vents of as many pieces of cannon, unheard and unseen; though I expected every instant to hear a shout, or receive a shot from the dark recesses of the angle-turrets. Had the night been fine or fair, this feat had never been accomplished; but I should have perished in attempting it. I now descended the parapet, and from the projecting cordon reached my ladder, recrossed the fosse, and on ascending the opposite side, left my means of ascent, together with my hammer, as a legacy to the enemy. The stockade was easily surmounted from the inside, and half blinded by the pouring rain and by the excitement of my own feelings, I rushed over the half-buried dead, and back towards the trenches to report that the Bastion de Louise had been deprived of its teeth.
As the reward of my enterprise, I narrowly escaped being shot by my friends. On hurrying towards our lines, a voice crying qui va là? from the angle of a trench, and the rattle of a musket made me pause; but being breathless by my race down hill, I was unable to speak. I had stumbled upon a trench guard of the young Marquis de Tonein's regiment.