“No,” said Harriet decidedly. “We will stay right here. We will be safe, and I will not leave you and father. Why, you both might be killed, or wounded.”
And from this stand neither Clifford nor her father could move her. The time that followed was one to try the stoutest heart. The houses of the village were honeycombed by shot. Scenes of horror were enacted which passed all description. Shot and shell rained without cessation day and night. Horses, for lack of forage, were slain by hundreds, and the girls had no means of finding out if their own pets were included in the slaughter. The shrieks and groans of the wounded mingled with the roar of artillery, and added to the awfulness. And nearer, ever nearer, approached the allies. The first parallel[[7]] of the Americans was opened and passed.
From the outlying redoubts the British were forced backward, and the second parallel opened. The situation was becoming desperate. The defenses were crumbling under the heavy, unceasing fire. Abattis, and parapet, and ditch were splintered, and torn, and leveled. The garrison was losing many men, and closer still came the patriots. The end was fast approaching. The Hector of the British army was opposed by a leader who never left anything to chance.
And in the caves there was no occupation to relieve the tension, save that of watching the shells. Peggy and Harriet stood at the entrance of their dugout on the evening of the eleventh of October engaged in this diversion. Sometimes the shells of the besieging army overreached the town and fell beyond the bluff into the river, and bursting, threw up great columns of water. In the darkness the bombs appeared like fiery meteors with blazing tails. Suddenly from out of the clouds of smoke and night a red-hot shell soared, curved, and fell upon the “Charon,” the British ship lying in the river. Almost instantly the vessel was enwrapped in a torrent of fire which spread with vivid brightness among the rigging, and ran with amazing rapidity to the top of the masts. From water edge to truck the vessel was in flames. The “Guadalupe,” lying near by, together with two other smaller ships, caught fire also, and all the river blazed in a magnificent conflagration. About and above them was fire and smoke, while cannon belched thunder and flame.
“Oh, this awful war! This awful war!” shrieked Harriet suddenly. “I shall go mad, Peggy.”
Peggy drew her back within the cave. “Let us not look longer, Harriet,” she said soothing the girl as she would a child. “I hope, I believe that it will not last. How can it go on? Oh, Harriet, Harriet! we could bear anything if it were quiet for only a little while.”
“At first,” sobbed Harriet, “I thought I could not bear for the British to be beaten; but now if only father and Clifford are spared, I care not.”
It was near the end now. After a gallant sortie by which the English regained a redoubt from the French only to lose it again, and after an attempt to cut through on the Gloucester side of the river Cornwallis gave way to despair. On the morning of the seventeenth Clifford came to the cave. He was haggard, disheveled, and grimy with powder. Tears were streaming from his eyes, and his appearance was so woebegone that the maidens ran to him with cries of alarm.
“Harriet,” he cried, flinging himself on the ground with a sob, “it’s all over! They are beating the parley.”