“I may say with truth that I did not eat or sleep for twice twenty-four hours, but kept always on the bastion, or went to the blockhouse to see how the people there were behaving. I always kept a cheerful and smiling face, and encouraged my little company with the hope of speedy succor.
“We were a week in constant alarm, with the enemy always about us. At last a lieutenant arrived in the night with forty men. I was at the time dozing, with my head on the table. The sentinel told me that he heard a voice from the river. I went up at once to the bastion and asked, ‘Who are you?’ One of them answered, ‘We are Frenchmen, who come to bring you help.’
“I caused the gate to be opened, placed a sentinel there, and went down to the river to meet them. As soon as I saw the officer, I saluted him, and said, ‘Sir, I surrender my arms to you.’ He answered gallantly, ‘They are already in good hands.’
“He inspected the fort and found everything in order, and a sentinel on each bastion. ‘It is time to relieve them, sir,’ said I; ‘we have not been off our bastions for a week.’ ”
THE SLAVE’S DREAM
H. W. Longfellow
Beside the ungather’d rice he lay,
His sickle in his hand;
His breast was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand;
Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
He saw his native land.
Wide through the landscape of his dreams
The lordly Niger flow’d;
Beneath the palm-trees on the plain
Once more a king he strode,
And heard the tinkling caravans
Descend the mountain road.