Lawrence, as he joined them. "There has, perhaps, never been such a
fierce and prolonged bombardment as that, and Europe looked on with
wonder, as every resource of two great nations was brought to bear
against that garrison of seven thousand men, who could not be starved,
nor conquered. It looked black for them, sometimes, but British
endurance and red-hot shot won the day, and the carnage on board those
ill-fated vessels during the last of the fierce engagement was beyond
anything recorded in history. They simply _had_ to give it up!"
As they now slowly steamed up the beautiful bay it was almost like
sailing over a mill-pond, after the past roughness, for it lay still
beneath the vertical sun, and was thronged with shipping of every
description and nationality. Presently there came a reverberation that
seemed to ricochet from rock and wave, and a little girl cried blankly,
"Oh dear! Are they firing at us?"
But an officer called out,
"No, it's a Russian corvette, saluting. See its dragon flag of black
and yellow? Now--watch!"
He pointed shorewards just as a puff of white smoke issued from an
innocent-looking clump of trees on the rocky hillside, which preceded
the sound of an answering boom from the iron lips of the fortress.
This was repeated many times, the hoarse cannon barks alternating
between gun-ship and shore, in an awe-inspiring exchange of courtesies.
As the girls grew used to the thunderous sounds they delighted to
speculate from which bastion, or ledge, or flowering bush, would come
that little puff of smoke, to be followed by the lightning and thunder
of man's invention, scarcely less terrible than those of nature's cloud
contests.
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