Chapter XXIII: The Bastion De Louise

Dundrennan, Sir Quentin Home, the Chevalier Livingstone, and other gallant gentlemen of the troop were anxious to share with me the honour of this perilous enterprise; but, aware of the danger--the almost certain death--to be incurred, I peremptorily declined all assistance, and resolved to achieve the deed alone, or pay the penalty of my own folly.

The firing languished as usual after sunset, and before nightfall had completely ceased. I clasped on my cuirass and gorget, buttoning over them the doublet of a Lorrainer who had been killed last night in the trenches. It was of dark cloth, faced and trimmed with the colours of duke Charles. I put on a light helmet, stuck four pistols in my girdle, and leaving my sword, took only a dagger. I had a light ladder, ten feet long; a rope, a hammer, and a pocketful of spike nails; and with this apparatus, when the miners were at work, and the out-guards or covering parties sleeping in their blankets, capôtes, or rocquelaures, I issued from the camp, and leaving all behind, advanced on my solitary and desperate enterprise towards the Bastion de Louise.

Frequently I paused to listen; but no sound came from the town, the ramparts and church spire of which--for it had but one--towered above me in the dark and moonless sky, across which the clouds were hurrying in black and broken masses.

As I crept on my mission, strange thoughts of home and of other times _would_ force themselves vividly upon me; and I remembered the green breezy braes, and the grassy dells, where the mountain runnel brawled under the broad-leaved water docks or the purple heather, and bright yellow broom, where as a boy I had played among the lambs, and gathered the white daisy and the golden buttercup, or watched the white smoke curling from the huge hall chimney of my father's old grey tower. To-night I might be slain--slain far, far away; and I thought of the quiet green grave where my father and mother slept so peacefully side to side in the old kirkyard at Glenkens, and a wild, deep wish rose from my heart to my lips that I was at rest beside them, and away from the selfish hurry of life and all the horror of war!

Anon came hope of success, and prouder thoughts arose within me, and grasping my dagger, I continued to creep stealthily forward.

Rearward, I heard the grating sound of the shovel and pickaxe in the trenches, as the sappers of the Chevalier de Ville replaced the gabions, or batted down the earthen banks, which the cannonade of the past day had disturbed. Perhaps a lantern might throw out a momentary gleam; but even momentary was too much; for then a lurid flash would break from the citadel, lighting all the sky with instantaneous redness, and a ball would whiz over my head towards the miner's lamp; or a shell would curve high in air, distinctly traceable, as it soared from the mouth of the mortar and sunk downward to its destination, by the fuse that flamed upward through its touch-hole, and now the terrible Bastion de Louise arose before me in massive strength, with its row of twenty brass guns frowning en-barbette, over the slope of the rampart.

Anxiety and shame filled my heart on finding that the bastion was full of men; sentinels, too, were on the parapet, as their outline, with helmet and arquebuse, were distinctly visible. For me to proceed was impossible, as the least sound might draw a volley towards the spot where I was lurking; but to return to the camp, merely to report that I had failed, and that my attempt, however rash and gallant, had proved a mere bravado, was more than I could think of, or endure with patience.

Creeping on, I came close to a stockade, which rose at the angle of forty-five degrees to the height of five feet in front of the ditch before the bastion, some shrubs and bushes grew at its base, and among these I lay close; so close, indeed, that I heard the words of command given, as the Lorrainers marched into the town, and, to my inexpressible relief, left none in the bastion, save the four sentinels. Four men were more easily to be met than four hundred; but even by this reckoning how was I to dispose of them? To pistol them all in succession was next to an impossibility, situated as I was; moreover, the discharge of a single shot would suffice to rouse the whole town, and man the walls from flank to flank in five minutes.

The darkness had increased, and fortunately for me the night bore every indication of becoming a stormy one. A high wind swept the side of the mountain; the river hurried over its bed of rocks with a hoarse brawl towards the Maese; and the gusty blasts, as they came in fierce and fitful squalls, piled the clouds in black and inky masses above La Mothe, the black outline of which--tower, spire, and rampart--stood forth black and sharply, at times as broad glares of sheet lightning flashed across the sky, seeming to whiten the summits of the distant hills, and to tip with fire the dewy leaves of the shrubs that covered all the rocky ground; and now, to my joy, came a broad, blinding, and united torrent of rain, falling slowly but surely, as if it would last for hours.

The frightful and oppressive stench of the partially-buried slain that lay before the stockade was not the least of my troubles; for in some of the places I had crept over, the men of Ramsay and of Hepburn were interred only a foot deep; and where the rain had washed away the soil, their toes and fingers, and more horrible still, their white skulls and ghastly teeth, were visible among the soft mould and sprouting grass!

I crept through a small aperture formed by some chance bullet in the stockade, and drawing my ladder after me reached the edge of the fosse that engirt the bastion; and now I could perceive that the dark figures of the four sentinels had disappeared; they had withdrawn to their stone turrets, one of which terminated each angle of the ravelin.

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.

'Qui va là?' shouted the sentinel again. 'Stand, monsieur, and deliver the parole.'

'_Saint Louis._'

'Bon--good,' he replied, shouldering his musket.

'The countersign, if you please?' said I.

'_Paris._'

'Thank you, friend musketeer.'

'_Saint Louis et Paris_. Bon! a thousand thanks, Monsieur Ecossais. A rash fellow would have fired at once on any man rushing thus from the enemy's lines. And now, brave comrade, what of the Bastion de Louise?'

'It is fangless now.'

'Mordieu! you have accomplished your task. O monsieur, that I were you! we shall dance a cotillon there in the morning.'

All blackened, muddy, and drenched, I hurried to the quarters of Sir John Hepburn, whom I found ensconced in the lower story of a ruined windmill, with the Viscounts Dundrennan, de Turenne, and Arpajou; the Marquis de Toneins; and Colonels Ramsay and Lesly, some sleeping, some smoking and drinking Rhenish and stroh wine by the light of a stable lantern; and to them I reported my success. The tall and stately Hepburn embraced me, all soiled as I was. He made me drain his cup filled with wine, and taking from his own breast the cross of St. Lazare, said--

'Wear this for me; and be assured, Arthur Blane, that on my recommendation king Louis will more than confirm the gift. I here proclaim you the premier cuirassier of the Scottish guard!'

The first man who invented the plan of nailing up cannon, by driving an iron spike into the touch-hole, was Caspar Vimercalus, a soldier of Bremen, who thus destroyed the artillery of Sigismund Malatesta. There have been many contrivances suggested to force out nails that were thus inserted, but none have been found of general use.