This Horde Of Robbers And Enthusiasts Was Now Advancing Upon The
Capital To Raise The Siege, And Each Day Brought Us Alarming Reports -
Whether True Or False We Could Not Know - Of Depredations They Were
Committing On Their March.
The good man, their commander, was not a
soldier, and there was no pretence of discipline of any kind;
The men,
it was said, did what they liked, swarming over the country on the
line of march in bands, sacking and burning houses, killing or driving
off the cattle, and so on. Our house was unfortunately on the main
road running south from the capital, and directly in the way of the
coming rabble. That the danger was a real and very great one we could
see in the anxious faces of our elders; besides, nothing was now
talked of but the coming army and of all we had to fear.
At this juncture my brother took it upon himself to make preparations
for the defence of the house Our oldest brother was away, shut up in
the besieged city, but the three of us at home determined to make a
good fight, and we set to work cleaning and polishing up our firearms-
the Tower musket, the awful blunderbuss, the three fowling-pieces,
double and single-barrelled, and the two big horse-pistols and an old
revolver. We collected all the old lead we could find about the place
and made bullets in a couple of bullet-moulds we had found - one for
ounce and one for small bullets, three to the ounce. The fire to melt
the lead was in a shelter we had made behind an outhouse, and here one
day, in spite of all our precautions, we were discovered at work, with
rows and pyramids of shining bullets round us, and our secret was out.
We were laughed at as a set of young fools for our pains. "Never
mind," said my brother. "Let them mock now; by and by when it comes to
choosing between having our throats cut and defending ourselves, they
will probably be glad the bullets were made."
But though they laughed, our work was not interfered with, and some
hundreds of bullets were turned out and made quite a pretty show.
Meanwhile the besiegers were not idle: they had in their army a
cavalry officer who had had a long experience of frontier warfare and
had always been successful in his fights with the pampas Indians; and
this man, with a picked force composed of veteran fighters, was
dispatched against the barbarians. They had already crossed the Salado
river and were within two or three easy marches of us, when the small
disciplined force met and gave them battle and utterly routed them.
Indians and gauchos were sent flying south like thistle-down before
the wind; but all being well-mounted, not many were killed.
So ended that danger, and I think we boys were all a little
disappointed that no use had been made of our bright beautiful
bullets.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 159 of 186
Words from 83817 to 84324
of 98444
