side the culverin, and was rewarded in
a minute or two by hearing something gently deposited against the mouth
of the embrasure, which, by the noise, should be a piece of timber.

"So far, so good," said he to himself; "when the scaling ladder is up,
the soldier follows, I suppose. I can only humbly thank them for giving
my embrasure the preference. There he comes! I hear his feet scuffling."

He could hear plainly enough some one working himself into the mouth of
the embrasure: but the plague was, that it was so dark that he could
not see his hand between him and the sky, much less his foe at two yards
off. However, he made a pretty fair guess as to the whereabouts, and,
rising softly, discharged such a blow downwards as would have split a
yule log. A volley of sparks flew up from the hapless Spaniard's armor,
and a grunt issued from within it, which proved that, whether he was
killed or not, the blow had not improved his respiration.

Amyas felt for his head, seized it, dragged him in over the gun, sprang
into the embrasure on his knees, felt for the top of the ladder, found
it, hove it clean off and out, with four or five men on it, and then of
course tumbled after it ten feet into the sand, roaring like a town bull
to her majesty's liege subjects in general.

Sailor-fashion, he had no armor on but a light morion and a cuirass,
so he was not too much encumbered to prevent his springing to his legs
instantly, and setting to work, cutting and foining right and left at
every sound, for sight there was none.

Battles (as soldiers know, and newspaper editors do not) are usually
fought, not as they ought to be fought, but as they can be fought; and
while the literary man is laying down the law at his desk as to how many
troops should be moved here, and what rivers should be crossed there,
and where the cavalry should have been brought up, and when the flank
should have been turned, the wretched man who has to do the work finds
the matter settled for him by pestilence, want of shoes, empty stomachs,
bad roads, heavy rains, hot suns, and a thousand other stern warriors
who never show on paper.

So with this skirmish; "according to Cocker," it ought to have been
a very pretty one; for Hercules of Pisa, who planned the sortie, had
arranged it all (being a very sans-appel in all military science) upon
the best Italian precedents, and had brought against this very hapless
battery a column of a hundred to attack directly in