hey big cannon guns in front o'
your house ready to sink the Frenchy ships; but we ar'n't no guns here,
on'y the one in the look-out, and she be rusted through."

Oddly enough, when I reached home there was no one in the house. My
father had gone down to the mine, and I was thinking about going after
him, but being hot with my walk, I strolled down first into the garden
on the cliff, but only to stop short, for there was a curious hissing
sound in the air.

"What, a snake!" I said to myself. And then, "No, it's too loud."

I stood listening, and I learned directly what caused the hissing, which
gave place directly to a peculiar humming, and then after more hissing a
familiar raspy voice roared out, its owner imagining he was singing:

"For we be sturdy English lads,
And this here be our land;
And ne'er a furren furreneer
Shall ever in it stand."

Then came a great deal of hissing before the strain was taken up again,
and accompanied by a good deal of scuffling on the beach-strewn path.

"They say they'll have the English soil,
These overbearing French;
So if they come they'll find it here
In six-foot two o' trench."

"Why, Sam," I said, "what are you doing?"

"Ah, Mas' Sep: can't you see? Washing out the bull-dogs' throats to
make 'em bite the Peccavis when they come."

I laughed as I looked at the old man, who was busy at work with a mop
and pail cleaning out the old cannons on my father's sham fort.

"Why, Sam, what's the good of that?"

"Good, my lad?" he cried, ramming the wet mop down one of the guns and
making the water spurt out of the touch-hole like a little fountain,
"Good! Why, we'll blow the Frenchy ships out of the water if they come
anigh us."

"Why, there's no powder," I said.

"Powder! Eh, but there is: lots, my lad."

"But there are no cannon-balls."

Old Sam stopped short with the mop right in the gun, and loosening one
hand, he tilted his old sou'-wester hat that he wore summer and winter
with no difference, only that he kept cabbage-leaves in it in summer,
and stood scratching his head.

"No cannon-balls!" he said. "No cannon-balls!"

"Not one," I said; "only the big one indoors we use for a door-weight,
and that would not go in."

"Well, now, that be a rum un, Master Sep, that be a rum un. I never
thought o' that. Never mind, it don't matter. They Frenchies 'll hear
the guns go off and see the smoke, and that's enough for them. They'll
go back aga