me on them suddenly and in force. The ground was alive
with them. Armies, legions, were there--not full-grown flying locusts,
but young ones, styled foot-gangers, in other words, crawlers, walkers,
or hoppers,--and every soul in the establishment had turned out to
fight.

Even the modest Bertha was there, defending a breach in the garden wall
with a big shawl, dishevelled in dress and hair, flushed in face, bold
and resolute in aspect, laying about her with the vigour of an Amazon.
The usually phlegmatic Conrad defended another weak point, while his at
other times amiable spouse stood near him making fearful and frequent
raids upon the foe with the branch of of a thorn-tree. Hans, like
Gulliver among the Lilliputs, guarded a gate in company with four of his
brothers, and they toiled and moiled like heroes, while perspiration
rolled in streams from their blazing faces. Elsewhere men and women,
boys and girls--black, brown, and yellow--exerted themselves to the
uttermost.

Never was fortress more gallantly defended, never were ramparts more
courageously assailed. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, were
slain under that garden wall--hundreds of thousands, millions, hopped
over their comrades' backs and continued the assault with unconquerable
pluck. The heroes of ancient Greece and Rome were nothing to them.
Horses, cattle, and sheep were driven in among them and made to prance
wildly, not in the hope of destroying the foe--as well might you have
attempted to blot out the milky way,--but for the purpose of stemming
the torrent and turning, if possible, the leading battalions aside from
the garden. They would not turn aside. "On, hoppers, on--straight on!"
was their watchword. "Death or victory" must have been their motto!

At one spot was a hollow trench or dry ditch leading towards an outhouse
which intervened between the locusts and the garden. No storming party
was detailed to carry the point. Where the numbers were so vast as to
cover the whole country, that was needless. They marched in columns,
and the columns that chanced to come up to the point voluntarily and
promptly undertook the duty. They swarmed into the ditch. Considine
and a small Hottentot boy observed the move, and with admirable skill
kept the advancing column in check until a fire was kindled in the
ditch. It was roused to a pitch of fierce heat that would have
satisfied Nebuchadnezzar himself, and was then left, for other points o