210 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



brought me to myself again, and with axe in one 

 hand and knife in the other, I rushed in among the 

 Spaniards, hacking and hewing right and left. It 

 was a real butchery, which lasted a good quarter of an 

 hour ; but then the Spaniards got sick of it, and 

 would have done so sooner had they known that their 

 leader was shot. At last they jumped off the mound 

 and ran away, such of them as could. Righteous and 

 I put the palisade in its place again, securing it as 

 well as we could, and then, telling my boy to keep 

 watch, ran over to the other side, where a desperate 

 fight was going on. 



" Three of our party, assisted by the women, were 

 defending the stockade against a score of Spaniards, 

 who kept poking their bayonets between the palisades, 

 till all our people were wounded and bleeding. But 

 Rachel had now recovered from her first grief at her 

 husband's death, or rather it had turned to a feeling 

 of revenge, and there she was, like a raging tigress, 

 seizing the bayonets as they were thrust through 

 the stockade, and wrenching them off the muskets, 

 and sometimes pulling the muskets themselves out 

 of the soldiers' hands. But all this struggling had 

 loosened the palisades, and there were one or two 

 openings in them through Avhich the thin -bodied 

 Spaniards, pushed on by their comrades, were able 

 to pass. Just as we came up, two of these copper- 

 coloured Dons had squeezed themselves through, 

 without their muskets, but with their short sabres 



