Mattock

“ The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave; 10
The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm; ”

“ In that quarter the excavations must already be several days old, and all traces are obliterated. But in the ravine——"
"In the ravine?" said the Countess.
"The slab is standing on end and a man is digging a hole with a mattock."
"A man? What man? Describe him."
"He is wearing a very long blouse."
"But his face?..."
"His face is encircled by a muffler which passes under a cap with turned-down brim.... You cannot even see his eyes. When he has finished digging he lets the slab fall back into its place and carries away the mattock." ”

“ From a rising ground whence they watched the battle in growing dismay, the leaders of the enemy saw the maid and her motions, and, concluding her an enchantress, whose were the airy legions humiliating them, set spurs to their horses, made a circuit, outflanked the king, and came down upon her. But suddenly by her side stood a stalwart old man in the garb of a miner, who, as the general rode at her, sword in hand, heaved his swift mattock, and brought it down with such force on the forehead of his charger, that he fell to the ground like a log. ”

“ And while the enclosures impress us with the number and power of the nations which built them, and enlighten us as to the amount of military knowledge and skill which they possessed, as well as, in some degree, in respect to the nature of their superstitions,—the mounds and their contents, as disclosed by the mattock and the spade, serve to reflect light more particularly upon their customs and the condition of the arts among them. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV. SHEPPARD LEE DIGS FOR THE BURIED TREASURE, BUT MAKES A BLOW WITH THE MATTOCK IN THE WRONG PLACE.
I was but an ill hand at labour, and of the use of the spade and mattock I knew nothing. The nature of the ground in which I was digging made the task especially difficult and disagreeable. There were many big stones scattered about in the earth, which jarred my arms horribly whenever I stuck them ”

“ The next man that passed carried on his shoulder a short wooden steel-bound mattock or hoe, such as the peasants use in cultivating the fields, and another led a bull stout of neck and sullen of countenance laden with a rough plow and other tools for the day's work. ”

“ They have no need to make use of the mattock; the soil is loose, and lifts easily. Nor is their task as excavators of long continuance—even shorter than they anticipated. Within less than eighteen inches of the surface, their tools come into contact with a harder substance, which they can tell to be timber—the lid of a coffin. ”

“ They then call out to the dead man, ‘Come, your house is being burnt,’ and walk home striking a mattock and sickle together. On coming to the house they kick down the matting which covers the doorway; the man inside says, ‘Who are you?’ and they answer, ‘It is we.’ They watch the lamp and when the flame wavers they believe it to show that the spirit of the deceased has followed them and has also entered the house. Next day the bones are thrown into a river and the earthen pot broken against a stone. ”

“ Some carried torches and lighted lanterns, and others spades and mattocks.
The officer looked around and, presently, pointed to a spot; then the men began to dig there, the watcher at the narrow window speculating, with half-listless curiosity, what could be their object; were they seeking a buried treasure?
Gradually the light of day crept up, and, at its approach, the torches' flare and the feeble glimmer from the lanterns began to wane, until, when the golden sheen, fast spreading over the Eastern sky, announced the birth of another day, they could no longer be discerned. ”

“ And, when we consider that the soil was broken by means of wooden or stone mattocks and crude wooden spades, and that the cultivating was mostly done by the women and children with hoes made from clam shells and the shoulder blades of the bear and moose, we are forced to realize that they were a remarkably industrious people, and that, had they known the use of metals, they would have compared most favorably in productive ability with the Europeans who came to supplant them. ”

“ At such times I could not help figuring to myself the many sieges that the wall had known, with the fierce assault by day, the secret attack by night, the swarming foe upon the plains below, the bristling arms of the besieged upon the wall, the boom of the great mortars made of ropes and leather and throwing mighty balls of stone, the stormy flight of arrows, the ladders planted against the defenses and staggering headlong into the moat, enriched for future agriculture not only by its sluggish waters, but by the blood of many men. ”

“ The moats, the steep slope of which is broken by the earth which has detached itself from the embankments and the stones which have fallen from the battlements, have a wide, deep curve, like hatred and pride; and the portal, with its strong, slightly arched ogive, and its two bays that raise the drawbridge, looks like a great helmet with holes in its visor.
When one enters, he is surprised and astonished at the wonderful mixture of ruins and trees, the ruins accentuating the freshness of the trees, while the latter in turn, render more poignant the melancholy of the ruins. ”

“ These cliff castles, and there are traces of fortification on almost every headland, must have been built by people who were actually "between the devil and the deep sea." Foot by foot they must have given way, till at length they stood with their backs to the sea, defending from their enemies one ultimate rock. Only too often is there a grave within these defences, the grave of the last man, strong enough to hold back the enemy, but slain at last. ”

“ John have withstood the onsets of enemies and the tremors of the earth, and, with the ancient moat, excite the curiosity of this so-called peaceful age of iron-clads and monster cannon. The city ascends the slope of the hill and passes beyond the wall. ”

“ The darkness was gathering swiftly, investing the world with its legion of gloom; and in the shadow of the great Castle of Caylus, rising like a rock itself out of the solid rock behind Lagardere, the moat was soon very dark indeed. ”

“ In the core and centre of the earth itself the arch-traitor, the mightiest traitor of all, lies, gravitation, which should naturally be the lieutenant of the denser of the two combatants. This is the most relentless, the most unmerciful leveller of all. It seizes with equal avidity upon the moat that the sunlight only makes visible, and the loosened but yet unapportioned cliff of a thousand feet high, cut by the river of a Mexican cañon. ”

“ The traces left at this point of the fearful conflict are grand and awe-inspiring beyond expression—crumbling, dismantled walls, towers knocked to pieces or battered out of shape, bastions buried beneath huge masses of rubbish, loopholes burst open, the earth ploughed up, and the moat filled with colossal fragments which look like masses detached from the side of a rugged mountain. ”

“ Batty’s naphtha-lamp illumines a narrow rift in the bowels of the mountain. In front from an unseen height a stream is rushing down fifty feet of rock. The air is filled with spray as the curtain of water is torn and buffeted by rock ledges, and thrown out of its course. The whole ‘Chapel of the Force’ is not ten feet square at its base, and the great converging slabs of rock continue up and up till they seem to meet in darkness. ”

“ The whole firmament was liquid with the light; it poured down like luminous rain, slid in cascades over the church domes, the tin roofs, the metallic palms, till the whole earth shimmered back to the skies. In the entire city only one spot gloomed—the old fort, mysterious and pestilential with its black oozing walls, its fever-belting moat ”

“ The ivy clambers up here and there, and shakes its uncropped branches, and its dried berries over the heavy portal. I cross the moat, and my step makes the chains of the drawbridge rattle. All is kept in the old state; only in lieu of the warder’s horn, I pull at the warder’s bell. The echoes ring, and die in the stone courts; but there is no one astir, nor is there a light at any of the castle windows. I ring again, and the echoes come, and blend with the rising night wind that sighs around the turrets, as they sighed that night of murder. I fancy—it must be a fancy—that I hear an owl scream ”

“ And then a thunder bolt, a great iron rock, hurled from Heaven, had crushed in the roof of an old keep, outside of the moat, where once a pretty girl—so ran the legend—and boy who were in the way of a terrible baron, way back in the reign of Charles V, had been strangled, and their bodies sunk in a well, which sometimes filled even now with blood, and ran out, painting the ground in red streaks under the hawthorn bushes. ”

“ Moreover the wall is of such frail material, and so thinly built, that a single bag of powder hung against it, and fired, would make a breach that would admit a column of soldiers together with their field-guns. Around the inner and principal wall runs a moat some five feet in breadth, partly wet and partly dry, and of so insignificant a depth that it could be filled up with a few fascines, or even with a dozen or so of dead bodies. ”

“ As when a frighted ram is seized by the horns and dragged by the shepherd hind through the brake, all the silly flock that could not move before follow him one by one, even so did our Norman monks and men-at-arms follow the first monk through the window and into the foul moat! ”

“ The grim towers of the Bastile, the impassable moat of the Bastile, the dumb, dull grip of the walls of the Bastile—this was the dreaded object which cast its deadly shadow on the muzzled thought of France! This was the living tomb from which they shrank back aghast, and which made so many of them, as soon as they touched English soil, breathe our heavy, fog-laden, smoke-begrimed atmosphere as if it were the very elixir of life. ”

“ Over many a hamlet the sword of Damocles is continually suspended in the shape of a precipitous rock-wall, or of a forest-crowned mountain-brow. For years the undermining waters are slowly and secretly at work, and then suddenly the crisis takes place. ”

“ A moment later it rang home against the wall on my side of the moat. I should be caught in a trap and the king with me, if he yet lived. He must take his chance, to live or to die. I took my sword, and passed into the outer room. ”

“ The wild waves dashed furiously against this one remaining obstacle. The firmest human masonry cannot stand [Pg 177] like the everlasting rocks. The strong foundations gave way, and with a crash, and a wail of anguish, the fortress fell, and nothing rose above the waters but the floating ark. For nothing that is founded on earth can escape the doom of earth. ”

“ Its bastions, outposts, and demilunes are cut out in zig-zags on a rocky plain: from afar, the walls look as though they might be cleared at a jump; but on coming closer one perceives the moat, a hundred feet wide, thirty deep, and the dark ramparts hewn in the face of the rock. ”

“ On every side great masses of broken masonry lie in heaps on the grass, or are seen suspended as if by magic in mid-air, a testimony to the destructive power of gun-powder and to the excellence of the mortar used by the Norman builders. ”

“ Meyer describes the ceaseless progress of the destruction even now, when there is so little left to destroy. Every morning men and boys go out armed with mattox or axe, scale the steepest mountain sides, and cut down and grub out, root and branch, the small trees and shrubs still to be found. ”

“ Like a torrent they rush over the moat and on to the breach, or the bastions, or the ramparts; attacking from every side, using every engine of warfare which the mightiest kingdom of the age has devised for the subjugation of rebellious cities. The sound of metal-headed arrows against the masonry is like a shower of hailstones upon glass; the battlements gleam with flashing steel, with sparks from brandished swords and flame-spitting falconets.
Of a truth, the mind cannot grasp it all, eyes cannot see nor ears perceive all the horrors, the misery and the devotion. ”

“ When they had logs enough to begin fencing, all placed ready for use, they dug holes along the line they had marked out with a furrow, and planted the logs side by side as closely as they could, like large stakes. In any newly settled place, where trees are plenty, this is the most easily built fortification settlers can have, and the strongest. A stone or earth wall takes much longer to build. It is still called a palisade, a wall of stakes,—just as it was by men who built so, thousands of years ago and called a sharpened stake a “palum.” ”

“ If the main body of the place were not so strongly fortified as to render a successful assault by force impossible, it was usual to attempt an escalade. With this end in view, the moat, which was generally literally strewn with caltrops (Fig. 58) , was filled up with fascines, on which ladders were reared against the ramparts, while archers on the brink of the ditch, protected by mantlets stuck in the ground, drove away with their arrows any of the defenders who attempted to show themselves above the parapets or at the loopholes. ”

“ On the besiegers' edge of the moat was what seemed at first sight a gigantic arsenal, longer than it was broad, peopled by human ants, and full of busy, honest industry, and displaying all the various mechanical science of the age in full operation. Here the lever at work, there the winch and pulley, here the balance, there the capstan. Everywhere heaps of stones, and piles of fascines, mantelets, and rows of fire-barrels. Mantelets rolling, the hammer tapping all day, horses and carts in endless succession rattling up with materials. ”