No usual means of adding to the horrors of the scene
were neglected. Whoops and yells were incessantly ringing around the
place, while the loud and often-repeated tones of a conch betrayed the
artifice by which the savages had so often endeavored, in the earlier part
of the night, to lure the garrison out of the palisadoes. A few scattering
shot, discharged with deliberation and from every exposed point within the
works, proclaimed both the coolness and the vigilance of the defendants.
The little gun in the block-house was silent, for the Puritan knew too
well its real power to lessen its reputation by a too frequent use The
weapon was therefore reserved for those moments of pressing danger that
would be sure to arrive.
On this spectacle Ruth gazed in fearful sadness. The long-sustained and
sylvan security of her abode was violently destroyed; and in the place of
a quiet which had approached as near as may be on earth to that holy peace
for which her spirit strove, she and all she most loved were suddenly
confronted to the most frightful exhibition of human horrors.
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