"Past the Henrietta Fort?" replied the Major. "Then you can help us,
for that way we make our sortie."

"To relieve the Charles Fort?" said Knightley. "I guessed the Charles
Fort was surrounded, for I heard one man on the Tangier wall shouting
through a speaking trumpet to the Charles Fort garrison. But it will
not be easy to relieve them. The Moors are entrenched between. There
are three trenches. I should never have crawled through them, but that
I stripped a dead Moor of his robe."

"Three trenches," said Tessin, with a shrug of the shoulders.

"Yes, three. The two nearest to Tangier may be carried. But the
third--it is deep, twelve feet at the least, and wide, at the least
eight yards. The sides are steep and slippery with the rain."

"A grave, then," said Scrope carelessly; "a grave that will hold
many before the evening falls. It is well they made it wide and deep
enough."

The sombre words knocked upon every heart like a blow on a door behind
which conspirators are plotting. The Major was the first to recover
his speech.

"Curse your tongue, Scrope!" he said angrily. "Let who will lie in
your grave when the evening falls. Before that time comes, we'll show
these Moors so fine a powder-play as shall glut some of them to all
eternity. _Bon chat, bon rat_; we are not made of jelly. Tessin, see
to Knightley."