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94 DAYS IN THE SUN
ness, but suddenly a sharp blaze of light from one of
the port-holes brightens our path. Darkness again
until we come to the next port-hole. At several places
the corridor widens into great apartments, along the
inside walls of which there are provision chambers and
water-tanks, ammunition piled in neat heaps against
the walls, cannons standing in all the port-holes. The
heat outside is unbearable, but here it is cold, with icy
draughts blowing through the corridor. The harsh
breath of these nether regions makes me shudder and
I quicken my steps as I approach each new port-hole,
to get as much as I can of the light of the outside-
world. Each new port-hole reveals new landscapes—a
succession of new fields of operation for these long-
throated guns. Under us and over us the rock ends
in an almost perpendicular wall for hundreds of feet
in each direction, against which the enemy’s balls would
glance. Even the loop-holes are provided with steel
curtains that may be raised or lowered after each dis-
charge, so that the soldiers may not be disturbed, in
taking aim, by the effects of the hostile projectiles.
We have seen all the sudden views the loop-holes
afford of the bay; the flat tongue of land which rises
but a few yards from the sea and connects this rock
with Spain lies four hundred feet below us. We can
see the guards at the Spanish boundary and, nearer, the
English sentries, and between the two boundary lines
the white churchyard and the neutral zone. You could
spit directly on the heads of the men under us, so steep
is the descent. The English have mined their part of
this tongue of land, right up to the steep wall itself;
they have only to press a button and the whole thing
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