[No Surrender! by G. A. Henty]@TWC D-Link bookNo Surrender! CHAPTER 5: Checking The Enemy 8/35
Moving along, Leigh spread the musketeers to a similar length of front.
At first, the enemy were half hidden by the wood at the other side of the slope; but as they issued from this, some twenty yards from the stream, a scattered fire broke out from the defenders. The Blues replied with a general discharge at their invisible foes, but these were crouching behind the stumps or trunks of the felled trees, and the fire was ineffectual.
Leigh's own band were lying in a little hollow, twenty yards behind the abattis; their pistols would have been useless, until the enemy won their way up to the trees, and until then they were to remain as a first reserve. Exposed as they were to the steady fire of the peasants, the assailants suffered heavily and, at the edge of the stream, paused irresolutely.
It was some fifteen yards wide, but they were ignorant of the depth, and hesitated to enter it; urged, however, by the shouts of their officers, who set the example by at once entering the stream, and by seeing that the water did not rise above their shoulders, the men followed.
But as they gained the opposite bank, they fell fast.
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