ever and anon, in spite of all our precautions, cut up some of us.
The engineer in the fort was a French officer by the name of Fleury, the same who struck the British flag at the storming of Stony-point. He was a very austere man and kept us constantly employed day and night, there was no chance of escaping from his vigilance.
Between the stone wall and the palisadoes was a kind of yard or pen, at the southern end of which was a narrow entrance not more than eight or ten feet wide, with a ditch about four feet wide in the middle, extending the whole length of the pen. Here, on the eastern side of the wall, was the only place in the fort that any one could be in any degree of safety. Into this place we used to gather the splinters, broken off the palisadoes by the enemy's shot, and make a little fire, just enough to keep from suffering. We would watch an opportunity to escape from the vigilance of Col. Fleury, and run into this place for a minute or two's respite from fatigue and cold. When the engineer found that the workmen began to grow scarce, he would come to the entrance and call us out. He had always his cane in his hand, and woe betided him he could get a stroke at. At his approach I always jumped over the ditch and ran down on the other side, so that he could not reach me; but he often noticed me, and as often threatened me, but threatening was all, he could never get a stroke at me, and I cared but little for his threats.
It was utterly impossible to lie down to get any rest or sleep on account of the mud, if the enemy's shot would have suffered us to do so. Sometimes some of the men, when overcome with fatigue and want of sleep, would slip away into the barracks to catch a nap of sleep, but it seldom happened that they all came out again alive. I was in this place a fortnight, and can say in sincerity that I never lay down to sleep a minute in all that time.
The British knew the situation of the place as well as we did. And as their point blank shot would not reach us behind the wall, they would throw elevated grape-shot from their mortar, and when the sentries had cried, "a shot," and the soldiers, seeing no shot arrive, had become careless, the grape-shot would come down like a shower of hail about our ears.
