and his men,
however, were hotly pursued through the forest by a detachment of German
riflemen, and the greater portion of them killed without mercy.

A detachment of British and colonial troops from the garrison of Port au
Prince in St. Domingo proceeded to besiege the town of Leogane in that
island. Covered by the guns of the fleet the troops were landed in two
divisions, while the _Swiftsure_, seventy-four, cannonaded the town, and
the _Leviathan_ and _Africa_ the forts. The place, however, was too strong
for them, and at nightfall the ships moved off to an anchorage, while
those who had landed were withdrawn on the following morning. Two of the
frigates were so much damaged that they were compelled to return to
Jamaica to refit. An attack was next made upon the fort of Bombarde, which
stood at a distance of fifteen miles from the coast. Will and a detachment
from his ship formed part of the force engaged. The road was extremely
rough, and was blocked by fallen trees and walls built across it. The
labour of getting the cannon along was prodigious.

"I must say," Will said to Dimchurch, who was one of the party, "I greatly
prefer fighting on board to work like this. We have to labour like slaves
from early morning till late in the evening; but I don't so much mind
that, as the fact that at night we have to lie down with only the food
that remains in our haversacks, and what water we may have saved, for
supper. Now in a fight at sea one at least gets as much to drink as one
wants."

"I quite agree with you, Mr. Gilmore. It's dog's work without dog's food.
I don't mind myself working here with a chopper eight or ten hours a day,
but I do like a good supper at the end of it. The worst of it is, that
when it is all over it is the troops who get all the credit, while we poor
beggars do the greater part of the work. The soldiers are well enough in
their way, but they are very little good for hard work. How do you account
for that, sir?"

"I can only suppose, Dimchurch, that while they get as much food as we do,
they have nothing like the same amount of hard work to do."

"That's it, sir. Why, look at them at Portsmouth! They just go out of a
morning and drill on the common for a bit, and then they have nothing else
to do all day but to stroll about the town and talk to the girls. How can
you expect a man to have any muscle to speak of when he never does a
stroke of hard work? I don't say they don't fight well, for I own