Explore "The Buccaneer a Tale" by Ann Maria Hall on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Vain is the bugle horn, / / Where trumpets men to manly work invite! / / That distant summons seems to say, in scorn, / / We hunters may be hunted hard ere night. / / SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT.
Constantia Cecil watched with much anxiety the progress of the carriages and horsemen which composed the train and body-guard of the Protector, as they passed slowly along the road that led to Cecil Place. A troop, consisting of twenty men, preceded; their bright arms, and caps, and cuirasses, reflecting back the blaze of the setting sun, like so many burnished mirrors. Then came Cromwell's own carriage, drawn by four strong black horses; -- they had need of strength, dragging, as they did, a weight of plated iron, of which the cumbrous machine was composed. The windows were remarkably narrow, and formed of the thickest glass, within which was a layer of horn, that, if it were shattered by any rude assault, would prevent the fragments from flying to the inside.