The fortifications had been merely sketched out. The ditches were
full of snow, the rivers were frozen. All work was at a standstill.
Dantzig lay at the mercy of the first-comer.
In twenty-four hours every available smith was at work, forging ice-
axes and picks. Rapp was going to cut the frozen Vistula and set
the river free. The Dantzigers laughed aloud.
"It will freeze again in a night," they said. And it did. So Rapp
set the ice-cutters to work again next day. He kept boats moving
day and night in the water, which ran sluggish and thick, like
porridge, with the desire to freeze and be still.
He ordered the engineers to set to work on the abandoned
fortifications. But the ground was hard like granite, and the picks
sprang back in the worker's grip, jarring his bones, and making not
so much as a mark on the surface of the earth.
Again the Dantzigers laughed.
"It is frozen three feet down," they said.
The thermometer marked between twenty and thirty degrees of frost
every night now. And it was only December--only the beginning of
the winter. The Russians were at the Niemen, daily coming nearer.
Dantzig was full of sick and wounded. The available troops were
worn out, frost-bitten, desperate. There were only a few doctors,
who were without medical stores; no meat, no vegetables, no spirits,
no forage.
No wonder the Dantzigers laughed. Rapp, who had to rely on
Southerners to obey his orders--Italians, Africans, a few Frenchmen,
men little used to cold and the hardships of a Northern winter--Rapp
let them laugh.
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