Bacon sent a letter from camp to two of his sea-faring friends, Captain William Cookson and Captain Edward Skewon, describing the progress of the siege and urging them to protect the "Upper parts of the country" against pirates, and to bid his friends in those parts "be courageous, for that all the country is bravely resolute." In the midst of the siege Bacon resorted to one measure which for pure originality has not been surpassed in the history of military tactics, and which, though up to the present writing no other general sufficiently picturesque in his methods to imitate it has arisen, has furnished much "copy" for writers of historical romances. The Rebel had the good fortune to capture two pieces of artillery, but a dilemma arose as to how he should mount them without endangering the lives of some of his men. His ingenious brain was quick to solve the riddle. Dispatching some of his officers to the plantations near Jamestown, he had them to bring into his camp Madam Bacon (the wife of his cousin Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., President of the Council), Madam Bray, Madam Page, Madam Ballard, and other ladies of the households of members of his Majesty's Council who had remained loyal to the Governor. He then sent one of these fair ones, under escort, into Jamestown, to let her husband and the husbands of her companions know with what delicate and precious material their audacious foe was strengthening his fort, and to give them fair warning not to shoot. The remaining ladies (alas for the age of chivalry!) he stationed in front of his breastworks and kept them there until the captured "great guns" had been duly mounted; after which he sent them all safely home. Most truly was it said that Bacon "knit more knots by his own head in one day than all the hands in town were able to untie in a whole week!" So effectual a fortification did the glimmer of a few fluttering white aprons upon his breastworks prove to be, that, as though confronted by a line of warriors from Ghostland, the Governor's soldiers stood aghast, and powerless to level a gun, while to add still further to their discomfiture they had to bear with what grace they could command having their ladies dubbed the "guardian angels" of the rebel camp. The cannon mounted under such gentle protection were never given a chance to prove their service.