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The foremost in the cavalry ranks had no time to lift their carbines to reply, ere they were swept into eternity, and those coming behind, although making a desperate stand, fell riddled by bullets from our three terrible engines of destruction. The fight with Samory's fugitives on the Way of the Thousand Steps had been exciting enough, but in extent or bloodshed was not to be compared with this.

They come back to me now the line of blue-and-white troopers, still with levelled carbines; the stolid Welshman, as indifferent as Snowdon; the dapper nobleman, still polished and lightsome, no longer play-acting but rather vaguely anxious; the high-minded troubled Jacobite, fear for his wife and babe gnawing at his heart; the spy, Weir or Turnditch, with the noose he had made for another drawn round his own neck; Master John Freake, the quiet, Quakerlike merchant, whose power was rooted deep in those far haunts of the world's trade, so that we were here shadowed and protected by the uttermost branches thereof.

There was a yell behind them, and a crashing sound. Out upon the broad savanna galloped a whole troop of Spanish cavalry, their carbines in their hands. And at their head rode a brightly uniformed captain waving his sword and galloping down upon the fugitives. "Surrender!" he yelled. "Lay down your arms." And that was the last straw; the sailors looked at Clif, and Clif looked at the sailors.

Cigarette was a resolute little democrat; she had loaded the carbines behind the barricade in Paris before she was ten years old, and was not seldom in the perplexity of conflicting creeds when her loyalty to the tricolor smote with a violent clash on her love for the populace and their liberty.

We were getting ready to leave the tavern, when we noticed some people coming downstairs from the upper room, carrying carbines under their dark cloaks. to me they had the look of thorough bandits; and after they were gone I told Monsieur Trepof my opinion of them.

"I'm ready to do anything, my lad," said my father sadly; "but what can half a dozen injured men, whose wounds are getting stiff, do against half a hundred sound?" Bigley sighed. "Couldn't we sit up here in the rocks and pick them all off with the carbines, sir?" he said suddenly. "Yes, my lad, perhaps we could shoot down a few if we had the carbines, which we have not.

My house is this moment in a state of barricade look at my windows, literally checkered with stancheon bars and as for arms, let me see, we have six blunderbusses, eight cases of pistols, four muskets, two carbines, with a variety of side arms, amounting to a couple of dozen.

Each man of us all was armed with a sword; and every man in that company, as it happened, knew the use of that weapon well. The troopers carried carbines, and all of us carried pistols. The glare in the east changing from pearly green to golden yellow, gave notice of the coming sun. One snow peak, Tambo, I think, began to catch the light, and blaze like another morning star.

This Baker at once undertook, though he said he did not want my property; and I drew out suggestions for him how to proceed. He then made friends with Mahamed, who promised to help him on to Faloro, and I gave Mahamed and his men three carbines as an honorarium.

We must have marched at least a mile, perhaps more, when the column was overtaken. It was moving at a walk on the road leading to Old Church. When there was a halt they were formed in line across the road and facing to the rear with carbines loaded and at a "ready" to repel any attack, should one be made. Once when halted the tread of horses could be heard approaching. "Halt!