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It was evident he was making for the Pass to intercept our scattered fugitives from escaping that way. The garden in which I then stood was surrounded by a low wall. A small goose-pool lay on the outside, between which and the garden I perceived that Claverhouse would pass. I prepared my flint and examined my fire-lock, and I walked towards the top of the garden with a firm step.
He put down his fire-lock finally and offered me his flask to drink liquor with him, but I did not use it. I had known that Shanks carried poisoned liquor in his pack, with the hope that it would destroy any indians who might come into possession of it, if he was taken, whether alive or dead.
He understood. He would do the same in a like situation. But Pèp would try to sleep less at night, and if he heard shouts or shots near the tower he would come out with his old fire-lock.
Two of these well-padded sentinels, with a stick stuck up in a fire-lock attitude, he assured me, had often been known to maintain a siege of a week, against a she-bear and a numerous family of hungry cubs, in the olden times; and, now that the danger was gone, he presumed the families which had caused these iron monuments to be erected, had done so to record some marvellous risks of this nature, from which their forefathers had escaped by means of so ingenious an expedient.
At the cry "Uzcoque" the slender active Albanian grasped his fire-lock, with rage and hatred expressed on his bearded countenance: the phlegmatic Turk sprang in unwonted haste from his carpet; his pipe and coffee were neglected, his women and treasures secured in the harem, while he shouted for the Martellossi, and slipping them like dogs from a leash, sent them to the encounter of their foes on the devastated plains of Cardavia.
Twenty or thirty targets, as many claymores, with dirks, and plaids, and guns, both match-lock and fire-lock, and long-bows, and cross-bows, and Lochaber axes, and coats of plate armour, and steel bonnets, and headpieces, and the more ancient haborgeons, or shirts of reticulated mail, with hood and sleeves corresponding to it, all hung in confusion about the walls, and would have formed a month's amusement to a member of a modern antiquarian society.
She gave an account of the young ladies in Virginia, Massachusetts, and elsewhere. Will Somers appeared in the dress of a revolutionary soldier, carrying on his shoulder a musket that was a fire-lock, and slung at his side was a powder-horn, while in his tinder-box were flint and steel. How many battles this old Continental had been in, what victories he had won, and what hardships he had endured!
In it I remember was seated a tremendous man, a town councillor, who fairly roared and cried like a child because the driver would not hasten his departure the cry of "the French" annihilated him, and I had half a mind to let off my fire-lock and see what the result would have been.
'Fire to the pan, alluding to the mode of using fire-arms, by applying a lighted match to the pan, before the fire-lock was invented. Ed. In the single combat of quarter-staff, he who held the best end of the staff usually gained the victory. Ed. : Pilgrim's Progress, Interpreter's House.
A clever Maroon went ahead to spy out the situation and returned to say that two recuas would leave at dusk, one coming from Venta Cruz, fifteen miles northwest of Panama, carrying silver and supplies, and the other from Panama, loaded with jewels and gold. Then a Spanish sentry was caught asleep by the advanced party of Maroons, who smelt him out by the match of his fire-lock.
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