United States or Nigeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then, ringing up the round of gun-stations, one after another, he sang out, in a voice to be heard by all: "Fire away!" The initial gun had been fired from the flag-ship when the leading ships of the two fleets were nearly abreast. It was followed by broadsides from all, and the action began.
In anticipation of possible attack, Nissr was forced to her best altitude, of now forty-seven hundred feet, all gun-stations were manned and the engines were driven to their limit. The hour was anxious; but the Legion passed the river in safety, just a little south of the twentieth degree, near the Third Cataract. Bohannan's gloomy forebodings proved groundless.
Many glanced, spun ricochetting into the sea, and with a venomous buzzing like huge, angry hornets, lost themselves in quick, white spurts of foam. But one shot at least went home. Sheltered though the Legion was, either inside the fuselage or in vantage-points at the gun-stations, one incautious exposure timed itself to meet a notched slug.
All the same, we're warning the whole coast, and our gun-stations will be served all night." "Shall we have a chance, do you think, of hitting any of them?" Thomson asked. The sailor winked. "There are a couple of gun-stations I know of not far from here," he said.
He prostrated himself, with groans and cries to Allah. The Legionaries, from galleries and gun-stations waving derisive arms, raised shouts and hurrahs. Sweaty, spent, covered with grease and dirt, they cheered with leaping hearts. Another shell, bursting in mid-air not fifty yards away, rocked Nissr, keeled her to port, and for a moment sent her staggering down.
Around the inner walls were the nerve-terminals of the structure the indicators, telegraph-dials, telephones, push-buttons, and speaking-tubes, which communicated with gun-stations, turrets, steering-room, engine-rooms, and all parts of the ship where men were stationed.
Word Of The Day