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No duel of the age of chivalry had a more eager throng of spectators. Now the "Alabama" has passed the three-mile line, and is on the open sea. The big French iron-clad stops; the pilot-boats, with no liking for cannon-balls, stop too. The "Deerhound" goes out a mile or so farther, and the "Alabama" advances alone to meet the antagonist that is waiting quietly for her coming.
So intolerable had this practice become even iron-clad coaches loopholed for rifles proving a vain device that the mine owners had adopted the more practicable plan of importing from California a half-dozen of the most famous "shotgun messengers" of Wells, Fargo & Co. fearless and trusty fellows with an instinct for killing, a readiness of resource that was an intuition, and a sense of direction that put a shot where it would do the most good more accurately than the most careful aim.
He pressed her hand and she settled back comfortably, with a long, deep breath; and he stretched his iron-clad length beside her and closed his eyes, firmly resolved not to waste a minute of this wonderful night in sleep.
Ballou, through whose iron-clad earnestness no sarcasm could pierce, said that that would not do, because the provisions were exposed and would suffer, the horses being "bituminous from long deprivation." The reader will excuse me from translating. What Mr. Ballou customarily meant, when he used a long word, was a secret between himself and his Maker.
The immediate effect of this was to curtail our privileges of riding about the country of Yokohama. Perhaps the most notable incident, historically, of our stay in Yokohama was the arrival of the first iron-clad of the Japanese navy, to which it has fallen a generation later to give the most forcible lesson yet seen of iron-clads in battle.
In the bows, an 18 and a 12-pounder; in the stern, two 9's; in broadside, from four to six 6's. There is in this a somewhat droll reminder of the disputed merits of bow, stern, and broadside fire, in a modern iron-clad; and the practical conclusion is much the same. The gondolas had one 12-pounder and two 6's. All the vessels of both parties carried a number of swivel guns.
She glides in and out among crowds of her sex, steers sweepingly clear of all obstacles, and emerges triumphant. A man enters and immediately becomes all boots and elbows. He needs as much room to turn round in as the English iron-clad Warrior, and it takes him about as long. He treads on all the flounces, runs against all the clerks, knocks over all the children, and is generally under-foot.
General Slocum had already captured a couple of steamboats trying to pass down the Savannah River from Augusta, and had established some of his men on Argyle and Hutchinson Islands above the city, and wanted to transfer a whole corps to the South Carolina bank; but, as the enemy had iron-clad gunboats in the river, I did not deem it prudent, because the same result could be better accomplished from General Fosters position at Broad River.
"You failed," pursued John Taylor, "because you couldn't get the banks and the big merchants behind you. We've got 'em behind us with big chunks of stock and a signed iron-clad agreement. You can wheel the planters into line will you do it?" John Taylor bent forward tense but cool and steel-like. Harry Cresswell laid his hand on his father's arm and said quietly: "And where do we come in?"
The fine Galle Face Hotel, with its sense of spaciousness and restful ease, the illuminated grounds, the band, and the dash of the waves caused that first Saturday evening to seem almost perfection; one and all felt willing to linger on indefinitely, but, alas, the iron-clad itinerary must be met, and a week in the mountains was to follow!
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