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Instead of the powerful Lee-Metford rifle, with its smokeless powder, its magazine action, and its absence of recoil, they were armed with the Martini-Henry, which possessed none of these advantages. In place of the deadly Maxim there was the Gardner gun the very gun that jammed at Tamai, and that jammed again at Abu Klea.
The lion tossed up his shaggy head and looked at us in dignified surprise. Then I fired and hit him in the ribs with a leaden bullet from my Lee-Metford. He reeled, sprang round, and staggered a few paces, when Jackson, who was firing a Martini-Henry, let him have one in the shoulder; this knocked him over sideways, and he turned about, growling savagely.
If intent on training for war, she might acquire the skill for guiding a Maxim or shooting down a foe with a Lee-Metford at four thousand yards as ably as any male; and undoubtedly, it has not been only the peasant girl of France, who has carried latent and hid within her person the gifts that make the supreme general.
With this frank and uncompromising reply the Empire, with the exception of a small party of dupes and doctrinaires, heartily agreed. The pens were dropped, and the Mauser and the Lee-Metford once more took up the debate. On March 13th Lord Roberts occupied the capital of the Orange Free State. On May 1st, more than six weeks later, the advance was resumed.
Some men, brave to rashness, ready as he to give his life to save her, would have raced madly over the intervening ground, scarce a furlong, and attempted a heroic combat of one against nine. Not so Jenks. With the methodical exactness of the parade-ground he settled down on one knee and leveled the rifle. At that range the Lee-Metford bullet travels practically point-blank.
Van Heerden was carried out, tied to a chair placed beside a stone wall, and seven Lee-Metford bullets penetrated the brain of the man who was wounded, perhaps mortally, in the service of the British army! That was his reward. Even that did not satisfy those who thirsted for blood, for the house of the unfortunate man was forthwith looted, and his widow and orphans robbed of everything.
"You seem to be well fitted for the work, and to set about it in the right spirit." "We have all been accustomed to hunting expeditions, sir, when we have often been out for some days, so that we understand how to shift for ourselves, though we are new to campaigning." "What rifles have you? that does not look like a Lee-Metford." "No, general, it is a Mauser.
Again the enemy pressed with vigour, but this time there were ten companies on the spur instead of two, and the Buffs, who became rear-guard, held everything at a distance with their Lee-Metford rifles. At a quarter to five the troops were clear of the hills and we looked about us. While this second attack was being carried out, the afternoon had slipped away.
They got in a few shots, most of which sprayed at various angles off the face of the cliff. But they waited for no more. When the lever of the Lee-Metford was shoved home for the fifth time the opposing crest was bare of all opponents save two, and they lay motionless. The fate of the flanking detachment was either unperceived or unheeded by the Dyaks left in the vicinity of the house and well.
Such was their talk when I left them." "Will they not miss you?" It was the last full one." "Mir Jan, do as I bid, and you shall see Delhi again, Have you ever used a Lee-Metford?" "I have seen them, sahib; but I better understand the Mahtini." "I will give you a rifle, with plenty of ammunition, Do you go inside the cave, there, and " Mir Jan was startled. "Where the ghost is, sahib?" he said.
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