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Bumpus was heard to whisper to himself, in a horrified tone, as he learned about those terrible firearms that must be held with their muzzles projecting in the direction of the floating home of the scouts; but all the same Bumpus, "though good and scared," as he afterwards candidly confessed, did not attempt to lie down, and shield his round body behind any of his comrades; if they could take the consequences surely he ought to be ready to face the music; and so be only knelt there and quivered and looked, momentarily to see a flash, and hear a deafening report that would stagger them all.
The Frenchmen endeavoured to slew round some of their guns to fire down on us, but before the muzzles were run through the embrasures, we were climbing over the parapet in a somewhat helter-skelter fashion, and, headed by the gallant captain of the Buckingham, leaping down into the fort.
"Stand still!" thundered De Launay and she stiffened automatically. His hands had dropped from the doorway and now they seemed to snap upward with incredible speed and in them were two squat and heavy automatics, their grizzly muzzles sweeping like the snap of a whip to a line directly at herself, as it seemed. Two shots again rocked her with their concussion.
Stooping down and applying his mouth to the keyhole he said, loud enough to be heard by those within: "Stand clear in there; I'm about to blow the lock to pieces. It is I Robert. The time has come." "Fire away, my lad!" was the reply. "You will not hurt us." Bob applied the muzzles of both pistols to the lock, and pulled the triggers.
Behind this long snout, a strong square forecastle was crammed with soldiers, and the muzzles of cannon grinned out through portholes, not only in the sides of the forecastle, but forward in the line of the galley's course, thus enabling her to keep up a continual fire on a ship right ahead.
No questions were asked and the others followed Jack and von Ludwig from the room, leaving Harris in command of the German crew of five. These Germans, under the muzzles of Harris' two revolvers, fell to work immediately. Von Ludwig led the former engine-room crew to the guns forward. "Man these guns," he said quietly. "There may be fighting to do.
Far out at sea, beyond the islands that sheltered their harbor, they saw an approaching sail; and as she drew near, straining their anxious eyes, they could descry the red flags that streamed from her masthead and her stern; then the black muzzles of her cannon, they counted seven on a side; then the throng of men upon her decks.
The dread of the fatal line, however, seemed to keep them back. The muzzles of the firearms were kept protruding from the walls, and, as there were several pistols as well as rifles, they made a good display of force, rather damping the courage of those who came expecting, probably, an easy victory.
Everyone at the hotel was in a state of consternation, for hardly six yards away the windows of the Post Office were crashing to the ground in the street, and at everyone bags of refuse were being piled up, and the muzzles of rifles were commanding all the windows of the hotel guests.
To mount the houses was easy enough, though the door of one had to be broken in, and presently we heard glass tumbling down as muzzles of rifles were poked through the upper panes, and soon sharp cracks and thick puffs of smoke leaping out showed that the men had settled down to their work.
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