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By George, sir, before daylight to-morrow we'll run up a nine-pounder, and have this rubbish down in five minutes! Yes, yes and I'd do it to-day, if it weren't the Sabbath." "I don't see that the Sabbath ought to count against what we may fairly call the dictates of national urgency," said the Doctor. " Salus patriae suprema lex." "What's that?" "Latin.
Major Nairne and Lieutenant Dambourges of the Royal Emigrants at once climbed in at the head of a storming-party and wild work followed with the bayonet. All the Americans inside were either killed or captured. Meanwhile a vigorous British nine-pounder had been turned on another house they occupied.
As the Arabs continued their fire, a nine-pounder and Gatling gun were brought into play upon the bushes, and the fire of the enemy soon died out and they fell back to their camp. The troops now had breakfast, and soon after they had finished the cavalry arrived from the other zareba. At eight o'clock the Mounted Infantry moved out, accompanied by a party of Abyssinian scouts.
Poor little Dabby, though, was shot dead while entering the breach the shell of our nine-pounder had made in the outer palisade that protected the Arab defences; and then, finding a second fence composed of similar baulks of timber in front of us, as strong as that we had surmounted, and that the fire of the Somalis increased the nearer we got to them, our chaps, staggered by the fall of poor Dabby, I must confess it, all at once began to cut and run!
There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large blue-bearded Dutchman, who had nearly taken a British frigate with an old iron nine-pounder from a mud breastwork, only that his gun burst at the sixth discharge.
At first they fired low, battering in doors, splintering wood-work, unhinging shutters, and ploughing the floors. The old walls of the town were shrouded in clouds of white smoke. The Palace appeared like a ring of fire from the red barrels of the riflemen. At length, one of the British militia officers stepped forward and pointed a nine-pounder direct on the cupola.
And then Copley Banks began to make preparations for his African voyage. It appeared that he relied upon force rather than barter for the filling of his hold, for he carried none of those showy trinkets which savages love, but the brig was fitted with eight nine-pounder guns, and racks full of muskets and cutlasses.
"We shall attack from our port side," said the captain to his chief officer; "let the guns be laid accordingly." The armament of the gun-boat consisted of two nine-pounder guns, one on the forecastle, and one on the poop; one twelve-pounder, just before the bridge; and four six-pound brass carronades.
To set these sails, she carried a numerous crew of tried seamen; promptitude and decision being required in the dangerous work in which she was engaged. Her armament consisted of six short guns and a long nine-pounder, which could be trained either fore or aft, to bring to a merchantman endeavouring to escape, or to knock away the spars of an enemy chasing her.
Lieutenant Dabchick came with us in command, as soon as she was fully manned and armed, an ammunition-chest being lowered down with a supply of `pills and pepper' for the little nine-pounder boat-gun we carried in our bows; when, we sheered away from the ship's side and lay on our oars, and the second cutter hauled up alongside to receive her crew and equipment like ourselves.
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