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An irregular but well-directed volley emptied half a dozen saddles, and for a moment staggered the charging line; but, before my men could reload, the guerilleros had leaped clear over their fallen comrades, and were swooping down with cries of vengeance. A dozen of their bravest men were already within shot-range, firing their escopettes and pistols as they came down.
Of modern rifles Kettle had only twenty on board, but he had an abundance of those beautiful instruments known as "trade guns," and at shot-range a man can be killed just as definitely by a dose of pot-leg out of a gas-pipe barrel as he can by a dum-dum bullet sent through scientific rifling.
It is then both difficult to approach and hard to kill them. Odd birds you may easily reach; you may see them perched upon the branches on all sides of you, and within shot-range; but the thick of the flock, somehow or other, always keeps from one to two hundred yards off. The sportsman cannot bring himself to fire at single birds. No. There is a tree near at hand literally black with pigeons.
We spent the dusk of the evening in pigeon-shooting, but did not meet with much success; for the birds perched for the most part on the summits of trees so lofty that they were quite out of shot-range. Many of these giants of the forest must have attained the height of at least two hundred feet.
Kaiser Karl and Johann George both emerged, in a minute or two, little the worse; Kaiser Karl perhaps blushing somewhat, and flurried this time, I think, in the impenetrable eyes; and his Cimburgis lip closed for the moment; and galloped out of shot-range.
It would have been equally safe at five: since I had no means of destroying it. I might easily have crept within shot-range since a grove of cotton-woods, just commencing where I had halted, extended up the bottom of the ravine. Under these I could have stalked, to the base of the cliff on which the animal stood a sort of angular promontory projecting into the gorge.
"These columns advance, however; through bushy hollows, water-courses, through what defiles or hollowest grounds there are; endure the cannon-shot, while they must; trailing their own heavy guns by hand, and occasionally blasting out of them where the ground favors; and do, with indignant patience, wind themselves through, pretty much beyond direct shot-range of either d'Eu or Fontenoy.
Friedrich had sent out to tell them: for the mist was clearing; and Friedrich, on the higher ground, saw new important phenomena: but it was too late. The Twenty Squadrons have to recoil out of shot-range, the faster, the better; with a loss of a good many men, in those two charges.
The Danish fleet, the Swedish fleet, were, both of them, quickly dealt with, and successively withdrew out of shot-range. And then Jarl Eric came up, and fiercely grappled with the Long Serpent, or, rather, with her surrounding comrades; and gradually, as they were beaten empty of men, with the Long Serpent herself. The fight grew ever fiercer, more furious.
Keith waits there two hours; his men, under fire all the while, trying this and that to get across; Munnich's scalade going off ineffectual in like manner: till at length Keith's men, and all men, tire of such a business, and roll back in great confusion out of shot-range. Munnich gives himself up for lost.
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