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"As for them French hats and the way they have of rowing, they act it all for a take-in. Just let a six-pound shot in among 'em, and see how they'll throw off their French airs and take to their English schooling." "I'll not do that; for we might injure a friend. What are those fellows in the felucca about now?"
One of these basins proved to be so small and so shallow that, standing on a projecting ledge of rock, Lance was able to make a tolerably thorough examination of its bed with the aid of the before-mentioned branch, and he had not been very long stirring up the sand with it when he turned up four very fine nuggets, varying in size from a hen's egg to a six-pound shot.
One after another the heavy six-pound shots crashed through her stern; and even at that distance it began to exhibit a ragged appearance. The cadet expected at any moment to reach the engines or the rudder of the fleeing ship, and so render her helpless. But probably her cargo served to protect the former, and the rudder was very hard to hit.
From captures there made, these crude contrivances were replaced with regular caissons, and for two of the six-pound brass pieces two rifled ten-pound Parrotts were substituted and two heavier six-pound brass pieces added, making a six-gun battery. Also the farm-wagon harness was exchanged for regular artillery harness.
Their place of refuge was between the cabin and the wheel-house, opposite the battery's position. A sheet of wet paper would afford as much resistance to a paving-stone as the walls of a steamboat cabin to a six-pound shot. As we stood among the ladies, two shells passed through the side of the cabin, within a few inches of our heads.
With no weapons except an old smooth-bore six-pound cannon, and that loaded with scrap iron gathered from a blacksmith's shop, we proceeded to Mill Creek and unlimbered on the bank in plain view of the boat, and distant from it some two or three hundred yards. I have always been glad that we had sense enough to refrain from shooting, for otherwise most of us would have been killed then and there.
Fearing they knew not what, the Continentals dragged an old six-pound cannon to the end of Teller's Point. That galled the Vulture and drove her from her anchorage, so that she drifted down the river. André, therefore, was compelled to make his way by land.
She ran into a French fleet of sixty sail, exchanged broadsides with the nearest, and showed her stern to the others. At 10 A.M. off Algeciras Point we were seriously attacked by a large latineer who had on board more than one hundred men. He came so near our broadside as to allow our six-pound grape to do execution handsomely.
On the 4th of July, 1867, Maxwell, who owned an antiquated and rusty six-pound field howitzer, suggested to the captain of the troop stationed there the propriety of celebrating the day. So the old piece was dragged from its place under a clump of elms, where it had been hidden in the grass and weeds ever since the Mexican War probably, and brought near the house.
He selected a spot almost under me, squatted down upon a flat rock, put two grasshoppers on his hook, threw it into the stream, and in a very short time drew out a good six-pound trout. Filled with admiration for the feat, while he was tying a string through the fish's gills I said to him, "Muy mahe," which another Indian had told me meant "big trout."
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