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Well, there was this man keeping on saying he'd done it the best he could, and there was Palmer carrying on like all possessed about it. 'Call that making a job of it? he says. 'If you had your rights you'd get the sack for this. What do you suppose I pay you your wages for? I tamped it right in the 'ole, he says, 'and now it's fell out, he says, 'I never see.
Before the door to the dwelling, on a flat stretch of tamped earth, stood a carrousel surrounded by a low, octagonal impalement; the stakes, decayed by the action of moisture and heat, still showed a vestige of their original blue paint. Those poor merry-go-round steeds, painted red, offered to the gaze of the indifferent spectator the most comical, and at the same time the most pathetic sight.
And if you're right careful to see that the tool-boxes the boys leave are all locked so's no powder can catch, you know and always start lighting against the air, so that if there's gas and it catches the fire'll blow away from you instead of following you up and if you examine the fuses to see they're long enough and the powder is tamped in just right each miner does that before he leaves and lots of firers just give 'em a hasty once-over instead of a real look and then shake your heels good and fast after you do fire "
The hole that he had made into the foot wall had been filled with dynamite and tamped, as though ready for shooting. But the charge had not been exploded. Instead on the ground lay the remainder of the tamping paper and a short foot and a half of fuse, with its fulminate of mercury cap attached, where it had been pulled from its berth by some great force and hastily stamped out. And Harry
The noise had not died away and the men behind were still trying to quiet the frightened horses when the sergeant, the same who had written, received from the hand of the Colonel a long package or roll which contained the records of the battery furnished by the men and by the Colonel himself, securely wrapped to make them water-tight, and it was rammed down the yet warm throat of the nearest gun: the Cat, and then the gun was tamped to the muzzle to make her water-tight, and, like her sisters, was spiked, and her vent tamped tight.
Next a good large fire-place and chimney were built in one corner by means of stones and mud, and then the roof was put on a thatched one of prairie grass. The floor was dirt compactly tamped. My furniture was very primitive: a chair or two, with about the same number of camp stools, a cot, and a rickety old bureau that I obtained in some way not now remembered.
With these awful weapons we wandered along the beach and fired at the gulls and solan-geese as they passed us. Fortunately we never hurt any of them that we knew of. We also dug holes in the ground, put in a handful or two of powder, tamped it well around a fuse made of a wheat-stalk, and, reaching cautiously forward, touched a match to the straw. This we called making earthquakes.
The Indians fell back before the charge was well begun. It was their last attempt. The wind rose, biting raw. The savages melted away as dusk drew down over the brown land. Some one looked at Smith. His head was sunk and he was moaning with pain. They found a willow switch and tamped a handkerchief into the wound. And then they laid him down in the rain-water which had gathered in the wallow.
His most eloquent gesture was when, from time to time, he tamped an ancient wooden pipe with a fingertip that wasn't as calloused as he could have wished, philosophically sucked in strangling fumes of rankest shag and, ignoring his company in the carriage as became a British-made manservant, returned jaded, gentle eyes to those darkling vistas of autumnal landscape that were forever radiating away from the window like spokes of a gigantic wheel.
To Jim Holden, Denny was simply fussing fruitlessly and absurdly with an ordinary "ant-hill," as he persisted in miscalling a termitary. Playing with bugs, that was all. Wasting his time poking into the affairs of termites and acting, by George, as though those affairs were of supreme significance! He grinned, and tamped and relighted the tobacco in his pipe.
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