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He was armed with a breech-loading carbine and two revolvers, and carried, attached to his saddle, a roll of blankets, a haversack, and a mail-pouch. Dismounting, he detached the pouch, at the same time answering questions and giving us items of news later than any contained in his despatches. After handing his pouch to the quartermaster-sergeant, his eyes fell upon the boy sergeants.
I seemed to know it and it seemed to know me. It hangs on my wall to this day, although of course I never use it now in our breech-loading era. Unfortunately, however, a local gunsmith to whom I sent it to have the lock cleaned, re-browned it and scraped and varnished the stock, etc., without authority, making it look almost new again. I preferred it in its worn and scratched condition.
Hitherto the old plan of muzzle-loading had been followed by all the nations of Europe and America. In our country the Civil War had come almost to its climax before breech-loading was generally introduced. Austria had continued to use the old muzzle-loading muskets.
Inside the barbette the gun revolved on its turn-table; its breech, together with the gunners, was protected by a hood of armour which revolved with the gun. This arrangement is probably less liable to be knocked out of action by the enemy's shot than the turret. Amidships was the "secondary" armament of six 6-inch breech-loading guns.
The breech-end of the second tube from the bore is forged solid so that its grain will run parallel with the bore and give the gun longitudinal strength. Still, it is a formidable gun, especially when relieved of the weak and complex breech-loading apparatus, and used with a better system of rifling and projectiles than Armstrong's.
They were a trifle awkward, perhaps, in their dark-blue hooded cloaks, with their tin-plate buttons, and armed with breech-loading rifles, and encumbered with canteens, basins, and pouches, all having an unprepared and too-new look.
They fell upon the ruin of the breech-loading cannon, and he said, "Don Ippolito, it's very good of you to take the trouble of showing me these matters, and I hope you'll pardon the ungrateful return, if I cannot offer any definite opinion of them now. They are rather out of my way, I confess.
We camped on a little knoll under an enormous tree at the far end of the village street, and a short time after the tents were up we had a visit from the Shan magistrate. He was a dapper energetic little fellow wearing foreign dress and quite au courant with foreign ways. He even owned a breech-loading shotgun, and, before we left, sent to ask for shells.
Here, in a wide trench behind a rampart of earth strengthened with barrels of cement, I found four muzzle-loading iron siege-guns of the last century, two modern mortars like the one that I had seen on the skids near the head of the Estrella cove, one smooth-bore cannon dated 1859, and two three-inch breech-loading rifles.
While unused to horses and largely ignorant of the country, they had good officers and they stood firm. The Southern charge, meeting a second volley from the breech-loading rifles, broke upon their front. Harry, almost by the side of Sherburne, felt the shock as they galloped into the battle smoke, and then he felt the Virginians reel.
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