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Updated: July 19, 2025
After a more substantial present of small articles and tobacco, the council was ended with a dram to the Indians. In the evening we exhibited different objects of curiosity, and particularly the air-gun, which gave them great surprise. Those people are almost naked, having no covering except a sort of breech-cloth round the middle, with a loose blanket or buffalo robe, painted, thrown over them.
"Then your simplest course will be to forget you have done so," answered the older man. "You go your way and I'll go mine. Your job's on the road, so you stop on it, Sammy, and if they busy chaps pop along, you can say you've heard nought moving but the owlets." "Duty's duty," replied Sam. "You must come along with me, I guess. Give me your air-gun, please, and pick up thicky bird."
I had just finished it and was stooping to pick up by air-gun, when I heard a sudden rush, and before I had time to look up I was thrown violently forward on my face, and found myself struggling in the embrace of a powerful grasp, from which I had nearly succeeded in freeing myself, when the arms which were clasping me were reinforced by several more pairs, and I felt a rope being passed round my body.
But not one word did she tell of the story of the two gentlemen in the barouche, and of the air-gun. She was wild to tell everything, but she was a good woman. "Now, ladies," said Mrs. Faulkner, "in my opinion, the thing for us to do is to go to see Maria Port; tell her what we think of her; and have all this wickedness stopped."
And raising his air-gun he got the roosting bird in a line with the sights, which was as easy to do pretty nearly as in broad day, and pressed the trigger. The black ball came tumbling down with a thump on the ground, and Marriner, pouncing upon it, put it in his sack. A second, a third were bagged without stirring from the spot.
I was afraid to remain with the regiment with my air-gun after this, lest some one should discover it and unravel the mystery; besides, I felt a sort of traitor to the brave friends who had so generously offered me their hospitality; so I invented urgent private affairs which demanded my immediate return to Naples, and on the morning of my departure found myself embraced by all the officers of the regiment from the colonel downward, who in the fervour of their kisses thrust sixteen waxed moustache-points against my cheeks.
A few steps farther on another, who had been disturbed by the whip-cracks of the air-gun, had withdrawn his head from under his wing. But he did not take to flight at once, being comfortable where he was and the sounds not very alarming, and while he hesitated he received a violent shock in the middle of his breast, which knocked him off his perch powerless and dying.
Holmes had picked up the powerful air-gun from the floor, and was examining its mechanism. "An admirable and unique weapon," said he, "noiseless and of tremendous power: I knew Von Herder, the blind German mechanic, who constructed it to the order of the late Professor Moriarty. For years I have been aware of its existence though I have never before had the opportunity of handling it.
There was a horrid boy who had been shooting at him all the morning with his air-gun: "I am really preserved at this time of the year," he said. "But what does that brat of a boy care about that? And, if I must lose my life, I would rather be caught in a proper snare." "I should have thought it would be better to be shot," said the willow-tree. "Then you're done with for good and all."
"Hah! you tooched me!" exclaimed the disappointed naturalist, looking fiercely round, while the amazed ape sent forth a bursting crack of its air-gun as it swung itself into the tree-top and made off. "Yes, I touched you, and if you will shoot when I am so close to you, you cannot wonder at it especially when you intend to take life uselessly.
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