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Ammunition was exceedingly scarce, and he had to provide for the manufacture of ball-cartridges. Transport there was none, but the great waggons of the Valley farmers supplied the deficiency. The supply and medical services were non-existent, and everything had to be organised de novo.
"Yes, Doctor," cried Archie excitedly. "You must have a lot of cartridges." "I had four boxes, my lad two of shot, large and small, and two of ball-cartridges for the tigers. But I haven't the least idea where they are." "But I know, dear on the store-room floor. I put them there to be dry." "Good girl! But they're no use for our men's rifles."
I listened it was the assembly! We only had time to dress, buckle on our knapsacks, take our guns, and run down. When we reached the barracks the roll-call had begun. When it was finished two wagons came up, and we received fifty ball-cartridges each. The Commandant Gémeau, the captains, and all the officers were there.
"Oh, come, Cousin Lou, this won't do at all," began Whately, hastening up. An ominous rush and trampling of feet was heard and an instant later the negroes were seen running toward them from the quarters and all points at which the sounds of the altercation reached them. "Turn out the guard," shouted Whately. "Rally the men here with carbines and ball-cartridges."
Yes, a duel with pistols horse-pistols at seventy-five paces, with ball-cartridges. And between whom? Our readers will never believe! Between M. Frantz Niklausse, the gentle angler, and young Simon Collaert, the wealthy banker's son.
They seemed proud of their weapons; some went so far as to kiss them; and, if looks were any criterion of feelings, their glowing faces said, as emphatically as it could be said, "Now that we have good tools, we shall show what good work we can do." Boxes of metallic ball-cartridges, centre-primed, were piled on the Plaza, and were quickly and quietly opened and distributed.
In the middle portion of the nineteenth century it was the habit to load the rifles of the twelve soldiers called out for shooting the condemned victim, with eleven ball-cartridges and one blank cartridge. As the soldiers never knew who of them had the latter, each one could console his disturbed conscience by thinking that he was not one of the murderers.
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