United States or Estonia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The valley was full of shouting, howling creatures, and every soul was shrieking, 'Not a God nor a Devil but only a man! The Bashkai troops stuck to Billy Fish all they were worth, but their matchlocks wasn't half as good as the Kabul breech-loaders, and four of them dropped.
I ran into evidence that you people had already used the blueprints for breech-loaders and mortars." Jerry Kennedy came to his feet and rambled over to the messroom's bar. "This seems to be all out spat, rather than a conference to compare progress," he said. "Anybody for a drink? Frankly, that's the next thing I'm going to introduce to Genoa, some halfway decent likker.
With field-guns in the open, the No. 1 of the detachment can aim his muzzle loader while it is being loaded, while he must wait to do so till loading at the breech is completed. Again, it was freely stated that, with breech-loaders greater protection was afforded to the gunners than with the muzzle-loaders. This entirely depends on how the guns are mounted.
Owing, however, to the increasing European colony at Shanghai and the numerous mail steamers which daily arrive there, a profitable market for game has sprung up during the past few years, to supply which there are now a number of native gunners who, as a means of livelihood, scour the country with foreign breech-loaders in search of pheasants, wildfowl, etc., so that, being capital shots, within a considerable distance of this port the shooting is not so good as formerly, although in all other parts of the Empire it still remains practically untouched until the advent of Europeans.
Now in those days revolvers and breech-loaders did not exist, so that the process of loading a pistol with ball was rather a long and complicated one. Yet although so much time was occupied between the shots, the animal remained as motionless as a stuffed figure.
"There's two double centre-fire breech-loaders in the case," he said to himself, "and there's his revolver and his sword, besides that old hunting-knife in the shark's-skin case there's every temptation for a young man to do it. Oh, what a world this is! Why, that there Mark Frayne's been the cause of all the trouble, and driven S'Richard away blow him! Dick Smithson.
They took off her, with a hurry that betrayed apprehension, 1,545 carbines and six Berdan breech-loaders, with a number of armourer's tools. It was remarked that the rifles supplied to the regular troops from Madrid were sighted to eight hundred metres, but that the range of those seized from the Carlists did not exceed five hundred.
We were frequently successful; we were on the inside, and had the advantage of the short interior lines, so that our few men and our breech-loaders told to a good purpose. There were frequent crises in the struggle, that at some times gave encouragement, but never hope. Once a determined onset was made from the East, and was met by the equally determined resistance of nearly our whole force.
But bayonet-charges cannot carry stone walls or mud-banks; and in the face of the almost incessant peppering of breech-loaders, rushes of the kind have become slightly old-fashioned. To the Carlists, in any case, was due the credit of readiness to have recourse to the steel whenever there was a rift for hand-to-hand fighting.
Their arms consisted of rifles which, Frobisher noted, were of widely-different patterns, most of them obsolete, although all were breech-loaders and a kind of cutlass, somewhat similar to the British naval weapon, but with a two-handed hilt, and only a small, circular piece of polished brass for a guard. The soldiery, however, smart though they were, in no way resembled those of European armies.
Word Of The Day