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The sailors, with their cutlasses belted round their waists, and a pistol stuck in their girdles, or in a becket at the side of the boat, ready to their hands the marines, in proportion to the number which each boat could carry, sitting in the stern-sheets, with their muskets between their legs, and their well pipeclayed belts for bayonet and cartouch-box crossed over their old jackets, half dirt, half finery all was ready for shoving off, when Captain M desired the officers whom he had appointed to the expedition to step down into his cabin.
It is likewise told of an officer of engineers, that having overtaken an American soldier, and demanded his arms, the fellow gave him his rifle very readily, but being ordered to resign a handsome silver-hilted dagger and silver-mounted cartouch-box, which graced his side, he refused to comply, alleging that they were private property, and that, by our own proclamations, private property should be respected.
"How so?" demanded Brereton, taking his position before the fire. "You see, man," explained the presbyter, "it occurred to me that, on so wet a night, 't would be almost impossible for the troops to keep their cartridges dry, since scarce a one in ten has a proper cartouch-box; so I set to making some new ones, and, having no paper, I'm e'en using the leaves of my own copy of Watts' Hymns."
They used to sit at their house doors and pace the streets with musket, pistol, dagger, and cartouch-box on their persons; and on the most trivial occasion of merriment or enthusiasm they would discharge their firearms. This habit gave a bloody termination to many quarrels, which might have ended more peaceably had the parties been unarmed; and so the seeds of vendetta were constantly being sown.
Darell's peculiar bent of mind was exemplified in a rusty broadsword, a tall grenadier's cap, a musket without lock or ramrod, a belt and cartouch-box, with other matters evincing a decided military taste.
While this was performing, the two old warriors, with the heads of their enemies suspended from their shoulders like a soldier's cartouch-box, stumped up and down, striking the floor with their clubs, and getting very excited. How long it lasted none of our party could tell, as one and all dropped off to sleep during the recital. Mr.
He saw that two men, fully armed, for Digatiski had secured ammunition for his own gun from the cartouch-box of the soldier, could force his withdrawal, bound as he was, farther and farther from the ensign and his party, whose attention had been temporarily diverted from the scout's delay in returning by signs of the enemy ambushed in another direction.
Attentive to all kinds of detail, he also gave his soldiers the cartouch-box and knapsack instead of the cumbersome apparatus to which they had been accustomed. In fact, Gustavus Adolphus was the founder of the modern science of battle.
We hear also for the first time of the "powder-horn" and the "cartouch-box." The "bagnets" that are mentioned were of little use against the Indians, and they were scarcely known in America until the wars with France. But with the appearance of the bayonet came also the revival of the fife, which had been discarded in England in the time of Shakespeare.
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