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Updated: May 1, 2025
They had got within four hundred yards from the brute when a faint puff of wind stirred the grass, and instantly the rhino shifted his position. "He's got our scent," said Berselius, taking the cordite rifle from Félix, who handed his gun also to Adams. "He's got it strong. We will wait for him here." The rhino, after a few uneasy movements, began to "run about."
The port forecastle six-pounder, using a shell containing cordite, a powerful English explosive, was in charge of a marine corporal named J.J. Murray, who acted as captain of the gun. After firing several rounds with marked success, Murray saw that the gun was loaded for another trial.
It was a magnificent exhibition of daring and self-restraint and cool assurance. At twenty-five yards or a little under, the cordite rang out. The brute seemed to trip, just as the other had done, over some invisible taut-stretched wire, and skidding with its own impetus, squealing, striking out and tearing up the grass, it came right up to Berselius's feet before stiffening in death.
The volunteers were known as the "Jam-tin Artillery Party," from the fact that their bombs were made of jam-tins filled with gun-cotton, cordite, etc. The party had to do all the "sticky work," and this was a very sticky job. The plan was to lay a trail with a fuse to bombs, which we placed under the floor at the top of the stairs leading to the upper storey of this old and disused gateway.
And within these long sheds, each seated behind a screen, were women who handled and cut deadly cordite into needful lengths as if it had been so much ribbon, and always and everywhere the same dexterous speed.
"Now," continued the teacher, "what I want to know is this: How is it that while I am standing upright in the ordinary position the blood doesn't rush into my feet?" And a little fellow shouted: "Why, sir, because yer feet ain't empty." One day an ammunition dump blew up. Cordite was blazing, shells and bombs bursting, and splinters and whole shells flying everywhere in the vicinity.
It is not half so heavy or clumsy as the old timers, but its power and penetration are tremendous. The largest of this modern type is the .650 cordite that is, it shoots a bullet six hundred and fifty thousandths of an inch in diameter, and has a frightful recoil. This weapon is prohibitive on account of its recoil, and few, if any, sportsmen now care to carry one.
In this event, Akeley was to take his camera, and with "Fred," "Jimmy" Clark, and I as escorts with our double-barreled cordite rifles, was to advance until he could get a photograph that would show an elephant the full size of the plate. If the elephants charged we were to yell and try to turn them without shooting; if they came on we were to shoot to hurt, but not to kill.
We found a noisy and rather gratifying revenge in destroying some ammunition which was buried in the garden; the throwing of three thousand rounds of cordite ammunition into the fire is a peculiarly exciting game.
There was just that close and musty smell which is peculiar to all buildings which have been shut up, even for a few days. But there was something else. Tarling sniffed and Whiteside sniffed. A dull, "burnt" smell, some pungent, "scorched" odour, which he recognised as the stale stench of exploded cordite. He went into the tiny dining-room; everything was neat, nothing displaced.
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