United States or Guatemala ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
For England would be unable to hold the Pass against such a force." "Is it really so difficult to cross the Pass, as it is said to be?" inquired Heideck. "The Pass is about fifty versts in length. In 1839 the Bengal corps of the Indus army advanced through it against the Afghan army, and managed without difficulty to take with them twenty-four-pound howitzers as well as eighteen-pound field guns."
Small blame to Amyas if he was thinking, not of his lonely mother at Burrough Court, but of those quick bright flashes on sand-hill and on fort, where Salvation Yeo was hurling the eighteen-pound shot with deadly aim, and watching with a cool and bitter smile of triumph the flying of the sand, and the crashing of the gabions.
All this time the roads leading to our lines were packed night and day with men, transports, guns, ammunition, limbers, and everything that is needed for a big charge. Our eighteen-pound guns were in long lines, wheel to wheel. Behind them were long lines of heavier guns and back of these a line of long range naval guns.
But she had not suffered these injuries without inflicting some in return. The "Enterprise" was much cut up aloft. Her foremast and mainmast had each been pierced by an eighteen-pound ball. Her captain lay upon the deck, gasping in the last agonies of death, but stoutly protesting that he would not be carried below until he received the sword of the commander of the "Boxer."
The eight-inch and six-inch howitzers were more gregarious. They worked in groups of four and sometimes a number of batteries were in line. Beyond them were those alert commoners, the field guns, rapid of fire with their eighteen-pound shells. These seemed more tractable and companionable, better suited for human association, less mechanically brutal.
Her bulwarks were shot through and through; her wheel was smashed to pieces; and there were long scorings fore-and-aft her decks, showing the paths that our eighteen-pound shot had ploughed up in their destructive passage.
This order set every one in motion. The women and children were hurried below, and the men, who had been constantly exercised, now, for five months, took their stations with the regularity of old seamen. The guns were cast loose ten eighteen-pound carronades and two nines, the new armament cartridges were got ready, shot placed at hand, and all the usual dispositions for combat were made.
Owing to the darkness and the extremely bad gunnery on both sides, little blood was spilt, and the damage done was mostly confined to the sails and rigging. Now and then a eighteen-pound shot hulled the Policy, and one went clean through her amidships.
Alphabetical Gray, who was officer of the deck; 'Pipe down, sir, says Mr. Gray to the gentleman of the watch; 'Pipe down, sir, says this youngster to the boatswain; and then such a twitter of pipes followed this order, and all hands were piped down, while poor old Sadler was still off soundings, and going down as fast as the eighteen-pound shot would take him.
The bodies of the five poor fellows who had fallen in the attack of the previous night were placed in the lee gangway, sewn up in their hammocks, each with an eighteen-pound shot at his feet, and the ensign spread over them as a pall.
Word Of The Day