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Immediately after, the field-gun on the quarterdeck was fired, and the report reverberated over the water and across the island on the one side, and through the streets of the town on the other, with sufficient volume to call every belated and idle citizen to the river-front at once.
Captain O'Brien reports that her cargo included "2,500 rifles, a 12-pounder Hotchkiss field-gun, 1,500 revolvers, 200 short carbines, 1000 pounds of dynamite, 1,200 machetes, and an abundance of ammunition." All was packed in boxes marked "codfish," and "medicines." The Bermuda sailed the next morning, March 15, with O'Brien in command, cleared for Vera Cruz.
The Cossacks were on horseback, the foot-soldiers with their arms shouldered, their colours flying in the air. Several cannons, among which I recognized ours, were placed on field-gun carriages. All the inhabitants had assembled in the same place, awaiting the usurper. Before the door of the Commandant's house a Cossack held by the bridle a magnificent white horse of Kirghiz breed.
As I stood and looked, suddenly the horrid bark of the modern high-velocity field-gun began down below in our lines, and the word passed along that a British battery had succeeded in getting through the jam, and was opening on the enemy from just outside the Legations. The barking went on very rapidly for a few minutes, and then ceased as suddenly as it had begun.
We waited, waited in our trenches, till the green-gray mob was near enough. Then the word came. Sapristi! We let loose with mitrailleuse, rifle, field-gun, everything that would throw death. It did not seem like fighting with men. It was like trying to stop a monstrous thing, a huge, terrible mass that was rushing on to overwhelm us. The waves tumbled and broke before they reached us.
Here was the type of country that was familiar to him, and he defied any Turk or Boche to spot him among the scrub and boulders. He was getting on very well, when once more, close to his ear, came a sound like the crack of doom. It was the field-guns now, and the sound of a field-gun close at hand is bad for the nerves if you aren't expecting it.
And when a Japanese farmer ordered a hay-cart from Canada, it was no pure chance that the remarkably strong wheels of this cart exactly fitted a field-gun. The barrel was brought over by a neighbor, who ordered iron columns for his new house, inside of which the separate parts of the barrel were soldered.
Major Marling may have begun to take that view too when he saw a white flag showing above the serrated crest of Rifleman's Ridge, which is generally but too vaguely described as Blaauwbank, where the Boers have at least one powerful field-gun mounted.
At once, with contemptuous perversity, Mr Vladimir changed the language, and began to speak idiomatic English without the slightest trace of a foreign accent. “Ah! Yes. Of course. Let’s see. How much did you get for obtaining the design of the improved breech-block of their new field-gun?”
The gun is fired at a fixed elevation, and is so small and light that it can readily be moved and set up by a couple of men in a few minutes. In no branch of the artillery has such advancement been made as in the trench mortars, which have now attained almost as great a degree of accuracy as the field-gun.
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