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Yet in due time the hard facts of human nature reasserted themselves and put this romantic transcendentalism by, even as the implacable Myles Standish put by that heavily loaded fowling-piece of the drunken Morton. But men believed in miracles in the first century of colonization, and they will continue at intervals to believe in them until human nature is no more.
"It was very true," he acknowledged, "that his brother had died of a jungle fever in pursuing the same amusement, and what was more, the fowling-piece in his hand belonged to his brother, who had bequeathed it to him; but as he had never heard of two brothers dying from a jungle fever taken by shooting jackals, he considered that the odds were strongly in his favour."
So if I sell you a fowling-piece, maybe I shall do wrong, and have the Government upon me as well as my master. The surprise in his voice was changed to suspicion, for while he spoke I saw that his eye had fallen on my foot, though I tried to keep it in the shadow; and that he saw the boot clotted with blood, and the kerchief tied round my leg.
The two muskets I loaded with a brace of slugs each, and four or five smaller bullets, about the size of pistol-bullets, and the fowling-piece I loaded with near an handful of swan-shot, of the largest size; I also loaded my pistols with about four bullets each: and in this posture, well provided with ammunition for a second and third charge, I prepared myself for my expedition.
A man armed with a long fowling-piece saluted him at the entry; and once inside he pointed from the house to his own breast, as much as to say, 'I am the Chief, and this is mine. I saluted him humbly. "A verandah ran around the four sides of the house, with a trench between it and the fortified wall.
He took his fowling-piece, and began to hunt over the island with the air of a man who is fulfilling a duty, rather than enjoying a pleasure; and at the end of a quarter of an hour he had killed a goat and two kids. These animals, though wild and agile as chamois, were too much like domestic goats, and Franz could not consider them as game.
These we rolled close to the edge of it, and ranging them in line with those that were already there, formed a sort of breastwork all round. Our three guns we had of course brought with us, as well as ammunition, and as mine was a double-barrelled fowling-piece we had thus four shots at command at any moment.
"You never can hurt one of them things," "Something will befall the brig on account of this," and "It's the mate's sperit, and sperits can't be harmed by lead or iron," were the sort of remarks made by the seamen, during the short interval between the issuing the order for the fowling-piece and its execution.
The doctor had a fowling-piece, and muskets and pistols enough were found to arm each of the rest of the party. With a good supply of ammunition they would thus, should they meet with hostile savages, be able to keep them at bay. They had already secured provisions sufficient to last them for several weeks.
"We don't buy any thing here," said he, suddenly looking very indifferent, "this is a place where people pawn things." Pawn being a word I had never heard before, I asked him what it meant; when he replied, that when people wanted any money, they came to him with their fowling-pieces, and got one third its value, and then left the fowling-piece there, until they were able to pay back the money.
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