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Updated: June 16, 2025
The boys were going out gunning that morning, and they had taken it into their heads that the two old fowling-pieces needed to be thoroughly washed out, and with hot water.
The music of jackdaws welcomed this first indication of improved weather; then Phoebe's sharp eyes beheld a phenomenon afar off through the momentary cessation of the rain. Three parts of a mile away, on a distant hillside, like the successive discharges of a dozen fowling-pieces, little blotches of smoke or mist suddenly appeared.
But, accepting the money, he contented himself with saying something about sportsmen going on shooting expeditions, without having money to pay their expenses; and hinted that such chaps might better lay aside their fowling-pieces, and assume the buck and saw. He then passed on, and left every eye fastened upon me. I stood their gazing some time, but at last could stand it no more.
As our party consisted of twelve men, including ourselves, and each was armed Lumley and myself with double-barrelled fowling-pieces we were able, if need be, to fire a volley of fourteen shots. Besides this, my chief and I carried revolvers, which weapons had only just been introduced into that part of the country.
This consisted of about thirty white men, armed with fourteen fowling-pieces, twenty daggers, fifteen swords, and eight cavalry pistols; and about two hundred native Christians, who, when the assaults of their unconverted brethren were made, armed themselves as they were wont to do in days gone by with formidable clubs, stone hatchets, and spears.
"I will, Lily," replied Dan, as he put the Isabel about, and headed towards the small island, about half a mile from the shore. "Take the helm, Cyd," continued he, as he left his post at the tiller, and rushed into the cabin. He returned in a moment with two fowling-pieces in his hands, and proceeded to load them. By this time the panting fugitive was distinctly seen, closely pursued by the dogs.
The great white drawing-room with its wainscotings of the time of Louis XVI., which opened out upon a flight of steps leading down into a terraced garden; the portraits of obscure ancestors: lawyers in powdered wigs and wearing the robes of the members of the Third estate, fat and rosy with double chins resting upon their broad cravats, amiable old ladies with oddly arranged hair and flowered gowns, coquettish still as they smiled in their oval, wooden frames, and then the old books in their old-fashioned bindings slumbering in a great bookcase with glass doors, or piled up on shelves below the fowling-pieces, the game-bags and the powder-horns.
The small number of birds yet present in early April gives a better opportunity for careful study, more especially if one goes armed with that best of fowling-pieces, a small spy-glass: the best, since how valueless for purposes of observation is the bleeding, gasping, dying body, compared with the fresh and living creature, as it tilts, trembles, and warbles on the bough before you!
We had some boats' sails, a cooking apparatus, two harpoons, spears, and two fowling-pieces, brought by the harpooners to kill a few dovekies for our messes. Several things, with a set of lines and harpoons, had been lost in the other boat. For some time after the fatal catastrophe I have described, we stood looking out seaward, undecided what steps to take.
The packets seldom carry any arms beyond a light gun to fire signals with, the pistols of the master, and perhaps a fowling-piece or two. Luckily the passengers were better provided: all the gentlemen had pistols, Mr. Monday and Mr. Dodge excepted, if indeed they properly belonged to this category, as Captain Truck would say, and most of them had also fowling-pieces.
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