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"Ay, ay," said Jack; "he quite forgets when the bullets were scuttling our nobs off Cape Ushant, when that big Frenchman had hold of him by the skirf of his neck, and began pummelling his head, and the lee scuppers were running with blood, and a bit of Joe Wiggins's brains had come slap in my eye, while some of Jack Marling's guts was hanging round my neck like a nosegay, all in consequence of grape-shot then he didn't say as I was a swab, when I came up, and bored a hole in the Frenchman's back with a pike.
Some trifling quarrel, that might perhaps have been settled by five minutes of common-sense arbitration, led to this fierce fray, in the midst of which Jesse Benton, brother of the colonel, fired at Jackson with a huge pistol, loaded to the muzzle with bullets and slugs. It was like a charge of grape-shot.
Luckily their guns were properly elevated for the range of the barrier; and, with the exception of a few straggling grape-shot that splashed the water round us, the whole went over our heads. For a moment I found myself cut off from my companions, and drifting fast upon the enemy.
To do this was fearfully dangerous, for their regiments of hussars and chasseurs advanced in good order to charge. Still we kept retreating, when a voice on the top of the ridge cried: "Halt!" and at the same moment the hussars, who were already rushing down upon us, received a terrific discharge of case and grape-shot, which swept them down by hundreds.
In the circumstances the thing was impossible, so the lawyer rose and stamped about the floor, and wished he were the Emperor of Russia with a cannon charged with grape-shot loaded to the muzzle and pointed at the centre of that brass band, in which case he would . Well, the old gentleman never thought out the sentence, but he stamped on and raved a little as the band brayed below his window.
Montgomery, with 60 men, pushed on at a run to carry the battery; but, when within fifty yards Bairnsfeather discharged his pieces, which were loaded with grape-shot, with deadly aim. Montgomery, his aid-de-camp Macpherson, Lieutenant Cheeseman, and 10 others fell dead at the first discharge, and with them the soul of the expedition fled.
"But they'd run," said Dolly, "they'd only be in the way." "Oh, if they ran away, then we'd have grape-shot or Cossacks with whips behind them," said the prince. "But that's a joke, and a poor one too, if you'll excuse my saying so, prince," said Sergey Ivanovitch. "I don't see that it was a joke, that..." Levin was beginning, but Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him.
A semi-defiant backward toss of the head was the result as much perhaps of the method of wearing his cap as of any pronounced mental characteristic. When Stannard was talking eagerly of any subject his hands went deeper into his pockets, his head thrust forward, and his eyes fairly popped, as though slight additional pressure would project them into space like many-tinted grape-shot.
But now close behind them Blücher's guns begin to thunder and Zieten's columns are rapidly gaining ground: all round their fur bonnets a hailstorm of grape-shot is raging whilst Adam's artillery is in action within fifty paces at their flank.
It was necessary to charge it with the bayonet, amidst a thick fire of grape-shot; every thing succeeded, but when it was supposed that there was no more to do but to pursue, all was nearly lost; some Russian dragoons, according to some, and horse-guards, according to others, risked a charge on a battery of Saint-Cyr's; a French brigade placed to support it advanced, then suddenly turned its back and fled through the midst of our cannon, which it prevented from being fired.
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