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Mansong sent down two broken gunlocks, and a large pewter plate with a hole in the bottom of it, for me to repair; and it was with much difficulty that I could persuade the messenger that none of us knew any thing about such occupations. October 6th.
Fifty threats were hurled at the bold speaker, and the click of gunlocks preceded a surge in his direction. Then from the mob went up a sullen, formidable muttering of warning. No individual voice could be distinguished; but the total effect of dead resistance and determination could not be mistaken. Instantly, at the words so valiantly uttered, the spirit of cohesion had been born.
The desperadoes, shouldering their way here and there, were finding each other out, were gathering in little groups. "They'll try a rescue!" whispered the man next to me. "Men," Danny's voice rang out, clear and menacing, "do your duty!" At the words, across the silence the click of gunlocks was heard as the Vigilantes levelled their weapons at the crowd.
They spoke not; but there was the click of gunlocks, and a powerful recover, on the ground, of heavy muskets, with barrels fully six feet long, which had been used by their forefathers in the times of the first Charles and the civil commotion.
It rained hard all the next forenoon, but the men wrapped their blankets and the skirts of their hunting shirts round their gunlocks, and hurried on after Ferguson. A few of Shelby's men stopped at a Tory's house. "How many are there of you?" asked a young girl. "Enough," said one of the riflemen, "to whip Ferguson, if we can catch him."
When at home the husband could be heard at daybreak pushing open his shutters; the household dog rushed out into the street; and Madame Sauviat presently came out to help her man in spreading upon the natural counter made by the low walls on either side of the corner of the house on the two streets, the multifarious collection of bells, springs, broken gunlocks, and the other rubbish of their business, which gave a poverty-stricken look to the establishment, though it usually contained as much as twenty thousand francs' worth of lead, steel, iron, and other metals.
One by one a dozen franc-tireurs stepped from behind the trees on every side, rifles shimmering in the subdued afternoon haze wiry, gloomy-eyed men, their sleeveless sheepskin jackets belted in with leather, their sombre caps and trousers thinly banded with orange braid. They looked at him without speaking, almost without curiosity, fingering their gunlocks, bayoneted rifles unslung.
While the garrison had resolved not to resist an attack, they had contemplated causing their enemy as much loss as if he had been obliged to carry the place by storm by placing shells in the magazine which would be exploded by the moving of some gunlocks put in a spot where they could not fail to be trodden upon.
The Spaniards often find Ross very serviceable to them. For instance, there is no such thing as a smith in all California; consequently the making and repairing of all manner of iron implements here is a great accommodation to them, and affords lucrative employment to the Russians. The dragoons who accompanied us, had brought a number of old gunlocks to be repaired.
The few who were provided with firearms, for want of gunlocks, had to set them off by a slow-match of burning tow; and cannon, meant to guard the mouth of the Peiho, were trained on the channel and fixed on immovable frames. The art of printing was known in China five centuries before it made its way to Europe.
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