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The harquebus or hak-bus, hook-gun, so called because of the hook in the front part of the barrel to give steadiness in firing was much lighter, was discharged from the hand; and carried bullets of twenty-four to the pound. Both weapons had matchlocks. The pike was eighteen feet long at least, and pikemen as well as halberdsmen carried rapiers.
Well, a lot of Terrans in the Year Zero had never seen a suit of armor, or an harquebus, or even a tinder box or a spinning wheel. Wheelbarrows; now there was something they'd find useful. He screened Max Milzer, in charge of the fabricating and repair shops on the ship. Max had never even heard of a wheelbarrow. "I can make them up, Mark; better send me some drawings, though.
Both sides suffered from short ammunition; but the Armada, with no fresh supplies, was undoubtedly in the worse case. "They fighting with their great ordnance," writes Medina Sidonia, "and we with harquebus fire and musketry, the distance being very small." Six-inch guns against bows and muskets tells the tale.
In a company of a hundred and thirteen, including officers, he had sixty-four armed with firelocks to thirty carrying pikes and halberds. As before his time the proportion between the arms had been nearly even; he thus more than doubled the number of firearms. Of these weapons there were two sorts, the musket and the harquebus. The musket was a long, heavy, unmanageable instrument.
But this I am free to tell thee that in the pitched court, betwixt the antechamber to my lord's parlour that hath its windows to the moat, and the great bay window of the hall that looks into that court, there goeth a descent, as it seemeth of stairs only; but to him that knoweth how to pull a certain tricker, as of an harquebus or musquetoon, the whole thing turneth around, and straightway from a stair passeth into an easy matter of a sloping way by the which horses go up and down.
The good old gentleman, Mr. Conscience, was knocked down twice by one of the Diabolonians, whose name was Mr. Benumbing. And my Lord Understanding had like to have been slain with an harquebus, but that he that shot wanted to take his aim aright. Nor did the other side wholly escape, for there was one Mr. Rashhead, a Diabolonian, that had his brains beaten out by Mr.
The Island of Gozzo being taken some years ago by the Turks, a Sicilian, who had two beautiful daughters marriageable, killed them both with his own hand, and their mother, running in to save them, to boot, which having done, sallying out of the house with a cross-bow and harquebus, with two shots he killed two of the Turks nearest to his door, and drawing his sword, charged furiously in amongst the rest, where he was suddenly enclosed and cut to pieces, by that means delivering his family and himself from slavery and dishonour.
The method of discharging these weapons was primitive in the extreme, as it was necessary to hold a lighted match to the priming, in a pan at the right side of the barrel, and one can imagine what a lot of fizzing, spluttering, and swearing there must have been in damp weather! Improvements in the harquebus and musket, as it got to be called later on, continued to be developed from time to time.
"I tell you, on the credit of a poor gentleman," he said, "that there were five hundred discharges of demi-cannon, culverin, and demi-culverin, from the Vanguard; and when I was farthest off in firing my pieces, I was not out of shot of their harquebus, and most time within speech, one of another."
The harquebus or hak-bus, hook-gun, so called because of the hook in the front part of the barrel to give steadiness in firing was much lighter, was discharged from the hand; and carried bullets of twenty-four to the pound. Both weapons had matchlocks. The pike was eighteen feet long at least, and pikemen as well as halberdsmen carried rapiers.
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