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A shower of bullets from their muzzle loaders pattered on the door or whistled in through the windows. Buck gave a grunt of pain as a bullet cut him across a shoulder; Jim and Jack were untouched.
Regardless of the fire poured upon them they hewed away at the sharp stakes, or strove to pull them up with their hands. The riflemen on the walls directed their fire now exclusively upon the leaders of the column, the breech loaders doing immense execution, and soon the Dahomans in their efforts to advance had to climb over lines of dead in their front.
This applies to those who loosen the coal from the bed; the loaders, who have constantly to lift heavy blocks of coal into the tubs, age with the twenty-eighth or thirtieth year, so that it is proverbial in the coal mining districts that the loaders are old before they are young.
There were enough to cover the country, red and black, for a dozen miles. We sighted them yesterday about four o'clock and there were enough around us to eat us alive, but we just threw out skirmish lines and marched steadily ahead, so they thought best not to bother us. They're shy of our breech loaders, damn 'em! That's all that kept them at respectful distance."
The sudden clanging of every bell on the place, the explosion of twelve hundred mortars and the simultaneous booming of an enormous cannon that far-famed gun whose wayward tricks had cost the lives of hundreds of its loaders in the days of the Good Duke might have passed for an earthquake of the first magnitude, so far as noise and concussion were concerned. The island rocked to its foundations.
Our scouts and pickets guards were driven in and forced to join the main ranks for safety. The Mormon troops were placed in position by the officers, so as to guard every point. We all had a large supply of bullets, with the patching sewed on the balls to facilitate the loading of our guns, which were muzzle loaders.
The mere names of scores of modern instruments of farming, all unknown in Civil War days hay carriers, hay loaders, hay stackers, manure spreaders, horse corn planters, corn drills, disk harrows, disk ploughs, steam ploughs, tractors, and the like give some suggestion of the extent to which America has made mechanical the most ancient of occupations.
Further progress was also made by the invention of breech loaders, which gave an increased rate of fire to these already formidable weapons, and to make matters still worse, much larger guns than had ever been made before could now be constructed without difficulty, and naval men justly began to feel uncomfortable about the safety of our "wooden walls."
Only two men could climb it abreast, and the advancing files could have been destroyed by a dozen marksmen with breech loaders. The only reasonable supposition was that, having been engaged for five hours, their ammunition was practically exhausted. Several acts of heroism were performed in the battle.
On the glacis facing the bay, and also on the open space just south of the walls, are mounted 9-inch breech loaders, four in all, made at Hoatoria, Spain, in 1884. They are well mounted, between high traverses, in which are bomb-proof magazines. These guns are practically uninjured, and Admiral Dewey has the breech blocks.
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