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Updated: June 16, 2025


The house now boasted six rooms; the barn and stock-sheds had at a distance the appearance of a town in themselves; the collection of haying implements mowers, loaders, stackers was almost complete enough to stock a jobbing house.

Presumably these sorry crow-baits, which drooped and limped about the barren railroad yards at the back of the siding where the shell loaders squatted, had been whole-skinned and sound of wind and joint in early August. Two months of service had turned them into gaunt wrecks. Their ribs stuck through their hollow sides.

These guns are not the "gas-pipes" I have seen up north; but decent rifles which have had the rifling filed out and the locks replaced by flint locks and converted into muzzle loaders, and many of them have beautiful barrels. I find the Ajumba name for the beautiful shrub that has long bunches of red, yellow and cream- coloured young leaves at the end of its branches is "obaa."

A saw log does not make a great deal of fuss while falling, but it falls through anything that happens in its way, and a man who gets mixed up in a load of twenty-five or thirty of them obeying the laws of gravitation from a height of some fifteen to twenty feet, can be crushed into strange shapes and fragments. For this reason the loaders are picked and careful men.

As loaders in that celestial chorus, I found about 400 frock-coated, top-hatted gentlemen from various parts of the world elderly diplomatists, ambassadors inured to the stifling atmosphere of courts, Foreign Ministers who had served their time of intrigue, professors who worshipped law, worthy officials primed with a stock of phrases about "the noble sentiments of justice and humanity," but reared in the deadening circle of uniforms, decorations, and insincere courtesy, having no more knowledge of the people's desires than of the people's bacon, and instructed to maintain the cause of peace chiefly by safeguarding their country's military interests.

If I did not care about eating, though, I was highly interested in the preparation of the Blazer presently for action, her five-inch breech- loaders being loaded with Palliser shell and the hoppers of her machine- guns filled; while the crew with rifles in their hands and cutlasses by their side mustered at quarters.

Of course, in those days only muzzle loaders were used, although we had cut-felt wads and all the improvements in gunnery known at that time. My weapon was supplied me by Captain Stevenson a good Manton, somewhat battered up from much use, but of excellent even pattern. Orme shot a Pope-made gun of London, with the customary straight hand and slight drop of the English makes.

Here a cavalcade of twenty or thirty carts, there in clusters of twos or threes. When they reach the factory the loaders have several vats ready for the reception of the plant, while others are taking out the already steeped plant of yesterday; staggering under its weight, as, dripping with water, they toss it on the vast accumulating heap of refuse material.

They come in the evening and bore holes for the blasting. Once these holes were bored by hand, but now they are made with powerful drills that work by compressed air. A little later other men come and set off cartridges. In the morning when the dust has settled and the smoke has blown away, the loaders appear with their shovels and load the coal into the cars.

An order was shouted by a man who was evidently their leader and, pausing, those who were armed with breech loaders fired after the flying horseman; totally disregarding Lisle, who had the satisfaction of finding that his sacrifice had been effectual, for the horse pursued its way without faltering. When it was out of range, the chief turned to Lisle.

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