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Updated: June 28, 2025
I did not know but he might be shooting at me, with a view to getting my sloop and her cargo; and so I threw up my old Martini-Henry, the rifle that kept on shooting, and the first shot uncovered three Fuegians, who scampered from a clump of bushes where they had been concealed, and made over the hills. I fired away a good many cartridges, aiming under their feet to encourage their climbing.
From 1881 every Transvaal and Orange Free State Boer without exception had, and was obliged to have, his Martini-Henry rifle. The Government arsenals were supplied with reserves of that up to recently unsurpassed weapon and with large stores of ammunition. The authorities supplied that rifle at £4 each, and even gratis in the case of indigent burghers.
Instead of the powerful Lee-Metford rifle, with its smokeless powder, its magazine action, and its absence of recoil, they were armed with the Martini-Henry, which possessed none of these advantages. In place of the deadly Maxim there was the Gardner gun the very gun that jammed at Tamai, and that jammed again at Abu Klea.
There was no mistaking the nature of the missile a regulation Martini-Henry "picket." About five hundred yards away a country-boat was anchored in midstream; and a jet of smoke drifting away from its bows in the still morning air showed me whence the delicate attention had come. Was ever a respectable gentleman in such an impasse?
The regiment possessed carbines beautiful Martini-Henry carbines that would lob a bullet into an enemy's camp at one thousand yards, and were even handier than the long rifle.
Jem had reloaded, so he put a bullet through this young fellow; and then putting in another cartridge, he floored the third, and they were all dead in less than a minute. It's a fine rifle is that Martini-Henry, but I think you'll be displeased, as we had no business to go nigh the place; it ain't my fault, and I wouldn't have done it myself, you may be sure."
Having emptied his Colt's repeater, he threw it carefully under a peculiar tree, so that he might find it when business was done; then he went to work with his revolver. As he rode forward he came upon an open stretch of ground, and the first object that struck his attention was a well-knit Kaffir on one knee covering his body with a Martini-Henry.
Perhaps, I thought, it was from this very store that Solomon drew the raw material for his "great throne of ivory," of which "there was not the like made in any kingdom." On the opposite side of the chamber were about a score of wooden boxes, something like Martini-Henry ammunition boxes, only rather larger, and painted red. "There are the diamonds," cried I; "bring the light."
The batteries took their place in the openings between the battalions, and the Maxim-Nordenfeldts were soon carrying death into the advancing foe; while the Martini-Henry, with which the black and Egyptian troops were armed, mowed them down as by a scythe. The Soudanese battalions fired, as was their custom, individually, as fast as they could load; the Egyptian battalion by steady volleys.
There were no guns at this point, and the only available troops were three hundred of the prisoners from Pretoria, armed with Martini-Henry rifles and obsolete ammunition.
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