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Updated: September 20, 2025
The sheyk and two of the chief men of El Arnieh were on horseback and armed with matchlocks; and the whole 'posse of the village were following on foot, with yells and vituperations of the entire ancestry of the merchant, and far more complicated and furious threats than Arthur could follow; but he saw Yusuf go forward to meet them with the utmost cool courtesy.
Meanwhile, about forty people all armed, assembled pêle-mêle on the opposite side of the route, on a hill behind, uttering wild cries, and throwing up their matchlocks into the air. The cries now ceased, and was succeeded by a most anxious silence, all waiting a closer observation.
To our astonishment, for the enemy had crept forward so silently that we had hardly heard a sound, there was a hideous yell, and a crashing volley, the bullets hissing over our heads again, and once more the gong-beating began. "Fire!" I said. "Yes, fire, my lads, steady where you see the flashes of their matchlocks." The voice came from close to my ear. "Mr Reardon!" I cried in astonishment.
The banks of the hollow were lined with swarthy troops, armed with matchlocks, from which they poured a steady fire upon our bewildered men, just roused from slumber, and groping in confusion after their arms. On an eminence a short way behind I espied an officer, whom I took to be Monichund himself, seated on an elephant, issuing orders to his troops.
Discharged from such a barrel, there being nothing to keep the point in the direction of its flight, it soon tumbles over, like an arrow without a feather, and strikes wide of the mark. Delvigne's new gun came into use in 1840. The long matchlocks of the Arabs had been very worrying to the French in Algiers.
This done, they tied the end of the ropes that bound our necks to the pommels of their saddles, and, having loosed our feet, they sprang on their ponies and rode off, with shouts, hisses, and cries of victory, firing their matchlocks in the air, and dragging us prisoners into the settlement.
To assail the camp first would assuredly, by the firing, draw upon them those from the village, and in whatever evil state these might arrive, they would, by their numbers, terrify the bowmen, who without doubt would have suffered some loss from the matchlocks.
His head is shaved to the bone; his face, of the Semitic type, is most sinister, truculent, and ferocious; his filthy Afghan rags bristle with knives and tulwars. He carries five or six matchlocks under one arm, and a hymn book, or Koran, under the other. He is in holy orders a Ghazi!
There was no people there, and the Army got afraid; so Dravot shoots one of them, and goes on till he finds some people in a village, and the Army explains that unless the people wants to be killed they had better not shoot their little matchlocks, for they had matchlocks.
'Now what may this mean? I said to Guatemoc, and as I spoke, I saw a Spaniard wave a white cloth in the air. Then, in an instant, before the cloth had ceased to flutter, a smoke arose from every side, and with it came the sound of the firing of matchlocks.
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