Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 24, 2025
At the station itself the "Tommys" buzzed about like bees, and the officers were having tea or dinner, or both combined, in the refreshment-room. One overheard scraps of conversation, from a subaltern to his superior officer: "A capital bag to-day, sir. Forty Mausers and ten thousand rounds of ammunition."
There were a dozen insurgent soldiers at the door, and as many more at the foot and head of the stairs, with several officers, all in military costume, the privates carrying Spanish Mausers and the officers wearing swords. We were admitted to an inner room, with a window opening on the street, and told the General would see us directly.
His troops, merely desirous of testing their brand-new Mausers, and as calmly cruel as only Easterns can be, did open a heavy fire a day or two ago on some Boxer marauders who had strayed into a station on the Tientsin-Peking line, and proposed to crucify the native station-master and beat all others, who were indirectly eating the foreign devils' rice by working on the railway, into lumps of jelly.
For a few minutes the Spanish returned the fire with Mausers, but as shell after shell crashed through the blockhouse, they abandoned it and fell back toward Coamo. Soon flames leaped upward from the roof, and an hour later the fort was but a smoldering ruin. "Meanwhile the infantry was pressing rapidly forward. General Wilson was wondering what had become of Hulings.
We wanted to be in time for the first fight." "I think yours was the first fight, except that a few shots were exchanged between our scouts and the Boers on the morning after the ultimatum expired. Now, sir, if you should at any time be in want of necessaries I shall be glad to supply you; but I cannot furnish you with ammunition, as the Mausers carry a smaller bullet than our rifles."
The party solemnly paraded the streets for fully half an hour, in no wise disconcerted by a pretty lively shelling and the ring of the Mausers on the corrugated iron roofs. Quite as disagreeable as "Creechy," although less noisy, was the enemy's 1-pound Maxim.
Five pencilled words may seem a small thing to build hope on, but it was enough for me, and I went about my work in the store with a reasonably light heart. One of the first things I did was to take stock of our armoury. There were five sporting Mausers of a cheap make, one Mauser pistol, a Lee-Speed carbine, and a little nickel-plated revolver.
With the full dawn and the first snapping of Boer Mausers from the hills around they had thrown up some sort of rude defences which they might hope to hold until help should come. But how could help come when there was no means by which they could let White know the plight in which they found themselves?
Their arms have been obtained from various sources, from purchases in Hongkong, from the supply which Admiral Dewey found in the arsenal at Cavite, from capture made from the Spaniards. They are partly Mausers and partly Remingtons. Their ammunition was obtained in the same way. They have used it freely and the supply is now rather short.
Graydon could see his comrades firing at the door from behind every conceivable barrier. Without hesitation he dashed down the aisle and into the thick of the fray near the door. The struggle was brief but fierce. The merciless fire of many Mausers on the outside opened a way through the small band of defenders, and the rush of the besiegers was successful.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking