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Updated: May 23, 2025
When they scampered away at the sound of the terrific explosions, and at sight of the smoke and the iron balls I landed a couple of hundred red warriors and led them to the opposite end of the hill into the tunnel that ran to its summit. Here we met a little resistance; but a volley from the muzzle-loaders turned back those who disputed our right of way, and presently we gained the mesa.
Boston replied that he did not know the stranger, told briefly how he came into camp, and by adroit questioning drew, in laconic sentences, a story from the taciturn Indian. The man was a hunter, who had been a famous bear-killer many years ago. In the days of muzzle-loaders he had two rifles, one of which was always carried for him by an Indian whom he hired for that service.
Some 400 soldiers are stationed in the fort, which means that the commander draws the pay for 1000 soldiers, and represents the strength of his garrison as 1000. Their arms are primitive and rusty muzzle-loaders of many patterns; there are no guns to be seen, if there are any in existence which is doubtful.
Ranged in a semicircle before the tent was a crowd of braves and warriors all arrayed in the picturesque garb that was unspoilt by any touch of Saxon attire, such as is commonly seen among redskins of the present day. Except that the old-time bows and arrows were replaced by more modern muzzle-loaders, there was nothing to suggest any association with white men and white men's tastes.
With the usual roars he rolled several times in apparent convulsive struggles, until half hidden beneath the dense jungle; there he remained. If I had had a double rifle I could have repeated the shot, but in those days of muzzle-loaders I had to reload a single rifle, and as usual, when in a hurry, the bullet stuck in the barrel and I could not drive it home.
Marching alongside the palanquin, on each side, at a distance of a few feet only, so narrow was the jungle path, was a line of Government troops, their weapons, consisting of flint-locks, match-locks, halberds, old muzzle-loaders, and, in a few cases, modern breechloaders, sloped over their shoulders; while close beside the litter, but a little in advance, so that Frobisher was unable to see the man's face, walked an officer with a drawn two-handed Chinese sword in his hand.
The cannon that he passed, with the exception of the Montigny mitrailleuses and the American gatlings, were all beautiful pieces, bronzed and engraved with crown and LN and eagle, but for all their beauty they were only muzzle-loaders. In a little while he came to the head of the column.
He crept forward inch by inch until he was on the verge of the gap they had torn in the road. Yet all the time a friendly rib of rock at the projecting angle of the precipice protected him from the long iron-barrelled muzzle-loaders carried by U Saw's retainers. The expert hands of the Kachins made short work of tearing up a number of small beams.
The tract shops exhibited in their windows bullet-dinted testaments, mothers' gifts to their soldier sons whose lives had been saved by it; for the muzzle-loaders of those days could not drive a projectile through so many pages.
For a few seconds that seemed to be minutes he listened, cherishing the quick thought that perhaps a turtle, wandering far beyond accustomed limits, had disturbed one of the spring-gun communications on the sands. A sputtering volley, which his trained ear recognized as the firing of muzzle-loaders, sounded the death-knell of his last hope. The Dyaks had landed!
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