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The forts mounted 33 rifled muzzle-loading guns, 3 rifled breech-loaders, and 120 old smooth-bores. The advantage in gun-power lay with the ships, especially as the sailors were by far the better marksmen. Fort Pharos continued to fire till 4 P.M. On the whole, the Egyptian gunners stood manfully to their guns.
Married women go scouting around at all hours and in all kinds of places with Platonic lovers, until the "old man" feeds a few slugs into a muzzle-loading gun and lets the Platonism leak through artificial holes in the hide of some gay gallant. When madame must have her beaux, and maids receive attention from married men, there's something decayed in the moral Denmarks. Mrs.
So we got our repeating rifles, some of the first that were ever made, serviceable but rather complicated weapons that fired five cartridges. Hans, however, with my permission, armed himself with the little Purdey piece that was named "Intombi," the singe-barrelled, muzzle-loading gun which had done me so much service in earlier days, and even on my last journey to Pongoland.
Ammunition there was none, for the artillery had been supplied with old muzzle-loading pistol and other cartridges broken up for the last weeks of the siege. And so ended the contest of four hundred years.
It was evident at a glance that neither of the cannon would be likely to hit a battle-ship at a distance of five hundred yards without a special interposition of Providence; and as the mortars had no elevating, training, or sighting gear, and could be discharged only at a certain fixed angle, it is doubtful whether they could drop a shell upon a floating target a mile in diameter and yet these five mortars and two eighteen-pounder muzzle-loading guns were all the armament that Morro Castle had.
"How do you get food for them?" Harkaman asked. "Or don't you bother?" "Oh, we gather that up all over," Valkanhayn told him. "We send parties out with landing craft. They'll let down on a village, run the locals out, gather up what's around and bring it here. Once in a while they put up a fight, but the best they have is a few crossbows and some muzzle-loading muskets.
The general effect was that of a gigantic mushroom carrying a heavy gun, and wearing a huge pair of blue goggles. La Salle alone of the four carried a huge single gun of number six gauge, and carrying a quarter of a pound of heavy shot to tremendous distances. The others used heavy muzzle-loading double-barrels.
When Sandy came he looked over the crude collection of shacks, gambling houses and saloons in the new town, and made up his mind that the time was not ripe for any of his "inside" schemes just yet. He gambled a little, and won sufficient to buy himself grub and half an outfit. A feature of this outfit was an old muzzle-loading rifle.
The most noteworthy feature of this, excepting, of course, the setting and reefing and taking in sail on board a moving vessel, instead of practising all these merely in dumb-show as had been our wont in a stationary ship like the Saint Vincent, was the exercise we had with the old-fashioned little muzzle-loading truck guns, which were mounted on wooden carriages of the sort only seen in the old Victory nowadays, with which the Martin was provided.
The Mir mounts a few primitive, muzzle-loading cannon, and the citadel is garrisoned by a thousand men, chiefly Afghans, deserters from Cábul, Kandahár, and other parts of the Ameer's dominions. They are a ragged, undisciplined lot.
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