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Updated: June 24, 2025
Entering at the city gate, on the left bank of the river, near the Maharajah's palace, we walked past a row of trumpery pop-guns, on green and red carriages, and so through the most filthy and odoriferous bazaar I ever met with, till we reached the residence of Saifula Baba, the great shawl merchant of Sirinugger.
The Emperor said to those who were near him, while admiring the splendid behavior of the Guard, "Look at those brave fellows, with a good-will they would run over the stone-slingers and pop-guns of the line, in order to teach them to charge without waiting for them; but it would have been useless, as the work has been well done without them."
Imposing as they certainly looked, and heavier though they were than most of those with which the world's famous sea-fights have been fought, they were already antediluvian. A few years later I saw a long range of them enjoying their last repose on the skids in a navy-yard; and a bystander, with equal truth and irreverence, called them pop-guns.
Of these the most acrid, namely, those of Peltier's paper, "L'Ambigu," had already received the reprobation of the British Ministry; but, as had been previously explained at Amiens, the Addington Cabinet decided that it could not venture to curtail the liberty of the Press, least of all at the dictation of the very man who was answering the pop-guns of our unofficial journals by double-shotted retorts in the official "Moniteur."
In the barracks were twelve rooms for the officers and accommodation for 100 men. The guns of Fort Howe would be no better than pop-guns in modern warfare. Indeed they appear never to have been fired upon an invader.
We got over that, although we left a good piece of my pants in the broken glass. But the hell of it was the M. P.'s got over too an' they had their pop-guns out. An' the last I saw of Bill Rees was there was a big fat woman in a pink dress washing clothes in a big tub, an' poor ole Bill Rees runs head on into her an' over they both goes into the washtub. The M. P.'s got him all right.
"What do you suppose those mosquitoes expect to do against us with their pop-guns and tomato cans?" asked Lawrence. "I do not know." Edestone shook his head. "Perhaps they are just coming up to look us over. They will keep out of sight, and as they may not know that we are protected on top, will perhaps try to drop one of their tomato cans on us. That is, if they can get close enough.
"Then we're going to do some pistol-shooting at a mark with ball-cartridge." "Pooh! It's all fudge!" said Bob yawning. "I wouldn't mind coming if you were going to do something with real guns." "Why, they're real pistols." "Pistols! Yes pop-guns. I mean big cannons." "Ah, well," I said, "I'm sorry you will not come, but I must go."
The Frenchmen, however, had more wind than we had, and gained on us fast. We threw our fourteen pop-guns overboard to lighten her, for even Cochrane felt that it was useless to think of fighting now.
He gave us an account of the capture off Barcelona, by the Speedy sloop-of-war, of the Gamo frigate, more than twice her size. The Speedy was a little craft, of one hundred and fifty-eight tons only, and carried fourteen pop-guns four-pounders with a crew of fifty-four men; while the Gamo measured six hundred tons, and had thirty-two guns, with a crew of three hundred and nineteen men.
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