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Updated: June 29, 2025
They had bitten cartridges until there was a deep black circle around their mouths. The burnt powder from the ramrods had blackened their hands, and in their efforts to remove the perspiration from their faces they had completed the coloring from the roots of the hair to the chin.
The other hunters shortly returned, bringing in another of the little deer; for the stag of the pampas is of small size. They were speedily skinned by the Gauchos, and cut up, and all the party were now engaged in roasting duck and venison steaks on their steel ramrods over the fire.
One could hear the whistling of bullets, the rattle of locks, the clink of ramrods; the whole line seemed to be a moving reptile, which moved a thousand glittering legs at the same time.
The resinous knots hissed as they were thrust into the snow, and the black, sinister night of winter, with the cries of the wind in the branches, fell upon the troop of men, ready to die as their chief had died; and all disappeared vision, phantoms the Tzigani silently taking refuge in the sombre forest, while here and there could be heard the rattle of the ramrods as the honveds loaded their guns.
Frederick, or some one of his time, the name marks the period, replaced wooden by cylindrical iron ramrods. To prime more quickly a conical funnel allowed the powder to pass from the barrel into the firing-pan. These two last improvements saved time in two ways, in priming and in loading. But it was the adoption of the breech-loader that brought the greatest increase in rapidity of fire.
At four o'clock in the afternoon we halted near a small pond of water, where we took up our residence for the night, lighted a fire, and prepared to cook our supper: that was, to broil over a couple of ramrods a few slices of salt pork, and a crow which we had shot.
Their ramrods clanged loud with fury as their eager arms pounded the cartridges into the rifle barrels. The front of the regiment was a smoke-wall penetrated by the flashing points of yellow and red. Wallowing in the fight, they were in an astonishingly short time resmudged. They surpassed in stain and dirt all their previous appearances.
It was a grim and grisly spectacle, for no form of torment from the nerve-wracking test of knife and tomahawk, arrow or bullet, aimed with intent to graze the flesh and not immediately to kill, to the ghastly ordeal of red-hot ramrods and blazing pine-root splinters thrust into the flesh or under the nails was omitted by those bloodthirsty red devils.
"We have the hatchets, and can whittle it away; and perhaps we can make some chisels, from the ramrods of your guards' guns. A lot can be done, with patience and plenty of hands." Stanley then went down below, and explained to the others the plan proposed.
I thought the voice was Ramon's, but I could not turn, and the people in the carriage answered in French, I thought. A man was shouting "Cool Drinks" on the other side of them. Finally, there was a roar, an irresistible swaying, a rattle of musket ramrods, a rhythm of marching feet, and the grating of heavy iron-bound wheels.
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