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Some few there were who got by subtler means to within 600 yards of the British front and 200 yards from Maxwell's blacks, there to yield their lives. Among the earliest, if not the first man, wounded in the zereba on 2nd September was Corporal Mackenzie, of "C" Company Seaforth Highlanders. About 6.10 a.m. he was hit in the leg by a ricochet.
Truth is the ricochet of a prejudice bouncing off a fact. Truth is what every man sees lurking at the bottom of his own soul, like the oyster shell housewives put in the kitchen kettle to collect the lime from the water. By and by each man's iridescent oyster shell of Truth becomes coated with the lime of prejudice and hearsay. All the above is probably untrue.
And now there was a second and longer probation in that gaunt town of Edinburgh, without any miniature to lie beside me on my work-table like a tickless watch, and help along the weary hours. For, as it seemed, the mere sight of the hand-of-write would have cheered me. Henceforward I could only learn, as it were, by ricochet what was going on. My grandmother never set pen to paper.
Ball after ball flew over or fell short, or kicked up the sand in the inclosure; but they had to fire so high that the shot fell dead and buried itself in the soft sand. We had no ricochet to fear; and though one popped in through the roof of the log-house and out again through the floor, we soon got used to that sort of horse-play and minded it no more than cricket.
I have seen several shot with a single bullet from a smooth-bore, and on one occasion, George tells me he saw a tigress killed with a single smooth-bore bullet at over a hundred yards. The bullet was a ricochet, and struck the tigress below the chest, and travelled towards the heart, but without touching it. She fell twenty yards from where she had been hit.
She was always yielding always ready to give in. But when Bridget in her harsh aggravating way fought things out and won, Nelly was indeed often made miserable, by the ricochet of the wrath roused by Bridget's methods upon herself; but she generally ended, all the same, by realising that Bridget had done her a service which she could not have done for herself.
In the evening deserters from hiscamp told Murray that the French were in full retreat; on which all the English batteries opened, firing at random through the darkness, and sending cannon-balls en ricochet, bowling by scores together, over the Plains of Abraham on the heels of the retiring enemy.
Bullets were splatting out, though none came near Hawkes. They seemed to ricochet off the air a few feet in front of him. The slim young man drew back. And now, the rubble and stones along the street began to lift, and to drive savagely at the attackers. A gale swept along the street, though Hawkes could feel no breath of air, and the force of it was enough to knock most of them down.
Jim sat in the stern of his little boat, guiding and propelling it with his paddle. Flocks of ducks rose before him, and swashed down with a fluttering ricochet into the water again, beyond the shot of his rifle. A fish-hawk, perched above his last year's nest, sat on a dead limb and watched him as he glided by. A blue heron rose among the reeds, looked at him quietly, and then hid behind a tree.
Nothing satisfied him. He was particularly distressed about the fullback. Hogboom was a good fellow and took signal practice perfectly, but he was no fiend. He lacked the vivacity of a real, first-class Bengal tiger. He wouldn't eat any one alive. He'd run until he was pulled down, but you never expected him to explode in the midst of seven hostiles and ricochet down the field for forty yards.
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