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Updated: June 18, 2025
The rhetorical trick of belittling the matter by speaking of it as "fisticuffs" will not pass in this discussion. When the South Carolina negroes on election day looked into the rifle-barrels of the Red-shirt clubs, it was no matter of fisticuffs. When every statesman in our country was eagerly seeking a peaceful solution of the Hayes-Tilden dispute, it was not fisticuffs that they feared.
And Amber gave over, in amazement unbounded, seeing the starlight glinting down a dozen levelled rifle-barrels, glowing pale on the spiked, rounded crowns of pith helmets, and striking soft fire from burnished accoutrements; while a voice, thick with a brogue that was never bred out of hearing of Bow Bells, was hectoring them to surrender. "'Ands up, ye bloomin' black beggars! 'Ands up, I s'y!"
"It does have to be exact," his guide answered, "but that is a matter of care rather than of difficulty. In this next building we bore the rifle-barrels, just a simple boring process, as you see, but there are all sorts of precautions taken to insure absolute steadiness.
The trenches support, communication, and firing had trickled with creeping rivulets of khaki caps and been a-bristle with bobbing rifle-barrels. Further back amongst the lines of guns the last loads of ammunition were rumbling up to the batteries, the last shells required to 'complete establishment' and over-complete it were being stowed in safe proximity to the guns.
There were a hundred of them, so cleverly ambushed behind a hedge that we would never have suspected their presence had we not caught the glint of sunlight on their rifle-barrels. We should not have gotten much nearer, in any event, for they had a wire neatly strung across the road at just the right height to take us under the chins.
As I came nearer to Belfort, I saw the guns going at a trot down a side road, and, a little later, I saw marching on my right, a long way off, the irregular column, the dust and the invincible gaiety of the French line. The sun here and there glinted on the ends of rifle-barrels and the polished pouches. Their heavy pack made their tramp loud and thudding. They were singing a song.
"For God's sake let them hear no sound in this belt of bush," I whispered to Lois. "I am calm, Euan. I am not afraid." "Then fallow the Sagamore." One by one we turned and crept away southward; and I was ever fearful that some gleam from the fire, catching our rifle-barrels or axe-heads, might betray us.
The seventeen men, riding two and three abreast, silent and grave for the most part, followed him. The moon shone upon their rifle-barrels and made black, grotesque shadows underfoot. Against the northern sky Mt. Temple was lifted sharply outlined; from its crest a leaping flame was stabbing at the stars, a new signal-fire to be seen across many miles.
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