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I am to have two petty officers, and Sir Sidney said that as you knew all about the brig you would be very useful to me. All the men are to remain here. Now we must overhaul the stores. What have you got on board?" "We have a very short supply of powder and ball, not above ten rounds for each gun, and there is hardly any small-arm ammunition.
The Honorary Secretary shouted himself hoarse through the din; and the smoke of the cheroots was like the smoke, and the rattling of the dice-boxes like the rattle of small-arm fire. Ten horses started very level and Regula Baddun's owner cantered out on his hack to a place inside the circle of the course, where two bricks had been thrown.
He came to the place where the main highway to Boulder Lake branched off from the road he was following. He turned into it, walking doggedly. Three miles toward the lake, an engine sounded from behind him. He got off the highway and turned the switch. A half-ton truck came trundling openly along the road. It came closer and closer. Small-arm ammunition exploded.
His words were drowned by a terrific discharge from the fort, the whole eastern front of which seemed to break out into flame and smoke, while a perfect storm of shot, shell, and small-arm missiles swept the ship, striking down men, ripping up planking and bulwarks, cutting rigging, and generally doing a tremendous amount of damage.
"Every one of them, and what is worse, all the reserve small-arm ammunition is lost too. The mules carrying them were with ours, and as the fighting up there has been going on ever since, I am afraid the infantry must have pretty well used up their last cartridges."
About the same time a consignment of half a million rounds of small-arm ammunition, which was discovered by the authorities through faulty packing in cement-bags, was also confiscated in another part of the country.
The little company of marines, under its own officers, was drawn up on the quarter-deck to keep down the fire of the enemy's small-arm men, and be ready to repel boarders, or head an attack, if the ships should come in contact.
If we should chance to engage a ship, then, who could tell but some bungling small-arm marks-man in the enemy's tops might put a bullet through me instead of the Commodore? If they hit him, no doubt he would not feel it much, for he was used to that sort of thing, and, indeed, had a bullet in him already.
They then endeavoured to procure some intelligence of the admiral and the rest of the officers, but without success. By daybreak they had gathered together about eighty marines, eighty pikemen, and one hundred and eighty small-arm seamen; all the survivors of those who had made good their landing.
An uncle of mine, Frederick Vizetelly, came over, I remember, and interviewed Freyeinet and others on behalf of an English small-arm firm. I forget whether he secured a contract or not; but it is a lamentable and uncontrovertible fact that many of the weapons and many of the boots sold by English makers to the National Defence were extremely defective.
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