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Updated: June 16, 2025
In this place I found incredible stores: mountains of percussion-caps, more chambers of fuses, small-arm cartridges, shells, and all those murderous explosive mixtures, a-making and made, with which modern savagery occupied its leisure in exterminating itself: or, at least, savagery civilised in its top-story only: for civilisation was apparently from the head downwards, and never once grew below the neck in all those centuries, those people being certainly much more mental than cordial, though I doubt if they were genuinely mental either reminding one rather of that composite image of Nebuchadnezzar, head of gold, breast brazen, feet of clay head man-like, heart cannibal, feet bestial like aegipeds, and mermaids, and puzzling undeveloped births.
In a few minutes the boarders, pikemen, and small-arm men were ranged in three lines close to our low rail, to await his attack, all preserving a perfect silence that seemed death-like.
"When Antonio came back with the whisky-an'-soda, he was told off to swing the 'ammick in slow time, an' that massacritin' small-arm party went on with their oratorio. The Sergeant had been kindly excused from participating an' he was jumpin' round on the poop-ladder, stretchin' 'is leather neck to see the disgustin' exhibition an' cluckin' like a ash- hoist.
Still, so eager was she in the pursuit, that she would not haul her wind, seemingly determined not to do so till she had sunk the chase. This there appeared every chance that she would do, for she had now got awfully near her, and it was surprising that her small-arm men had not contrived to pick off the helmsman, when the boat would, of course, have broached to, and have been her own.
Frobisher anchored a few miles up the river, and spent a whole day exercising his men at cutlass and small-arm drill, to smarten them up a little and prepare them as far as possible for the cut-and-thrust work which, he felt sure, the task of exterminating the pirates would ultimately involve.
As usual, the dose, instead of checking their progress, only stimulated them to greater exertions. The marines and small-arm men returned the fire in right good earnest, while the boats advanced more rapidly than before. The Frenchmen had been taken by surprise: they had barely time to load their guns.
The canoes gather round us; the savages begin to assail us with all their weapons, shouting and shrieking terribly. The ship gathers way; the savages, grown bold, are climbing up the sides. "Depress your guns, lads," says the captain. "Small-arm men, give it them." The shot goes crashing in among the canoes, knocking many to pieces. Not a native clinging to the sides escapes the small-arm men.
The queen's birthday coming round soon after the vicar's, Jupp, remembering how it used to be kept up when he was in the navy, great guns banging away at royal salutes while the small-arm men on board fired a feu de joie, or "fire of joy," as he translated it by the aid of Miss Conny, who happened just then to be studying French, he determined to celebrate the anniversary as a loyal subject in similar fashion at the vicarage, with the aid of a couple of toy cannon and a small bag of powder which he purchased for the purpose.
Boarding nettings were up, small-arm men were stationed at the bow and stern, and as they drew near the guns opened a hot fire with grape and canister. Still the British seamen, not to be daunted, dashed on, and, climbing up the sides and cutting their way through the nettings, in another minute the schooner's deck was won. She proved to be a Spanish privateer, a very fine new vessel.
Here the enemy made a determined stand, entrenched behind a stockade. The fight lasted for four hours, and then the situation became critical. The Maxim had jammed, the ammunition of the seven-pounder was exhausted, and a great proportion of the small-arm ammunition had been expended. Captain Cox and thirty men went into the bush, to turn the enemy's position.
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