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"Well, well, this is a matter of very little consequence though I see my learned friend is making a copious note of it," said Mr. Balais, gayly. "The main point is what, as you have told us, did occur that you found out the secret somehow. When you got it, I suppose you opened the box?" No answer, save from Mr. Smoothbore, who observed, tartly: "You have no right to assume that, Sergeant."
The shift from sail to steam, from oak to iron, from shot to shell, and from muzzle-loading smoothbore to breech-loading rifle began about 1850; and progress thereafter was so swift that an up-to-date ship of each succeeding decade was capable of defeating a whole squadron of ten years before.
A dozen of such weapons well handled on board a ship would create an astonishing effect; but for most purposes the weight of the ammunition is a serious objection. There is a great difference of opinion among sportsmen regarding the grooves of a rifle; some prefer the two-groove and belted ball; others give preference to the eight or twelve-groove and smoothbore.
As the words passed his lips some missile, from its peculiar sound I judged it was the leg off an iron pot, hurtled past my head, fired evidently from a smoothbore gun with a large charge of bad powder. Then I remembered the war-horn and all that it meant. "Off you go," I said, "we are ambushed by Kaffirs."
"You have been in Richmond?" she said. "Molly had a letter from Miriam " "Yes, I went to find, if possible, rifled muskets for my company. I did not do as well as I had hoped the supply is dreadfully small but I secured a few. Two thirds of us will have to manage, until we can do better, with the smoothbore and even with the old flintlock. I have seen a breech-loader made in the North.
He went hunting with this gun for a good many years, but he had never shot anything with it, when his uncle gave him a smoothbore rifle, and he in turn gave his gun to my boy, who must then have been nearly ten years old. It seemed to him that he was quite old enough to have a gun; but he was mortified the very next morning after he got it by a citizen who thought differently.
Smoothbore and Balais get all there is between them, confound them! I say, just pass that claret." Not another word about Richard. The judge himself had forgotten him except as a case in his notes. The jury forgot him in a week. A murder of a shipwrecked sailor happened soon afterward on that coast, and became the talk of the country-side in his place.
A warrior leaped from cover and started to run to the woods. Cousin shot him off his feet before he could make a rod. Our admiration for the smoothbore and its wholesale tactics was beyond expression. The Indians, also, thoroughly appreciated its efficacy, and there was a general backward movement toward the woods.
In 1851 Minié rifles supplanted in the British army the old smoothbore musket or "Brown Bess," with which at ranges above 200 yards it was difficult to hit a target 11 feet square. This change led quickly to the rifling of heavy ordnance as well.
Smoothbore had thus concluded a lengthened and impassioned harangue, he sat down, wiping his hands upon his handkerchief, as though implying that he had washed them of the prisoner for good and all, and that a very dirty job it had been; while the judge rose and left the court, it being the hour appointed to his system, by nature, for the reception of lunch. Richard remained in the dock.
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