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Updated: May 6, 2025
The brass piece, and two swivels, mounted on travelling carriages, were stationed in the centre, ready to support the post exposed to the heaviest attack: these detached works were to be all joined together by a paling, intended to enclose the whole settlement; meanwhile, the Martello tower was to be carried on with all possible speed; and it was hoped that this, when completed, would almost supersede the necessity of the rest, and form an impregnable barrier to the efforts of any native force; while the tangled brushwood, and newly-felled trees, were to form a formidable and impracticable hedge forest side.
"And with the dawn came the swarm of Mustafa Khan's clansmen, running eagerly toward the opened gateway of the fort, with their fellow conspirators shouting and shooting and waving their swords in pretended pursuit. But just within the entrance were ranged a dozen guns and arquebuses on swivels, loaded to their muzzles with slugs of iron.
Dick did not answer, but when the vessel faded into a hazy mass ahead he started the engine and steered into her eddying wake, which ran far back into the dark. Then after a glance at the compass, he beckoned Jake. "Look how she's heading." Jake told him and he nodded. "I made it half a point more to port, but this compass swivels rather wildly. Where do you think she's bound?"
As they approached the stranger opened her broadsides, and firelocks and swivels were discharged at them; but they were already so close that the shot flew over their heads, and the next instant the British seamen were scrambling up the sides of the stranger, in spite of the opposition offered them from pikes, firelocks, and pistols.
A broad platform extended over the counter, low down abaft the raised poop. Besides the long gun I have described, the larger vessels had a similar one run through the bulkhead of the cabin aft, besides numerous large swivels, four or more on a side, of various calibre, mounted in solid uprights, secured about the sides and upper works.
Besides clothesline and other such familiar and domestic twistings, there are great cordages scarce kinsmen to them, which will later put to sea and will whistle with shrill enjoyment at their release. There are such hooks, swivels, blocks and tackles, such confusion of ships' devices as would be enough for the building of a sea tale.
But when I mentioned that I had a canister of real Scotch which was of no use to me, as I had left off taking snuff, his ears became instantly opened. ‘You said something about two swivels, I think,’ said he; ‘I cannot spare you two, but I will give you one.
This amusement, I must intimate, was a favourite one with all on board, not omitting even Jacko; and whenever the yacht became land-locked, I could always hear the distinguishing order, "Load the swivels!" If it were not for the wild grandeur of the scenery, the sail among these Fiords would be most tedious, unchanging, as they are, by indications of human abode.
Lynton was busying himself with the tackle as they sailed on, when Brace turned to him and said: "You don't expect to catch anything with that great drag-hook, do you?" And he laughed at the large triangle hanging beneath a huge spoon, and furnished with a double arrangement of swivels. "Indeed, but I do," was the reply. "Here, catch hold of the tiller, my lad. Steady. A little slower now."
The main armament of the Astronef consisted of four pneumatic guns, which could be mounted on swivels, two ahead and two astern, which carried a shell containing either one of two kinds of explosives invented by her creator. One of these was a solid, and burst on impact with an explosive force equal to about twenty pounds of lyddite.
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