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Updated: May 3, 2025
But now a greater danger awaited us, for the savages had outrun us on the bank, and were about to plunge into the water ahead of the schooner. If they succeeded in doing so, our fate was sealed. For one moment Bill stood irresolute. Then, drawing a pistol from his belt, he sprang to the brass gun, held the pan of his pistol over the touch-hole, and fired.
He had managed to get in a shot during the confusion, and one of the blacks next rammed in the powder and put another shot in after it. "All right! now blaze away, my hearty!" he sang out. He had piled up a good quantity of powder over the touch-hole, so there was an abundance of smoke, and the negro whom he addressed fully believed that the gun had gone off.
And I could trust my husband to see to that; and before I touched one of them I made him put a brimstone match to the touch-hole. And I found it so pleasant to polish them, from having such wicked things quite at my mercy. The wood was what I noticed most, because of understanding chairs.
Such was his solicitude, that it was a thousand pities he was not able to dwarf himself still more, so as to creep in at the touch-hole, and examining the whole interior of the tube, emerge at last from the muzzle. Quoin swore by his guns, and slept by their side. Woe betide the man whom he found leaning against them, or in any way soiling them.
"Yes, you rascal!" said Bevis, putting a pinch of powder on the touch-hole, "you know you are a wicked story-teller; you killed the poor leveret after I let you loose. Now!" and he went down on one knee, and put his cannon-stick on the other as a rest to keep it straight. "Wait a minute," said the weasel, "just listen to me a minute. I assure you "
"No," he whispered; "if it comes to the worst, and Jarette and his scoundrels are making for here, I shall put the muzzle of my gun to the touch-hole and fire it." "Won't it blow the priming away?" I said. "No; it will fire the piece instantly." "I hope he will not have to try," I thought to myself as I ran to Walters' cabin, and told him of the fight to come. "And I can't help," he moaned.
"There is no one to hear, since we are alone upon the rampart, nor can it do scathe, since it points to sea. I pray you to loose it and I will listen to the sound." He bent over the bombard with an attentive ear, while Aylward, stooping his earnest brown face over the touch-hole, scraped away diligently with a flint and steel.
I tell you it was a hard race; and being without my gun now only my bayonet stack in my trousers' waist-band I was there first, and had driven my spike into the touch-hole before Lieutenant Leigh reached his; but the next moment his was done, the cords were cut, and the prisoners loose from the guns. But now we had to get back.
"Again I saw him raised to his hands and knees and the men stand away from him, and old Jorge stoop glancing along the gun. "'Left a little. Right an inch. Por Dios, senor, stop this trembling. Where is your strength? "The old gunner's voice was cracked with emotion. He stepped aside, and quick as lightning brought the spark to the touch-hole.
At this moment an arquebusier leveled his piece from a neighboring mound, with deadly aim; but the watchful Minerva, who had just stopped to tie up her garter, seeing the peril of her favorite hero, sent old Boreas with his bellows, who, as the match descended to the pan, gave a blast that blew the priming from the touch-hole.
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