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Long he gazed, and then, slightly shaking his head, stepped down from the beam and paced about the little enclosure, half unconsciously examining the work of platform and parapet, and following with a gunner's eye the range of the pieces yet unmounted; pausing longest before the eastern front, he marked with satisfaction how well the minion there to be placed would guard the landing and sweep the solitary street, and even knelt to look along its imaginary barrel.
A very smart and soldierly appearance the quartermaster-sergeant presented on horseback in his position on the left hand of the forward driver, a good-looking light-haired man, Adolphe by name, whose mount was a sturdy chestnut, admirably matched with the mate that trotted at his side, while in his proper place among the six men who were seated on the chests of the gun and its caisson was the gunner, Louis, a small, dark man, Adolphe's comrade; they constituted a team, as it is called, in accordance with the rule of the service that couples a mounted and an unmounted man together.
In 1835 R.H. Dana, Jr., the author of "Two Years before the Mast," found Monterey but little changed; some of the cannon were unmounted, but the Presidio was still the centre of life on the Pacific coast, and the town was apparently thriving. Day after day the small boats plied between ship and shore, and the population gave themselves up to the delights of shopping.
"What! do you mean that you won't be there the day after to-morrow?" cried Potel, interrupting his friend. "Do you wish to be called a coward? and have it said you are running away from Bridau? No, no! The unmounted grenadiers of the Guard can not draw back before the dragoons of the Guard. Arrange your business in some other way and be there!" "One more to send to the shades!" said Max.
A third horse, Wilson's, fell dead, and what was, perhaps equally disastrous, one of the bullocks also. The means of traction and transport were now reduced to three bullocks and four horses. The situation became grave. The unmounted horsemen might walk, of course, as many squatters had done already; but if they abandoned the wagon, what would the ladies do?
One of the unmounted searchers carried a lantern. They were Tom Walsh, -on Keno, -Jack Durham, and Tom Sherwood. "What in 'tarnation's the trouble, lad?" demanded Tom, as soon as the searching party had exchanged greetings with Ralph, fervently overjoyed to see them. "We've been looking for you ever since three o'clock this afternoon." Ralph explained the object of his quest.
Exceedingly startled, Si and Shorty sprang up, seized their guns, bounded to the door and looked out. They could see nothing to justify the alarm. There was not a rebel, mounted or unmounted, in sight. In the road below were two or three army teams dragging their slow way along, with their drivers yelling and laughing at a negro, whose mule was careering wildly across the fenceless field.
I carry still the keen impression of that moment when I took, unconsciously, the measure of the three: the mounted army man, commander of the fort, big in his official authority and force; Jondo on his great black horse, to me the heroic type of chivalric courage; and between the two, Esmond Clarenden, unmounted, with feet firmly planted, suggesting nothing heroic, nothing autocratic.
The four champions had now been joined by some fifty horsemen and a large body of unmounted peasants. Turner was made prisoner; and the money restored to the service of those from whose pockets it had been originally drawn. The number of the insurgents had now risen to three thousand.
So we were invisible unless the camels should approach too close. The Turks and Tugendheim I saw placed in the midst of all the other unmounted men, and ordered them guarded like felons; and I bade those in charge of mules and horses stand by, ready to muzzle their beasts with coats or what-not, to prevent neighing and braying.
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