Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
We could tell how the fight had gone by the way in which the bodies lay. In one place the Russians had made a stand, and were piled up in heaps as the British again and again charged them. In other parts the round-shot had torn through whole ranks of men, cutting them down like corn before the reaper's sickle.
This so terrified the Chinese that, after a few discharges of round-shot had been fired into other junks, the crews of many jumped overboard, while others cut their cables in the hopes of escaping on shore. Some were immediately captured, others escaped up the river, pursued by the Nemesis, which succeeded in bringing one down and burning another which had grounded.
And at other times they would seem to be fighting with some enemy serving at their guns stripped half-naked, with handkerchiefs knotted about their heads, and with the grime of powder-smoke upon their bare flesh and so blackening their faces as to give their gleaming eyes a still more savage look; falling dead or wounded with their blood streaming out upon the deck and making slimy pools in which a man running sometimes would slip and go down headlong and would get up, with a laugh and a curse, only in another moment to drop for good as a musket-ball struck him or as a round-shot sliced him in two; and all of them with a savage joy in their work, and going at it with a lust for blood that made them delight in it and take no more thought than any other fighting brutes would take of guarding their own lives.
A moment later she too staggered and fell sideways stunned by the wind of a round-shot. The firing ceased as suddenly as it began. I heard a voice saying as if it continued a discussion "And Lantine of all men! I'd have picked him for the levellest-headed man in the troop. By the way, he comes from these parts, I've heard say." And with that I ran to my sister's side.
Further search brought to light several more round-shot, but in the same state as the first, and we noticed that in several places the timbers were burnt, most probably by the natives, or the crew themselves, for the sake of the copper bolts.
This line had three sections of field-guns, that kept things pretty lively, and several round-shot came so near me that I realized that they were aimed at my staff; so I dismounted, and made them scatter. As the gunboats got closer up I saw their flags actually over the parapet of Fort Hindman, and the rebel gunners scamper out of the embrasures and run down into the ditch behind.
The rest of the ridge was unprotected by guns in position, it being at so great a distance from the city and also free from the enemy's attacks; the only danger and annoyance arose from occasional shells, which reached the camp and exploded amongst the tents, from round-shot and from rocket fire.
But one day the name of James Dutton blazed forth in a despatch that electrified the community. At the storming of Chapultepec, Private James Dutton, Company K, Rivermouth, had done a very valorous deed. He had crawled back to a plateau on the heights, from which the American troops had been driven, and had brought off his captain, who had been momentarily stunned by the wind of a round-shot.
At this juncture another French ship, the "Montagne," passing under the "Marlborough's" stern, fired a broadside into her of round-shot and langridge, killing many of her brave crew, and wounding among others her captain, though receiving but a few shots in return.
This is the heavy artillery, the round-shot and shell; but M. Dumas is too skilful a general to leave any part of his forces unemployed, and does not omit to bring up his sharpshooters, and open a pretty little fire of ridicule upon English travellers in Italy, who, as it is well known, go thither to make the fortunes of innkeepers and purchase antiquities manufactured in the nineteenth century.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking