Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We were taken possession of by the Gros Souris, a Spanish zebec with a long eighteen-pounder and seventy-five men. The other vessels were a three-masted zebec with an English sloop which she had captured and a schooner. Two hours afterwards we were all at anchor in the river, and the next day proceeded to St. Jago, where I had, with the crew, the felicity of being put into the gaol.
"But to return to my story: Major Crutchfield, the American commander, resolved that he and his four hundred and fifty men would do what they could to defend the town. They were encamped on an estate called 'Little England, a short distance southwest of Hampton, and had a heavy battery of seven guns, the largest an eighteen-pounder cannon.
Oh, yes, for two or three hours when they were not firing. What did fatigue matter to an eighteen-pounder spirit released from the eternal grind of trench warfare and pushing across the open in the way that eighteen pounders were meant to do? Weren't they horse artillery?
She was named the Essex Junior, carried twenty guns, of which half were long six-pounders and half eighteen-pounder carronades, and was manned by sixty of the Essex's crew under her first lieutenant. The first service of the Essex Junior was to convoy to Valparaiso the Barclay and four of the British prizes.
I thought I saw him once: but, thank Heaven, here's ball again. Ah, sir, if one could but cast a silver one! Now, stand by, men!" And once again Yeo's eighteen-pounder roared, and away. And, oh glory! the great yellow flag of Spain, which streamed in the gale, lifted clean into the air, flagstaff and all, and then pitched wildly down head-foremost, far to leeward.
Tam only saved himself by taking the risk of a spinning nose dive into that zone of comparative safety which is represented by the distance between the trajectories of high-angle guns and the flatter curve made by the flight of the eighteen-pounder shell.
The rain was gradually ceasing. Shafts of light from an unseen sun tinged the edges of the smoke-coloured clouds with amber and rose. A few spent musket-balls falling about the enclosure aroused Brock's suspicions. He was watching, from behind the earthen parapet, the flight of the shells discharged by the eighteen-pounder, and, seeing that they burst too soon, turned to the gunner.
His artillery, two batteries and two eighteen-pounder iron guns, drawn by oxen, were placed in position at intervals along the line. A battalion was thrown to the rear, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Childs, of the artillery, as reserves.
This summons was carried by Colonel Macdonell and Major Glegg, under a flag of truce, across the river. The batteries at Sandwich consisted of one eighteen-pounder, two twelve-pounders, and two 51/2-inch howitzers. Back of these artificial breastworks extended both a wilderness and the garden of Canada.
Just as we halted at a spot where two puddly, churned-up sunken roads crossed, guns behind and on either side of us belched forth flame and rasping sound. Eighteen-pounder shells screamed swiftly over us; the whole countryside spurted flashes. One of the horses plunged with nervousness. "It's an S.O.S. call, sir," said a driver who had put his horse under a bank, raising his voice against the din.
Word Of The Day