A PICKANINNY’S TREASURE TROVE
Once at Annapolis, while we were firing a six-pounder semi-automatic gun in a speed test, we had succeeded in firing forty-two aimed shots in a minute into a huge earth butt, which, owing to recent rains, was merely a heap of mud.
The day following, a negro boy, about fourteen years old, found one of the projectiles, which had penetrated the butt, and glancing, came out at the top without exploding. This he brought up to where my assistant was doing some work on the gun, and showed what he had found.
My assistant shouted at him, “Look out! That’s loaded, and if you drop it, it might go off.”
Frightened, the negro immediately dropped the projectile upon the hard cement pavement, and, as it struck point down, it did go off, and took off one of his legs; and a fragment of the shell came dangerously close to the head of my assistant.