The gun fired perhaps fifty rounds before it stopped. Then it stuck, and my assistant worked at the belt and lever, attempting to start it again. I told him to put down the safe so that the gun could not fire, which he did. I was then about to step around the gun in front, which I confess was a very careless thing to do, when it began firing again. I was already so close to the muzzle that my clothes were cut by the bullets and burned by the gunpowder.
The trigger had been pulled, and held pulled, by the sand, so that the safe did not prevent it from firing.
It is pretty good practice to keep away from the business end of a loaded gun.
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.