“One man then held on tight to the butt, while another, coming out with a hot poker, discharged the weapon, the effect of which in noise and smoke was marvellous; but the poor fellow who was doing the marksman was knocked heels over head backward. He seemed, however, quite accustomed to that sort of thing, for, picking himself up in a minute, he performed what I certainly took for the coup d’état of the whole proceeding. Suddenly swinging round the jingall on its pivot, he applied his mouth to the muzzle, and blew violently down it, which sent the remaining sparks flying out of the vent, and then swung it back into its former position, by which manœuvre he nearly knocked my companion off his legs.
“The piece was then left with its muzzle inclined well upward, so that any rain which might fall would trickle nicely down the barrel and accumulate at the breech. The picket seemed to be without any shot for their jingall, for we tried to get them to put one in, so that we might fire across the bows of our junks, in order to test the courage of the boat coolies. Probably shot are not used in the warfare of the interior: our after experience was favorable to this supposition.”
Captain Blakiston rather maliciously adds, that the picket was placed there for the purpose of giving an alarm by running away as soon as any body of rebels might come in sight.
I possess a specimen of the jingall. It is exactly seven feet in length, and is, in fact, nothing more than a heavy iron tube mounted on a stock, and supplied with the rudest imaginable arrangement for the match. Altogether, I think that the risk of firing it would be rather greater than that of being fired at with it.
As for the bow and arrow, they are substantially the same as that which has been described when treating of the Tartars, the weapon having been taken up by the Chinese, and its use carefully learned after the same fashion as has been mentioned.
The most characteristic Chinese weapon with which I am acquainted is the [repeating crossbow] (shown on page 1425), which, by simply working a lever backward and forward, drops the arrows in succession in front of the string, draws the bow, shoots the missile, and supplies its place with another. The particular weapon from which the drawings are taken was said to have been one of the many arms which were captured in the Peiho fort.
It is not at all easy to describe the working of this curious bow, but, with the aid of the [illustration], I will try to make it intelligible.
The bow itself is made of three strong, separate pieces of bamboo, overlapping each other like the plates of a carriage-spring, which indeed it exactly resembles. This is mounted on a stock, and, as the bow is intended for wall defence, it is supported in the middle by a pivot. So far, we have a simple crossbow; we have now to see how the repeating machinery is constructed. Upon the upper surface of the stock lies an oblong box, which we will call the “slide.” It is just wide and long enough to contain the arrows, and is open above, so as to allow them to be dropped into it. When in the slide, the arrows necessarily lie one above the other, and, in order to prevent them from being jerked out of the slide by the shock of the bowstring, the opening can be closed by a little wooden shutter which slides over it.
Through the lower part of the slide a transverse slit is cut, and the bowstring is led through this cut, so that the string presses the slide upon the stock. Now we come to the lever. It is shaped like the Greek letter π, the cross-piece forming the handle. The lever is jointed to the stock by an iron pin or bolt, and to the slide by another bolt. Now, if the lever be worked to and fro, the slide is pushed backward and forward along the stock, but without any other result.
Supposing that we wish to make the lever draw the bow, we have only to cut a notch in the under part of the slit through which the string is led. As the slide passes along the stock, the string by its own pressure falls into the notch, and is drawn back, together with the slide, thus bending the bow. Still, however much we may work the lever, the string will remain in the notch, and must therefore be thrown out by a kind of trigger. This is self-acting, and is equally simple and ingenious. Immediately under the notch which holds the string, a wooden peg plays loosely through a hole. When the slide is thrust forward and the string falls into the notch, it pushes the peg out of the hole. But when the lever and slide are drawn backward to their full extent, the lower end of the peg strikes against the stock, so that it is forced violently through the hole, and pushes the string out of the notch.