“An’ ye did it too without an aim, for you had both eyes tight shut at the time,” remarked Fergus. “Iss that the way they teach ye to shoot at sea?”
“In course it is,” replied Jenkins, gravely. “That’s the beauty o’ the blunderbuss. There’s no chance o’ missin’, so what ’ud be the use o’ keepin’ yer eyes open, excep’ to get ’em filled wi’ smoke. You’ve on’y got to point straight, an’ blaze away.”
“I did not know that you use the blunderbuss in your ships at all,” said Dechamp, with a look of assumed simplicity.
“Ho yes, they do,” said Jenkins, squinting down the bell-mouthed barrel, as if to see that the touch-hole was clear. “Aboard o’ one man-o’-war that I sailed in after pirates in the China seas, we had a blunderbuss company. The first-leftenant, who was thought to be queer in his head, he got it up.
“The first time the company was ranged along the deck he gave the order to load with ball cartridges. There was twenty-six of us, all told.
“‘We’ve got no cartridges for ’em, sir,’ whispered the man nearest him.
“‘If you don’t obey orders,’ growled the leftenant ’tween his teeth, ‘I’ll have ye strung up for mutiny every man Jack of you—load!’ he repeated in a kind of a yell.
“We had our or’nary belts and pouches on, so we out wi’ the or’nary cartridges—some three, some four,—an’, biting off the ends, poured in the powder somehow, shoved in the balls anyhow, an’ rammed the whole consarn down.
“‘Present—fire!’ roared the leftenant.
“Bang! went the six an’ twenty blunderbusses, an’ when the smoke cleared away there was fourteen out o’ the twenty-six men flat on their backs. The rest o’ us was raither stunned, but hearty.