“Good,” murmured Jack, as he heard the terms of the armistice, “that ought to be plenty of time and—Oh, glory be!”
Ned had come on deck while the young leader was speaking. In his arms he carried a collection of as strange-looking weapons as were ever seen outside of a museum. Yet they represented a type of gun destined to become famous.
“Hurray!” muttered Tom under his breath, “they’re the gas-guns, sure enough.”
While Captain Andrews’ eyes fairly bulged. Jack took one of the guns. They were of a dull colored metal, allowing no light to glint from any bright surfaces. A barrel about three and a half feet in length, terminated in a cylinder of greater diameter than the barrel itself. This was a muffler, which effectually silenced the sound of the spring that was used to send the gas globes on their way and snap the fuses. The stocks of these odd firearms, if such they could be called, were large, and contained sixteen “gas globes”—spheres of a tough and glutinous kind of gelatine, filled with the destructive gas—a compound of ammonium nitrate,—in a semi-liquid form.
“How do you fire them?” asked Captain Andrews.
“Handle them just as you would an ordinary gun,” rejoined Jack. “The globes will burst when they strike the Tarantula and spread the gas they contain broadcast. Luckily, the craft is to leeward of us, or we might be in danger of getting a dose of our own medicine when the gas globes detonate.”
“Will the gas kill them?” asked Captain Andrews, in such a vindictive tone that Jack couldn’t help smiling.
“Hardly,” he said; “but it will take the fight out of them for a while, I imagine.”
Acting under the lad’s instructions. Captain Andrews summoned some of the interested sailors to him. There were twelve of the guns “and a chest full of ammunition below,” whispered Ned.
Eight of the men were given a gas-gun each. Their faces expanded in grins as they learned the nature of the novel weapons.