The various nations, all over the world, are watching the trial of this gun with the greatest interest. It can be so easily handled, can be carried by ten men, and put together and made ready for firing two minutes after it is unloaded, that other nations are anxious to see if it is really the valuable weapon it is claimed to be.
Besides the advantages of being light and easy to handle, it can be fired without noise or smoke, and therefore its whereabouts are not easily discovered by an enemy; and moreover, if it has to be abandoned in a retreat, it can be disabled with one sharp blow of a stone, so that it can never be turned on its fleeing owners by a victorious enemy.
If the report about it is true, it has one fault, that is so serious that it outweighs all the virtues. This fault is that the dynamite-gun has a habit of going off at both ends; that is to say, it is liable to explode both at the breech and the muzzle. It may therefore be quite as destructive to the army firing it, as to the enemy at which it is fired.
Of course this will render the gun very unpopular, if it is true; but people who understand the weapon declare that the fault lies, not in the gun, but with the climate of the West Indies.
The three tubes of this gun (which we described fully in Number 6 of The Great Round World) are fastened together at the breech with a clasp which holds the whole mechanism of the gun in place.
The climate of the West Indies is so moist that metal rusts in an amazingly short space of time, and it is difficult to keep anything bright and polished.
It is supposed by those who understand the gun that, having been constantly exposed to the moist air, it has rusted, and that the important clasp has become so rusty that it can no longer be pushed fully home, and so the gun is not secure.
In their opinion the failure of the dynamite-gun has not been proved; it may be necessary to make some alterations to fit it for service in swampy countries, but that as a weapon it is still a success.
Terrible floods are reported from the Mississippi Valley. A section of the country equal in size to the whole State of Missouri is now under water, and steamboats are hurrying over what were once farm lands, rescuing the unfortunate families who have been caught by the floods.