A little farther on we encountered four beautiful
nine--pounder fieldpieces, each lumbering along, drawn by half a dozen
mules, and accompanied by three or four negroes, but with no escort
whatsoever.
"I say, quashie, where are the bombardiers, the artillerymen?"
"Oh, massa, dem all gone to drink pruce."
"What, more spruce!--spruce--nothing but spruce!" quoth I.
"Oh, yes, massa--after dem drink pruce done, dem all go to him
breakfast, massa--left we for take de gun to de barrack--beg one
feepenny, massa"--as the price of the information, I suppose.
"Are the guns loaded?" said I.
"Me no sabe, massa--top, I shall see." And the fellow to whom I
addressed myself stepped forward, and began to squint into the muzzle of
one of the fieldpieces, slewing his head from side to side, with absurd
gravity, like a magpie peeping into a marrow--bone. "Him most be load--
no daylight come troo de touch--hole--take care make me try him." And
without more ado he shook out the red embers from his pipe right on the
touch--hole of the gun, when the fragment of a broken tube spun up in a
small jet of flame, that made me start and jump back.
"How dare you, you scoundrel?" said the captain.
"Eigh, massa, him no hax me to see if him be load--so I was try see.
Indeed, I tink him is load after all yet."
He stepped forward, and entered his rammer into the cannon, after an
unavailing attempt to blow with his blubber--lips through the touch
hole.
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