, and Stuart with a touch of
returning professional consciousness wondered with that contempt for
ignorance characteristic of the expert what wise project they had in
progress now. For the gun had just been charged, but with that economy
of powder, the most precious commodity in these far-away wilds, for
which the Indians were always noted. The ball, skipping languidly out,
had dropped down the embankment outside and rolled along the ground
with hardly more force than if impelled down an alley by a passable
player at bowls, barely reaching the glacis before coming to a full
halt. Realizing the difficulty, the gun under the king's directions was
shotted anew; erring now in the opposite extreme, it was charged so
heavily that, perhaps from some weakness in the casting, or the failure
to duly sponge and clean the bore, or simply from the expansive force of
the inordinate quantity of powder, the piece exploded, killing two of
the savages, serving as gunners, and wounding a third. The ball, for the
cannon had been improperly pointed by some mischance, struck the side of
the nearest block-house, and as its projectile force was partly spent by
the explosion, the tough wood turned it; it ricochetted across the whole
expanse of the enclosure, striking and killing an Indian lying asleep on
the opposite rampart. A vast uproar ensued, and Stuart could have
laughed aloud in bitter mirth to see Oconostota almost stunned alike by
the surprise and the force of the concussion, timorously and dubiously
eying the wreck. Then, with a subdued air of renunciation and finality,
"Old Hop," as the soldiers called him, came limping carefully down the
steep ramp from the terrepleine, evidently just enlightened as to the
dangers lurking about the breech of the cannon, well as he had long been
acquainted with the menace of its muzzle. The fury of the savages bore
some similarity to the ricochet forces of the misdirected cannon-ball.
Stuart plainly perceived himself destined to bear the brunt of the
infuriating mishap in which, although he had no agency, he might be
suspected of taking secret and extreme delight. It was for a moment a
reversal of the red man's supremacy in the arts of war, that had been
demonstrated by the results of the siege, the acquisition of the
ordnance, the surprise and the massacre of the capitulated garrison. In
the stress of the noisy moment, when the corpses had been carried off
and the howling women and their friends had f