ained kid, without a seam or wrinkle, slightly greased with the
best watch-maker's oil--selected a ball perfectly round and true--laid
the patch upon the muzzle, and placing the bullet exactly in the centre
over the bore, buried it with a single rap of a small lignum vita
mallet, which hung from his button-hole; and then, with but a trifling
effort, drove it home by one steady thrust of the stout copper-headed
charging rod. This done, he again inspected the cone, and seeing that
the powder was forced quite up into sight, picked out, with the same
anxious scrutiny that had marked all of his proceedings, a copper cap,
which he pronounced sure to go, applied it to the nipple, crushed it
down firmly, with the hammer, which he then drew back to half-cock, and
bolted. Then he set the piece down by the fireside, drained his hot
jorum, and...

"That fellow will do his work, and no mistake," said he. "Now A--- here
is my single gun"--handing to him, as he spoke, one of the handsomest
Westley Richards a sportsman ever handled--"thirty-three inches, nine
pounds and eleven gauge. Put in one-third above that charger, which is
its usual load, and one of those green cartridges, and I'll be bound
that it will execute at eighty paces; and that is more than Master Frank
there can say for his Manton Rifle, at least if he loads it with bullets
patched in that slovenly and most unsportsmanlike fashion."

"I should like to know what the deuce you mean by slovenly and
unsportsmanlike," said Frank, pulling out of his breast pocket a couple
of bullets, carefully sewed up in leather--"it is the best plan
possible, and saves lots of time--you see I can just shove my balls in
at once, without any bother of fitting patches."

"Yes," replied Harry, "and five to one the seam, which, however neatly
it is drawn, must leave a slight ridge, will cross the direction of the
grooving, and give the ball a counter movement; either destroying
altogether the rotatory motion communicated by the rifling, or causing
it to take a direction quite out of the true line; accordingly as the
counteraction is conveyed near the breech, or near the muzzle of the
piece."

"Will so trifling a cause produce so powerful an effect?" inquired the
Commodore.

"The least variation, whether of concavity or convexity in the bullet,
will do so unquestionably--and I cannot see why the same thing in a
covering superinduced to the ball should not have the same effect. Even
a hole i