The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, Volume 2 (of 2)Paltock, Robert
Science
The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, Volume 2 (of 2)
Paltock, Robert
Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction
Maleck having chose me out fourscore of his countrymen, in about a
month's time I trained them up to the knowledge of my pistols and
cutlasses, and the management of them; and taking a chest with me for
the arms and other necessaries, we sallied up to the Black Mountain. I
rested there; and there Nasgig and Lasmeel overtook me, saying that when
they found me obstinate to go, they could not in their hearts leave me,
happen what would. This put new spirits into me, and we consulted how
the noises lay, and agreed to engage first upon the skirts of them,
where the smokes were most straggling. I charged six guns and all my
pistols, which I kept in my chest, and ordered them to alight with me
about a hundred paces from the first smoke they saw; then ordered three
of them to carry my guns after me, and twelve of them to take pistols
and follow me; but not to fire till I gave orders. The remainder I left
with the baggage.
We marched up to the smoke, which issued out of a low archway just at
the foot of the mountain. It was very light there with the flames of the
volcano; and entering the arch, a fellow ran at me with a red-hot iron
bar; him I shot dead: and seeing two more and a woman there, who stood
with their faces to the wall of the hut or room, as unwilling to be
seen, I ordered Maleck to speak to them in a known tongue, and tell
them we were no enemies, nor intended them any hurt; and that their
companion's fate was owing to his own rashness in running first at me
with the hot bar; and that if they would show themselves good-natured
and civil to us, we should be so to them; but if they offered to resist
openly, or use any manner of treachery towards us, they might depend
upon the same fate their companion had just suffered.
Upon hearing this, they approached us; and showing great tokens of
submission, I delivered my gun to Maleck, and bade them go on with their
work, ordering all the guns out of the shop for fear of a spark. I then
perceived they were direct forges, but made after another manner
from ours, their wind being made by a great wheel, like a wheel of a
water-mill, which worked with the fans or wings in a large trough, and
caused a prodigious issue of air through a small hole in the back of the
fireplace. They were then drawing out iron bars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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