ad come out to the country by way of a skylark rather than as a
settler, had followed the hunters, bent, he said, on firing a broadside
into a buffalo. He had brought with him a blunderbuss, which he averred
had been used by his great-grandfather at the battle of Culloden. It
was a formidable old weapon, capable of swallowing, at one gulp, several
of the bullets which fitted the trading guns of the country. Its powers
of scattering ordinary shot in large quantity had proved to be very
effective, and had done such execution among flocks of wild-fowl, that
the Indians and half-breeds, although at first inclined to laugh at it,
were ultimately filled with respect.

"I doubt its capacity for sending ball straight, however," remarked Dan
to Jenkins, who was carefully cleaning out the piece, "especially if
charged with more than one ball."

"No fear of it," returned the sailor, with a confident air. "Of course
it scattered the balls about six yards apart the only time I tried it
with a lot of 'em, but that was at fifty yards off, an' they tell me
that you a'most ram the muzzle against the brutes' sides when chasin'
buffalo. So there's no room to scatter, d'ee see, till they get inside
their bodies, and when there it don't matter how much they scatter."

"It's well named a young cannon by La Certe," said Peter Davidson, who,
like the seaman, was out on his first buffalo-hunt. "I never heard such
a roar as it gave that time you brought down ten out of one flock of
ducks on the way up here."

"Ay, Peter, she barked well that time," remarked the sailor, with a
grin, "but, then there was a reason. I had double-shotted her by
mistake."

"An' ye did it too without an aim, for you had both eyes tight shut at
the time," remarked Fergus. "Iss that the way they teach ye to shoot at
sea?"

"In course it is," replied Jenkins, gravely. "That's the beauty o' the
blunderbuss. There's no chance o' missin', so what 'ud be the use o'
keepin' yer eyes open, excep' to get 'em filled wi' smoke. You've on'y
got to point straight, an' blaze away."

"I did not know that you use the blunderbuss in your ships at all," said
Dechamp, with a look of assumed simplicity.

"Ho yes, they do," said Jenkins, squinting down the bell-mouthed barrel,
as if to see that the touch-hole was clear. "Aboard o' one man-o'-war
that I sailed in after pirates in the China seas, we had a blunderbuss
company. The first-leftenant, who was thought to be qu