"When you were shot?" Bink asked. "All guns, big and little, are under
pressure when they are shot."
"I'll put your throat under pressure when we get away from here!" Bink
threatened.
"This is a twelve-inch rifle, loaded with one hundred and thirty pounds
of powder and a projectile of the same weight as the first."
The party had moved to a new point, and Captain Heath was again talking.
Other guns were fired, after the discharge of this one; the last shot
being sent from a twelve-inch rifle with a charge of four hundred and
seventy-five pounds of Dupont brown prismatic powder and a projectile
weighing one thousand pounds.
The roar, the jar, and the vibration were like that of a miniature
earthquake. Captain Heath's calm voice was heard again, after a short
silence.
"The velocity was two thousand and eighty-eight feet per second, and the
pressure four thousand pounds. This pressure is ten thousand pounds too
high. The powder is too quick, and will be condemned."
After this there was an examination of the guns and carriages, with a
lecture by Lieutenant Bell; an examination of the gun-lift battery and
the hydraulic lifts, and the wonderful Buffington-Crozier
disappearing-carriages, and a look over the site of the new artillery
post to be known as Fort Hancock.
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