devastation, was very impressive, and caused
one to regard them with great interest and
respect. They waited with their cavernous mouths
turned this way, till at last a bugle was heard
to sound in the distance, and in a moment
afterwards there was a flash of something, and a puff
of something, and the hut received a shock, and
one's ears seemed suddenly to be driven mysteriously
into the interior of one's throat, and one's
teeth to have become loosened, and—in a word,
a gun had been fired.

We were not released from our place of retirement
until this discharge had been succeeded by
two others, and not then even, for a minute or
two, because the air was full of all sorts of
fragments which had been struck out of the target
and out of the different structures near it, and
which, falling on the head of one of the committee
on iron, might have interfered to some extent
with the clearness of his judgment. Once released,
we all rushed off pell-mell to see how these blows
had told. They had not told much, being only
some trifles discharged from a 68-pounder of
the old school, which had just dinted the surface
of the target a little, and flown off from its iron
plates, as a peppercorn might from a cuirass.

Again we were ordered under cover, and
again, after long waiting and much expectancy,
our ears were driven into our throats, and our
teeth loosened in their sockets. This time it
was an Armstrong gun which had been tried,
but it was only a 110-pounder, and the impression
made upon the target was little more than
in the previous experiment. So far, the iron-
plated ship which the target represented was
decidedly getting the best of it.

The next time we emerged from cover, it was
with a considerably quickened interest. A
projectile weighing nearly 300 pounds, shaped
something like a very thick and blunt sugarloaf,
and standing about eighteen inches from
the ground before it was placed in the gun, had
beeu blown, with a charge of 45 Ib. of powder,
out of Sir William Armstrong's 300-pounder.
When we reached the target, we found this trifling
object lying about a dozen yards from the place
where it had struck: its own force having caused
it to rebound so far. It was also very much
shortened by the violence of the collision, and
spread out proportionably. And well it might
be. It had struck full upon the seven-and-a-
half inch plate—the reader is requested to
remember what seven and a half inches of iron
are—it had pierced this mass through, had
broken one of the ship's ribs, and had given
the whole structure a shake which had seriously
loosened the rivets and screws that held it
together. Yet this was nothing to what was
coming; for the next experiment was to be
made—not with a shot at all, but with a shell
—a live shell weighing 286 Ib., with a charge
of 11 Ib. of powder inside it.

If we were careful before, to get out of harm's
way, we were certainly still more careful now. In
that great cavern in which we were all stowed
away, it has been mentioned that a great ragged
breach existed, through which what was going
on outside could be seen well enough. We
were all ordered away even from that aperture
now, and were crowded to one side of our place
of refuge. There is all the difference in the
world between shot and shell; the shot could
be depended on to go straight from the mouth
of the gun to the target: the only cause for
apprehension being that the splinters of target
or pieces of the missile itself might fly off after
the concussion, and so do mischief. With the
shell it was different. It might burst as it left
the gun, and one of its fragments might fly
straight in at that breach of which mention has
been made: or, as had happened on the occasion
of the last experiments, the gun itself might
burst, and one of its scathed atoms find its
way to where we were. So we all kept to
the side of the building where there was no
danger, crowding together;—some of us,
perhaps, glancing up now and then at an ugly long
scar on that part of the brickwork which was
opposite the breach, and which looked
uncommonly like a mark left by some such flying
messenger as we were hiding away from. As we
stood thus in silent expectation, the whole
aspect of the scene must have given one a good
idea of what takes place in actual warfare, when
some mighty fortress is being besieged by the
enemy.

What a crash that was when the explosion
did take place at last, and seemed to shake the
very ground on which we stood! And what a
rush took place as soon as prudence allowed us
to go and see how the iron-clad ship had borne
the blow! The woodwork at the back of it was
on fire; that was the first thing that we saw, for
the smoke was rising from the top of the target.
The projectile had not rebounded this time.
It had gone straight through the armour-plate,
and had burst in the massive structure on which
the plates were laid, and which represented the
wooden portion of the ship's side. And there
the greater portion of the shell remained firmly
embedded in the wood, which had caught fire at
the moment of the explosion. As one looked
about and saw how the fragments of the shell,
which had burst outward, had embedded
themselves in the timbers of the adjacent buildings,
one could form some idea of what frightful
results would follow if such a missile actually
penetrated to the between-decks of a ship intact,
only bursting to pieces when it got among the
crew.

This, however, was not accomplished either
by this shell of Sir William Armstrong's or by
that of Mr. Whitworth, which was next fired;
no, nor by any other missile employed in that
day's experiments.

The shell discharged from the Whitworth gun,
which is not circular in the bore, but hexagonal,
penetrated to the same depth as the Armstrong
shell had done: bursting also when well through
the armour-plates, and remaining, like the last,
embedded in the ship's timbers. There was,
however, this great difference between the two
experiments. The Armstrong shell weighed
nearly twice as much as the Whitworth shell,