Читать книгу The Long Rifle - Stewart Edward White - Страница 17

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Fortunately for our belief in this chronicle, records, both ancient and modern, are here to sustain us. Otherwise we could not be blamed for dismissing the whole story with a shrug. So convinced—and justly so—have we become of the superiority of our modern high-velocity rifles, that we have ended by unduly depreciating the old-fashioned arms, but especially the flintlocks dealt with in this our tale. Our impression of them is that they were slow to load, clumsy to handle, dilatory in fire, and of only approximate accuracy. Or if we admit accuracy at all, it is only within the limits of a very short “squirrel range.” As a matter of fact, we are in general very skeptical of even that much; suffering, I suppose, from a reaction against Fenimore Cooper’s impossible absurdities.

But in sober earnest these impressions are libels upon an excellent weapon; and many of them, as accusations against its efficiency, must fall to the ground. That the old long rifles were not clumsy, a moment’s handling will convince any experienced rifleman, if he can get hold of a good specimen. That the flintlock, when properly constructed, in good condition, and with the best flint suitably edged and sharpened, is, so far as the marksman can tell, as fast as a percussion lock is surprising but true. “With regard to the interval between the flash pan and the explosion,” writes Captain Dillin, “actual tests under the most exacting conditions have proved that it is so trifling as to be negligible; that there is no time to flinch and therefore no bad deliveries.” He describes then the proper loading and priming, and goes on. “Hangfires and missfires are unknown under these conditions, and having had a wide experience with both flintlock and percussion, the author hesitates to give the claim of superiority to the latter system.” And fortunately for our curiosity as respects the remaining point—accuracy—we need here depend on no mere legends. In ancient bullet pouches have been found many targets, tucked away there by their owners, probably after a successful shooting match. And in our own times a few perfect specimens of these old rifles have been tested by our modern experts. I have seen a few of the former; and the results of a number of the latter tests are before me as I write. At one hundred yards from the muzzle, and of course from a dead rest, three successive shots were so closely grouped that a five-cent piece was large enough to touch all three; three more from the same rifle—named “Old Killdeer,” by the way—repeated this; and two other groups of three each could be covered by a silver half-dollar and a dollar respectively. Another arm of similar type made five straight bull’s-eyes at the same range; placed six bullets in succession inside a dollar at fifty yards; and of five bullets at twenty-five yards four cut into the same hole and the fifth was but three sixteenths of an inch outside. Captain Dillin quotes from an assistant to one of the old rifle makers, who said: “No gun ever suited him unless it was capable of driving a tack three times out of five at fifty yards.”

While one hundred yards might be adopted arbitrarily as about the limit of this delicate accuracy, that by no means marked the effective limit of the gun, especially in war. Old Killdeer, at two hundred yards, placed five balls which could be included in a rectangle five by seven and a half inches; which is good grouping for any modern arm, except such precisionists as the high-velocity type. Careful tests at the standard silhouette man target gave ten straight hits at two hundred; and five out of ten at three hundred. “And,” reports the man who made the tests, “the penetration from any of these rifles at three hundred yards, and even beyond that distance, was sufficient to kill, or put out of action, anyone hit.”

So we see that the commanding advantage of such weapons as the modern Springfield, as practical arms within the limits desired by the old timers, lies largely in their speed; and that we cannot dismiss as apocryphal the tales of accuracy that have come down to us from old times.