A fine piece of luck was this for a man
who had scarcely fired a shot since, aged ten, he brought down
with an air-gun an occasional sparrow at three cents a head. We
took the afternoon train to Mt. Hope on the edge of Colon and
trooped away to a little plain behind "Monkey Hill," the last
resting-place of many a "Zoner." The Cristobal Lieutenant, father
of Z. P., was in charge, and here again was that same Z. P.
absence of false dignity and the genuine good-fellowship that
makes the success of your neighbor as pleasing as your own.
"Shall I borrow a gun, Lieutenant?" I asked when I found myself
"on deck."
"Well, you'll have to use your own judgment as to that," replied
the Lieutenant, busy pasting stickers over holes in the target.
The test was really very simple. All you had to do was to cling to
one end of a No. 38 horse-pistol, point it at the bull's-eye of a
target, hold it in that position until you had put five bullets
into said bull's-eye, repeat that twice at growing distances,
mortally wound ten times the image of a Martinique negro running
back and forth across the field, and you had a perfect score.
Only, simple as it was, none did it, not even old soldiers with
two or three "hitches" in the army. So I had to be content with
creeping in on the second page of a seven-page list of all the
tested force from "the Chief" to the latest negro recruit.
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