Through Russian Snows: A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow by G. A. Henty (reading women txt) 📕

on horseback, in the middle of the confusion of a charge, you have only got to point your pistol and bring down your man. The thing is downright ridiculous! It will be a pleasure to teach you, Mr. Wyatt. I should say, from your look, you are likely to turn out a first-rate shot."

"It won't be for want of trying if I don't," Frank replied.

"If you will take my advice, sir, you will learn to shoot with both hands. For a civilian who never wants to use a pistol except in a duel, the right hand is all that is necessary, but for a cavalry-man, the left is the useful hand. You see an officer always carries his sword in his right hand, and if he has got to shift it to his left before he can use his pistol, he could never use it at all, if hard pressed in a fight. Another thing is, that the left side is the weak side of a horseman. His sword is all right in defending him if attacked on the right, but if he is attacked on the left he is fighting under a big disadvantage. He has much more difficulty in guarding himself on that side, and he has nothing like the same reach for striking as he has on the other."

"That is quite true, now I come to think of it," Frank said; "though I never gave it a thought before. Yes, I see that the left hand is the most useful one, and I will practice with that as well as with the other. Well, what hour will suit you?"

"It don't make much difference to me, sir; the evenings are getting longer; you can see well enough until five."

"Well, then, shall we say half-past four?"

"Half-past four will suit very well, Mr. Wyatt. It is four o'clock now, so if you like to take your first lesson to-day I will meet you at the shed in half an hour. You cannot miss the place, it is on the right side of the road and stands by itself, and there is my name over the door."

"Thank you; I will be there," Frank replied.

"I may as well come with you, Wyatt," Captain Lister said. "I will fire a few shots myself, for I have had no practice for the last two years, and I have a fancy to see what I can do with my left hand. I have never tried with it, and I quite agree with Woodall that it is the left hand that a cavalry-man should use."

Frank was a good deal surprised at first to see how much more difficult it was to hit a mark, even at the distance of twelve paces, than he imagined that it would be. Woodall would not allow him to take aim.

"You will never get a chance to do that, Mr. Wyatt, in a fight; you have got to whip out your pistol, to throw up your arm and fire. It has got to be done by instinct rather than by aim. It is all very well to aim when you are on your feet and standing perfectly steady, but on a horse half-mad with excitement, and perhaps going at a gallop, you could no more hold your arm steady on a mark than you could fly. Put down the pistol for a time. Now you know, sir, when you point at a thing with your first finger extended, however quickly you do it, you will be there or thereabout, and it is the same thing if you have got a pistol in your hand. You see that black patch on the wall to the right of the target. Now turn your back to it. Now, when I give the word, turn on your heels, and the moment your eye catches that patch throw up your arm with your forefinger extended and point to it. When you get it up there, hold it as steady as you can. Now, sir!"

Frank did as he was ordered.

"Now, sir, look along your arm. You see you are pointing very nearly at the centre of the patch. You are just a little high. Now try it with your left. There, you see, you are not quite so accurate this time—you are six inches to the left of the patch, and nearly a foot high. Remember that it's always better to aim a little low than a little high, for the tendency of the hand in the act of pulling the trigger is to raise the muzzle. Now, sir, try that half a dozen times, using the hands alternately. Very good! Now take this empty pistol—no, don't hold it like that! Not one man in twenty, ay, not one in a hundred, holds a pistol right, they always want to get the first finger on the trigger. Now, you want the first finger to point with, the second finger is quite as good to pull with, in fact better, for going straight, as it does, with the arm, there is less tendency to throw up the muzzle. Now take it like this; you see my forefinger lies along in the line of the barrel, that is the really important point. Get into the way of always grasping your pistol so that the first finger is in an exact line with the barrel, then, you see, just as your finger naturally follows your eye and points at the spot, so your pistol must be in the same line. It is best to have the middle and third fingers both on the trigger, and the little finger and thumb alone grasping the butt.

"You will find that a little difficult at first, but you will soon get accustomed to it, and your little finger will rapidly gain strength, and, you see, the hold of your first finger along the barrel helps the other two to steady it. By having the middle and third fingers both on the trigger, you give a pressure rather than a pull to it, and they will soon come to give that pressure at the very moment when the first finger gets on the mark aimed at. Now try it half a dozen times with the pistol unloaded, and after pressing the trigger keep your hand and arm in as nearly the same position, so as to see if it is pointing truly at the mark. Very good! Now try with the left hand. There, you see, that hand is not so accustomed to its work, and though you might have hit the target, I doubt if either of the shots would have struck the inner circle. Now we will try with the pistol loaded."

Six shots were fired alternately with the right and left hand. Those of the former were all within a few inches of the bull's-eye, while none of the others went wide of the outside.

"Very good, indeed," the gunsmith said. "I don't hesitate to say that in a very short time you will become a fair shot, and at the end of three months, if you practise regularly, a first-class one. Your hand is very steady, your eye true, and you have plenty of nerve. Now, sir, I should advise you to keep that unloaded pistol in the drawer of your table, and whenever you have nothing else to do, spend five minutes in taking quick aims at marks on the wall, using your hands alternately. Now, Captain Lister, will you try a few shots?"

Taking a steady aim, Captain Lister put his bullets almost every time into the bull's-eye, but, to Frank's surprise, when he came to try quick firing in the way he had himself done, the captain's shooting was much less accurate than his own.

"It is a question of eye," the gunsmith said next day, when Frank was alone with him. "You see Captain Lister's shooting was fair when he took a steady aim, but directly he came to fire as he would in action, and that without the disturbing influences of excitement and of the motion of his horse, he was nowhere. He did not even once hit the target in firing with his left hand. He would certainly have missed his man and would have got cut down a moment later, and even with his right hand his shooting was very wild."

Captain Lister himself was evidently disconcerted at finding how useless his target practice would be to him in the field, and, two or three times in the next week, went with Frank to practise. He improved with his right hand, but did not seem to obtain any accuracy in firing with his left, while Frank, at the end of a month, came to shoot as well with one hand as with the other.

Frank worked steadily at Russian, and although he found it extremely difficult at first, soon began to make progress under his teacher, who took the greatest pains with him. He soon got over the good-tempered chaff of the subalterns of his detachment, who, finding that he was at other times always ready to join in anything going on, and was wholly unruffled by their jokes, soon gave it up. They agreed among themselves that he was a queer fellow, and allowed him to go his own way without interference. At the end of three months he was discharged from drill and riding school, and had thenceforth a great deal more time on his hands, and was able to devote three hours of a morning and two of an afternoon to Russian.

He was delighted with his master, whom he came to esteem highly, finding him a most intelligent companion as well as an unwearied teacher. Strelinski, indeed, would have been glad to have devoted twelve hours a day instead of five, could Frank have afforded the time. He was a very different man now to what he was when he had first called at Sir Robert Wilson's lodgings. He looked well and happy; his cheeks had filled out, and he carried himself well; he dressed with scrupulous care, and when Frank had no engagement with his comrades, the Pole accompanied him on long rides on his spare charger, he having been accustomed to riding from his childhood. From him Frank learned a great deal of the state of things in Poland and Russia, and gained a considerable insight into European politics, besides picking up a more intimate colloquial knowledge of Russian than he gained at his lessons. Of an evening Frank not unfrequently went to parties in the town. The gallant deeds of our troops in Spain had raised the military to great popularity throughout the country, and the houses of all the principal inhabitants of Canterbury were hospitably opened to officers of the garrison.

Many of the young men preferred billiards and cards in the mess-room, but Frank, who declined to play billiards, and had not acquired sufficient skill at cards to take a hand at whist, was very glad to accept these invitations. He specially enjoyed going to the houses of the clergy in the precincts of the cathedral; most of them were very musical, and Frank, who had never heard much music at Weymouth, enjoyed intensely the old English glees, madrigals, and catches performed with a perfection that at that time would have been hard to meet with except in cathedral towns.

After three months the gunmaker no longer accompanied Frank to his shooting-gallery.

"It would be robbing you to go on with you any longer, Mr. Wyatt. When a man can turn round, fire on the instant and hit a penny nine times out of ten at a distance of twelve paces, there is no one can teach him anything more. You have the best eye of any gentleman I ever came across, and in the twenty years that I have been here I have had hundreds of officers at this gallery, many of them considered crack shots. But I should go on practising, if I were you, especially with your left hand. It is not quite so good as the right yet, although very nearly so. I will come down once a week or so and throw up a ball to you or spin a penny in the air; there is nothing like getting to hit a moving object. In the meantime you can go on practising at that plummet swinging from the string. You can do that as well by yourself as if I were with you, for when you once set it going it will keep on for five minutes. It is not so good as throwing up a penny, because it makes a regular curve; but shooting, as you do, with your back to it, and so not able to tell where it will be when you turn round, that don't so much matter."

"What is the best shooting