236 BTJRSTING OF A GUN. 



past them, and finally sunk in deeper water. 

 They then " swept " for him nearly a whole 

 day with a weighted rope, but could not re- 

 cover him. 



An affair which might have had a termina- 

 tion anything but comical, however, was, that 

 they had burst the gun I had bought at Ham- 

 merfest for them to shoot fowls with. They 

 seemed to attribute this catastrophe to the low 

 price (four and a lialf dollars) which I had 

 given for that weapon; but as a gentleman 

 who accompanied me last summer had burst a 

 seventy-guinea London rifle near the very 

 same spot, a friend of mine burst a four- 

 barrel the year before in Norway, and my 

 present compagnon cle voyage, Lord David 

 Kennedy, burst another expensive rifle by 

 the same maker a few years before in India ; 

 it seems that even the exorbitant prices charged 

 by the crack London makers afl^ord no security 

 whatever against such accidents ; so that I was 

 inclined to attribute this mishap to careless 

 loading. The explosion had very nearly de- 

 prived my valued sailing-master, Mr. Wood, of 

 his left arm ; and as it was, the arm had been 

 burned and lacerated in a painful manner, but 

 was now healing. 



