The corporal, moreover, fixed his "baggonet," as he called
the formidable, glittering instrument that usually embellished the
end of his musket--a MUSKET being the weapon he chose to carry,
while the bee-hunter himself was armed with a long western RIFLE.
CHAPTER XVI.
The raptures of a conqueror's mood
Rushed burning through his frame;
The depths of that green solitude
Its torrents could not tame,
Though stillness lay, with eve's last smile,
Round those far fountains of the Nile
--MRS HEMANS.
When the bee-hunter and Corporal Flint thus went forth in midnight,
from the "garrison" of Castle Meal (Chateau au Miel), as the latter
would have expressed it, it was with no great apprehension of
meeting any other than a four-footed enemy, notwithstanding the
blast of the horn the worthy corporal supposed he had heard. The
movements of the dog seemed to announce such a result rather than
any other, for Hive was taken along as a sort of guide. Le Bourdon,
however, did not permit his mastiff to run off wide, but, having the
animal at perfect command, it was kept close to his own person.
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