Some makes of automatic firearms, instead of using the recoil for operating the mechanism, have a small tube alongside the barrel, which communicates by a minute hole with the bore of the barrel near its muzzle.

The breech does not open till the bullet is just pa.s.sing out of the barrel, past the hole into the tube, and therefore the expansion of the gas of the explosion loses its force.

A small fraction of this gas rushes through the hole into the tube and operates the mechanism.

This has been the principle I have always worked on in trying to solve the problem of an automatic firearm.

One system uses the recoil, tempered by a buffer, to modify its force.

The other consists in diverting enough gas from the big explosion to operate the mechanism gently.

It is conceivable that by this latter system it would be possible to convert the explosion of a siege cannon into a force just strong enough to break an egg, and that by two such divisions of the explosion, one would open the breech and the other close it, without the necessity of any anti-recoil mechanism at all on the principle of the slide valve of a locomotive steam engine. (My grandfather, Ross Winans, invented the locomotive slide valve, not Stevenson.)

I think I am right in saying that this system has not yet been applied to automatic pistols, and that they all operate on the recoil, driven back by a compressed spring.

A fault in every automatic pistol I have yet seen, is the difficulty of first loading it.

The cartridges are carried in a clip, which is inserted in the b.u.t.t of the pistol and drops out on pressing a b.u.t.ton. Most automatic pistols indicate when this magazine is empty and the pistol unloaded.

This is very good, but what I complain of is that, after the magazine is full, you have to bring the first cartridge into the barrel by hand, after the first shot the cartridges are fed into the barrel and the empty ones ejected, automatically.

When getting the first cartridge ready to fire in a revolver you accomplish it in c.o.c.king the pistol, and with a magazine rifle by working a bolt or lever.

But with an automatic pistol, if the hands are wet, cold, greasy, or weak (as a soldier with blood on his hands and weak from a wound), it is impossible to get the first cartridge into the barrel, or get the pistol ready to shoot.

The operation in automatic pistols begins by taking the pistol _in both hands_. (Compare with c.o.c.king the revolver with one hand.)

Then you hold the stock firmly with one hand, and grip the slippery barrel of the pistol with the other hand, and use considerable force to draw the barrel back against the strong compression spring.

Your only a.s.sistance to get a grip is a slight corrugation on the barrel, only wide enough for your thumb and forefinger to hold.

Imagine trying to pull hard with only your forefinger and thumb gripping a smooth and possibly slippery surface, with a cold, wet, or greasy hand.

Let any one grease the automatic pistol and his hand and see if he can perform this operation. Sandow, no doubt, could do it, but not the average man.

The magazine rifle is purposely made with a bolt like a door bolt, so that it can be operated easily under all conditions, but the automatic pistol, evidently to give it a neat external appearance, has no projection to take hold of to drive back the slide, which, besides, takes more strength than is required to operate the bolt of a magazine rifle.

The remedy is simple: have two small projections, one on each side of the corrugated grip on the barrel, so that the shooter can get two fingers one over each side of this grip and, holding the stock in one hand, draw back the slide with his other hand, with a perfect grip under all conditions, like bending a crossbow.

As to the shape and angle of the stock, inventors and shooters are at constant war.

The inventor is thinking of his mechanism; he makes his stock at the best angle, shape, and size to suit what he puts inside it. It is much easier to construct apparatus to feed cartridges into the barrel at right angles than at an acute angle.

Therefore, the inventor generally gives the shooter a stock unsuitable to do good shooting with.

The inventor should work in combination with the shooter. The shape of the pistol externally should first be decided on by the shooter, so as to be the best possible for shooting. In my opinion this should be the shape of the French duelling pistol of the Gastinne-Renette pattern. (Plates 2 and 9.)

The inventor should try to design his pistol to fit, as far as possible, into this external shape.

Some points, as the distance of the trigger from the finger, and the slope and form of the b.u.t.t, cannot be departed from without injury to accurate shooting and quick handling of the pistol, and yet these are the very things inventors alter.

Other points the shooter may give way in, if such modifications are of vital importance from the inventor's point of view.

The reverse procedure is, however, the rule. An inventor generally has no knowledge of shooting, or horses, or whatever else his invention applies to; he is merely a clever mechanic. He has "imagination" and theories.

Generally, such theories are most grotesque and childish.

I will instance an invention relating to horse-shoes.

The inventor showed me a sort of bird-cage of iron and said it was a horse-shoe.

He informed me that shoeing horses as at present practised is wrong. "It is brutal to nail shoes onto horses' feet. How would you like to have an iron shoe nailed on the sole of your bare foot?"

I tried to explain to him that the outer horn of a horse's foot has no feeling, that a horse is hurt only when the farrier is clumsy and drives a nail into the sensitive inner tissues of the foot, but he was too far absorbed in his theories to listen to me.

He then went on to show me that his shoe needs no nailing on, that it has clamps, fastened by thumbscrews which clasp the horse's foot and grip it by claws "just below where the hair grows," to use his expression.

I explained to him that this (the coronet) is the most sensitive part of the horse's foot, to press there would give him great pain and cause him to go lame, and finally his foot would die and drop off.

Also, that these clamps and thumbscrews would strike the horse on the opposite fetlock and throw it down, and the centrifugal force would cause the shoes to fly off when the horse was going.

Finally, that these shoes were hideously ugly and no horseman would care to be the laughing stock of everyone by taking his horse out with such things on.

The inventor merely said: "All you hors.e.m.e.n are the same. You merely follow each other without any imagination," and he went out, to get the same reply from every horseman he met.

He was firmly convinced that people who have to do with horses all their lives are fools and never think of what is best for the horse, but it rests with men like himself who have "imagination" to show us hors.e.m.e.n how to shoe and handle horses.

CHAPTER XXIV

PECULIARITIES AND FAULTS OF AUTOMATIC PISTOLS

Before purchasing an automatic pistol it would be well to try shooting several makes. Inventors have not yet arrived at anything like a standard shape. The grip, angle of stock, distance of trigger, etc., all vary, and you can decide what suits you best only by actual trial.

Handling the unloaded pistol is not enough. I was once trying an automatic military rifle and found it balanced and handled very nicely.

In order to test it in rapid fire I tried it against a magazine rifle to which I was accustomed.

For merely "loosed off" it beat the magazine rifle, but I wished to try it for accuracy and speed combined.

The test was to shoot at the "Running Deer" Bisley, to empty the magazine at one run of the deer.

The deer runs at a speed of fifteen miles an hour during five and a half seconds at a distance of 110 yards from the firing point, across the line of fire.

With my magazine rifle I got off five shots, making four hits, wasting much time with the loading.

With the automatic rifle there was not an instant wasted in the loading; the difficulty was in getting the shots to go anywhere near the deer--in fact, I could not hit the deer, except with the first shot.