Had our people known of its signal effect, they could have depopulated the place in a few hours.
The whole matter impressed me queerly.

The only artillery I had ever seen in action were field pieces.

They made an earsplitting crash when they were discharged, and there was likely to be oceans of trouble for everybody in that neighborhood about that time.

I reasoned from this that bigger guns made a proportionally greater amount of noise, and bred an infinitely larger quantity of trouble.

Now I was hearing the giants of the world's ordnance, and they were not so impressive as a lively battery of three-inch rifles.