It seemed to me that odd things were happening around the priest's litter.

Henriques had left it, and dashed past me so close that I could have touched him.

From somewhere among the trees a pistol-shot cracked into the air.
As if in answer to a signal the high bluff across the stream burst into a sheet of fire.

'A sheet of fire' sounds odd enough for scientific warfare.

I saw that my friends were using shot-guns and firing with black powder into the mob in the water.