There were baskets of lead bullets, fist-sized cannon balls, extra muskets and swords, and a number of squat barrels sealed with wooden plugs.

On the deck below him was what appeared to be a yacht-club starting cannon, its squat polished barrel gleaming in the light.

Most also wear the syoumai, a 40- or 50-foot length of black or blue-black gauzelike material that is wrapped around a woman's head until it looks a bit like a squat barrel.

Grim eyes warned her that a second scream would bring flame jetting from the squat barrel of the gun.

He kicked himself towards the giant eel and raised the squat barrel of his gun.

There was no furniture, except a few squat barrels serving as tables.

Their squat barrels, doubled by the recoil cylinders that grew on their backs like tumors, pointed cavernous mouths upward at the sky.

The pistol lay there in its molded bed of pale blue foam, a massive revolver with an ugly housing that bulged beneath the squat barrel.

He thrust at them with the squat barrels of the huge gun and Harper, still helping Sharpe, smelt the burnt powder from the seven barrels.

It was a device with a squat little barrel of a body and numerous flexible arms.