"Percussion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... explosives, their battery was revealed by the yellow flash of the guns in the purple shadow of the hill. These guns were worked with marvellous accuracy, but, fortunately, many of the shells—fired with percussion fuses—dug deep into the sand before bursting. The Volunteer Battery found their own guns so inferior to those of the enemy that there was little chance of silencing them, and General French, seeing there was no question of occupying Elandslaagte with the small force at his disposal, moved his ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... round to a place called the East Laboratory, a series of detached buildings, where I knew that I should find whatever I wanted: and I prepared my mind for a day's labour. In this place I found incredible stores: mountains of percussion-caps, more chambers of fuses, small-arm cartridges, shells, and all those murderous explosive mixtures, a-making and made, with which modern savagery occupied its leisure in exterminating itself: or, at least, savagery ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... wrote its name in the bill, was not a bad wine; a bottle of it assisted imagination as a percussion-cap does the powder in your rifle. In the present ease it also brought on an explosion, for as Blome knocked off the segar-ashes for the second time, he heard a loud exclamation from a balcony on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... at this epoch percussion caps were virtually unknown, and the infantry of all nations still used flint-lock muskets, which it was almost impossible to fire once the priming powder became wet. Now, as it had rained without ceasing for the whole day, this contributed largely to the defeat ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... precision and force. The most obvious objection to them is the one above alluded to. The cartridges must, of necessity, be made by special machinery, and can be supplied only from the manufactory. To this it is replied, that the same objection may be urged against the use of percussion-caps. We grant it; and if it were possible to dispense with them, it would be an obvious gain. But because we must have caps, in spite of their disadvantages, it does not follow that we should increase unnecessarily the equipments against which the same objection exists ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
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