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More "Breech" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he led me from gun to gun slapping hand on breech or trunnion, and as I hearkened 'twas hard to recognise the merry peddler in this short, square, grave-faced gunner who spake with mariner's tongue, hitched ever and anon at the broad belt of his galligaskins, and rolled in ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... Soon after this we came to the Mecan River, which we prepared to ascend. In making a portage, we suddenly discovered a little Indian boy, dressed in the extreme of the Indian summer fashion—in other words, he was in a state of perfect nakedness, with the exception of a breech-cloth; and upon casting our eyes across the river we beheld his worthy father, in a similar costume, busily employed in catching fish with a hand-net. He was really a wild, picturesque-looking fellow, notwithstanding the scantiness of his dress; and I was much interested ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... was hopin' it meant action of some kind." The ex-rancher was silent for a moment. Then his right fist went into his left palm with a smack. "The only kind o' resolution that'll get anythin' is made o' lead and fits in a rifle breech! And I want to tell you, old man, if there ain't some pretty quick right-about-facin' in certain quarters, I'll be dashed if I ain't for it! An' I won't be standin' alone, either!" ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... up from the training Pool for his first assignment, he was sent to the ship where his temperament, training and abilities best fitted. And those who were designated as Free Traders would never fit into the pattern of Company men. Of late years the breech between those who lived under the strict parental control of one of the five great galaxy wide organizations and those still too much of an individual to live any life but that of a half-explorer-half-pioneer which was the Free Trader's, had widened alarmingly. Antagonism flared, rivalry was strong. ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... flowed in for his breech-loading, cast-steel cannons. In severe tests which followed, the famous Woolwich guns were driven from the field. The Krupp guns won great victories over the French cannon at Sedan, which was an artillery duel. At Gravelotte and Metz the Krupp guns surpassed all ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... and are accustomed to tattoo their bodies, arms, legs, and even their faces, where a beard should grow, with very carefully-drawn and handsome figures. The greater the chief, or the more valiant he is, the more he tattoos himself, leaving untattooed only the parts covered by the breech clout—the [clothing or] dress worn by them, and which covers only the privy parts. Both men and women suffer no hair to grow on their bodies except on the head. They wear the hair long and take good care ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... with four yellow laces, closed before very richly with a dozen of pewter buttons; his hose was of grey kersey, with a large slop[1] barred overthwart the pocket-holes with three fair guards, stitched of either side with red thread; his stock was of the own, sewed close to his breech, and for to beautify his hose, he had trussed himself round with a dozen of new-threaden points[2] of medley color: his bonnet was green, whereon stood a copper brooch with the picture of Saint Denis; and to want nothing that might make him amorous in his old days, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... have the new breech-loaders now, Mr. Folsom," said the officers. "The Indians have only old percussion-cap rifles, and not too ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... Christian drama Christ was represented by a naked youth. Then he was represented by a youth who wore a breech cloth only. In the sixteenth century, at Naples, in a representation of the creation of Adam and Eve, the actors had only the privates covered. The stage fell and many were hurt, which was held to show God's displeasure ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... his sappers at once got to work. The breech-block was unscrewed and taken out, falling a prize to the Light Horse, who vied with each other in carrying it home (it weighs 137lbs.) Then gun-cotton was thrust up the breech into the body of the gun. ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... people that need them in their business. Our folks don't need a baby any more than you need a safe, and there are people just suffering for babies. Say, how would it be to take the baby some night and leave it on some old batchelor's door step. If it had been a bicycle, or a breech loading shot-gun, I wouldn't have cared, but a baby! Bah! It makes me tired. I'd druther have a prize package. Well, I am sorry Pa allowed me to come home, after he drove me away last week. I guess all he wanted me to come back for was to humiliate me, and send me on ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... percussion by Government system of screwing on new breech. Mexican and Civil War ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... tight-rope walkers on a taut rope stretched fully thirty feet in the air. It was proclaimed that they were rivals for the favor of a pretty freedwoman and that they had agreed on this contest as a settlement of their rivalry. Certainly the two, naked save for breech-clouts and each armed with a light lance in one hand and a thin-bladed Gallic sword in the other, neared each other with every sign of caution, enmity and courage. Their sparring for an opening lasted ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... be placed inside of them. I never saw such heavy cannon either at Portsmouth, Plymouth, Dover, or any other fortified port in England. The sentinels would not allow us to take a minute survey of these ordnance; but as soon as we walked round from the muzzle to the breech, in order to examine their really herculean proportions, a bayonet, thrust before our eyes, would be sure to interrupt the stream of information which commenced flowing through them to the mind. I suppose ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... the sturdy, squat patriot as the one hope of the Empire's overthrow, and did not propose to have him taken. Scouts, spies, the entire French secret service, delved, gestured, and sweated. But they laid bare next to nothing. At the Palacio Municipal a number of functionaries told of a peon in breech clout, a wretch coated with alkali dust till the muscles of his legs looked like grayish ropes, who had emerged from the cacti plain ten days before and come running into Chihuahua. The peon had made direct for the Palacio, where, in some way, he had contrived a secret word ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... brother had murdered a friend of Georgi (the van-driver), and was now in gaol at Rhodes for the capital offence. The Turk was very intelligent, and thoroughly conversant with the various methods of breech-loading firearms; he examined several rifles and guns belonging to me, and at once comprehended the mechanism, and explained it to the admiring crowd. When this individual left our camp in the evening, the story that I had heard in outline was corroborated by the driver Georgi, who asked ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... year 1896.... The gun, which is constructed of forged and tempered steel, has a 3" bore. Its total length is 8 feet and its weight is 726 pounds. The body of the gun consists of three elements:—1. A tube in which the breech piece is fixed. 2. A sleeve covering the tube for a length of 3 feet 6 inches. 3. A chase hoop. The chamber is provided with twenty-four grooves of variable pitch which have a final ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... enthusiastic cheer, and then our helm was put up to wear round upon the other tack, when the master—who all this time had been anxiously pacing the poop—suddenly ran to the head of the poop-ladder and shouted, "She strikes, sir! she strikes!" and jumping upon the breech of a gun, I saw the tricolour being slowly hauled down from the ensign staff upon which it had been hoisted when her mizenmast fell. The Captain, too, sprang up beside me in time to see the flag go fluttering in over the taffrail ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... articles and tobacco, the council was ended with a dram to the Indians. In the evening we exhibited different objects of curiosity, and particularly the air-gun, which gave them great surprise. Those people are almost naked, having no covering except a sort of breech-cloth round the middle, with a loose blanket or buffalo robe, painted, thrown over them. The names of these warriors, besides those already mentioned, were Karkapaha, or Crow's Head, and Nenasawa, or Black Cat, Missouris; and Sananona, or Iron Eyes, Neswaunja, or Big Ox, Stageaunja, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... schooner with food enough to keep starvation off for ten days. The tide and wind helped, and early one afternoon the big white boat under a ragged sail shouldered its way before the sea breeze into Patusan Reach, manned by fourteen assorted scarecrows glaring hungrily ahead, and fingering the breech-blocks of cheap rifles. Brown calculated upon the terrifying surprise of his appearance. They sailed in with the last of the flood; the Rajah's stockade gave no sign; the first houses on both sides of the stream ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... chuckled as he blew for the fiftieth time into the breech of his speckless rifle. Mulcahy groaned and buried his head in his arms till a stray shot spoke like a snipe immediately above his head, and a general heave and tremour rippled the line. Other shots followed and a few took effect, as a shriek or a grunt attested. The officers, who ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... my crippled state I rejoiced at my liberty! Upon getting to the foot of the Cotills cliff, I whistled for my faithful "Begum," but no "Begum" came, so I sat down and rested, and whistled, and whistled again, till presently away he came tumbling down the breech in the cliffs, to my great delight. After a bit I despatched him to fetch "Eddy," and while that worthy was on his way to my help, managed, with great exertion and risk, to scale the cliff. "Eddy" bore me up the zig-zag, and home by the lower path, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... sparkling smile of expectation at the prospect of seeing the Kablunet use his thunder-weapon, looked surprised and disappointed, but went into action promptly with his spear, accompanied by Akeetolik. Leo's rifle, being a breech-loader, was quickly re-charged, but as the rest of the party stood leaning on their spears with the evident intention of merely watching the combat, the youth resolved to hold his hand, despite Benjy's earnest recommendation to put one ball between ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mexican saddle. Beside the saddles was an odd-looking object. It resembled a gigantic book, partly open, and set upon the opened edges. It was a pack-saddle, also of Mexican fashion, and in that country called an "alpareja." It had a strong leathern girth, with a breech-strap to keep it from running forward upon the shoulders of the animal that might wear it. At a short distance from the saddles, several blankets—red and green ones—with a bear-skin and a couple of buffalo-robes, were lying ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... gun was empty, he struck the breech of it with his finger; and then he turned away, not deigning even once to look back again; and Lorna saw his giant figure striding across the meadow-land, as if the Ridds were nobodies, and he the proper owner. Both mother and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... have ear rings made of wire with three cornered pieces of tin dangling all around their ears. It was not how good, but how much, with them. How these Indians ever lived through a winter the way they dressed, I don't see. They wore only leggings, shirts, breech clouts and a blanket. Their legs were no barer than a Scotchman's though. Our Indians used to tuck things in the bosom of their shirt, as well as in their belts. They used to tuck butcher knives in their leggings. If they were ever going ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... nothing for excess of anguish and fatigue. I threw myself down on the island-ground, like a dead man, and drowned in desolation swooned away, nor did I return to my senses till next morning, when the sun rose and revived me. But I found my feet swollen, so made shift to move by shuffling on my breech and crawling on my knees, for in that island were found store of fruit and springs of sweet water. I ate of the fruits, which strengthened me; and thus I abode days and nights, till my life seemed to return and my spirits began to revive and I was better able to move about. So after due consideration ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... visited several other chiefs, and found that all of them were taking their morning draught, or had already taken it. Returning to the king, I found him asleep in a small retired hut, with two women tapping on his breech. About eleven o'clock he arose again, and then some fish and yams, which tasted as if they had been stewed in cocoa-nut milk, were brought to him. Of these he eat a large portion, and lay down once more to sleep. I now left him, and carried ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... loaded shells, drew a gun from the case, threw up the breech and rammed in the shells. Then he extended the weapon to within an inch of the terrified inspector's nose. "Now, Monsieur the Spectacles, look in there and tell ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... nevertheless. Accordingly after breakfast, having rubbed some oil upon my leg, which was very sore from the cub's tongue, I took the driver, Tom, who did not half like the job, and having armed myself with an ordinary double No. 12 smooth-bore, the first breech-loader I ever had, I started. I took the smooth-bore because it shot a bullet very well; and my experience has been that a round ball from a smooth-bore is quite as effective against a lion as an express bullet. The lion is soft, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... the gun where it is mounted are not sufficient to take up the recoil, hence the braces which protrude against the wooden platforms sunk into the ground. The bridge-like structure on the rear platform of the car is part of the carrier for the shell in loading, and the arched bar over the breech block a part of the newly ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... splashing of the swimmers, and their voices, gradually drew nearer, until the bee-hunter took up his rifle, determined to sacrifice the first savage who approached; hoping, thereby, to intimidate the others. For the first time, it now occurred to him that the breech of his rifle might be used as a paddle, and he was resolved to apply it to that service, could he once succeed in extricating himself from the enemies by whom he was nearly environed, and from ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... another instant of inaction a crime. The men were listening with their mouths wide apart, their heads cocked on one side, and their eyes staring. They tightened their cartridge-belts nervously, and opened and shot back the breech-bolts of their rifles. I took out my revolver, and spun the cylinder to reassure myself for the hundredth time that it was ready. But Laguerre stood quite motionless, with his eyes fixed impassively upon his watch as though he were a physician at a sick-bed. ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... enormous, but I was completely thunderstruck when I saw the two great breeches side by side. They reminded me of two big engine boilers. They must be about 6 feet in diameter and are probably not less. The officer who took us round had a breech block swung back, and we were ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... seaward port-holes blinded, and sweat dripping from our chins. Then we lay on the cabin roof again, in breech-clouts, waiting for a breeze, and showing no light except the red coals ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... dropped flat to the ground as if he had been shot. The giraffe had not seen him, for the head, having vanished for a moment, reappeared; it was feeding, plucking down small branches of leaves, and Felix, lying on his side, opened the breech of the rifle, drew the empty cartridge case, inserted a cartridge in each barrel, and closed the breech. Now, unknown to Adams, when he had fired the gun the day before, there was a plug of clay in the left-hand barrel about two inches from the muzzle; just an inconsiderable wad of clay ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... thin, dark, dried up, shrivelled fellow, with keen eyes, and a sharp nose. The midshipmen called him "Old Chili Vinegar," or, "Old Hot and Sour." He was what we term a martinet. He would keep a man two months on his black list, giving him a breech of a gun to polish and keep bright, never allowing him time to mend his clothes, or keep himself clean, while he was cleaning that which, for all the purposes of war, had better have been black. He seldom flogged a man; but he tormented him into sullen ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... next shot. They heard it a minute later, and then saw him behind a pine about five hundred yards away. After sending his bullet into the valley he had withdrawn a little and was slipping another cartridge into the fine breech-loading rifle that he carried, the most modern and highly improved weapon then used, as Warner ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of French civilians gathered round them, excited at the sight. Artillery officers examined their broken breech-blocks and their inscriptions: ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... destined to meet the test just then, however, for just at that moment a courier in breech-clout and sandals dashed up the gallery and burst into the room, bearing in his right hand a thin square ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... in plaine termes, cunningly to be able to dissemble. But (if it please your Maiestie) may it not seeme inough for a Courtier to know how to weare a fether, and set his cappe a slaunt, his chaine en echarpe, a straight buskin al inglesse, a loose alo Turquesque, the cape alla Spaniola, the breech a la Francoise, and by twentie maner of new faishoned garments to disguise his body, and his face with as many countenances, whereof it seemes there be many that make a very arte, and studie who can shew ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... these rivulets and streams the soldiers plunged, one in front, feeling the depth of the water with a sounding rod, and as he led we followed. The black men made a splendid picture. They were naked but for breech-cloths, and the moonlight flashed on their wet skins and upon the polished barrels of the muskets. But, as a sporting proposition, as far as I could see, we had taken on the hippopotamus at his own game. We were ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... the handle but curved at the other end. The broad portion used for throwing or carrying the ball was formed of thongs of deerskin, interwoven and drawn firm and tight. It was a picturesque sight when the opposing teams were ready to commence play. The animated warriors were nude except for a breech-cloth reaching to the knee. When all was in readiness, an Indian maiden came tripping into the centre of the field. She was prettily attired after the custom of her tribe, wore bracelets of silver and a red tiara decked with eagle feathers. Placing the ball among the players, she hurried ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... 'For look ye, Jerry,' says he, 'I'm no confounded courtier to go bowing and scraping to a painted old woman, with a lot of other fools, just because she happens to be a duchess,—no, damme!' and down 'e sits on the breech o' the gun here. But, just then, my lady heaves into sight, brings up alongside, and comes to an anchor on his knee. 'Dear,' says she, with her round, white arm about his neck, and her soft, smooth cheek agin his, 'dear, it's ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... their sledges, the best of cutlery, knives, hatchets, and saws for their work, and the cooking utensils of civilization. Formerly they were dependent upon the most primitive hunting weapons; now they have repeating rifles, breech-loading shotguns, and an abundance of ammunition. There was not a rifle in the tribe when I first went there. As they have no vegetables, and live solely on meat, blood, and blubber, the possession of guns and ammunition has increased the food-producing capacity ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... "you must see our 'Wild Irishman' here before you say you've yet found the queerest, brightest, cleverest chap in all your travels. What d'ye say, Stockford?" And the Major paused in his work of charging cartridges for his new breech-loading shotgun and turned to await his ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... something between a hat and a turban, and over his baggy Turkish trousers hung a long Persian coat of bright-colored, large-figured cloth, bound at the waist by a belt of cartridges. Across the shoulders was slung a breech-loading Martini rifle, and from his neck dangled a heavy gold chain, which was probably the spoil of some predatory expedition. A quiet dignity sat on ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... not," answered Mildmay. "She is fitted with a torpedo port for'ard, for firing what the professor called 'torpedo-shells'; two 10-inch breech-loading rifled guns, fired through ports in the dining-saloon, and six Maxim guns, fired from the upper deck, to say nothing of small-arms. Such an armament is ample for every occasion which is at all likely ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... any idea as to its age or nationality. It would most probably have been a twelve or eighteen-pounder howitzer, for it was about four feet in length, and disproportionately large in girth; but one of the trunnions, and the button at the breech, were broken off, the portion that had lain undermost had entirely disappeared, and the remainder was so honeycombed, that beyond ascertaining that it was a piece of ordnance, we could elicit nothing from this curious relic of a ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... the finest ship of the Spanish navy lowered her flag and was headed in for the beach. After she had thus surrendered, and before the Americans could board, she was wrecked by her own crew, who opened sea-valves, smashed out dead lights, threw overboard the breech-blocks of their great guns, and in many other ways worked what destruction they could in the time allotted. As a result of this vandalism, the fine ship rolled over on her side soon after striking, and would have slipped off into ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... the horses, I walked over to the shore with the lady and children who were my companions. There we saw a sight characteristic of these islands. Three women decently clothed in a garment which covered them from head to foot, and a man with only a breech-clout on, were dashing into the surf, picking up sea-moss, and a little univalve shell, a limpet, which they flung into small baskets which hung from their shoulders. They were, in fact, getting their suppers, and they were quite as much ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... a trait of the race, was evidenced here. The heavy steel breechblock of the seventy-five was replaced by a wooden block. When fired the explosion of the powder charge automatically blew the wooden breechblock backward, thus neutralizing the shock. But owing to the open breech much of the powder's driving force was lost. Nothing to equal the new arm had there been up to that time. The wooden breechblock completely did away with the heavy hydraulic recoil cylinders which were one of the distinguishing features of the seventy-five. These cylinders ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... knows, General George Washington was shot dead at the Battle of Germantown, in 1777, by an English, or, rather, Scottish, officer, Patrick Ferguson—the same Patrick Ferguson who invented the breech-loading rifle that smashed Napoleon's armies. Washington, today, is one of our lesser national heroes, because he was our first military commander-in-chief. But in this other world, he must have survived to lead our armies to victory and become our first President, ...
— Crossroads of Destiny • Henry Beam Piper
... day, such a one as would be fitting for a dark deed of border justice. A cold, drizzly rain blew from the northwest. Jonathan wrapped a piece of oil-skin around his rifle-breech, and faced the downfall. Soon he was wet to the skin. He kept on, but his free stride had shortened. Even upon his iron muscles this soggy, sticky ground ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... thought most suitable to each Was, for the elder and the stouter, first A Candiote cloak, which to the knee might reach, And trousers not so tight that they would burst, But such as fit an Asiatic breech; A shawl, whose folds in Cashmire had been nursed, Slippers of saffron, dagger rich and handy; In short, all things ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... pitiful to see from leanness, and a great fever was upon it. Robert Barrow, the crippled captain, and a sick passenger shared the child's shelter. "Whereupon two Canibals appeared, naked, but for a breech-cloth of plaited straw, with Countenances bloody and furious, and foaming at the Mouth"; but on being given tobacco, retreated inland to alarm the tribe. The ship's company gathered together and sat down to wait their return, expecting cruelty, says Dickenson, and dreadful death. Christianity ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... the breech of the nine-pounder at which he had been so busily engaged earlier in the afternoon. He appeared to be an idler who merely looked on but he was watching every motion, and that hard, canny face of his had, for once, forgot to grin. Releasing a three-foot ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... such a weapon as he had coveted all his life long, seeing such in gunsmiths' windows and the halls of noblemen: a breech-loader, of foreign make, beautifully mounted and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... matter of clothes." He grinned again. "We'll want a breech clout, at least. I propose that we get the sheerest silk gauze we can find, and cut an eighth-inch square apiece to tie about our middles ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... 10th August Metternich had despatched the passports for the Comte Louis de Narbonne, Napoleon's Ambassador, and the war manifesto of the Emperor Francis; then he had the beacons lighted which had been prepared from Prague to the Silesian frontier, as a sign of the breech of the negotiations, and the right (i.e. power) of the Allied armies to cross the Silesian frontier (Metternich, vol. i, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... whirling, grinding noise, ending once more in a powerful click. He straightened himself then, and I saw that what he held in his hand was a sort of gun, with a curiously misshapen butt. He opened it at the breech, put something in, and snapped the breech-block. Then, crouching down, he rested the end of the barrel upon the ledge of the open window, and I saw his long moustache droop over the stock and his eye gleam as it peered along the sights. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... narrow trail, past the spring, ride in single file the Apaches, slowly, on tired horses, for the pursuing soldiers have given them no halting space. Naked, save for a breech-clout, with a narrow red band of dyed buckskin about his forehead, in which sticks a feather, each rides silent, grim, cruel, a hideous human reptile, as native to the desert as is the Gila monster. The horse is saddleless. For a bridle, the warrior uses a piece of grass ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... cooking up something. They've got some Indians in it too. Saw them rehearsing old Thunder Mountain the other day in nothing but a breech-clout." ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... blow-gun of these Indians is supplied with a wide mouth-piece and requires but slight air pressure to shoot the arrow at a considerable speed. In the trap one is placed horizontally so as to point at a right angle to the path leading to the maloca. At the "breech" of the gun is a young sapling, severed five feet above the ground. To this is tied a broad and straight bark-strip which, when the sapling is in its normal vertical position, completely covers the ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... all happy at losing dear friends," the young man answered, gently, as he turned away and patted the breech of a gun, upon which there was a little rust next day; "that feeling comes later ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... on its knees, drove its nose into the ground, and produced a miniature earthquake with a snort. Then it sprang up and rushed at its foe. Ian was reloading swiftly for his life. Vain hope. Men used to breech-loaders can scarce understand the slow operations of muzzle-loaders. He had only got the powder in, and was plucking a bullet from his pouch. Another moment and he would have been down, when crack! crack! went shots on either side of him, and the bear fell with a ball from ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... most importance; the whistle is used to call attention; the touch is looser in the ranks than formerly; squares to resist cavalry are no longer used; [Footnote: A British officer, who has had good opportunities, says the infantry drill is second to none.] the Berdan breech-loader is the infantry arm; sergeant-majors wear officers' swords, and ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... past year. Few volunteers now remain in the service, and they are being discharged as rapidly as they can be replaced by regular troops. The Army has been promptly paid, carefully provided with medical treatment, well sheltered and subsisted, and is to be furnished with breech-loading small arms. The military strength of the nation has been unimpaired by the discharge of volunteers, the disposition of unserviceable or perishable stores, and the retrenchment of expenditure. Sufficient ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... away from my Nell. But you must come out with us. There is no such fun as stumping over the moors—the Jew has got all the turn-out for that sort of thing—short frocks and knickerbockers, and a duck of a little breech-loader. She thinks she's a great shot, poor thing, and men are civil and let her imagine that she's knocked over a pheasant or a hare, now and then. As for the partridges, she lets fly, of course, but to ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... intestine of the gnat was narrow and that the wind went forcibly through it, being slender, straight to the breech; and then that the rump, being hollow where it is adjacent to the narrow part, resounded through the violence ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... o'clock in the morning. Here they encamped at this early hour. He caught two wild geese, and told his wife to cook them. His followers all dispersed to hunt buffalo, as they were plenty about. He then put a new flint in his gun, and stripped himself all but his breech-cloth, and went out to explore the route he should pass on ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... not look European, the pistol stuck in his shawl belt was of the best, strongest, and most hard-hitting type. Old- fashioned, indeed, so far that it was not breech-loading; for he had considered that if he lost his cartridges, or spent them, his weapon would become a useless lump of iron, whereas percussion caps, powder, and ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... that the principle of the modern revolver was born and partially carried out centuries before the ingenious American, Colonel Colt, perfected a weapon which has since become universal. The same remark will apply to the principle of breech-loading fire-arms, examples of which may here be seen three hundred years old. One very singular cannon was observed, actually made from closely woven rope, so strong and compact as to be capable of bearing a discharge with gunpowder, and which had ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... most harm. The cannonading was lively and well sustained, though it was not like one of the present time, when shot are hollow, and a gun is chambered and, not unfrequently, has a muzzle almost as large as the open end of a flour-barrel, and a breech as big as a hogshead. At the commencement-of this century a long twelve-pounder was considered a smart piece, and was thought very capable of doing a good deal of mischief. The main battery of the ship was composed ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... laying down the breech-strap he was mending. "Did you ever fire a gun?" he inquired suddenly, as he was starting across the yard to fetch the ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... ever heard, and he was Western bred. Then he reacted on himself. "The Fox might come back!" Suddenly he remembered something. He got out a common sulphur match. He wet it on his lips and rubbed it on the muzzle sight: Then on each side of the notch on the breech sight. He lined it for a tree. Yes! surely! What had been a blur of blackness ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... No!" he said, bringing down his hand with a thump on the bedstead, "a bay'nit ain't no good to a little man—might as well 'ave a bloomin' fishin'-rod! I 'ate a clawin', maulin' mess, but gimme a breech that's wore out a bit, an' hamminition one year in store, to let the powder kiss the bullet, an' put me somewheres where I ain't trod on by 'ulkin swine like you, an' s'elp me Gawd, I could bowl you over five times outer seven at height 'undred. Would ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... fought with the muzzle-loading rifle. Toward the close I had one brigade (Walcutt's) armed with breech-loading "Spencer's;" the cavalry generally had breach-loading carbines, "Spencer's" and "Sharp's," both of which ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... have had it in his breech-cloth," remarked the corporal seriously, for not a rag besides had he about him. "No, no it couldn't be him, ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... exercising the men at making sail, preparing for action, and gun and cutlass exercise had been performed, anchor again cast, ropes coiled up, and everything in apple-pie order, the Chilian officers rallied round Stephen, and, taking his seat on the breech of a gun, he told them the story, but with a good deal less detail than he had given to Lord Cochrane. This relation elicited the greatest admiration on the part of his hearers. The fact that he and two others alone, and without any tools save swords, should ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... my little piece of brass!" said Roberts, slapping the gun familiarly on the breech; "only get us out of our scrape, and I'll polish you ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... mail steamers which daily arrive there, a profitable market for game has sprung up during the past few years, to supply which there are now a number of native gunners who, as a means of livelihood, scour the country with foreign breech-loaders in search of pheasants, wildfowl, etc., so that, being capital shots, within a considerable distance of this port the shooting is not so good as formerly, although in all other parts of the Empire it still remains practically untouched until ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... and I could again see clearly, the warrior was standing upon the Stone of Sacrifice—naked save for his breech-clout, and armed with a round shield and a maccahuitl of hardened gold. The monk still wore his flowing habit, whence the hood had fallen back, so that his head was bare; in one hand he held his crucifix, and with the other ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... narrowed eyes nailed to the straight grey ribbon streaming into the distance, the sea and the waves roaring in our ears, folded in the wings of the wind, we cheated Dusk of seven breathless miles and sent Nature packing with a fork in her breech. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... man of extraordinarily striking look and demeanor. He stood considerably over six feet in height, with a remarkably powerful yet lean body. He was naked except for a cloth breech clout girdled about his loins. His appearance was not that of an Oroid, for beside his greater height, and more muscular physique, his skin was distinctly of a more brownish hue. His hair was cut at the base of the neck in Oroid fashion; it was black, with streaks of silver ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... got a streak of my daddy's wild blood. He was a great hunter in his day, and that's why I prize this gun so much. It was made in London by John Armstrong in 1874—so that silver plate on the breech says—and if it is old fashioned it kin shoot. You chaps ought to be here in the fall when the ducks and geese are moving—I'd show you ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... shot-gun, aimed fairly well, was generally productive of results. Kurt stopped wasting his cartridges. Some one was hurt behind his car and he crawled out to see. A villager named Schmidt had been wounded in the leg, not seriously, but bad enough to disable him. He had been using a double-barreled breech-loading shot-gun, and he wore a vest with rows of shells in the pockets across the front. Kurt borrowed gun and ammunition; and with these he hurried back to his covert, grimly sure of himself. At thought of Glidden he became hot all over, and this ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... full length on the ground and pressed a cartridge into the breech of his rifle. His companions stood over him as he cast a hurried glance forward and ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... without the universal serape, which often serves for both cloak and coat. Otherwise his garb was the ordinary stable wear of a Mexican gentleman's servant; wide velveteen trousers open along the outer seams, and fended with leather at breech and bottoms. "Batos" and a black glaze hat completed his habiliments, with a scarf of China crape, the chammora, around his waist. Scanning the face shadowed by the broad rim of his sombrero, it was seen to be that ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... when caught and overpowered by a householder usually appeals, and often, let us hope, with success, to his captor not to deliver him over to the useless horrors of penal servitude. In other cases the lawbreaker escapes because those who could give him up do not consider his breech of the law a guilty action. Sometimes, even, private tribunals are formed in opposition to the official tribunals; and these private tribunals employ assassins as executioners, as was done, for example, ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... before—braver, indeed, than the crusaders, as was proved by the fact that in these days they wear no armor. To this Goldwin Smith answered that he thought war in the middle ages was more destructive than even in our time. Sheridan said that breech-loading rifles kill more than all ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... as much as we could get up the stairs with easily. It was, as the reader will probably remember, set in a light framework of wrought-iron, adjusted to a swivel, and arranged with a screw for raising or lowering the breech at will. The bed-pieces of the framework had been pierced for screws. It was, therefore, but a few minutes' work to bore holes in the top of the chest and drive the screws. Meanwhile the captain, who enjoyed the scheme as well as any of us, split open a couple of old tackle-blocks, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... time of attending to their duties." "Then a person could have escaped without their seeing him?" "A whole regiment of persons might have escaped. You will understand the situation exactly if I compare this corridor to a long cannon, the room at the end being the breech-loading chamber. Two guards were inside the room, and two others stood outside the door that communicated with this corridor. These four men were killed instantly. Of the guards inside the room not a vestige has been found. The ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... hand came into contact with a polished metal surface cold as ice. It was his rifle. Naab had placed it under the blankets. Fingering the rifle Hare found the spring opening on the right side of the breech, and, pressing it down, he felt the round head of a cartridge. Naab had loaded the weapon, he had placed it where Hare's hand must find it, yet he had not spoken of it. Hare did not stop to reason with his first impulse. Without a word, with silent insistence, disregarding ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... in the current of its passengers, partaking the characteristics of its contrasted extremities, fantastically blending the purple and fine linen of Chowringhee with the breech-cloths of the Black Town, Cossitollah is, as I have said, preminently the type street of Calcutta. Other localities have their peculiar throngs, and certain classes and castes are proper to certain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... joiner; Starveling, the tailor; Smooth, the silkman; Shallow and Silence, country justices; Elbow and Hull, constables; Dogberry and Verges, Fang and Snare, sheriffs' officers; Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, and Bull-calf, recruits; Feebee, at once a recruit and a woman's tailor, Pilch and Patch-Breech, fishermen (though these last two appellations may be mere nicknames); Potpan, Peter Thump, Simple, Gobbo, and Susan Grindstone, servants; Speed, "a clownish servant"; Slender, Pistol, Nym, Sneak, Doll Tear-sheet, ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... envelope. Then he took a cylinder about twelve inches long, and almost half as much in diameter, a huge thing, constructed, it seemed, of a substance that was almost as brittle as an eggshell. Into the large hemispherical cavity in the breech of the gun he shoved it. He took another quick look at the light gleaming from the house in ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... came trembling forth with the gun and two shells. Without stopping to glance at the cartridges,—nor to realize that they were filled with Number Eight shot, for quails,—she thrust two of them into the breech and, turning, fired pointblank ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... decided. They faced us, in manner determined. We waited, tense and watchful. Without even a premonitory shout a pony bolted for us, from their huddle. He bore two riders, naked to the sun, save for breech clouts. They charged straight in, and at her mystified, alarmed murmur I was holding on them as best I could, finger crooked against trigger, coaxing it, praying for luck, when the rear rider dropped to the ground, bounded briefly and ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... by the invention of breech loaders, which gave an increased rate of fire to these already formidable weapons, and to make matters still worse, much larger guns than had ever been made before could now be constructed without difficulty, and naval men justly began to feel uncomfortable ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... found on the line of the retreat of the Americans from the battle-ground at Hubbardton, Vermont. It has the date of 1774 on the breech. From ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... we, hastily collecting at the exposed points, seeking to drive them back. We were frequently successful; we were on the inside, and had the advantage of the short interior lines, so that our few men and our breech-loaders ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... accommodation, by going across the country and visiting unfrequented paths, will act wisely to carry with them a piece of oil-skin to sit upon while taking refreshments out of doors, which they will often find needful during such excursions." To save trouble, the breech of the pedestrian's breeches should be a patch of oil-skin. Here a question of great difficulty and importance arises—Breeches or trousers? Dr Kitchiner is decidedly for breeches. "The garter," says he, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... old spo'tin' rifle talk up, and I reckon we'll find some in a horn flask in the bottom of my cart." His expectations in this particular were realized, and he loaded the rifle with a small blank charge. "Now," he said, shaking the powder into the pan by a succession of smart taps on the breech, "sometimes these old pieces go off and sometimes they don't; it depends on the flint, but you stand back of your Uncle Bob, sonny, and keep yo' fingers out of yo' ears, and when you say—bang!—off ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... the boreal areas the breech-clout was nearly universal with men, and the cincture or short petticoat with women. Even in Mexico and Mayan sculptures the gods are arrayed in gorgeous breech-clouts. The foot-gear in the tropics was the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... departure from the general practice in connection with such weapons. When the gun is loaded the bolt which holds the compressor back is withdrawn, either by the hand for manual firing, or by the action of the automatic closing of the breech when the arm is being used as a quick-firer. In firing the gun is thrown forward under the pressure of the released air which occurs at the moment of discharge. The energy of the recoil brings ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... and a manuscript of the first play acted by Thespis. These had not exhausted the stock of the dealer: he possessed the skin of a giraffe killed in the Roman amphitheatre; the head of King Arthur's spear; and the breech of the first cannon fired at the siege of Constantinople. The jury, however, thought that the virtuoso having ordered those curiosities, ought to pay for them, and brought in a verdict for ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... did not make a bad appearance. They were a trifle awkward, perhaps, in their dark-blue hooded cloaks, with their tin-plate buttons, and armed with breech-loading rifles, and encumbered with canteens, basins, and pouches, all having an unprepared and too-new look. They all came from the best parts of the city, with accelerated steps and a loud beating of drums, and headed, if you please, by their major on horseback, a truss-maker, who ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... whipped round and let drive a snap shot that tipped him head over heels, breaking his back within two inches of the root of the tail, and there he lay helpless but glaring. Tom afterwards killed him with his assegai. I opened the breech of the gun and hurriedly pulled out the old case, which, to judge from what ensued, must, I suppose, have burst and left a portion of its fabric sticking to the barrel. At any rate, when I tried to, get in the new ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... we all lay in the shadow of a great rock as soon as we could see a ragged stone wall uplifted against the purple sky, and Kagig whistled half a dozen times. We plainly heard the snap of breech-blocks being tested. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... fly a fart, As great as it had been a thunder dent*; *peal, clap That with the stroke he was well nigh y-blent*; *blinded But he was ready with his iron hot, And Nicholas amid the erse he smote. Off went the skin an handbreadth all about. The hote culter burned so his tout*, *breech That for the smart he weened* he would die; *thought As he were wood*, for woe he gan to cry, *mad "Help! water, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Charter—the mother of the American Constitution. It found Ireland a nation of savages and did for it what the mighty power of the Caesars could not—brought it within the pale of civilization. But for the Roman Catholic Church Slattery might be wearing a breech clout, digging roots with his finger nails and gorging himself with raw meat in Ireland to-day instead of insulting the intelligence of American audiences and wringing money from fanatics and fools by warring upon the political institutions ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... hundred yards, counting his strides, he continued on. Then, in total darkness, he pocketed the torch, slid a cartridge into the breech of his rifle, slung the weapon, pulled out a handkerchief, and tied it across ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... lettering on barrel, which is octagon and extremely heavy. Ramrod under barrel. Stock extends only to breech and is inlaid with German silver. Extremely rare. This type was used on the ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... with laughter. "And it was all done by one old settler and his gal, them standing out open and free with their breech-loaders, and us hiking out for camp like ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... minute and second determined by the commission's mathematicians the projectile will be slid into the cannon. The concussion will explode the powder in the breech. This final act is to take place"—he glanced at his ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... Roman cohort stood over the cloisters of the temple, [for they always were armed, and kept guard at the festivals, to prevent any innovation which the multitude thus gathered together might make,] one of the soldiers pulled back his garment, and cowering down after an indecent manner, turned his breech to the Jews, and spake such words as you might expect upon such a posture. At this the whole multitude had indignation, and made a clamor to Cumanus, that he would punish the soldier; while the rasher part of the youth, and such as were naturally the ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... in the belts that girt in their gaunt waists: the heroic youthful sinew of the old border folk. One among them, larger and handsomer than the others, had pleased his fancy by donning more nearly the Indian dress. His breech-clout was of dappled fawn-skin; his long thigh boots of thin deer-hide were open at the hips, leaving exposed the clear whiteness of his flesh; below the knees they were ornamented by a scarlet fringe tipped with the ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... the vessel, chained to the sides of the hull on long runners that led up to the firing tubes, were the massive torpedoes, ready to be pushed forward for insertion in the firing chambers. Chief Gunner Mowrey was working over one of the breech caps and turned to meet ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... pyramid of light rose from the breech of the gun, which sufficed, during the moment it lasted, to discover three boats filled with armed men, advancing immediately opposite, while two others could be seen diverging, apparently one towards ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... about the room, from telephone desk to bookcase, from the table to the huge steel safe, door ajar, swung outward like the polished breech of a ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... Nigel," the captain had said, "it's all very well to use breech-loaders when you've got towns and railways and suchlike to supply you wi' cartridges, but when you've got to cruise in out-o'-the-way waters, there's nothin' like the old style. It's not difficult to carry a few thousand percussion-caps ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... an' I reckon the ball's opened," rejoined Lash, and now that former nervous impatience so unnatural to him was as if it had never been. He was smilingly cool, and his voice had almost a caressing note. He tapped the breech of his Winchester with a sinewy brown hand, and he did not appear to be addressing any one in particular. "Yaqui's opened the ball. Look up your pardners there, gents, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Wasn't that her reason for begging a passage? Well, you darned lunatic! Is this Europe? Or anywhere near it? Let me tell you, there's no steamer touching here from Surabaya or anywhere else. Sanjai's the nearest steamer port—a ship a month; besides, no man or woman other than a breech-clouted deer-footed native could get here from Sanjai in less than a week. She looks as if she just hopped out of a ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... of the Jameson incursion, the Transvaal had in readiness extensive parks of the most modern quick-firing Maxims and Nordenfeldts of various calibres, and breech-loading field artillery of the Krupp make. The Orange Free State hurried to their assistance with similar artillery, each burgher armed with a Martini-Henry rifle. Besides all that, there was the dynamite and explosives ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... and as they are also minutely subdivided, the effects of damage by shot and consequent flooding may be localized to a considerable extent. The guns of the ship are to consist of four 20 centimeter Hontorio breech loading guns on Vavasseur carriages, six 12 centimeter guns, eight 6 pounder rapid firing, and eight or ten small guns for boats and mitrailleuse purposes, four of which are in the crow's nests at the top of the two masts of the ship. We may remark in passing that the builders saw their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... Dunlap, throwing a cartridge into the breech of the Sharp, and ejecting it to show how fast ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... room, from telephone desk to bookcase, from the table to the huge steel safe, door ajar, swung outward like the polished breech of a twelve-inch gun. ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... hide "like frightened little girls", and the king betakes him to a "narrow shelter", an euphemism evidently of Saxo's, for the scene is comic. The king comes forth when the hero is victorious, and laughing at his hairy legs, nick-names him Shaggy-breech, and bids him to the feast. Ragnar fetches up his comrades, and apparently seeks out the frightened courtiers (no doubt with appropriate quip, omitted by Saxo, who hurries on), feasts, marries the king's daughter, and begets on her ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... for the lack of land Shall fight upon the waterhe hath challenged Formerly the grand whale; and by his titles Of Leviathan, Behemoth, and so forth. He tilted with a sword-fishMarry, sir, Th' aquatic had the bestthe argument Still galls our champion's breech. Old Play. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the statutes. He would not have rained upon the unjust as the just if he had had the directing of the heavens. As Private Gellatly put it: "Sergeant Fones has the fear o' God in his heart, and the law of the land across his saddle, and the newest breech-loading at that!" He was part of the great machine of Order, the servant of Justice, the sentinel in the vestibule of Martial Law. His interpretation of duty worked upward as downward. Officers and privates were acted ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... chill crept over Hare. As he crawled under the blankets Naab had spread for him his hand came into contact with a polished metal surface cold as ice. It was his rifle. Naab had placed it under the blankets. Fingering the rifle Hare found the spring opening on the right side of the breech, and, pressing it down, he felt the round head of a cartridge. Naab had loaded the weapon, he had placed it where Hare's hand must find it, yet he had not spoken of it. Hare did not stop to reason with his first impulse. Without a word, with silent insistence, disregarding ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... sleeping-place. cast, to throw. birth, coming into life. caste, an order or class. braid, to weave. cede, to yield. brayed, did bray. seed, to sow; to scatter. breach, a gap. coarse, not fine. breech, the hinder part. course, way; career. broach, a spit; to pierce. dam, mother of beasts. brooch, an ornament. damn, to condemn. but, except. cane, a reed; a staff. butt, a cask; a mark. Cain, a man's name. call, to name. ceil, to line the top of caul, a kind of ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... had it in his breech-cloth," remarked the corporal seriously, for not a rag besides had he about him. "No, no it couldn't be him, and ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... groups passed and repassed along the lagoon wall where, already curiously tired, he had halted beside an old bronze cannon—some ancient Spanish piece, if he could judge by the arms and arabesques covering the breech, dimly visible in the rays ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... found the Sioux and their allies armed with the best modern breech-loaders, well supplied with ammunition and countless herds of war ponies, and far too numerous and powerful to be handled by the small force ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... to consist of fifty soldiers, twenty-five marines, and fifty blue-jackets, who were to embark in the steamer's boats, two of which were provided with small breech-loading pieces running on slides, and under the ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... all events," answered Jack, and Needham, giving a friendly slap on the breech of the gun, while he cast his eye along the sight, brought it to a proper elevation, and the brig yawing slightly, he pulled the trigger. The shot flew straight for the chase, but as Jack watched its course, he saw that it fell into the water short ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... approximately that which he had hastily figured out on the envelope. Then he took a cylinder about twelve inches long, and almost half as much in diameter, a huge thing, constructed, it seemed, of a substance that was almost as brittle as an eggshell. Into the large hemispherical cavity in the breech of the gun he shoved it. He took another quick look at the light gleaming from the house in the ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... all gone from the ditch to within a few feet of where I was lying. A little beyond the other end of the building stood two cannon pointing towards me with a group of rebels at the breech of each one of them trying to discharge it. They were two of our own guns that had been captured before they had been fired by our gunners and were still loaded with the double charges of canister intended for ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... starboard side ... we ran into the thick of a fleet of sampans, boats fashioned flat like overgrown rowboats, propelled each by a huge sculling oar, from the stern ... they were fishers who manned them ... two or three to a boat ... huge, bronze-bodied, fine-muscled, breech-clouted men ... as they sculled swiftly to give us sea-room each one looked fit ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... returned to the fort on the next day. John Nelson, after crossing over, endeavored to escape down the river; but being there met by a stout warrior, he too was killed, after a severe struggle. His shattered gun breech, the uptorn earth, and the locks of Indian hair in his yet clenched hands, showed that the victory over him had not ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Constitution. It found Ireland a nation of savages and did for it what the mighty power of the Caesars could not—brought it within the pale of civilization. But for the Roman Catholic Church Slattery might be wearing a breech clout, digging roots with his finger nails and gorging himself with raw meat in Ireland to-day instead of insulting the intelligence of American audiences and wringing money from fanatics and fools by warring upon the political institutions ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... seconds, the cloud dispersed, and the cannon and men re-appeared; the gun-crew had just finished rolling it slowly, correctly, without haste, into position facing the barricade. Not one of them had been struck. Then the captain of the piece, bearing down upon the breech in order to raise the muzzle, began to point the cannon with the gravity of an astronomer levelling ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... beer, the pombe of the East Coast. Here they abuse the best of roast meat, openly sigh for 'palaver-sauce' and 'palm-oil chop,' and find fault with the claret and champagne. Chez eux they wear breech-cloths and nature's stockings—eoco tutto. Here both men and women must dress like Europeans, and a portentous spectacle it is. The horror reaches its height at Sierra Leone, where the pulpit ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... butting his head against it to raise it. Then he saw it lifted and in came a creature more hideous than Smith ever dreamed could exist. Painted all in red pocone, with breast tattooed in black, wearing no garment save a breech-clout and a gigantic headdress of feathers, shells and beads, he straightened himself to his great height. A horrible mask, distorting human lineaments, covered the face, and a medicine-bag of otter skin hung ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... discovered, contained a lot of cartridges for the rifles, there being a hundred or more of various sorts, some for the breech-loaders and some for the Enfields of the old- fashioned regulation size. There were also a variety of smaller cartridges for the revolvers, and "Old Jock" gave Tom and I each a package of these latter ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... they sewed fig tree leaves together, and made themselves breeches,' belongs exclusively to this Bible, but it is a mistake. The Saxon version of AElfric has, {166} 'and sewed fig-leaves, and worked them WEED-BREECH, or cloaths for the breech.' Wicliffe also translates 'and maden hem breechis;' and it is singular that Littleton, in his excellent Dictionary, explains perizomata, the word used in the Vulgate, by breeches. In the manuscript French translation of Petrus Comestor's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... so it went on all day—the Rebels rushing up first on this side, and then on that, and we, hastily collecting at the exposed points, seeking to drive them back. We were frequently successful; we were on the inside, and had the advantage of the short interior lines, so that our few men and our breech-loaders told to ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... any infantry lurking in ambush, watching to give them a hot reception. I have said that Arthur was thoroughly armed; besides his two revolvers and sabre, he had his double-barreled tiger-rifle, a breech-loader of the newest pattern, which had only lately been introduced into India. Arthur had not long to wait for his foes, for the clattering of the armed hoofs of their troop horses were soon heard coming along at a rapid pace. ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... two captains to the pivot gun, one on each side, stationed nearest to the base of the breech. Seventeen men were required to work the pivot gun, whose duties were defined in the names applied to them, the powderman being the odd one. The first and second captains were numbers one and two; the odd numbers being on the right, and the even on ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... difficulties arose too, connected with the use of the guns as a shelter from fire, and very exact rules had to be made to avoid tilting the nose and raising the breech of a gun in order to ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... Dick understands his trade, He stands by the breech of a short carronade, The linstock glows in his bony hand, Waiting that grim ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... feet may be presented in a normal manner, but the head and neck twisted back or to one side, or the head and one fore foot may be presented normally, while the other fore foot is doubled back, or there may be a breech presentation as the rump of a foetus with both hind feet thrown close to its body. This is a very difficult presentation, especially if in a young animal. A foetus abnormally presented requires good judgment and cleanliness, also lubrication of the walls of the womb with unsalted Lard, Cotton ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... asked him what he thought was best to teach them first. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learnt ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... "you shall have the book and a breech- loading shot-gun also. As for fishing-tackle, you can get along with a pole cut from the woods until you have earned money enough yourself to buy ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... a man of extraordinarily striking look and demeanor. He stood considerably over six feet in height, with a remarkably powerful yet lean body. He was naked except for a cloth breech clout girdled about his loins. His appearance was not that of an Oroid, for beside his greater height, and more muscular physique, his skin was distinctly of a more brownish hue. His hair was cut at the base of the neck in Oroid fashion; it was black, with streaks ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... he continued going across to the packing case, "is a saloon pistol, and will be exhibited in the museums of the next century as being the weapon with which the new era was inaugurated. Into the breech I place a Boxer cartridge, specialty provided for experimental purposes with a steel bullet. I aim point blank at the dab of red sealing wax upon the wall, which is four inches above the magnet. I am an absolutely ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai. 5 But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men. There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low 10 lean thorn between, And ye may hear a breech bolt snick where ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... the 'Shine Musketoons,' after their lieutenant-colonel; the '289th Pennsylvania Volunteers,' after the State series of numbers, which began with 280 or thereabout; and the 'First Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Reserve Corps, Breech-Loading Carbineers,' and doubtless by other names, though ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mortal shape. I seek refuge against you this night by the Throne-verse and the Chapter of Sincerity[FN56] and the Two Preventives!"[FN57] So saying the Wag put off all his clothes till he was naked, with prickle and breech exposed and danced among the slave-girls. They bound his hands and he wantoned among them, while they died of laughing at him and the Caliph swooned away for excess of laughter. Then he came to himself and going forth the curtain to Abu al-Hasan, said to him, "Out on thee, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... tests, and by which their reputations were established. The result is a rifle, compared with which, as manufactured by a dozen rifle-makers in the United States, the Mini, the Enfield, the Lancaster, or even the Sharpe's, and more recent breech-loaders, are bungling muskets. The last adopted form of missile, the sugar-loaf-shaped, of which the Minie, Enfieid, Colonel Jacob's, and all the conical forms are partial adaptations, has been, to our personal knowledge, in use among our riflemen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... cleaning of rifles started, although it was dark. Mine was already in good shape, and I leaned it against the side of the trench and went below for the rest of my equipment. While I was gone, a shell fragment undid all my work by smashing the breech. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... had the Springfield; England had the Enfield, which was practically the same as the Springfield; Austria had a rifle bearing a close resemblance to both, and of about the same calibre; Prussia had a breech-loader which no Government would now think of issuing to troops; France had an inferior muzzle-loader, and was experimenting with an imitation of the Prussian needle-gun, which finally proved ruinous to the Empire. There were few arms for sale, ...
— The Supplies for the Confederate Army - How they were obtained in Europe and how paid for. • Caleb Huse
... pardon," he continued. "Took you for old Gilly, you know." He snapped the empty shells from his gun, and blew into the breech, before adding, "Would you mind, then? That is, if you're bound up for Stink-Chau. It's a beastly long tramp, and ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... who got away carried some lead with them. Lieutenant Schwatka, who remained with the sleds, said that when the firing began it sounded for a while like a sharp battle, so rapidly and incessantly were the shots delivered. It clearly illustrates the advantage of breech-loaders and magazine guns when game is plentiful and much ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... his breath. Not a nerve trembled. The dog stopped, looked at Paul a moment, broke into a louder growl, opened his jaws wider, his eyes glaring more wildly, and stepped slowly forward. Now or never, Paul thought, was his time. The breech of the gun touched his shoulder; his eye ran along the barrel,—bang! the dog rolled over with a yelp and a howl, but was up again, growling and trying to get at Paul, who in an instant seized his gun by the barrel, and brought the breech down upon ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... is of marble, and around it is a quadrangular wall, breast high, of rough Gallegan granite; close to each corner rises from the earth the breech of an immense brass cannon, intended to keep the wall compact and close. These outer erections are, however, not the work of the French, but of ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... violent love Outrun the pauser reason. Here lay Duncan, His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood; And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech'd with gore: who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage to ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... a desk on shore, and the mode of carrying them out notified to the service in print. All this would have been quite as astonishing to the contemporaries of Nelson or of Exmouth and Codrington as the aspect of a battleship or of a 12-inch breech-loading gun. ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... rifles and yet keep his feet. They must be poor shots, he thought. He himself began to shoot rather deliberately. He did not see the faces of the men at whom he shot, for he always aimed at their breasts. Once, however, he took careful aim at a white face which lay against the breech of a rifle leveled at him. He aimed for the white space between the eyes quite as coolly as though he were facing a target. Yet he jumped a little in surprise as, following his report, he saw a blotch of red appear where he had aimed—saw it for just a second before the man reeled forward heavily ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... no fire-spouters astern. She bent to her paddle with Arctic skill and vigour. So did her mates, and the oomiak darted from the shore while the Indian who had fired the shot was still agonising with his ramrod—for, happily, breech-loaders ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... that the shell will fall from a great height and penetrate the decks of the enemy's ships. This is known as mortar firing, but the modern ordnance used for this purpose is more of a howitzer than a mortar, being simply short rifled pieces arranged for breech loading. All our batteries should, of course, be as far from the city or other object to be protected as possible, to prevent the enemy from firing over and beyond the batteries ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... forecastle. Then, gliding among the convicts stretched here and there, he made the round of the ship, and found that the "Speedy" carried four guns, which would throw shot of from eight to ten pounds in weight. He found also, on touching them that these guns were breech-loaders. They were therefore, of modern make, easily used, and of ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... Hall, and there did hear Betty Michell was at this end of the towne, and so without breach of vowe did stay to endeavour to meet with her and carry her home; but she did not come, so I lost my whole afternoon. But pretty! how I took another pretty woman for her, taking her a clap on the breech, thinking verily it had been her. Staid till [Sir] W. Batten and [Sir] W. Pen come out, and so away home by water with them, and to the office to do some business, and then home, and my wife do tell me that W. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... looked at the breech plug before turning on the power," said the German, "but I had no reason to suspect that anything was wrong." He went on to explain that the explosion was something like that which occurs when the breech-block of a big navy gun is not properly in place. The force of the Cardite, ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... long room, whose whitewashed walls reflected the light of a small fire burning on a rude hearth. Close to the hearth sat a man whom the prisoners at once supposed to be the puyo, or governor. By his side sat another, a small figure, somewhat wrinkled. He wore nothing but a breech-clout of buckskin, for it was summer. Several aged men were gathered in the neighbourhood of the fire. Although none of them wore either ornaments or badges, it was easy to surmise that they were the principal shamans. Along the wall sat, lounged, or squatted the ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... the Indian, dropping his empty gun, brandished his tomahawk and prepared to throw it at his enemy. Morgan struck with the butt of his gun, and the Indian hurled his tomahawk at one and the same moment. Both blows took effect; and both of the combatants were at once wounded and disarmed. The breech of the rifle was broken against the Indian's skull, and the edge of the tomahawk was shattered against the barrel of the rifle, having first cut off two of the fingers of Morgan's left hand. The Indian then attempting to draw his ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... seeing here and there an officer whom he knew, saluting cheerily, making a thousand excuses for his haste to the good-natured artillerymen, who only grinned in reply. As he rode, he noted with misgivings that the cannon were not breech-loaders. He had recently heard a good deal about the Prussian new model for field artillery, and he had read, in the French journals, reports of their wonderful range and flat trajectory. The cannon that he passed, with the exception of the Montigny mitrailleuses and the ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... remember the correction I had already received from him for my insolence; for he might not always be in the humour of sparing a wretch who abused his goodness. To this inuendo I made no reply but by a kick on the breech, which overturned him in an instant. He started up with wonderful agility, and, drawing his sword, attacked me with great fury. Several people interposed, but, when he informed them of its being ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... entered the circle, he dropped the breech of the latter to the ground, and, leaning calmly upon the muzzle, quietly surveyed the countenances of the group, in profound silence. The regulators were too much surprised to speak while this was going on; and ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... that blue breech, now playes he the Devil. So get ye home, drink small beer, and be ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... was heard on the stairs, and as Trent opened the breech and peered into the barrel of the weapon, Inspector Murch appeared at the open door of the room. "I was wondering"—he began; then stopped as he saw what the other was about. His intelligent eyes opened slightly. "Whose ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... Below the breech-clout the iron limbs were encased in leggings and the small feet were covered with moccasins, now faded and worn by hard usage. The Panther paused, with his left foot in advance, his right hand grasping the hilt of his ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... Mildmay. "She is fitted with a torpedo port for'ard, for firing what the professor called 'torpedo-shells'; two 10-inch breech-loading rifled guns, fired through ports in the dining-saloon, and six Maxim guns, fired from the upper deck, to say nothing of small-arms. Such an armament is ample for every occasion which is at all likely to arise; and if the professor will ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... never reached the Major, but was opened by another Field officer, who sent back this flatulent reply. "If you are with Major Blinks, you had better ask him whether you may use your own discretion and, if necessary, remove breech blocks and abandon guns." I was not with Major Blinks, and I neither knew nor cared where he might be. Nor had I any intention of abandoning the guns. I determined, without asking anyone's permission, to use my discretion ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... strength the old man swayed the breech of the heavy gun to its bearing, and then seizing the string of the lock, he stood back and watched for the next swell that would bring the shark in range. He had aimed the piece some distance ahead of his mark; but yet a little moment would ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... sounded merrily. One of the carts with wounded stopped by the side of the road close to Pierre. The driver in his bast shoes ran panting up to it, placed a stone under one of its tireless hind wheels, and began arranging the breech-band ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... did not appear to think that Acton's being a monitor was a clinching argument barring young Bourne's sport. Perhaps he had private reasons for his opinions. Anyhow, he glibly promised to have a breech-loader and a ferret for young ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... you up in the middle of the night, a few hours ago," said Lingard, without even looking at d'Alcacer who raised his hands a little and let them fall. Lingard sat down on the breech of a heavy piece mounted on a naval carriage so as to command the lagoon. He folded his arms on ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... the shell coming up upon a little trolley to the gun. He sees the gunners, as drilled and precise as the men he saw at the forges, swing out the breech block and run the shell, which has met and combined with its detonators and various other industrial products since it left the main dump, into the gun. The breech closes like a safe door, and hides the shell from the visitor. It is "good-bye." He receives exaggerated warning of the danger ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Coconino buckskins one upon the other, and upon them a double piece of white cotton. The buckskins represented daylight, or the twilight that comes just at the dawn of day. The invalid for whom this ceremony was held took off all his clothing except the breech cloth, and sat on the outside by the entrance of the sweat house amid the din of rattle and song, the theurgist being the only one who had a rattle. The invalid propelled himself into the house feet foremost, the covering of the sweat ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... the defiles of the Argonne where there are defiles no longer; never mind, that is according to tradition. I have a friend in Rouen who proposed to a club the manufacture of lances to fight against the breech-loaders! ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... The Arabs had antiquated matchlocks, mostly worn away to paper thinness at the mouth: as usual they fired with the right elbow raised to the level of the ear, and the left hand grasping the barrel, where with us the breech would be. Hassan Turki had one of those fine old Shishkhanah rifles formerly made at Damascus and Senaa: it carried a two-ounce ball with perfect correctness, but was so badly mounted in its block-butt, shaped like a Dutch cheese, that ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the superior centering of the shot obtainable with the breech-loading system, Bashforth introduces a factor [sigma], called the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... down the breech-strap he was mending. "Did you ever fire a gun?" he inquired suddenly, as he was starting across the yard to fetch the weapon from ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... cliffs, somewhere between Cape Race to the southward and St. John's to the northward, hides the little hamlet of Chance Along. As to its geographical position, this is sufficient. In the green sea in front of the cleft, and almost closing the mouth of it, lie a number of great boulders, as if the breech in the solid cliff had been made by some giant force that had broken and dragged forth the primeval rock, only to leave the refuse of its toil to lie forever in the edge of the tide, to fret the gnawing currents. At low tide a narrow strip of black shingle shows between ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... the exception of blankets—still much worn by both sexes at their homes, and dancing suits—their original costumes are now seldom seen. The blanket has been substituted for the sea-otter cloak, trousers and dresses for the breech cloth, and leather undergarments by woven ones. The men wear hats, but the women very rarely; a handkerchief or shawl being their most common head covering. Some of the elderly women, however, wear large hats of the Chinese pattern, braided by them from ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... States military academy through casual favour, and graduated in 1847, when war with Mexico was nearly over. In 1853 he resigned his commission, and from 1853 to 1858 was engaged in the manufacture of firearms at Bristol, R.I. In 1856 he invented a breech-loading rifle. He was employed by the Illinois Central railroad until the Civil War broke out. Then he took command of a Rhode Island regiment of three months militia, on the summons of Governor Sprague, took part in the relief of the national capital, and commanded a brigade ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... a second Frenchman took the tube in hand. Colonel Thouvenin abandoned the chamber, and filled up much of the place it had occupied with a cylindrical steel pillar, or tige, which projected from the breech-plug longitudinally into the barrel. This formed a little anvil whereon the bullet was to be beaten into the grooves. But the bottom was flattened, and the powder acted only on the periphery of the ball instead of the centre, tending thus to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... strides he went down. A tough vine, unnoticed on the ground, looped snakily around one ankle and threw him hard. His gun flew from his hand. As he fell a tiny whispering sound flitted past, followed by a small blow somewhere behind him. Ensued a gruff grunt from Tim and the swift clatter of a breech bolt. ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... librarian's letter with a nephew with the most modern of military training: and as I was at a military school in 1860—just two centuries after our period—we had fun together. Even with an old muzzle loader—Scott's Tactics—it was "Load and fire in ten motions," now antiquated with the breech-loaders of to-day. The same operation, in 1662, required 28 motions, as we counted. By the bye, did I tell you that I found the flint-lock invented (in Spain) in 1625—and it "soon" spread over Europe? I felt, however, that the intervening 37 ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... very earth seemed to burst apart; yet the answering rifle-fire was steady—steady as the roll of drums. Then we truly saw one red light, and "EK!" said we all at once. EK means ONE, sahib, but it sounded like the opening of a breech-block. "Mount!" ordered Colonel ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... whirl is this? Monstrous incongruity. Philosophy and fighting troopers. The Infinite and dead horses. There's humour for you. The Sublime takes off its hat to the Ridiculous. Send a cartridge clashing into the breech and speculate about the Absolute. Keep one eye on your sights and the other on Cosmos. Blow the reek of burned powder from before you so you may look over the edge of the abyss of the Great Primal Cause. Duck to the whistle of ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... formidable, long-barreled "Colt," which, with one sharp motion of the fingers, she promptly unlimbered, exposing the breech. In each cylinder chamber, she saw, lay a loaded cartridge. Once assured of this, she snapped shut the breech and balanced the gun in the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... steamers which daily arrive there, a profitable market for game has sprung up during the past few years, to supply which there are now a number of native gunners who, as a means of livelihood, scour the country with foreign breech-loaders in search of pheasants, wildfowl, etc., so that, being capital shots, within a considerable distance of this port the shooting is not so good as formerly, although in all other parts of the Empire it still remains practically untouched ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... the Prussians in 1866 that they opposed breech-loaders to the muzzle-loaders of the Austrians; but it would be folly to give all the credit of the victory to the breech-loaders and none to Moltke and his lieutenants. Thus, it must remembered that two things contributed to our victories. One was the excellent make and armament of our ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... France in the days preceding the use of modern breech-loading firearms, the gray wolves of Europe were very bold, and a great many people were killed ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... September day. One of these two was Sir David Forster, a big man, with a light-brown beard and a florid complexion. The other was John Saltram, who sat in a lounging attitude on one of the deep window-seats examining his breech-loader. His back was turned towards the window, and the glare of the blazing logs shone full upon his dark face with a ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... was the khaki bag containing gas mask and respirator. Over his outer garments were his belt, brace straps, bayonet and ammunition pouches. His rifle was slung upon his shoulder with the foot of a woolen sock covering the muzzle and the leg of the same sock wrapped around the breech. A large jerkin made of leather, without sleeves, was worn over the short coat. Long rubber boots reaching to the hips and strapped at ankle and hip completely covered his legs. When anticipating trench raids, or on a raiding party, a handy trench ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... faces. There were less of the ape characteristics about their features, and less of the negroid, too. They carried weapons, stone-shod spears, stone knives, and hatchets—and they wore ornaments and breech-cloths—the former of feathers worn in their hair and the latter made of a single snake-skin cured with the head on, the head depending to ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... opposite directions and the prisoners were left squatting under the eyes and bayonets of a very suspicious prison guard, who made no secret of being ready for all conceivable emergencies. One enthusiast drew the cartridge out of his breech-chamber and licked it at intervals of a minute or two, to the very great interest of the Hillmen, who memorized every detail that by any stretch of imagination might be expected to improve their own shooting when ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... the loud Cannons Breech, Which makes no distinction betwixt poor and rich, Instead of his Dog might have ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... read the indictment, which was in the usual form. It charged Laura Hawkins, in effect, with the premeditated murder of George Selby, by shooting him with a pistol, with a revolver, shotgun, rifle, repeater, breech-loader, cannon, six-shooter, with a gun, or some other, weapon; with killing him with a slung-shot, a bludgeon, carving knife, bowie knife, pen knife, rolling pin, car, hook, dagger, hair pin, with a hammer, with a screw-driver; with a nail, and with all other weapons and utensils ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... noncommissioned officers, as a measure for securing the better care and protection of supplies; an appropriation for the publication of the catalogue and tables of the anatomical section of the Army Medical Museum; a reappropriation of the amount for the manufacture of breech-loading arms, should the selection be so delayed by the board of officers as to leave the former appropriation unexpended at the close of the fiscal year; the sale of such arsenals east of the Mississippi ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... astonishment was great when Edgar pushed the lever, opened the breech, inserted a cartridge, and closing the breech said that it was now loaded and ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... surmised the nature of the occasion which called so many together, from the appearance and equipment of these horses. They were not heavy animals, with the marks of plough-collars on their broad shoulders, or the hair worn off their rumps by huge breech-straps; but light and clean-limbed, one or two of them showing signs of good blood, and all more ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... their weapons, their harpoons and lances, the best of wood for their sledges, the best of cutlery, knives, hatchets, and saws for their work, and the cooking utensils of civilization. Formerly they were dependent upon the most primitive hunting weapons; now they have repeating rifles, breech-loading shotguns, and an abundance of ammunition. There was not a rifle in the tribe when I first went there. As they have no vegetables, and live solely on meat, blood, and blubber, the possession ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... his heart beat, for there, bright and new, were the things he had been longing for: a large metal model, carriage and all, of a breech-loading cannon, and a patent ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn
... ourselves up in the healing solitudes of the crater of Haleakala and get a good rest, for the mails do not intrude there, nor yet the telephone and the telegraph; and after resting we would come down the mountain a piece and board with a godly, breech-clouted native, and eat poi and dirt, and give thanks to whom all thanks belong for these privileges, and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of revenge, he would horribly upset my work; for the reporting of the trial would fall on me without a relief. What that trial would be like I knew even to weariness. There would be the rifle carefully uncleaned, with the fouling marks about breech and muzzle, to be sworn to by half a dozen superfluous privates; there would be heat, reeking heat, till the wet pencil slipped sideways between the fingers; and the punkah would swish and the pleaders would jabber in the verandahs, and ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... maner mysteres and craftes; as of clothes, botes and other thinges; and thei dryven cartes, plowes and waynes and chariottes; and thei maken houses and alle maner of mysteres, out taken bowes and arwes and armures, that men maken. And alle the wommen weren breech, as wel as men. Alle the folk of that contree ben fulle obeyssant to hire sovereynes; ne thei fighten not ne chiden not, on with another. And there ben nouther thefes ne robboures in that contree; and every man worschipethe othere: but no man there dothe no reverence to no straungeres, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... says Terence, forgetting his bad temper in his anxiety to exhibit his treasure. "It's a breech-loader, too; none of your old-fashioned things, mind you, but a reg'lar good one. I'll tell you who lent it to me, if you'll promise not ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... never greater than in this, my first essay as a hunter. I had not gone far from the camp before I met with pigeons, and some of them alighted in the bushes very near me. I cocked my pistol, and raised it to my face, bringing the breech almost in contact with my nose. Having brought the sight to bear upon the pigeon, I pulled trigger, and was in the next instant sensible of a humming noise, like that of a stone sent swiftly through the air. I ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... anxious eyes as he broke the breech, looked at the shining circle of cartridges, and ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... a bush, I found a March-cat, and with it I wiped my breech, but her claws were so sharp that they scratched and exulcerated all my perinee. Of this I recovered the next morning thereafter, by wiping myself with my mother's gloves, of a most excellent perfume and scent of the Arabian Benin. After that ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... reckon the ball's opened," rejoined Lash, and now that former nervous impatience so unnatural to him was as if it had never been. He was smilingly cool, and his voice had almost a caressing note. He tapped the breech of his Winchester with a sinewy brown hand, and he did not appear to be addressing any one in particular. "Yaqui's opened the ball. Look up your pardners there, gents, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... designs and samples to be seen in Venice, showing that the principle of the modern revolver was born and partially carried out centuries before the ingenious American, Colonel Colt, perfected a weapon which has since become universal. The same remark will apply to the principle of breech-loading fire-arms, examples of which may here be seen three hundred years old. One very singular cannon was observed, actually made from closely woven rope, so strong and compact as to be capable of bearing a discharge with gunpowder, and which had once seen service in battle. The ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... of what was instilled into him in the nursery may possibly occur to some even at this day. 'In our childhood,' he complains, 'our mothers' maids have so terrified us with an ugly devil having horns on his head, fire in his mouth, a tail in his breech, eyes like a bison, fangs like a dog, a skin like a niger, a voice roaring like a lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one cry Boh!' Chaucer has expressed the belief of his age on the subject. It seems ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... Essence of Selfishness then as she purrs around a simmering saucepan of milk destined for my coffee, and inspects the toast and jam, and sniffs at my breech-loader, well greased with neatsfoot-oil, and now the ghostly light in the courtyard tells me to ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... could. I wish I could find anything to do," answered Giovanni, laying down the breech-loader and looking out of the window. "The world is turned inside out like a beggar's pocket, and there ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... Indians around the waggon appeared to number near two hundred men. They must have constituted the full band: for it is rare that a war-party is larger. Those seen appeared to be all warriors, naked from the breech-clout upward, their skins glaring with pigments. Neither woman nor child could I see among them. Had the other waggons been captured, there would not have been so many of the captors clustered around this particular one. In all likelihood, the vehicle had ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... taking their seats in the luxurious chamber within. The first stop is at Sydney, Cape Breton, and the car is pointed accurately in that direction. At three minutes to 7 the engineers and conductor come on board; the former to place the powerful oxyhydrogen charge in the great breech-loading tube, the latter to close the doors against ingress or egress. Precisely at 7 the signal is given. A furious and powerful hissing is then heard, as well as a momentary scraping of the car on its runners. In another ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood; And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature, For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murtherers Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech'd with gore.— ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... man must be a new arrival. He was youngish and merry-faced as he drew closer, with black curly hair and a pointed beard. There was a mental-motive look to him, as if he were a high grade engineer or machinist. He wore a breech-clint of woven grasses, and ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... magazine Springfield, the old single-shot Springfields, with one hundred thousand rounds of 45-70 ball cartridges, had been sold to the highest bidder. In addition to the small arms, Lopez had at present in a warehouse three machine guns and four 3 inch breech-loading pieces of field artillery (the kind of guns generally designated as a "jackass battery," for the reason that they can be taken down and transported over rough country on mules)—together with a supply of ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... the bushes. Mr. Black had a gun and pistol, too; he attempted to shoot the negro, but William Turner, Col. Singleton's overseer, who hired Mr. Black to hunt Dick, the runaway from the colonel's plantation, would not let him do it. Mr. Black then attempted to strike Champion with the breech of his gun, but Champion kicked him down, and as he drew his knife to stab Mr. Black, Mr. Turner, the overseer, struck him on the back of his head with the butt of a loaded whip. This stunned him for a few moments, and by the time he had regained ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... clean the bore. With the cleaning rod the bore must always be cleaned from the breech—never from the muzzle. Cleaning from the muzzle is liable to wear and otherwise injure the mouth of the barrel, which is easily injured and thus ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... above him, as he struggled from his cramped quarters. The savage had grabbed him about the shoulders, but his hands were still free; they held the gun on high. And in the second when he found his feet under him, as Phee-e-al dragged him clear of the chest, Rawson brought the breech of the gun crashing down ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... conviction took possession of his mind, that the dog had a turned-up tail; and that, if, in passing under the cloths, he had elevated and wagged it, their defilement must have been consummated. Ready-witted Brahmin! another idea. He called the cleverest of his children, and bade it affix to his breech-cloth a plantain-leaf, dog's-tail-wise, and waggishly. Then resuming his all-fours-ness, he passed a second time under the cloth, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... out of the direct course. The chief invited us to take part in the sport; which of course we readily consented to do. All arrangements having been made, a part of the band, numbering some fifty or sixty men, armed with bows and arrows, with no other garments than their breech-clouts, set off on horseback in two divisions, followed by a number of men on foot, who concealed themselves as we went along in any holes or behind any hillocks ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... people fled from him as from a wild beast, believing him to be a violent madman; and by such compulsion he took, without any resistance, all that he desired from the houses. I saw this man, who unexpectedly came toward me of his own accord; he was naked, his only covering being a wretched breech-cloth; he wore in his girdle a dagger, and carried in his hands his bow and arrows. I caressed him, and tried to soften him with presents and gentle treatment, and this intercourse we continued for five or six years, with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... appearance by the addition of a hideous balbriggan undershirt, sandwiched between tight trousers with innumerable buttons and a brilliantly coloured turban; while still others, in little else than a fez and breech-clout, seemed not a whit abashed. The children were either quite naked, or wrapped in sarongs, faded by the sun and weather to a dull harmony of their once too ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... men of Jakoits village, rushed along the narrow path that led to his house, they heard the roar and crackle of the flames; when they gained the open they saw the bright light shining on the old cannon, whose polished brass was stained and streaked with red. Tiaru lay across the breech, dead. ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... were cooking up something. They've got some Indians in it too. Saw them rehearsing old Thunder Mountain the other day in nothing but a breech-clout." ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... blacks took a gun and a cutlass, as Dick Sand had done. A cartridge was slipped into the breech of the Remingtons, and, thus armed, all four went to the ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... fellows had their hands full fighting them off until the engineers made good their work, which they did by smashing the hydraulic buffers with picks, destroying the sights, blowing the guns up, and taking the breech-blocks back ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... of galloping hoofs, and twisted about just in time to see a rider top a rise a short distance in front of him. He snapped down his breech sight and faced the supposed assailant with the rifle ready at his shoulder. Almost as quickly he lowered the weapon and snatched off his sombrero in joyful salute. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... replied. "I'll give an account of myself." And he stepped forward, grasping one of his pistols, not by the breech, but by ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... two or three vagrant grains that lodged round the mouth of his piece, took out a handful of bullets, looked them all over carefully, selected one without flaw or wrinkle, drew out his patching, found the most even part of it, sprung open the grease-box in the breech of his rifle; took up just so much grease, distributed it with great equality over the chosen part of his patching, laid it over the muzzle of his rifle, grease side down, placed his ball upon it, pressed it a little, then took it up and turned the neck a little more ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... beholding breaches of the statutes. He would not have rained upon the unjust as the just if he had had the directing of the heavens. As Private Gellatly put it: "Sergeant Fones has the fear o' God in his heart, and the law of the land across his saddle, and the newest breech-loading at that!" He was part of the great machine of Order, the servant of Justice, the sentinel in the vestibule of Martial Law. His interpretation of duty worked upward as downward. Officers and privates were acted on by the force known as Sergeant ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Leslie proceeded direct to the island where, having landed Flora, he proceeded, with some difficulty, to rouse the savages, and supply them with food and drink. They proved to be, as Leslie had said, a pair of fine, well-made men, naked, save for a kind of breech-clout round their loins, of sturdy physique, and apparently but little the worse for their adventure. Nor were they especially unprepossessing in appearance, although there was a certain character of ruthlessness ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... perseverance, he had succeeded in obtaining the appointment of an official commission to examine it. The commission decided that the Larinski musket possessed certain advantages, but that it had three defects: it was too heavy, the breech became choked too rapidly with oil from the lubricator, and the cost of manufacture was too high. Count Abel did not lose courage. He gave himself up to study, devoted nearly two years to perfecting his invention, and applied all his increased skill ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... cavalry attempted to purse. They had become careless. The camel-guns spoke at intervals, and the square slouched forward amid the protesting of the camels. Then came the attack of three thousand men who had not learned from books that it is impossible for troops in close order to attack against breech-loading fire. ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... her as a man should love all things that are swift and strong and honest, keen for marks and goals—a big, clean-limbed, thoroughbred horse that will break his heart to get under the wire first; a high-power rifle, slim of muzzle, thick of breech, with its wicked little throaty cry, doing its business over a flat trajectory a thousand yards away: I love her as a man should love those. Little did I dream that she ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... the yard and climbing down the sail, unlacing as they go? So far as I am able to judge, their method is a most simple and effective one, for all that they do is to lower the sail, gather in the slack at the bottom, and as there are several sheets up and down the breech of the sail, the thing is done with the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... little difficulties arose too, connected with the use of the guns as a shelter from fire, and very exact rules had to be made to avoid tilting the nose and raising the breech of a gun in order ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... going out of the direct course. The chief invited us to take part in the sport; which of course we readily consented to do. All arrangements having been made, a part of the band, numbering some fifty or sixty men, armed with bows and arrows, with no other garments than their breech-clouts, set off on horseback in two divisions, followed by a number of men on foot, who concealed themselves as we went along in any holes or behind any hillocks ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... place like this we must not yield to fright, but do the utmost to bestir ourselves; therefore, up at once, and fling a handful of that assafetida upon the fire." Agnolo, at the moment when he moved to do this, let fly such a volley from his breech, that it was far more effectual than the assafetida. [1] The boy, roused by that great stench and noise, lifted his face little, and hearing me laugh, he plucked up courage, and said the devils were taking to flight tempestuously. So we abode thus ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... its square uprights of pine wood the Stand resembled one of our own pistol-galleries at a fair, with this difference, that the amateurs brought their own weapons, breech-loading muskets of the oldest pattern, which they managed, however, with some adroitness. Tar-tarin, his arms crossed, observed the shots, criticised them aloud, gave his advice, but did not fire himself. The Russians watched him, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... always were armed, and kept guard at the festivals, to prevent any innovation which the multitude thus gathered together might make,] one of the soldiers pulled back his garment, and cowering down after an indecent manner, turned his breech to the Jews, and spake such words as you might expect upon such a posture. At this the whole multitude had indignation, and made a clamor to Cumanus, that he would punish the soldier; while the rasher part of the ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... field, and I believe those who got away carried some lead with them. Lieutenant Schwatka, who remained with the sleds, said that when the firing began it sounded for a while like a sharp battle, so rapidly and incessantly were the shots delivered. It clearly illustrates the advantage of breech-loaders and magazine guns when game is ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... gunners cluster on the gun, Clasping the clammy breech and slippery shells; If 'tis a joke they do not see the fun And damn you to the worst of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... gun from a corner where it stood against the wall, opened the breech, shut it again, and turning to the open window lifted the stock ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... we had an affair with Turkish justice which illustrates the position of the consuls in Turkey so well that I tell it fully. The dragoman and I had gone off to shoot rock-pigeons in one of the caves by the seashore, leaving at home my breech-loading hunting rifle, then a novelty in that part of the world. When we got home at night the city was full of a report that some one in our house had shot a Turkish boy through the body. I at ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... was improbable: the more so, that the Indians around the waggon appeared to number near two hundred men. They must have constituted the full band: for it is rare that a war-party is larger. Those seen appeared to be all warriors, naked from the breech-clout upward, their skins glaring with pigments. Neither woman nor child could I see among them. Had the other waggons been captured, there would not have been so many of the captors clustered around this particular one. In all likelihood, the vehicle had been ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... a weapon as he had coveted all his life long, seeing such in gunsmiths' windows and the halls of noblemen: a breech-loader, of foreign make, beautifully ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the root of Arabi's defiance. He had some grounds for confidence. The British fleet consisted of eight battleships (of which only the Inflexible and Alexandra were of great fighting power), along with five unarmoured vessels. The forts mounted 33 rifled muzzle-loading guns, 3 rifled breech-loaders, and 120 old smooth-bores. The advantage in gun-power lay with the ships, especially as the sailors were by far the better marksmen. Yet so great is the superiority of forts over ships that the engagement lasted five hours or more (7 A.M. till noon) ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... greatest stage in the history of war, the notable invention of gunpowder was achieved, and an enormous transformation took place in the whole terrible art. The musket, the rifle, the pistol, the cannon were one by one evolved, to develop in the nineteenth century into the breech-loader, the machine gun, the bomb, and the multitude of devices fitted to bring about death and destruction by wholesale, instead of by the retail methods of ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... and, as to his conduct with the Maltese, it was, probably, to shew his consequence. I am sure, the good queen never had a thought of any under-hand work against us; therefore, I would recommend sending him here with a kick in the breech, and let all ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... a trained buffalo-hunting horse, which went by the unconventional name of "Brigham," and from the government he obtained an improved breech-loading needle-gun, which, in testimony of its murderous qualities, ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... then removed his clothing, until nothing remained but the breech-cloth. Beaulieu took a rope (selected by himself for the purpose) and first tied and knotted one end about the juggler's ankles; his knees were then securely tied together, next the wrists, after which the arms were passed over the knees and a billet of wood passed ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... who was a bit of a boaster, "give me time to aim and I'll warrant me 'Thunder of God'" (that was the name let in with gold on the breech of the gun) "will hit the mark within a yard every time. Thou shalt see it ere-long. There is a sort of pigeon place on the face of the bastion where I will aim, and thou shalt see the splinters of it spin!" He shaded his eyes with his hand and ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... cheek to back of the ear, and he stumbled over a pile of wheat sheaves and fell headlong. As he had dropped his shotgun, she picked it up and with her thumb on the safety, her finger on the trigger, and her left hand on the breech, showed him how a $125 shotgun looks in the hands of one who could and would use it ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... trail, past the spring, ride in single file the Apaches, slowly, on tired horses, for the pursuing soldiers have given them no halting space. Naked, save for a breech-clout, with a narrow red band of dyed buckskin about his forehead, in which sticks a feather, each rides silent, grim, cruel, a hideous human reptile, as native to the desert as is the Gila monster. The ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... Breech, side, back, and other presentations sometimes occur; in all of which instances, the foetus must be turned in such a position that it can be brought away with as little trouble as possible. When this cannot be accomplished, the only resort is embryotomy, or cutting ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... in red breech-clout and spectacles, the lamplight shining on his bald head, sat in the midst of them, familiar by a score of years with their chants. Pae filled the pipe and the bowls and joined in the chorus, while the Paumotan boys, in a shadowy recess, sipped ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... best to teach them first. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learnt ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... thus each time I essay to get within thy narrow precincts. Oh! for a chair, a stool, a rope; or have they purposely swung thee so high? hadst thou been o'er a gun, indeed, one might have scaled thee by the breech. So! In at last; yet, with that eternal sentinel walking his rounds within a few paces of my ear, how is it possible to sleep? Exhausted, however, by the novelty and excitement of the past day, at length wearied nature asserted ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... give this as one of the General Canons of the Syllogism; but we have seen (chap. vi. Sec. 6) that it is of wider application. Indeed, 'not to go beyond the evidence' belongs to the definition of formal proof. A breech of this rule in a syllogism is the fallacy of Illicit Process of the Minor, or of the Major, according to which term has been unwarrantably distributed. The following parasyllogism illicitly distributes ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... to the obscurer paths. You may quote Napoleon as a contrary instance. I maintain positively that his day was over, his sun was eclipsed, when his valet had to loosen the buckles of his waistcoat and breech. Now, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the formidable warrior, for such his garb denoted him to be, continued motionless in the attitude he had at first assumed—his right cheek reposing on the ornamented stock of his rifle, and his quick and steady eye fixed in one undeviating line with the sight near the breech, and that which surmounted the extreme end of the deadly weapon. No sooner, however, had the head of the advancing column come within sight, than the trigger was pulled, and the small and ragged bullet sped hissing from the grooved ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... act is reached when the point of a bayonet, 23 1/2 inches long, fastened to the breech of a cannon, is placed in her mouth and the piece discharged; the recoil driving the bayonet suddenly down her throat. The gun is loaded with a 10 gauge ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... past the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men. There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between, And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... usefulness of hatpins or hairpins as pipe-cleaners, usefulness of pins to schoolboys, both when bent for fishing and when filed to an extra point for use on the boy in the seat in front (honouring him in the breech, as Hamlet would have said) and their curious habits of turning up in unexpected places, undoubtedly caught by pins in their long association with the lovelier sex. But of these useful hyphens of raiment we ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... "The breech-action has jammed!" he exclaimed. "Drop him, Tom. He's scented us, and is headed this way. The whole herd will follow in ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... incapable for a time of attending to their duties." "Then a person could have escaped without their seeing him?" "A whole regiment of persons might have escaped. You will understand the situation exactly if I compare this corridor to a long cannon, the room at the end being the breech-loading chamber. Two guards were inside the room, and two others stood outside the door that communicated with this corridor. These four men were killed instantly. Of the guards inside the room not a vestige has been found. The door, one of the strongest ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... fire of a covered line is simply to devote them to destruction. The greater the mass, the greater the loss—that is all. A large mass has no more chance of success than a small one. That this is absolutely true since the introduction of breech-loaders is probably not doubted by any one; and it was very nearly true with the muzzle- loading rifles used during our late war, as was abundantly demonstrated on ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... Jim waited until he heard the click of the gun as its breech closed after reloading, then moved forward with well-bred restraint to sniff long and inquiringly where the bird ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... by a friend to George, that whipp'd Jack, (52) that whipp'd the breech, That whipp'd the nation as long as it could stand over it - after which It was itself re-jerk'd by the sage author of this speech: "Methinks a Rump should go as well with a Scotch spur as with a switch." From ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... off for ten days. The tide and wind helped, and early one afternoon the big white boat under a ragged sail shouldered its way before the sea breeze into Patusan Reach, manned by fourteen assorted scarecrows glaring hungrily ahead, and fingering the breech-blocks of cheap rifles. Brown calculated upon the terrifying surprise of his appearance. They sailed in with the last of the flood; the Rajah's stockade gave no sign; the first houses on both sides of the stream seemed deserted. A ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... great matters; and calling to mind the saying of the late Chancellor Olivier, that the French were like monkeys that swarm up a tree from branch to branch, and never stop till they come to the highest, and there shew their breech. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... fill with water and cellulose material, and as they are also minutely subdivided, the effects of damage by shot and consequent flooding may be localized to a considerable extent. The guns of the ship are to consist of four 20 centimeter Hontorio breech loading guns on Vavasseur carriages, six 12 centimeter guns, eight 6 pounder rapid firing, and eight or ten small guns for boats and mitrailleuse purposes, four of which are in the crow's nests at the top of the two masts of the ship. We may remark in passing that the builders ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... men examined Smoke's rifle, ejecting and counting the cartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle and breech. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... the further advantage of being much the safer plan, and seeing that the powder is up to the cones before you do so. If it is not so, let your hammer down, and give a smart tap to the under side of the breech, holding it uppermost, and you will never need a picker; or at least almost never. Remember, too, that the best picker in the world is a strong needle headed with sealing wax. And now that you have finished loading, and ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... water here. So, out of this, you mis-begotten son of a red-coated ape, or I'll give you something to help you along." And the sentry quietly pulled out a cartridge, and began leisurely fitting it into the breech of ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... fight" although he and his friend had only one charge of powder apiece. These two were young men, and like many of their generation they imitated the Indian to the extent of wearing thigh-leggings and breech-clouts. ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... was to consist of fifty soldiers, twenty-five marines, and fifty blue-jackets, who were to embark in the steamer's boats, two of which were provided with small breech-loading pieces running on slides, and under the charge of ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... cavalry uniform and on this parade some of them had their heavy overcoats on, others their large black hats, with all the brass accoutrements attached; some of them were minus pantaloons and only wore a breech-clout. Others wore regulation pantaloons but no shirts, and were bareheaded; others again had the seat of their pantaloons cut out, leaving only leggings; some of them wore brass spurs, though without boots or moccasins; but for all ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... natural looking as possible, and then we are ready for business. Now here they come—a flock of seven geese, plump down among the stool, but get up again with equal haste. Two of them are knocked down with the breech-loader, one dead, the other only wounded—a third stopped by the muzzle-loader. Theodoric was dreamily watching his decoys as they danced about, when a bunch of sprig-tail swooped dawn, hovering above the stool. He picked his bird, and dropped ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... and decided. They faced us, in manner determined. We waited, tense and watchful. Without even a premonitory shout a pony bolted for us, from their huddle. He bore two riders, naked to the sun, save for breech clouts. They charged straight in, and at her mystified, alarmed murmur I was holding on them as best I could, finger crooked against trigger, coaxing it, praying for luck, when the rear rider dropped to the ground, bounded briefly and dived headlong, worming into ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... to the world. It is an improvement upon all that has yet been done in the way of ordnance, and the principles involved in its construction can be applied to any size of gun, from a one-inch barker to a thirty-six-inch thunderer. The model as it now stands weighs 475 pounds, measures four inches at breech, and is constructed of the finest of gun brass at a cost of $3,500. There is a magazine at the breech in which a large number of heavy shells can be held in reserve, and in the action of the gun these slip down to their places and are fired at the rate of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... especially the kava-drinkers. I afterward walked out, and visited several other chiefs, and found that all of them were taking their morning draught, or had already taken it. Returning to the king, I found him asleep in a small retired hut, with two women tapping on his breech. About eleven o'clock he arose again, and then some fish and yams, which tasted as if they had been stewed in cocoa-nut milk, were brought to him. Of these he eat a large portion, and lay down once more to sleep. I now left him, and carried ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... possible during the short time of their annual contract engagements. In a country like Persia, where pride of arms prevails to keep up the habit of carrying them, there is a steady demand for modern breech-loading rifles. The Government is alive to the necessity of preventing the importation of firearms, and from time to time seizures are made of consignments smuggled under the guise of merchandise. ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... trough of fat, and the goodman, and the goody in the byre, and Daisy the cow at the manger, and the leaf-picker in the home-field, and Mr. Stoat of Stoneheap, and Sir Squirrel of the Brake, and Reynard Slyboots, and Mr. Hopper the hare, and Greedy Graylegs the wolf, and Bare-breech the bear-cub, and Mrs. Bruin, and Baron Bruin, and a bridal train on the king's highway, and a funeral at the church, and Lady Moon in the sky, and Lord Sun in heaven—and, now I think of it, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... of the American Constitution. It found Ireland a nation of savages and did for it what the mighty power of the Caesars could not—brought it within the pale of civilization. But for the Roman Catholic Church Slattery might be wearing a breech clout, digging roots with his finger nails and gorging himself with raw meat in Ireland to-day instead of insulting the intelligence of American audiences and wringing money from fanatics and fools by warring upon the political institutions of ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the Winchester, and, holding it in front of him, jerked down the lever as he had seen Dorothy do, so as to eject the old and put a fresh cartridge into the breech. But the old cartridge, in springing out, flew up and hit him such a smart rap between the eyes that Leon at once seized his ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... since leaving Pembina, at about nine o'clock in the morning. Here they encamped at this early hour. He caught two wild geese, and told his wife to cook them. His followers all dispersed to hunt buffalo, as they were plenty about. He then put a new flint in his gun, and stripped himself all but his breech-cloth, and went out to explore the route he should pass on ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... saw such heavy cannon either at Portsmouth, Plymouth, Dover, or any other fortified port in England. The sentinels would not allow us to take a minute survey of these ordnance; but as soon as we walked round from the muzzle to the breech, in order to examine their really herculean proportions, a bayonet, thrust before our eyes, would be sure to interrupt the stream of information which commenced flowing through them to the mind. I suppose the soldier had read or heard of England, and thinking the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... attached a body resembling the little toe of a newly-born infant. On the left side the limb was represented by a fleshy corpuscle 1 inch long and 1/4 inch in circumference, resembling the great toe of an infant. There was no history of shock or injury to the mother. The child presented by the breech, and by the absence of limbs caused much difficulty in diagnosis. The three stages of labor were one and one-half hours, forty-five minutes, and five minutes, respectively. The accompanying illustration shows the appearance of the limbs at ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... in plain sight, the cannon was loaded with powder and ball. A man lit a slow match, blew it painstakingly to a glow, then took his position at the breech. The slight innumerable sounds of these activities died. The bustle of men moving imperceptibly fell. Not even the coughing and sneezing usual to a gathering of people paying attention was heard, for the intense interest inhibited these nervous symptoms. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... employer, one afternoon, "you must see our 'Wild Irishman' here before you say you've yet found the queerest, brightest, cleverest chap in all your travels. What d'ye say, Stockford?" And the Major paused in his work of charging cartridges for his new breech-loading shotgun and turned to await ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... beginning to make. The shoals toward the beach were already white with the churn of water, while those farther out as yet showed no more sign than of discoloured water. As the schooner went into the wind and backed her jib and staysail the whaleboat was swung out. Into it leaped six breech-clouted Santa Cruz boys, each armed with a rifle. Denby, carrying the lanterns, dropped into the stern-sheets. Grief, following, ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... said that the gut of the gnat was narrow, and that, in passing through this tiny passage, the air is driven with force towards the breech; then after this slender channel, it encountered the rump, which was distended like a trumpet, and there ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the enemy won their way—taking advantage of every rock and inequality of ground—until they were within two hundred yards of the village. Nearer than this they could not come, for the ground was open and, in the face of the force in shelter, armed with breech loaders, it would have been madness ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... or cannon, were muzzle-loading. The secondary armament, mounted in tops, cageworks, bulkheads, etc., were breech-loading; but these smaller pieces fell out of favor as time went on owing to reliance on long-range fire and rareness of boarding actions. Down to the middle of the 19th century there was no great improvement in ordnance, save in the ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... gravitation, the undulatory theory of light and heat, steam as a motive power in navigation, flying machines, the invention of the camera obscura, magnetic attraction, the use of the stone saw, the system of canalisation, breech loading cannon, the construction of fortifications, the circulation of the blood, the swimming belt, the wheelbarrow, the composition of explosives, the invention of paddle wheels, the smoke stack, the mincing machine! It is, therefore, easy to see why he called "Mechanics ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell
... see a submarine dive down into green water, see the torpedo slid into the tube, breech-block closed, and—"Now—for Kaiser and fatherland!"—by means of an image thrown on a screen from the periscope, see the English cruiser go up in a ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... about twenty over my head with the butt. He tore my shirt off, after I would not pull it off; he ordered me to cross my hands. I didn't do that. After I wouldn't do that he went and got his gun. and broke the breech of that over my head. He then seized up the fire-tongs and struck me over the head ever so often. The next thing he took was the parlor shovel and he beat on me with that till he broke the handle; then he took the blade and stove it at my head with all his might. I told ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... figure of Soa, outlined in bold relief against the background of the fire and surrounded by many of the freed Settlement men. At the instant when he saw her she was in the act of springing back from the breech of the gun, the lanyard in her hand. Then came the roar of the shot and ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... stepped down to face the breech of a gun whose muzzle pointed out of another hole in the timbered ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... hardly brought his gun to his shoulder to take aim. It could not all be luck either; that was evident when Westby demolished ten clay pigeons in rapid succession. It was Carroll's turn now; Westby, having made his perfect score, blew the smoke from the breech ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... necessities of his pocket, and captures his Constantinople to pay for a dinner at the "Freres." What fleets of Russian gunboats have I seen launched to procure a few bottles of champagne! I remember a chasse of Kersch, with the cafe, costing a whole battery of Krupp's breech-loaders!' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... out, capturing the automatic on the table. With rapid and sure gestures he extracted and pocketed the clip, drew back the breech, ejecting into his palm the one shell in the barrel, and replaced the weapon, all before the Prussian gave over his insane ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... it meant action of some kind." The ex-rancher was silent for a moment. Then his right fist went into his left palm with a smack. "The only kind o' resolution that'll get anythin' is made o' lead and fits in a rifle breech! And I want to tell you, old man, if there ain't some pretty quick right-about-facin' in certain quarters, I'll be dashed if I ain't for it! An' I won't be standin' alone, ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... almost naked, usually with nothing but the smallest possible breech clout around their loins, which the police require them to wear; they plaster their bodies with mud, ashes and filth; they rub clay, gum and other substances into their hair to give it an uncouth appearance. Sometimes they wear their hair in long braids hanging ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... savages. With this thought an inspiration came to him like a ray of sunlight piercing the blackness of a dungeon. He felt among the inner folds of his ragged blanket, withdrew a small object and thrust it into his mouth. A second later the blanket was snatched from his body leaving him clad only in a breech clout, and he was given a push into the lane as a hint that his ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... of disappointment, to blow up the walls, the powder, as the Russians confidently assert, was possessed by the devil of water, and refused to explode; and when they planted a heavily-loaded cannon before the Holy Gate, and built a fire on top of the touch-hole to make it go off, it went off at the breech, and blew a number of Frenchmen into the infernal regions, after which the remainder of them thought it best to let ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... what they call in the country, a fine body of a woman; tall, well-built, with a full bust and broad breech, and she certainly made more than one excise man squint at her, but it was no use for them to come and sniff round her too closely, or else there would have been blows. At least, that is what the custom-house ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the envelope. Then he took a cylinder about twelve inches long, and almost half as much in diameter, a huge thing, constructed, it seemed, of a substance that was almost as brittle as an eggshell. Into the large hemispherical cavity in the breech of the gun he shoved it. He took another quick look at the light gleaming from the house in the darkness ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... your Chief who transmewed you from Jinn shape to mortal shape. I seek refuge against you this night by the Throne-verse and the Chapter of Sincerity[FN56] and the Two Preventives!"[FN57] So saying the Wag put off all his clothes till he was naked, with prickle and breech exposed and danced among the slave-girls. They bound his hands and he wantoned among them, while they died of laughing at him and the Caliph swooned away for excess of laughter. Then he came to himself and going forth the curtain to Abu al-Hasan, said ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... When the breech is opened by pulling back the bolt, a projection on the latter strikes the carrier at N, causing its front extremity to raise the cartridge into the position shown in the section. This movement is accelerated by the spring, A, acting against a knife-edge projection ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... in their application the principles are subject to the influence of successive inventions. Gunpowder abolished the bow and arrow and the knight in armour; the bayonet affixed to the musket superseded the pike; the rifle outranged the musket; the breech-loader and the magazine attachment progressively increased the rate of fire; smokeless powder rendered a firing line almost invisible; the flat trajectory of the small-arms bullet increased the danger-zone in an advance; the increased power, mobility, and accuracy of ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... swarthy hue, Between a gingerbread-nut and a Jew, And his pigtail is long, and bushy, and thick, Like a pump-handle stuck on the end of a stick. Hairy-faced Dick understands his trade; He stand by the breech of a long carronade, The linstock glows in his bony hand, Waiting that grim old ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... took the tube in hand. Colonel Thouvenin abandoned the chamber, and filled up much of the place it had occupied with a cylindrical steel pillar, or tige, which projected from the breech-plug longitudinally into the barrel. This formed a little anvil whereon the bullet was to be beaten into the grooves. But the bottom was flattened, and the powder acted only on the periphery of the ball instead of the centre, tending thus ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... they were, squarely across the Indian trail, and ready for their coming. Roswell Holmes could not have that distinction at all events, thought McLean, as he tried the lock and breech-block of his rifle to see that everything was in perfect working order. Come what might,—if it were only Indians,—he meant to make a record in this fight that any woman might be proud of; and if he fell,—well, he wouldn't have to pay for Sergeant Marsland's stealings, or have the ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... and men; after a few seconds, the cloud dispersed, and the cannon and men re-appeared; the gun-crew had just finished rolling it slowly, correctly, without haste, into position facing the barricade. Not one of them had been struck. Then the captain of the piece, bearing down upon the breech in order to raise the muzzle, began to point the cannon with the gravity of an astronomer ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Lester had more fine things than all the rest of the boys about there put together. He took particular pride in his splendid hunting and fishing outfit, and it was coveted by almost every boy who had seen it. He had four guns—all breech-loaders; a beautiful little fowling-piece for such small game as quails and snipes; a larger one for ducks and geese; a light squirrel rifle, something like the one Clarence Gordon owned; and a heavier weapon, which ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... soldiers were braver now than ever before—braver, indeed, than the crusaders, as was proved by the fact that in these days they wear no armor. To this Goldwin Smith answered that he thought war in the middle ages was more destructive than even in our time. Sheridan said that breech-loading rifles kill more than ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... I gave the word to gallop for cover to the woods where the Welsh company was. There I got ——, who understands them (the guns), and an infantryman who volunteered to help, and —— and I ran up to the Maxims and took out the breech mechanism of both and one of the belts, and carried away one whole Maxim. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... getting to the foot of the Cotills cliff, I whistled for my faithful "Begum," but no "Begum" came, so I sat down and rested, and whistled, and whistled again, till presently away he came tumbling down the breech in the cliffs, to my great delight. After a bit I despatched him to fetch "Eddy," and while that worthy was on his way to my help, managed, with great exertion and risk, to scale the cliff. "Eddy" bore me up the zig-zag, and home by the lower path, and ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... deseruisse decet. Torn from your book! I'll tear it from your breech. How say you, Mistress Virga, will you suffer Hic puer bonae[11] indolis to tear His lessons, leaves, and lectures ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... before these lightning movements. He avoided encounters; but the blows from which he escaped fell with destructive force upon the vessel. A piece of broken chain remained attached to the carronade. This bit of chain had twisted in some incomprehensible way around the breech button. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... course. Let's see. How much did you get for obtaining the design of the improved breech-block of ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... on stones—clear, sharp words of command—clink of breech action—coldness of iron will warming the steel throat that voices its thoughts—hard, scientific, inhumanly mechanical; yet there is a subtle, attractive feeling that draws together the living elements that serve ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... empty, he struck the breech of it with his finger; and then he turned away, not deigning even once to look back again; and Lorna saw his giant figure striding across the meadow-land, as if the Ridds were nobodies, and he the proper owner. Both mother and I were greatly hurt at hearing of this insolence: for ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... using the most picturesquely murderous of all weapons, and Black Eagle offered, through the interpreter, to give him a mustang and a fine wolf-skin. The pony was declined, the skin accepted, a quid pro quo being bestowed on the chief in the shape of one of Mr. Ramsay's breech-loaders, a gift that made the snake eyes glitter. But what earthly return can be made for some friendly offices? Could a thousand guns be considered as an adequate payment for the delirious thrill that Mr. Ramsay felt when he shot an arrow straight through the neck of a big buffalo, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... at the same time he looks to the priming of his gun, and then fixes his eye on the door as it slowly opens. He drops the breech hastily to the ground as the ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... much earlier than people have supposed. It is certain that gunpowder was used "in missiles," before it was used to propel them. The earliest cannon were generally of forged iron built in strips secured by iron rings. They were loaded by movable chambers which fitted into the breech, and they were known as "crakys of war." We find them on English ships at the end of the fourteenth century, in two kinds, the one a cannon proper, the other an early version of the harquebus-a-croc. The cannon ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... had passed. Clumps of palm trees were to be seen here and there. Pools of standing water, where horses and cattle stood cooling themselves, were frequent. The people whom we met wore little clothing. Men frequently had nothing but the breech-clout and hat. Women wore a skirt, but no upper garment. Children up to ten and twelve years of age ran naked. Reaching San Mateo at twelve o'clock, we found the village excited at our non-appearance. Our carretero had arrived long before ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... at all happy at losing dear friends," the young man answered, gently, as he turned away and patted the breech of a gun, upon which there was a little rust next day; "that feeling comes later ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... there as ever put paw and breech upon hidden treasure. 'Tis the mine, master, that ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... brandished his tomahawk and prepared to throw it at his enemy. Morgan struck with the butt of his gun, and the Indian hurled his tomahawk at one and the same moment. Both blows took effect; and both of the combatants were at once wounded and disarmed. The breech of the rifle was broken against the Indian's skull, and the edge of the tomahawk was shattered against the barrel of the rifle, having first cut off two of the fingers of Morgan's left hand. The Indian then attempting to draw his knife, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... he continued. "Took you for old Gilly, you know." He snapped the empty shells from his gun, and blew into the breech, before adding, "Would you mind, then? That is, if you're bound up for Stink-Chau. It's a beastly long tramp, and ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... evening and the morning of the First Day has listened. God knows. God knows. What a whirl is this? Monstrous incongruity. Philosophy and fighting troopers. The Infinite and dead horses. There's humour for you. The Sublime takes off its hat to the Ridiculous. Send a cartridge clashing into the breech and speculate about the Absolute. Keep one eye on your sights and the other on Cosmos. Blow the reek of burned powder from before you so you may look over the edge of the abyss of the Great Primal Cause. Duck to the whistle of a bullet ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... Cupid's bow, Once on a time was an a— gut; Now to a nobler office put, By favour or desert preferr'd From giving passage to a t—; But still, though fix'd among the stars, Does sympathize with human a—. Thus, when you feel a hard-bound breech, Conclude love's bow-string at full stretch, Till the kind looseness comes, and then, Conclude the bow relax'd again. And now, the ladies all are bent, To try the great experiment, Ambitious of a regent's heart, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... artillery was fair, the cavalry good, and the train and auxiliary services well organized. About one-third of the infantry were armed with the (Maennlicher) magazine rifle, which now made its first appearance in war, the remainder had the Gras and other breech-loaders, which were also the armament of the dictator's infantry. Balmaceda could only wait upon events, but he prepared his forces as best he was able, and his torpederas constantly harried ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... I saddled up and loped for the crest of the nearest divide to get the benefit of the first sun-rays. But alas! the hoodoo was still plodding diligently on my trail. I topped a little rise, and almost rode plump into the hostile arms of a half-dozen breech-clout warriors coming up the other side. I think there were about half a dozen, but I wouldn't swear to it. I hadn't the time nor inclination to make an exact count. The general ensemble of war-paint and spotted ponies was enough for me; I didn't need ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... it! The neutralizer may be all right, in its way, but personally I'm rather strong for these!" He laid a hand on the breech of the Lewis machine-gun mounted in the gallery, its grim muzzle pointed out through a slit in the colloid screen. "The six guns we've got aboard, in strategic positions, look like good medicine to me! Wouldn't it be the correct thing to call the gun-crews and ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... plaine termes, cunningly to be able to dissemble. But (if it please your Maiestie) may it not seeme inough for a Courtier to know how to weare a fether, and set his cappe a slaunt, his chaine en echarpe, a straight buskin al inglesse, a loose alo Turquesque, the cape alla Spaniola, the breech a la Francoise, and by twentie maner of new faishoned garments to disguise his body, and his face with as many countenances, whereof it seemes there be many that make a very arte, and studie who can shew himselfe most fine, I will ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... attempted to shoot the negro, but William Turner, Col. Singleton's overseer, who hired Mr. Black to hunt Dick, the runaway from the colonel's plantation, would not let him do it. Mr. Black then attempted to strike Champion with the breech of his gun, but Champion kicked him down, and as he drew his knife to stab Mr. Black, Mr. Turner, the overseer, struck him on the back of his head with the butt of a loaded whip. This stunned him for a few moments, and ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... curstly meve[202] Nor I would mine own eyes in no wise believe, Until that other I beat me so, That he made me believe it, whether I would or no. And if he had yourself now within his reach, He would make you say so too, or else beshit your breech. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... it again and again, bewildered, tempted and yet afraid to believe it true, moved to the depths of his nature, at once happy and unhappy in the gamut of his doubts. It could not be possible. No, it could not be possible. Standing at the breech of his gun, his eyes on a Spanish gunboat they had driven under the shelter of a fort, he found himself repeating: "And very much in love with my boy. And very much in love with my boy." And then, suddenly becoming intent again on the ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... his tent and in what remained of the heat of the fire he warmed for a few moments the breech of his rifle. Then he smothered the fire by kicking snow over it. Returning to the edge of the plain, he posted himself near the largest spruce he could find, up which it would be possible for him to climb a dozen ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... tangle of leaves and vines a primitive landing. It was a little dock with a thatched lodge in the rear of it and a few cords of wood stacked upon its end. There were some natives here—Indians probably,—with dark skins bared from head to foot; they wore only the breech-clout, and this of the briefest. Evidently they were children ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... cast, to throw. birth, coming into life. caste, an order or class. braid, to weave. cede, to yield. brayed, did bray. seed, to sow; to scatter. breach, a gap. coarse, not fine. breech, the hinder part. course, way; career. broach, a spit; to pierce. dam, mother of beasts. brooch, an ornament. damn, to condemn. but, except. cane, a reed; a staff. butt, a cask; a mark. Cain, a man's name. call, to name. ceil, ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... is heard in the outer darkness, and a dozen forms, lithe and lean, dressed only with the narrow white breech-clout and mocassins, and daubed with white earth until they seem a group of living marbles, come bounding through the entrance, yelping like wolves, and slowly moving round the fire. As they advance, in single file, they throw their bodies ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... pauser reason. Here lay Duncan, His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood; And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech'd with gore: who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Melville's fine breech-loading rifle was slung over his shoulder, and held in place by a strap that passed in front. It could be quickly drawn from its position whenever needed. It was not of the repeating pattern, but the ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
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