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More "Point-blank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... officers of the army who resigned their commissions was Colonel Robert E. Lee, who was sent for by General Scott, and asked point-blank whether he intended to resign with those officers who proposed to take part with their respective states, or to remain in the service of the Union. Colonel Lee made no reply, whereupon "Old Chapultepec" came directly to the point, saying, "I suppose you will go with the rest. If your ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... much like murder," continued the innkeeper. "Your hand would tremble so that you would miss me at point-blank. There goes the last of the sun. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... "I seldom say rude things—never intentionally. I don't know which is in worst taste, that, or paying point-blank compliments. Without being mathematical, you may have heard that the line of ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... adjective employed. You soon learn that there is no random, no waste, in this man's words. But here is the promised extract from the sermon on "A Perverted Conscience." In it Bourdaloue depresses his gun, and discharges it point-blank at the audience before him. You can almost imagine you see the ranks of "the great" laid low. Alas! one fears that, instead of biting the dust, those courtiers, with the king in the midst of them to set the example, only ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... going that day," she said, point-blank, and as Katy too had asked to stay a little longer, Wilford was compelled to yield, and taking his hat sauntered off toward Linwood; while Katy went listlessly into the kitchen, where Bell Cameron sat, her tongue moving much faster than her hands, which pared ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... her to her last resting-place. But Olivier begged him to go, and promised that he would faithfully watch over her in his stead: he induced him to leave the house: and, to make sure of his not going back on his decision, went with him to the station. Christophe refused point-blank to go without having a sight of the great river, by which he had spent his childhood, the mighty echo of which was preserved for ever within his soul as in a sea-shell. Though it was dangerous for him to be seen in the town, yet ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... their walk to Englebourn, Harry, in answer to Tom's inquiries, explained that in his absence the stable-man, his acquaintance, had come up and begun to talk. The keeper had joined in and accused him point-blank of being the man who had thrown him into the furze bush. The story of the keeper's discomfiture on that occasion being well known, a laugh had been raised in which Harry had joined. This brought on a challenge to try a fall then and there, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... on which he hailed Don Anton:—Strike sail! Senor Juan de Anton, or I must send you to the bottom!—Come aboard and do it yourself! bravely answered Anton. Drake's whistle blew one shrill long blast, which loosed a withering volley at less than point-blank range. Anton tried to bear away and shake off his assailant. But in vain. The English guns now opened on his masts and rigging. Down came the mizzen, while a hail of English shot and arrows prevented every attempt to clear away the wreckage. The dumbfounded Spanish ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... even necessary to adjust sights, as the enemy were within "point-blank" range. Enfilading the enemy these guns were raking his flank with fire, whilst he was preparing to make a final rush down into the wadi. Had not this move been circumvented in the "nick of time," it is impossible to estimate the disastrous consequences which would have ensued. Almost at once, ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... thus point-blank to retract, effectually destroyed whatever hopes of mediation or reconciliation had been entertained by the milder and more moderate adherents of the Church who still wished for reform. Nor was any union possible ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... and asked Riderhood point-blank if he knew where she was? Clearly, he did not know. He asked Riderhood if he would be willing, in case any intelligence of her, or of Wrayburn as seeking her or associating with her, should fall in his way, to communicate it if it were paid for? He would ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... met seemed also to feel a curiosity as to his errand, for he stopped a very old, shambling horse to lean from his seat and ask point-blank: "Where may you be going in such a hurry on such ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... a business career, she was in terror lest her friend should scent a romance, and for this reason she had never spoken of the symptoms Ditmar had betrayed. She attempted to convey to Eda the doubtful taste of staring point-blank at the house of one's employer, especially when he might be ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "She declined point-blank. I determined then to change mine, and sent word of my intention to the Countess." He flung himself into a chair. "Her reply was to send back to me her marriage contract and her wedding-ring, and to beg to ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... don't agree with you there, Step-hen," remarked Allan. "Like Smithy here, I found something about that man that interested me. If asked me point-blank now, possibly I couldn't tell you what it was that attracted me—his eyes, his smile, or his whole manner. But I'd be badly mistaken if he would turn ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... to say with a very polite smile, and every now and then kept on taking out his watch. When I had finished, he thanked me very much, but gave me clearly to understand that he considered I had been made a fool of. I tried to persuade him to see you, but he declined point-blank. Shall I tell ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... plodded slowly along the base, with my rifle ready. Cougar tracks were so numerous I got tired of looking at them, but I did not forget that I might meet a tawny fellow or two among those narrow passes of shattered rock, and under the thick, dark pinyons. Going on in this way, I ran point-blank into a pile of bleached bones before a cave. I had stumbled on the lair of a lion and from the looks of it one like that of Old Tom. I flinched twice before I threw a stone into the dark-mouthed cave. What impressed me as soon as I ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... held the gun at arm's length, turned their faces away and shot at random; it was clear that very few knew how to shoot, and that their Sniders could be of use only at short range. This is confirmed by the fact that all their murders are done point-blank. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... of rock listened and watched for a minute or so more while the two men began unloading cases of foodstuffs from the spaceboat. Then, satisfied that it was perfectly safe, he aimed his gun and shot twice in rapid succession. The range was almost point-blank, and there was, of course, no need to take either gravity or air resistance ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... revolver in his hand, and, suddenly raising it, fired point-blank at his man, not fifteen feet away. The hammer snapped on the nipple, but the cartridge did not explode. Wilbur turned to the Chinaman next him ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... the doors of remote rooms, where nobody ever went, slammed to in the maddest way. Now and then the tornado, sweeping down the side of Mount Agamenticus, bowled across the open country, and struck the ancient hostelry point-blank. ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... accurately at the process which was going on within it. I felt very strongly disposed to have the tree cut down and subjected to examination; but there were two strong arguments against this, one being the overpowering carrion-like effluvium which the tree exhaled, while the other was Piet's point-blank refusal to have anything to ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... before us. I do not wish to dogmatize, but I will only say that the more clearly we realize the nature of the creative process on the spiritual side the more the current objections to the Gospel narrative lose their force; and it appears to me that to deny that narrative as a point-blank impossibility is to make a similar affirmation with regard to the power of the Spirit in ourselves. You cannot affirm a principle and deny it in the same breath; and if we affirm the externalizing power of ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... her dress again, for of course she referred to that, and he could not help asking her a point-blank question. ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... suggestion, and the sweet, merciful sound of that same "Not do so any more" which really was prompted, I fear, much more by that charity in her which hopeth all things than by any signs of amendment in myself. Well was it for me that no time was allowed for an investigation into my morals by point-blank questions as to my future intentions. In which case it would have appeared too undeniably, that the same sad necessity which had planted me hitherto in a position of hostility to their estimable families would continue ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... they will do about it will be to make Esther miserable. They have begun to gossip already. A young man, even though he is a clergyman, can't be seen always in company with a pretty woman, without exciting remark. Only yesterday I was asked point-blank whether my niece ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... counter-charge. Accordingly the pieces were immediately run to the top of the hill, the drivers, Shiffer and Correll, riding boldly up and executing a left-about on the skirmish line, where the skirmishers were lying down. The pieces were unlimbered and instantly put into action at point-blank range, the skirmishers giving way to the right and left to make way for the guns. The enemy was less than 300 yards away, and apparently bent ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... man, for I asked him point-blank at the end of all this: "What about the Griffin?" He looked at me for a moment almost with intelligence, and told me that he would hand me over in the next village to a man who was going through March. So he did, and the horse of this second man was even faster than that of the baker. ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... Ladybug appeared to want to keep the site of her house a secret from all her friends. When they asked her, point-blank, where her house was, she always pretended not to hear the question and left them. Or she would begin to ask questions of her own choosing, without ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... coming to anchor, one on the bow of their admiral, and the other on the bow of their vice-admiral, got astern, and could not with all our diligence be of any service for a full half hour after the action began. At length we got within point-blank shot of them, and then were forced either to anchor or drive farther off with the current, as there was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... turned his prow on the seaward tack, meaning to return again immediately with the same prospect of advantage possessed at first—his plan being to crash suddenly athwart the Drake's bow, so as to have all her decks exposed point-blank to his musketry. But once more the winds interposed. It came on with a storm of snow; he was obliged to ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... discharge for vituperative rhetoric. But before entering upon this subject I must be allowed to repeat a twice-told tale and once more to give the raison d'etre of my long labour. When a friend asked me point-blank why I was bringing out my translation so soon after another and a most scholarly version, my reply was as follows:—"Sundry students of Orientalism assure me that they are anxious to have the work in its crudest and most realistic form. I have received letters saying, Let ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... in no doubt on this point. When I was ushered into his study, after a much-needed wash and a shave, he received me standing and said point-blank: "Your orders are to stay here until ten o'clock to-night, when you will be taken to Berlin by Lieutenant Count von Boden. I don't know you, I don't know your business, but I have received certain orders concerning you which I intend to carry out. ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... talked away to me in his usual entertaining fashion, my rage and fright began to go off a little—though at bottom, of course, there was no change in my opinions, nor any doubt as to my giving him a point-blank refusal when the issue should ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... in fruitless enquiries. She asked this one and that, every one she could think of, if they had seen Peter, and was met everywhere with meaning grins and point-blank denials. Apparently no one had set eyes on Peter, and every one seemed to imply that she ought io know more about him ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... in the stockyards district, the automobile was stopped by a wave of dead. It was for all the world like a wave tossed up by the sea. It was patent to us what had happened. As the mob charged past the corner, it had been swept, at right angles and point-blank range, by the machine-guns drawn up on the cross street. But disaster had come to the soldiers. A chance bomb must have exploded among them, for the mob, checked until its dead and dying formed the wave, ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... scenting the trails of the night and barking wildly at his master by turns. The man was walking hardly three hundred yards from where Stone, rifle in hand, lay, and had reached the footpath leading from the bench to the creek bottom when Stone, half rising, covered him slowly with point-blank sights. In the path ahead, the dog had struck a fresh gopher hole and, still yelping, was pawing madly into it, when a rifle cracked. The man with the pail, swung violently half around by the shock of a ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... each other across." There was the further difficulty that, to reach the open lake, the vessels would have to go three miles against a current that ran four knots an hour, and much of the way within point-blank range of the enemy. Nevertheless, after examining all situations on Lake Erie, Elliott had reported that none other would answer the purpose; "those that have shelters have not sufficient water, and those with water cannot be ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... of horsemen... but at the voice of their commander, General Drouet, who, sword in hand, set them an example in resistance, the French gunners, taking their muskets, remained calmly behind their guns, from where they fired point-blank at the enemy. Nevertheless, the great number of the latter would have eventually triumphed, had not, on the Emperor's order, all Sbastiani's cavalry, along with all that of the Imperial Guard , mounted Grenadiers, Dragoons , Chasseurs, Mamelukes, Lancers and Guards ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... jurisdiction ceased at the outer door of the Seminary, and that it was not his business to keep order in the Terrace. Even the sergeant, when the Bailie commanded him to herd the boys in the courtyard, forgot the respect due to a magistrate, and refused point-blank, besides adding a gratuitous warning, which the Bailie deeply resented, to let the matter drop, or else he'd repent the day when he ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... had always looked with grudging sullenness upon the great Wolfhound and his doings, refused point-blank to be a party to the exodus, and croakingly warned the others against following a new-comer and an outlier such as Finn. He gave them to understand that he had been born in the shadow of Mount Desolation, like his sire and dam before him, and that he would live ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... would take his sudden exclusion from these parties. Now Lucy missed the Dodds very much, and was surprised to see them invited no more. But it was not in her character to satisfy a curiosity of this sort by putting a point-blank question to the person who could tell her in two words. She was one of those thorough women whose instinct it is to find out little things, not to ask about them. When day after day passed by, and the Dodds were not invited, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... cowardly outrage, worthy of the worst days of the French monarchy, which his clients were being subjected to. The whole investigation was in keeping with the spirit evinced by the bench. The witnesses seemed to come for the special purpose of swearing point-blank against the hapless men in the dock, no matter at what cost to truth, and to take a fiendish pleasure in assisting in securing their condemnation. One of the witnesses was sure "the whole lot of them wanted to murder everyone ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... men had notice sufficient to lie close behind their waste-boards, which, for this very purpose, they had made so high that they could easily sink themselves behind them, so as to defend themselves from anything that came point-blank (as we call it) or upon a line; but for what might fall perpendicularly out of the air they had no guard, but took the hazard of that. At first they made as if they would row away, but before they went they gave a volley of their fire-arms, firing ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank, he implies it in the politest terms ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... secret, then," said Richard, as he took back the bank-note. He had learned, perhaps, in America, to be a very inquisitive man. He added point-blank, "Pray ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... ships did not always obey the summons, peremptory though it was. One pretended not to hear it, or to misunderstand it, or to believe it was meant for some other craft, and so held stolidly on her course, vouchsafing no sign till a second shot, fired point-blank, but at a safe elevation, hurtled across her decks and brought her to her senses. Another, perhaps some well-armed Levantine trader or tall Indiaman whose crew had little mind to strike their colours submissively at the behest of a midget press-smack, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Christ. In the later plays these interpolations developed into scenes of roaring farce. When Herod learned of the escape of the Wise Men, he would rage violently about the stage and even among {25} the spectators. Noah's wife, in the Chester play of The Deluge, refuses point-blank to go into the Ark, and has to be put in by main force. The Second Shepherds' Play of the Towneley cycle contains an episode of sheep stealing which is a complete and perfect little farce. Nor were the scenes of pathos ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... the rear of the Union line concealed by the woods; they march right up to the ranks where the red-barred flag is flying! What can it mean? Neither side fires. There must surely be some mistake. Hark! now the blue line discovers—too late—that the mass is the enemy, and half the line withers in the point-blank discharge. They are swept from the ground. Jack is trembling—demoniac. The gray mass springs forward; they have seized the guns—four of them—and turn them upon the disappearing blue. Then a hoarse shout of delirious triumph. The guns are lost; the day is lost, for now there are no blue-coats ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... heeling, and all that idiotic speechlessness that set Emmy on her hind legs, was sheer love of the truth. He couldn't tell a lie—to a woman. That would be it. He would pretend that Jenny had chivvied him into taking Em, that he was too noble to refuse to take Em, or to let Em really see point-blank that he didn't want to take her; but when it came to the pinch he hadn't been able to screw himself into the truly noble attitude needed for such an act of self-sacrifice. He had been speechless when a prompt lie, added to the promptitude and exactitude of Jenny's ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... shot!" cried Sam, who now had his pistol out, and as the head of the snake came up over a tree root, the youngest Rover fired point-blank. His aim was true, and the head of the snake went down, and the body whirled this way and ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... used to his curious-looking face, and his quiet ways, I wanted badly enough to know something about him, and who his connections were. First, I asked his friend who had recommended him—the friend wasn't at liberty to answer for anything but his perfect trustworthiness. Then I asked Mannion himself point-blank about it, one day. He just told me that he had reasons for keeping his family affairs to himself—nothing more—but you know the way he has with him; and, damn it, he put the stopper on me, from that time to this. I wasn't going to risk losing the best clerk ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... were on March 23 rejected by the States-General. Wiser counsels however prevented this point-blank refusal being sent to Paris, and it was hoped that a policy of delay might secure better terms. The negotiations went on slowly through March and April; and, as Blauw and Meyer had no powers as accredited ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... signal from the leader of the Boxers, about fifty rifles were fired point-blank at the wall. Fred raised his rifle, pressed the trigger, and the Boxer leader threw up his arms and fell on his face. Fred's shot was taken by the other defenders as the signal to fire, and ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... solemn countenance and in deep measured tones. Yet somehow I got an irresistible conviction that he was exasperated by something in particular. In the unworthy hope of being amused by the misfortunes of a fellow-creature I asked him point-blank ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... "general store" keeper, acting as self-appointed chairman, asked if anyone had anything to report. For himself, he had seen the Major and asked point-blank for payment of his bill. The Major had been very polite and was apparently much concerned that his fellow townsmen should have been inconvenienced by any neglect of his. He would write to his attorneys ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... she explained to him further, that she wished to conceal anything. The least tinge of concealment was wholly alien to that frank fresh nature. If her head-mistress asked her a point-blank question, she would not attempt to parry it, but would reply at once with a point blank answer. Still, her very views on the subject made it impossible for her to volunteer information unasked to any one. Here was a personal matter of the utmost privacy; a matter which concerned ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... me out." Tabs still spoke with friendliness. "While we were together your telegram arrived and I agreed to be the bearer of her message. But as for her second request, that I should become engaged to her, I refused that point-blank." ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... yell rises as a dozen rebel bayonets are plunged into a defiant fugitive, for he has levelled his musket point-blank and shot ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... injuries I have never known the same deadly sickness as came over me when I felt the poor, silent, patient creature, which I had come to love more than anything in the world except my mother and the Emperor, reel and stagger beneath me. I pulled my second pistol from my holster and fired point-blank between the fellow's broad shoulders. He slashed his horse across the flank with his whip, and for a moment I thought that I had missed him. But then on the green of his chasseur jacket I saw an ever-widening black smudge, and he began to sway in his saddle, very slightly at first, but ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cheeks. Early as was the hour, he had already been indulging: his breath puffed sour. Mahony prepared to state the object of his visit in no uncertain terms. But his preliminaries were cut short by a volley of abuse. The man accused him point-blank of having been privy to the rascally drayman's fraud and of having hoped, by lying low, to evade his liability. Mahony lost his temper, and vowed that he would have Bolliver up for defamation of character. To which the latter retorted that the first innings in a court of ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... a remarkable degree of uncertainty and embarrassment in the discussion of great problems. At the Borckes', and also at the homes in Morgnitz and Dabergotz, she had been declared "infected with rationalism," but at the Grasenabbs' she was pronounced point-blank an "atheist." To be sure, the elderly Mrs. Grasenabb, nee Stiefel, of Stiefelstein in South Germany, had made a weak attempt to save Effi at least for deism. But Sidonie von Grasenabb, an old maid of forty-three, had gruffly interjected the remark: "I tell you, mother, simply an ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... effective. The battery 'blazed with cannon, swivels, and small-arms,' which fired point-blank at the men ashore and with true aim at the boats crowded together round the narrow landing-place. Undaunted though undisciplined, the men ashore rushed at the walls with their scaling-ladders and began ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... not much seem to relish it. There was a queer stringhalt in their talk—a conversational shy across the road—when one touched on these subjects. After a while I went to a Tribal Herald whom I could trust, and demanded of him point-blank where the trouble really lay, and who was ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... been all nearly point-blank shots, and, anyhow, I had had a good deal of pistol practice. Macdonald had a little gallery at Horton Pen. The Lugarenos, huddled together in the boat, were only able to moan with terror. They made soft, pitiful, complaining noises. Two or three took headers overboard, like so many frogs, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the auld wa's as thick as mice in a meal-ark."—"But Aleck," crooned old Mause from the corner, "whilk ane o' the lasses are you for?" This was enough. I watched my opportunity, slipped out to the stable, found Aleck, who had retreated thither in his confusion, and point-blank proposed that he should take me with him that very night, and introduce me to one of the girls at Moyabel, as I longed to have an hour's courting after the old fashion before I left the country. I concluded by offering him a ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... she should answer that question. It was very tempting to say that Elaine had suggested it—but decidedly risky. Riviere might ask the girl point-blank. It was better to be prudent in this game of strategy, and ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... fact I have been assured by a Boer who was present that it was the sound of the tins attached to the alarm wires which disturbed them. However this may be, in an instant there crashed out of the darkness into their faces and ears a roar of point-blank fire, and the night was slashed across with the throbbing flame of the rifles. At the moment before this outflame some doubt as to their whereabouts seems to have flashed across the mind of their leaders. The order to extend had just been given, but ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that admitted of no argument, that he had to tell Sylvia all that had happened in those ten minutes while the grey morning grew rosy. This sense of compulsion was deaf to all reasoning, however plausible. He knew perfectly well that unless he told Sylvia who it was whom he had shot at point-blank range, as he leaped the last wire entanglement, no one else ever could. Hermann was buried now in the same grave as others who had fallen that morning: his name would be given out as missing from the Bavarian corps to which he belonged, and in time, after the ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... escaped! I could hardly keep down a cry of triumph. I did ask if it was true, but none of them paid any attention to me. Buell then ordered Herky-Jerky to trail Dick and see where he had gone. Herky refused point-blank. "Nope. Not fer me," he said. "Leslie has a rifle. So has Bent, an' we haven't one among us. An', Buell, if Leslie falls in with Bent, it's goin' to git hot fer ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... made no reply, and his daughter smiled contentedly as she heard him stamping about in the larder. He made but a poor meal, and then, refusing point-blank to assist Annie in moving the piano, went and smoked a very reflective pipe in ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... by far the most important of these fortresses. At this place the opposite shores of New York and Vermont are pushed out into the lake toward each other, thus forming two peninsulas, with the lake contracted to a width of half a mile, or point-blank cannon range, between them: one is Ticonderoga; the other, Mount Independence. Thus, together, they command the ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... old Andrew," laughed Grimm indulgently. "Positively no! I refuse, point-blank. I'll do you any favour in reason. But I draw the line at being dragged into any of your ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... oath Dan turned in his saddle, giving the horse the head, and leveling his rifle fired point-blank at the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... who thwart mutual inclination, the persecutions of fathers, the jealousies arising without any foundation, complaints, despair, running away with, and its consequences. Thus things are carried on in fashionable life, and veritable gallantry cannot dispense with these forms. But to come out point-blank with a proposal of marriage,—to make no love but with a marriage-contract, and begin a novel at the wrong end! Once more, father, nothing can be more tradesmanlike, and the mere thought of it ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... shook his head and his fist at the young Irishman, and discharged a double-headed oath at him, within point-blank shot. Nevertheless, Bohun continued, "If you will let me have one man, only ONE man, I may be ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Cissie Gardiner, Maggie Woodhall, and five of the lower division, including Ethel Maitland. Beatrice Wynne, after a little hesitation, added her signature, but May Firth, Doris Kennedy, and Ella Johnson refused point-blank. ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... said Mrs. Broadhurst. 'Only let things go on, and mind your cards, I beseech you, to-morrow night better than you did to-night; and you will see that things will turn out just as I prophesied. Lord Colambre will come to a point-blank proposal before the end of the week, and will be accepted, or my name's not Broadhurst. Why, in plain English, I am clear my girl likes him; and when that's the case, you know, can you doubt ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... seized its breast with its teeth, as if trying to pull out the thing that had smitten it. The next instant it was at the very door, and its huge form shut out the light, as it was about to pounce upon its prey. But Claude had seized a second arquebuse, and, when the bear was within two yards, fired point-blank into its hairy breast. The bullet entered its heart, and it fell dead at their feet. The cub, which had followed close at its heels, with a pitiful cry threw itself upon its mother's body, and seeing the warm blood flowing ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... not get close to her; our iron beak, too, was sticking in the side of the sunken Cumberland—we could only ram with the blunt prow. The Minnesota, as we passed, gave us all her broadside guns—a tremendous fusillade at point-blank range, which would have sunk any ship of the swan breed. The turtle shook off shot and shell, grape and canister, and answered with her bow gun. The shell which it threw entered the side of the frigate, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... to be privately buried, after photographs of it had first been taken. I even went the length of communicating the opinion of the surgeon consulted, that some chemical means of arresting decomposition had been used and had only partially succeeded—and I asked her point-blank if the surgeon was right? The trap was not a bad one—but it completely failed. She said in the coolest manner, "Now you are here, I should like to consult you about my play; I am at a loss for some new incidents." Mind! ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... there was no one to watch him—no one but Miss La Rue. She felt the submergence of the boat and came out of her room to investigate. She was just in time to see Benson at the diving rudders. When he saw her, he raised his pistol and fired point-blank at her, but he missed and she fired—and didn't miss. The two shots awakened everyone, and as our men were armed, the result was inevitable as you see it; but it would have been very different had it not been for Miss La Rue. It was she who closed the ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... matters from her uncle's nerveless hands. She had a good deal of a battle in respect to Chunk. It was a sham one on the part of Zany, as the girl well knew, for Chunk's "tootin'" was missed terribly. Mr. and Mrs. Baron at first refused point-blank to hear of ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... had engaged me on the previous day for a game of ninepins, and when it was over, they came close to me, and looking at each other to keep up their courage, they put to me the following questions, point-blank: ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... find an opportunity to sell the Maud at Aden, you will not be disappointed?" asked the captain, point-blank, looking earnestly into the face ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... Not, indeed, that their weapons retained a higher degree of perfection than theirs, but that they exhibited unheard-of dimensions, and consequently attained hitherto unheard-of ranges. In point of grazing, plunging, oblique, or enfilading, or point-blank firing, the English, French, and Prussians have nothing to learn; but their cannon, howitzers, and mortars are mere pocket-pistols compared with the formidable engines of the ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... their curiosity: and he would have been either a very bold or a very insensitive man who would have ventured to continue questioning him any further. So, though many people hazarded guesses as to where he had come from, nobody ever asked him the point-blank question: Who are you, if you please, and what ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... of approbation from the rest of the party. At the top of the hill were four scattered pillars of different diminutive forms, with gilt balustrades; all painted with gaudy colours, and none large enough for a moderate tea-garden, or sufficiently solid to have resisted the point-blank stagger of a drunken man. Lower down were two holes in the rock, which, from their size and appearance, I should have taken for a rabbit-burrow and a badger's earth, but for the young lady's joyous exclamation—"Ah! voila les hermitages. Messieurs, il y a deux hermites la-dedans." ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... craven feeling all the while that perhaps she was being used somehow as a tool for the destruction of English plans and men. She tried to get the courage to open one of those messages, but she was afraid that she might find confirmation. She made up her mind again and again to put the question point-blank to Sir Joseph, but her tongue faltered. If he were guilty, he would deny it; if he were innocent, the accusation would break his heart. She hated Nicky too much to ask him. He would lie ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... load with canister containing 250 small musket balls. Having served out a dozen Woolwich tubes, instead of the uncertain Egyptian articles, I gave positive orders that the gun was to be laid for a point-blank range of 200 yards every evening at sunset, with the tube in its place, the lanyard attached and coiled. A piece of raw hide was to cover the breech of the gun to protect it ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... one hundred to one hundred and fifty rupees a year. Every rite is accompanied by a more or less considerable addition to the purse of the insatiable family Brahman, but the happy events pay better than the sad ones. Knowing all this, the Babu asked the Brahman point-blank to perform a false samadhi, that is to say, to feign an inspiration and to announce to the sorrowing mother that her late son's will had acted consciously in all the circumstances; that he brought about his end in the body of the flying fox, that he was tired of that grade ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... knowing exactly whether he means honestly (if I thought he did, Mrs. Lumley, nothing should induce me to throw him over); and I don't like to make the other miserable, which I am sure I should do if I refused him point-blank; nor do I think I could do at all well without him, accustomed as I have been to depend upon him for everything from childhood. So I have wavered and prevaricated, and behaved disingenuously, almost falsely; and what must he think of ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... retake the guns with a superb charge, but though he got through himself he lost more men, amongst whom was a splendid fellow, his second in command, named Berwkoff, who was greatly loved by us all. A Magyar soldier seeing Kalmakoff with his Ataman banner borne by his side, took a point-blank shot at his head, but he forgot the high trajectory of the old Russian rifle, and the bullet merely grazed the top of the Cossack leader's head and sent his papaha into the mud. His banner-bearer could not see his leader's cap so left, and jumped off his horse ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... smoke rushing out with each discharge, and then swaying back with the gun's recoil. But the guns were rarely stationary long, and we soon had the unwonted experience of finding ourselves well behind our own artillery. Finally, in places our batteries were firing at almost point-blank range; the enemy was simply blasted out ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... ground or ground sloping gently to the front is most favorably situated either for point-blank or ricochet firing: a converging fire ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... not explain to her son by what means she had letters from her husband, and once when he asked her point-blank she did not speak out, and he did not dare ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... sister interposed. He was wrong, she declared, to proceed in such a point-blank manner. In cases like these, it was only wile which conquered. He must resume his incognito, and try, this time, the effect of a feminine disguise. She picked out and copied the feeblest of his songs or sonnets, and sent it to La Roque, as from a girl-novice who humbly sued for his literary ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the Turks were pushing their boats into the water; then the Maxims attached to the battery suddenly spoke and the guns opened with case at point-blank range at the men and boats crowded under the steep ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... soldier offered to sell his horse to the landlord, but the latter curtly declined, having horses enough to "eat their heads off" during the winter, as he expressed it. His Jeremy Collier aversion to players was probably at the bottom of this point-blank rebuff, however. He was a stubborn man, czar in his own domains, a small principality bounded by four inhospitable walls. His guests—having no other place to go—were his subjects, or prisoners, and distress could not find ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Almost at point-blank range, howling maledictions, he hurled a murderous fusillade at the Master of the now swiftly ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... I cried, "Even suppose that I grant your request, even suppose I agree not to tell Sylvia the truth—still the day will come when you will hear from her the point-blank question: 'Is my child blind because of this disease?' And what will you ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... gone out with the first day's shift to work on the road through the wood. He refused point-blank to leave the ship. This state of affairs lasted through the next two days, the banker stubbornly ignoring the advice and finally the commands of Captain Trigger. In the meantime he had been joined in his rebellion,—a ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... an hour when through the mist they saw an Indian cautiously riding in. He was reconnoitering the wallow. Their hearts sank. They kept quiet until he was within point-blank range—they could see his red blanket, rolled beneath ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... come to look to me for anything and everything in the way of comfort, Colonel Joe McKibben brought an order from the General for me to get fresh beef for the headquarters mess. I was not caterer for this mess, nor did I belong to it even, so I refused point-blank. McKibben, disliking to report my disobedience, undertook persuasion, and brought Colonel Thom to see me to aid in his negotiations, but I would not give in, so McKibben in the kindness of his heart rode several miles in order to procure the beef himself, and thus save me from the dire results ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... point-blank if you did," returned the senator's son. "This bit of halter is no proof against him. No, you'd only get into hot water if you accused him ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... under the circumstances he ordered her released instead of being shot. He turned his back and walked away about five paces. Suddenly the woman snatched another revolver from behind the counter and fired point-blank. As he fell, the officer called out to his orderly, 'Bayonet ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... through the rattle of the rifles. The buffalo-guns boomed in slow succession like the strokes of a tolling bell. Empty saddles began to show in the forefront. The charge swerved off, and as it passed at point-blank range a curtain of powder smoke unrolled ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... swore point-blank that he heard Ralph go out of the house soon after he went to bed, and that he heard him return at two in the morning. This testimony was given without hesitation, and made a great impression against Ralph in the minds of the justices. Mrs. ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... did it!" I cried wildly. "I remember now, I did it. It all comes back to me at last. I fired at him, just so. I aimed the loaded pistol point-blank at his heart, I can hear the din in my ears. I can see the flash at the muzzle. And then I flung down the pistol—like this—at my feet: and darkness came on; and I forgot everything. Why, Dr. Marten knew that much! I remember now, he told me he'd formed a very ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... at the proposition. It was on the end of his tongue to refuse point-blank; but when he glanced at Bud he thought better of it. The latter was trying to look good-natured, but there was an expression on his face that brought all the negro's fears back to him with redoubled intensity. He saw very plainly that it would take more than a ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... tell you, Bessie," said Dolly, when her chum finally asked her point-blank what she meant to do. "You're not a sneak, and I'm not afraid of your telling on me, but you'll be happier if ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... discovered secret processes, beyond any which have yet been found; and on this point, in order to be brief, I will give but one particular, which will astonish good shots of every degree. This is, that when I charged my gun with powder weighing one-fifth of the ball, it carried two hundred paces point-blank. It is true that the great delight I took in this exercise bid fair to withdraw me from my art and studies; yet in another way it gave me more than it deprived me of, seeing that each time I went out shooting I returned with greatly better ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... have been hesitating whether to tell my father point-blank that I want no more Spanish lessons and have Henarez sent about his business. But in spite of all my brave resolutions, I feel that the horrible sensation which comes over me when I see that man has become necessary to me. I say to myself, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... to demonstrate more clearly the obstacles to be encountered in the contemplated assault. In the first place, it is impossible to take Vicksburg in the front without too great a loss of life and material, for the reason that the river is only about half a mile wide, and our forces would be in point-blank range of their guns, not only from their water-batteries which line the shore, but from the batteries that crown the hills, while the enemy would be protected from the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to suppose it true, for my part, See reasons and reasons: this, to begin— 'Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart At the head of a lie,—taught Original Sin, The Corruption of ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... generally preached from the house-tops. She refused me point-blank; and I knew she was a girl who knew her own mind. Then I rejoined my ship; and remained mostly abroad for a long time. I fancied it would all blow over; but it didn't; I was harder hit than I thought; and then, you ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... Trantridge, a place forty miles from here, and made it his business to expostulate with a lax young cynic he met with somewhere about there—son of some landowner up that way—and who has a mother afflicted with blindness. My father addressed himself to the gentleman point-blank, and there was quite a disturbance. It was very foolish of my father, I must say, to intrude his conversation upon a stranger when the probabilities were so obvious that it would be useless. But whatever ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... what is half ridiculous into something all serious. Winchelsea and Newcastle after all did not vote the other night; they said they wanted no evidence, that they would have no such Bill, and would not meddle with the discussion at all except to oppose it point-blank. Fools as they are, their folly is more tolerable and probably less mischievous than the folly of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... allies, whilst wintering in a friendly country? how, again, was he to prevent Pharnabazus from overriding the Hellenic states in pure contempt with his cavalry? Accordingly he sent to Pharnabazus and put it to him point-blank: Which will you have, peace or war? Whereupon Pharnabazus, who could not but perceive that the whole Aeolid had now been converted practically into a fortified base of operations, which threatened his own ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... "that's because our English novelists are such dabs at the art of omission." And after the briefest pause, "Mere idle and impertinent curiosity," he postulated, "is one thing: honest neighbourly interest is another. If I were a bolder man, I should ask you point-blank what part of Italy your part of ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... words, of improving the paper. Runcorn is strong on the side of blackguardism. We had a great fight the other day over a leader offered by Kenyon,—a true effusion of the political gutter-snipe. I refused point-blank to let it go in; Runcorn swore that, if I did not, I should go out. I offered to retire that moment. "We must write for our public," he bellowed. "True," said I, "but not necessarily for the basest among ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... accompaniment of a dismal headache from over-application), he had stopped to converse with Miss Mapp immediately afterwards, with one eye on the time, for naturally he could not fire off that sort of news point-blank at her, as if it was a matter of any interest ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... entered and said heartily, "That's right, Alida! You are here to stay, you know. You mustn't think it amiss that I left you a few moments alone for I had to get that talkative old man off home. He's getting a little childish and would fire questions at you point-blank." ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... in the extreme upper right corner. They checked in thirteen and eight-tenths seconds minus on the station, and a fiery dialogue ensued when the computer questioned the accuracy of the location of the station and refused point-blank ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... subdued by the discovery that he must bide in the poorhouse the Jews had built there till the elders had examined him. And there he had herded all day long with the sick and cripples and a lewd rabble, till evening brought the elders and his doom—a point-blank refusal to allow him to enter the city and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... said Heathcote to himself, "this is the fellow everybody tells me is a beast to be fought shy of, and not trusted for a minute." He was almost tempted to interrogate Pledge point-blank on what it all meant; but his shyness ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... said that in 1877, when the marshal thought of resigning rather than accepting such an advanced Republican as M. Jules Simon as chief of his Cabinet, he sent for M. Grevy, and asked him point-blank: "Do you want to become president of the Republic?" "I am not in the least ambitious for that honor," replied M. Grevy. "If I were sure you would be elected in my place, I would resign," continued the marshal; "but I do not know what would happen if I were to go." "My strong advice to you is not ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... go on unbroken. He was rather glad, on the whole, not to hear that she had declared herself willing to regard him as a brother. Those dreadful old phrases only make the refusal ten times worse. Probably the most wholesome way in which a refusal could be put to a sensitive young man is the blunt, point-blank declaration that never, under any circumstances, could there be a thought of the girl's loving him and having him for her husband. Then a young man who is worth his salt is thrown back upon his own mettle, and recognises the conditions under which he has to battle his life out, and ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... torch along the ground; he had also seen other horsemen—two or three, as he thought—but could not identify them. Jacko's deposition was also taken as to the man who had been heard and seen in the wool-shed at night. Jacko was ready to swear point-blank that the man was Nokes. The policemen suggested that, as the night was dark, Jacko might as well allow a shade of doubt to appear, thinking that the shade of doubt would add strength to the evidence. But Jacko was not going to be taught what sort ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... morning, after my return from seeing you," she replied in answer to Craig's inquiry, then added, wide-eyed with alarm, "What shall I do? He must have opened the wall safe and found the replica. I don't dare ask him point-blank." ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... with his wife, has one or two children by her, before he will pain the heart of his adored mother by telling her the truth. The adored mother suspects her son, but no trace of the suspicion appears in her letters to him. The questions which an English parent would level at him point-blank she is entirely too delicate to address to her dear Maurice; but she puts them to the Prefect of Police, and ferrets out the marriage through legal documents, while yet no trace of this knowledge dims ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... will not hit anybody; and when I begin to shoot do you shoot also, and as quickly as you can. Mind, you are not to hit anybody," I added; for I saw by the look on Young's face that he longed to fire into the crowd point-blank. For answer he gave me a rather sulky nod of assent; but I saw by the way that he held his pistols that my order was obeyed. "Now," I said, "Fire!"—and as rapidly as self-acting revolvers would do it, we poured twenty-four shots through the slits in the wall. No doubt several ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... so sensible of as most other men; and this partly out of judgment, for the world looks upon several things as dreadful or to be avoided at the expense of life, that are almost indifferent to me: partly, through a dull and insensible complexion I have in accidents which do not point-blank hit me; and that insensibility I look upon as one of the best parts of my natural condition; but essential and corporeal pains I am very sensible of. And yet, having long since foreseen them, though ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... dead silence. The boys had not bargained for such a point-blank demand for help, and it took them off their feet. One looked at the other and several shuffled uncomfortably. The Forecaster watched the lads keenly, interested to see how they would face the issue. Ross ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... curve and star every move of the enemy. The gashed water at every stroke of club or swish of tail or fin bled in blue and red fire, as if the very sea was wounded. The enemy's line of battle was broken and scattered, but not until more than one of the assailants had looked point-blank into the angry eyes of a shark and beaten it off with actual blows. It was the Thermopylae of sharkdom, with numbers reversed—a Red Sea passage resonant with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... in time to undermine the whole fabric of the Arts. Architecture was deposed from its high intellectual dominance. It tended more and more to become a conventional affair, and it was an easy transition from the exuberance of Hellenistic art to the point-blank vulgarity of ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... down below into the fort, and wherever the flames got hold they were extinguished. But that which the falling arrows sent high in air, to drop almost perpendicularly on the fort, failed to do, though shot with wondrous skill, was accomplished by the arrows sent in the ordinary way point-blank against the walls. ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... It is said that at the battle of Dundee General Meyer, feeling convinced that the God of Battles had decided against him and his forces, decided to surrender to the British, but Louis Botha fiercely combated his general's decision, and point-blank refused to throw down his arms or counsel his men to do so. What followed all the world knows, and Botha went up very high in the estimation of the better class of fighting burghers. At the Tugela, before the first big battle took ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... made its appearance, and alarmed the Kirk Session so much, that they held several meetings to look over their spiritual artillery, if haply any of it might be pointed against (p. 032) profane rhymers. Unluckily for me, my wandering led me on another side, within point-blank shot of their heaviest metal. This is the unfortunate incident which gave rise to my printed poem, The Lament. This was a most melancholy affair, which I cannot yet bear to reflect on, and had very nearly given me one or two of the ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... the goal in a line, he corrects the course, and shows us the deviation that is necessary in order to arrive at it; like the sailor making allowance for the deviation of the magnetic pole, in steering. Happiness is not gained by a point-blank aim; we must take a boomerang flight in some other line, and come back upon the target by an oblique or reflected movement. It is the idea of Young on the Love of Praise ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... his kinsfolk stop the way Point-blank, there could not be A happening in the world to-day ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... a point-blank question which I hardly expected," said Yanski, gazing at her in astonishment. "Don't you ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... Lincoln refused point-blank to accept the compromise and he put his refusal in writing. The historic meaning of his refusal, and the significance of his determination not to solve the problem of the hour by accepting a dual system of government ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... within fifty yards. Then fire and give them the bayonet; and yell like furies when you charge!" Five minutes later, as the triumphant Federals topped the crest, the long gray line rose up, stood fast, fired one crashing point-blank volley, and immediately charged home with the first of those wild, high rebel yells that rang throughout the war. The stricken and astounded Federal front caved in, turned round, and fled. At the same instant ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... "Somewhat confused at this point-blank shot, uttered in a voice so loud as to attract the attention of those in immediate proximity, I made a random reply, and took the occasion to ask if I could see him in his study at the ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... first invited the boy to help me he refused point-blank, upon two distinct pleas: the first of which was that he saw no reason why he should work at all, seeing that I was there to do what needed to be done; while, in the second place, if he chose to work at all he would do only such work as he pleased, and in any case was not going ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... was crafty. She began to complain about Evangelina, but it was only after many months that she ventured to suggest to her husband that he sell the girl. Esteban, of course, refused point-blank; he was too fond of Sebastian's daughter, he declared, to think of ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... upon him as a real shock when people began to ask him point-blank whether he was engaged to Jan, and if so, what they were going to do about Tancred's children. Rightly or wrongly, he discerned in the question some veiled reflection upon Jan, some implied slur upon her conduct. ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... banished, still communicated with his friends in the capital. What more likely then, than that the attempt on Conde's life was made by Masarins? And if so, who more likely to lead it than the penniless youth who had refused point-blank to join any of the other parties? Mazarin, it would be asserted, must have left me in Paris ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... never, on any account, to be dispatched on the most trivial errand of any sort; and that even if entreated to take upon him such a matter, it was generally understood that he would "prefer not to"—in other words, that he would refuse point-blank. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... resounded with noisy detonations: fusees, serpents, and petards exploded in all directions—at the gate, in the gardens, even upon the walls of the legation. Great confusion followed, as no one was prepared for this point-blank politeness, so mysteriously organized by the Chinese servants. In China nothing takes place without a display of fireworks. About an hour was spent in reorganizing the caravan. Meanwhile, Madame de Bourboulon, whose frightened horse had ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... asking him point-blank just what his life had been, and why he had never been to school, Ruth did not see how she was to learn more than the white-haired boy wished to ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... cover in the buildings. A hole being made in the legation wall, Captain Halliday followed by his men crept through, and at once came upon the enemy, and before he was able to use his revolver received a serious wound from a rifle at point-blank range, the bullet breaking his shoulder and entering the lung; notwithstanding, he shot three of the enemy and walked back unaided to the hospital. For this gallant action Captain Halliday was awarded the V.C. Captain Strouts then took charge, and driving back the ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... out before she got through with me. I assured her that I understood the beauty of righteousness, and that I held a strong hand—a straight flush, as it were. I was well aware that the metaphor was somewhat mixed; but it expressed my sentiments and relieved my feelings, and so I fired it at her point-blank. She snorted and pawed and bellowed, and swore at me in cow-language, but I didn't care for that. So I shook the old, battered milk-pail in her face, and told her I was born in Connecticut, and did business on spot-cash principle; ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... at him from under his cowl, which he had drawn over his head, and partly over his face, as if he wished to shade his own emotions. They were those of a huntsman within point-blank shot of a noble stag, who is yet too much struck with his majesty of front and of antler to take aim at him. They were those of a fowler, who, levelling his gun at a magnificent eagle, is yet reluctant to use his advantage when he sees the noble sovereign of the birds pruning himself in ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... form of a man's figure, standing still and motionless as a statue in the midst of all this tumult, and thereupon, as by some instinct, knew that that must be the master-maker of all this devil's brew. Therewith, still kneeling upon the deck, he covered the bosom of that figure point-blank, as he supposed, with his pistol, ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... horsemen... but at the voice of their commander, General Drouet, who, sword in hand, set them an example in resistance, the French gunners, taking their muskets, remained calmly behind their guns, from where they fired point-blank at the enemy. Nevertheless, the great number of the latter would have eventually triumphed, had not, on the Emperor's order, all Sbastiani's cavalry, along with all that of the Imperial Guard , mounted Grenadiers, Dragoons , Chasseurs, Mamelukes, Lancers and Guards of Honour, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... refusing thus point-blank to retract, effectually destroyed whatever hopes of mediation or reconciliation had been entertained by the milder and more moderate adherents of the Church who still wished for reform. Nor was any union possible with those who, while looking to a truly representative Council as the best safeguard ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... affection for him. She had lost her husband many years before, and had been left with considerable fortune and no family besides this one brother. So much information, after repeated and unabashedly point-blank questions, had the Joppites succeeded in extracting from Mr. Halloway, who with all his apparent frankness was the most difficult person in the world ever to be brought to talk of himself and his own affairs. But just to see Mrs. Whittridge, with her sweet face and ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... He refuses point-blank, with a bearing of such superiority as an attack of the sort can hardly ruffle. "Not to you, so forgetful of your honour, have I need here to reply. I set aside your evil aspersion; truth will hardly ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... end to end. Morillo was standing aft by the taffrail, and as we passed near enough to hear the wash of the water about the pirate vessel's rudder, he suddenly snatched up a blunderbuss, and, singling me out, fired point-blank at me, one bullet knocking my cap off, while another lodged in my left shoulder, a third killing the man at our wheel, close behind me. The Guerrilla immediately ported her helm, while I, springing to our wheel, ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... back for a counter-charge. Accordingly the pieces were immediately run to the top of the hill, the drivers, Shiffer and Correll, riding boldly up and executing a left-about on the skirmish line, where the skirmishers were lying down. The pieces were unlimbered and instantly put into action at point-blank range, the skirmishers giving way to the right and left to make way for the guns. The enemy was less than 300 yards away, and apparently bent ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... resolved to go up point-blank to my brother (husband), and to tell him who I was; but not knowing what temper I might find him in, or how much out of temper rather, I might make him by such a rash visit, I resolved to write a letter to him first, to let ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... the young people were proposing to undertake. He went so far as to put clearly before them aspects of the case which they might have overlooked and to read them legal extracts of a discouraging nature. They were unmoved, and the sindaco, still dissatisfied, asked Berto point-blank whether he really wished, under the circumstances, to take Giuseppina to be his wife. Berto replied in the affirmative. Concealing his surprise, the sindaco turned to Giuseppina and asked her whether she wished ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... the whole line of sandbags became alive with other white figures pouring in one crashing volley at point-blank range, and with a full-throated British cheer the Reedshires vaulted over the wet ditch and hurled themselves upon the astonished Prussians ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... I said, severely, "I have not asked Miss Wade what she is going to do. If you inquire of her point-blank, as you have inquired of me, I dare say she will tell you. For myself, I am just a globe-trotter, amusing myself. I only want to have a look round ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... try if Ships might come near enough to batter, who all gave it, as their Opinions, that there could not more than three Ships possibly anchor at the upper End of the Harbour; and if they were laid but in a Foot Water more than they drew, they would not be in a Point-Blank-Shot, and consequently could do no material Execution; however, to convince the General, that Ships could be of no manner of Service to him, the Admiral caused the Galicia (one of the Spanish Ships) to be fitted proper for battering, by forming, between each Port, Merlons (or Cases) of six Foot ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... he was young he was very religious, and prepared himself for a clerical career, and that when he had finished his studies at the high school in 1863 he intended to enter a theological academy, but that his father, a surgeon and doctor of medicine, jeered at him and declared point-blank that he would disown him if he became a priest. How far this is true I don't know, but Andrey Yefimitch himself has more than once confessed that he has never had a natural bent for medicine ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... legs, was sheer love of the truth. He couldn't tell a lie—to a woman. That would be it. He would pretend that Jenny had chivvied him into taking Em, that he was too noble to refuse to take Em, or to let Em really see point-blank that he didn't want to take her; but when it came to the pinch he hadn't been able to screw himself into the truly noble attitude needed for such an act of self-sacrifice. He had been speechless when a prompt lie, added to the ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... account of the hard night-and-day work he had been doing, he really ought to have five thousand dollars, but he would be glad to settle for three thousand, if they thought five thousand was too much. But when asked point-blank, he hadn't the courage to name either sum—thousands looked large to him then—so he hesitated ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... said, the wind, and being able to go nearer it than the Spaniard, kept his place at easy point-blank range for his two-eighteen-pounder culverins, which Yeo and his ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... lancers joined them. More than 5,000 strong, these horsemen rode into the valley, formed at the foot of the slope, and then, under cover of their artillery, began to breast the slope. At its crest the guns of the allies opened on them point-blank; but, despite their horrible losses, they swept on, charged through the guns and down the reverse slope towards the squares. Volley after volley now tore through with fearful effect, and the survivors ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... embarrassed by each other's presence, exchanged a few commonplace words. Their great friendship had recently cooled, Jansoulet having refused point-blank all further subsidies to the Bethlehem Society, leaving the business on the Irishman's hands, who was furious at this defection, and much more furious still at this moment because he had not been able to open Felicia's letter before the arrival of the intruder. The Nabob, on his side, was ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... thwart mutual inclination, the persecutions of fathers, the jealousies arising without any foundation, complaints, despair, running away with, and its consequences. Thus things are carried on in fashionable life, and veritable gallantry cannot dispense with these forms. But to come out point-blank with a proposal of marriage,—to make no love but with a marriage-contract, and begin a novel at the wrong end! Once more, father, nothing can be more tradesmanlike, and the mere thought of it makes ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... it!" I cried wildly. "I remember now, I did it. It all comes back to me at last. I fired at him, just so. I aimed the loaded pistol point-blank at his heart, I can hear the din in my ears. I can see the flash at the muzzle. And then I flung down the pistol—like this—at my feet: and darkness came on; and I forgot everything. Why, Dr. Marten knew that much! I remember now, he told me he'd formed ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... frightened. They held the gun at arm's length, turned their faces away and shot at random; it was clear that very few knew how to shoot, and that their Sniders could be of use only at short range. This is confirmed by the fact that all their murders are done point-blank. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... back again. It is only some business that calls him into Midlandshire. He does not even take all his luggage away. I have a great mind to tell him point-blank that his presence in this house—at all events in Mr. Coe's absence—is unwelcome; but I dare not do ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... The question point-blank does not do with her. (Aloud) How happy you make me! For this provincial joker, Godard, avers that you almost fainted when he prompted Napoleon to declare that Ferdinand had broken his leg. Ferdinand is a pleasant young fellow, our intimate friend for some four years; ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... into a deliberate stare. Every now and then the spokes-boy of the party—he was the oldest, evidently, but his face was smaller and whiter, and his eyes were more like little black beads than those of either of his brethren—would fire off a point-blank pistol-shot of a question; when this was answered or evaded, they resumed their steady stare. I was lapsing rapidly into a helpless imbecility under the horrible fascination, when their mother summoned me to supper; they vanished then, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... homely, homespun; neat; severe, chaste, pure, Saxon; commonplace, matter-of- fact, natural, prosaic. dry, unvaried, monotonous &c 575. Adv. in plain terms, in plain words, in plain English, in plain common parlance; point-blank. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... loan. Saturday night came, and with it his hotel bill, which he had no means of discharging. In an agony of shame and anxiety, he went to a friend, and entreated the sum of five dollars to enable him to return home. He was met with a point-blank refusal. In the deepest dejection, he walked the streets till late in the night, and strayed at length, almost beside himself, to Cambridge, where he ventured to call upon a friend and ask shelter for the night. He was hospitably entertained, and the next morning walked wearily ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... in wisdom. My director in Paris, a very enlightened man withal, was anxious that I should be at once ordained a sub-deacon, the first of the holy orders which constitutes an irrevocable tie. I refused point-blank. So far as regarded the first steps of the ecclesiastical state, I had obeyed him. It was he himself who pointed out to me that, the exact form of the engagement which they imply is contained in the words of the Psalm which are repeated: ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... called, and swore point-blank that he heard Ralph go out of the house soon after he went to bed, and that he heard him return at two in the morning. This testimony was given without hesitation, and made a great impression against Ralph in the minds of the justices. Mrs. Jones, a poor, brow-beaten ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... special interest, as showing how firmly the English naval tradition was already fixed, should be noticed the twenty-fifth, relating to seamen gunners, the twenty-sixth, forbidding action at more than point-blank range, and above all the fifth and sixth, aimed at obliterating all distinction between soldiers and sailors aboard ship, and at securing that unity of service between the land and sea forces which has been the peculiar distinction of the national ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... between him and the cage—once more, to the horror of Clare, holding by the neck his poor little Abdiel, curled up into the shape of a flea. The brute was making his way with him to the cage of the puma, whose wrath, grown to an indescribable frenzy, now blazed point-blank at the dog. ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... might get out of Ransford if he, Bryce, were Coroner, or solicitor, and had Ransford in that witness-box. He would ask him on his oath if he knew that dead man—if he had had dealings with him in times past—if he had met and spoken to him on that eventful morning—he would ask him, point-blank, if it was not his hand that had thrown him to his death. But Bryce had no intention of making any revelations just then—as for himself he was going to tell just as much as he pleased and no more. And so he sat and heard—and knew from what he heard that everybody there was ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... said, "that you show no more concern while a weight like this rests upon the kingdom. The amount which we must raise without a moment's delay is two hundred thousand guilders, and the Lubeck ambassadors refuse point-blank to depart unless they take that sum with them. If they don't get it we fear open war, which God forbid! Therefore, by the allegiance which you owe us and the realm, we exhort you, send the four hundred marks' weight without delay." Even this appeal had no immediate effect, and after ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... intention of coming to anchor, one on the bow of their admiral, and the other on the bow of their vice-admiral, got astern, and could not with all our diligence be of any service for a full half hour after the action began. At length we got within point-blank shot of them, and then were forced either to anchor or drive farther off with the current, as there was not a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... when they met another man, to whom Moscione said, "What is your name, my brave fellow? Where were you born? And what can you do in the world?" And the man answered, "My name is Shoot-straight; I am from Castle Aimwell; and I can shoot with a crossbow so point-blank as to hit a ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... to Mr Waller that perhaps the best plan would be to interview Psmith. Psmith would know exactly how matters stood. He could not ask Mike point-blank whether he had been dismissed. But there was the probability that Psmith had been informed and ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... a tool in selling up Ardea, and in thus forcing the marriage. Well, it seems this personage did not think himself sufficiently well-paid for his complicity. He demanded of the Baron a large sum, with which to found some large swindling scheme, which the latter refused point-blank. The other threatened to relate their little dealing to Ardea, ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... direct relations with a Mussulman of education and position. To be asked point-blank whether I thought four wives better than three on general principles, and quite independently of the contemplated spouse, was a little embarrassing. He seemed perfectly capable of marrying another before dinner for the sake of peace, and I do not believe he would have considered ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... realized what had happened Billy had possessed himself of the fallen club and struck one of them a blinding, staggering blow across the eyes. Then number three pulled his gun and fired point-blank at Billy. The bullet tore through the mucker's left shoulder. It would have sent a more highly organized and nervously inclined man to the pavement; but Billy was neither highly organized nor nervously inclined, so that about the only immediate effect it had upon him was to ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... too preoccupied to notice her handmaiden's significant emphasis, as she indicated a fresh-looking, bashful young fellow, whose confusion was evidently heightened by the unexpected egress of Mr. Hamlin, and the point-blank presence of the ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... prove you the whole plan in plain A B C. Here's your sun—call him A; B's the moon; it is clear How the rest of the alphabet brings up the rear Of the planets. Now ask Arago, ask La Place, (Your sages, who speak with the heavens face to face!) Their science in plain A B C to accord To your point-blank inquiry, my friends! not a word Will you get for your pains from their sad lips. Alas! Not a drop from the bottle that's quite full will pass. 'Tis the half-empty vessel that freest emits The water that's in it. 'Tis thus with men's wits; Or at least with ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... singing as he went, when St. Lucia stood before him, and looking straight in the murderer's face, exclaimed: 'Now is the time!' and shot him point-blank in the chest. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... European unrest after the war, the new loan, and other matters, when, of a sudden, a black-mustached man in a dark grey overcoat and a round fur cap sprang from the bushes at a lonely spot, and, raising a big service revolver, fired point-blank at His Excellency. ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... won't tell me a thing. She's shielding him. But I went through her letters and found a note from him. It's signed 'J. C.' I accused him point-blank to her and she just put her head down on her arms and sobbed. I ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... asked her point-blank whether she loved me. Her silence gave me my answer, and I took her unresisting body into my arms and kissed her to distraction. Oh! these kisses, how bitter they seem to me now, and yet how I long to hold her once again. For, freeing herself from ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... Englebourn, Harry, in answer to Tom's inquiries, explained that in his absence the stable-man, his acquaintance, had come up and begun to talk. The keeper had joined in and accused him point-blank of being the man who had thrown him into the furze bush. The story of the keeper's discomfiture on that occasion being well known, a laugh had been raised in which Harry had joined. This brought on a challenge to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... of Mr. Taylour added fuel to the fire of Freddy's wrath: he put the spurs into Mayboy, dashed after the woman, pulled his horse across the road in front of her, and shouted his question point-blank at her, coupled with a warm inquiry as to whether she had ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... lost, since he knew where it was; and Zoe had compromised herself beyond retreating. He intended to wear this anxious face a long while. But his artificial snow had to melt, so real a sun shone full on it. The moment he looked full at Zoe, she repaid him with such a point-blank beam of glorious tenderness and gratitude as made him thrill with passion as well as triumph. He felt her whole heart was his, and from that hour his poverty would never be allowed to weigh with her. He cleared up, and left off acting, because it was superfluous; he had now only to bask in sunshine. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... John F. Hartranft (both names afterward greatly distinguished), and both officers and men were made to feel the necessity of success. [Footnote: Ibid.] At the same time Crook succeeded in bringing a light howitzer of Simmonds's mixed battery down from the hill-tops, and placed it where it had a point-blank fire on the further end of the bridge. The howitzer was one we had captured in West Virginia, and had been added to the battery, which was partly made up of heavy rifled Parrott guns. When everything was ready, a heavy skirmishing ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... as I could,—which did not decrease his nervousness. When he put it to me point-blank, I said: "I can't do it, Senator. I will not mix in quarrels ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... position well within their own territory, according to the general order to accept no combat under actual conditions, so that the least skirmish was magnified at Athens to a new victory. The summons to demobilize was met by a point-blank refusal, when the fleets of the powers—Russia and France excepted—entered on the scene, and the blockade of the Greek coast was declared. This saved the credit of the ministry with the country; and Deliyanni, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... his prow on the seaward tack, meaning to return again immediately with the same prospect of advantage possessed at first—his plan being to crash suddenly athwart the Drake's bow, so as to have all her decks exposed point-blank to his musketry. But once more the winds interposed. It came on with a storm of snow; he was obliged to ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... aware of the loss we had sustained by receiving a frequent artful ball which seemed to light with unerring instinct on any nose that was the least bit exposed. I have known one of Pepper's snowballs, fired point-blank, to turn a corner and hit a boy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... defiance of King Charles and his chamberlains. They did wisely, for none was better able to defend the town than my Lord Guillaume, none was more set on doing his duty. When the King of France had commanded him to deliver the place he had refused point-blank; and when later the Duke promised him a good round sum and a rich inheritance in exchange for Compiegne, he made answer that the town was ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... sought Straker out in a lonely corner of the smoke-room. His face was flushed and defiant. He put it to Straker point-blank. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... and system more precise and absolute than the guesswork Mr. Thompson concedes to be unavoidable to-day with the utmost care and experience. It could not have been done with a missile liable, in the calmest atmosphere, the moment it passed the point-blank, to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... and the thud-thud of the ponies' little hoofs was audible through the rattle of the rifles. The buffalo-guns boomed in slow succession like the strokes of a tolling bell. Empty saddles began to show in the forefront. The charge swerved off, and as it passed at point-blank range a curtain of powder smoke unrolled along ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... to have a ride round the city and its suburbs to judge for himself how matters stood, and gave orders through the Sheikh for his horse to be brought round; but upon their guardian being summoned they were met by a point-blank, ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... a nice point-blank sight on my forehead. Now he moved the gun, aimed it off me, pointed, it across the ...
— The Very Black • Dean Evans
... follow, our hero once more set his face point-blank to his adventure. Keeping a sharp eye on the enemy's height, he begun making his way down the gulley into the valley—screening his movements, as best he might, where the gulley was too shallow to conceal ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Calais to Copenhagen. The carriage was a special one and was leaving the station at a slow, preliminary rate when a youth named Sipido jumped on the foot-board of the car and fired two shots, in rapid succession, point-blank at the traveller who was just taking a cup of tea with his wife. He was about to fire a third time, but was seized by the stationmaster, arrested and sent to prison. The man turned out to be a Belgian, expressed no regret for his attempted crime, ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... joined us with genial condescension, and I recollected that his proverbial harshness toward the male offender was redeemed by an extraordinary sympathy with the women. Thereupon I laid a general case before Sir John, asking him point-blank whether he considered such conduct as Quinby's (but I did not say whose the conduct was) either justifiable in itself or conducive to the enjoyment of a holiday ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... resource he thought he would go and get Juliott Penaluna, and persuade that young lady to come and be introduced to the Rosewarnes. At first Miss Penaluna refused point-blank. She asked him how he could expect her to do such a thing. But then her cousin Harry happened to be civil, and indeed kind, in his manner to her, and when he was in one of those moods there was nothing she could refuse him. She went and got ready ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... Mr. Romanes speaks point-blank of the new-born child as "embodying the results of a great mass of hereditary experience" (p. 77), so that what he is driving at can be collected by those who take trouble, but is not seen until we call up from our own knowledge matter whose relevancy does not appear ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... was a pause, so long that the Englishman thought he was going to be refused point-blank; then an even voice said, "Come in," and ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the jungle, for which the country was well adapted, so as to get to the rear of the town and forts, and make a simultaneous attack on the first shot being fired from our boats. The last barrier (and there were four of them) was placed just within point-blank range; the gig being a light boat, I managed to haul her over, close to the bank, and advanced so as to be both out of sight and out of range; and just as our first boat came up with the barrier, I ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... ever; but, unharmed as he was physically, it was evident to all the company that he was suffering from some mental discomposure. Miss Macdonnell, with a frank curiosity which might have been trying in any one else, asked him point-blank the reason of his absence from the meal for which, in spite of his partiality for French cookery, he had ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... I should find an opportunity to sell the Maud at Aden, you will not be disappointed?" asked the captain, point-blank, looking earnestly into the ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... hissed Shepard, a fighting animal to the last. He had whipped out a magazine gun from his coat pocket, and began firing point-blank. Burke threw his stick at the man, but it ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... said, "to send the letter that was demanded of him. And yet I couldn't take the responsibility of injuring the company by advising him to refuse the Church request. You know, if we had refused it, point-blank, they would have destroyed every interest we had within the domain of their power. I should have been ruined financially. All our stockholders would have suffered. They would ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... honour instead of to be tried for a big, insane sort of offence calculated to bring about international complications he couldn't have had a prouder bearing. And he wasn't even pale. He looked just brown and calm and natural. I had to confess to when you asked me a point-blank question that night in the park, that I was all muddled up in my mind about his conduct in ordering the gunfire. I didn't know whether he'd gone off his chump, or been fooled, or what. But I can ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... horse-racing and the gambling which invariably goes with it, by the Colonel's wasted life and her own ensuing loneliness, nevertheless prayed night and day that Queen Bess would be victorious, for Frank had finally refused, point-blank, to let her risk her fortune in the scheme for the development of his coal-lands, and so, if the mare lost and the eastern firm refused to purchase her at the large price which would enable him to join ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... on the ships could not see the forts, the great steel calling-cards of the British Empire came falling out of nowhere as regularly and with as deadly precision as though they were being fired at point-blank range. ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... strength, Ticonderoga was by far the most important of these fortresses. At this place the opposite shores of New York and Vermont are pushed out into the lake toward each other, thus forming two peninsulas, with the lake contracted to a width of half a mile, or point-blank cannon range, between them: one is Ticonderoga; the other, Mount Independence. Thus, together, they command the passage of ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... to bring down his game and save himself from being trampled to a jelly. Mildmay, however, was not so fortunate. He seemed to think that it mattered very little where he directed his aim, so long as he made sure of hitting the brute somewhere, and he therefore fired point-blank at the chest of the mammoth which was menacing him. The shell sped true, but, encountering the thick shaggy coat and the enormously tough hide of the creature, failed to penetrate the body, and, exploding outside, only inflicted such wounds ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... sudden exclusion from these parties. Now Lucy missed the Dodds very much, and was surprised to see them invited no more. But it was not in her character to satisfy a curiosity of this sort by putting a point-blank question to the person who could tell her in two words. She was one of those thorough women whose instinct it is to find out little things, not to ask about them. When day after day passed by, and the Dodds were not invited, it flashed through her mind, first, that there must ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... last resting-place. But Olivier begged him to go, and promised that he would faithfully watch over her in his stead: he induced him to leave the house: and, to make sure of his not going back on his decision, went with him to the station. Christophe refused point-blank to go without having a sight of the great river, by which he had spent his childhood, the mighty echo of which was preserved for ever within his soul as in a sea-shell. Though it was dangerous for him to be seen in the town, yet for his whim he ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Hilary to confess that this point-blank question startled her.—Her bringing up had been strictly among the professional class; and in the provinces sharper than even in London is drawn the line between the richest tradesman who "keeps a shop," and the poorest lawyer, doctor, or clergyman who ever ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... Nicene Council then decide That strong debate? was it by Scripture tried? No, sure; to that the rebel would not yield; Squadrons of texts he marshall'd in the field: That was but civil war, an equal set, 160 Where piles with piles[112], and eagles eagles met. With texts point-blank and plain he faced the foe. And did not Satan tempt our Saviour so? The good old bishops took a simpler way; Each ask'd but what he heard his father say, Or how he was instructed in his youth, And by tradition's force upheld ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... deep round oath Dan turned in his saddle, giving the horse the head, and leveling his rifle fired point-blank at the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... was only her companion's silence which enabled Rachel to realize her strange fortune at this stage, and she had to put her question point-blank before she ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... light again close to the table with napkins on her arm. She removed the work-box reverentially, the doctor's manuscript unceremoniously, and proceeded to lay a cloth: in which operation she looked at Rose a point-blank glance of admiration: then she placed the napkins; and in this process she again cast a strange look of interest upon Rose. The young lady noticed it this time, and looked inquiringly at her in return, half expecting some communication; but ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... conspicuous and interesting figure was Henry Luttrell. It was known that he must be getting on in life, for he had sat in the Irish Parliament, but his precise age no one knew. At length Lady Holland, whose curiosity was restrained by no considerations of courtesy, asked him point-blank—"Now, Luttrell, we're all dying to know how old you are. Just tell me." Eyeing his questioner gravely, Luttrell made answer, "It is an odd question; but as you, Lady Holland, ask it, I don't mind telling you. If I live till next year, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... had struck up a friendship with Miss Lindsay and Lorraine Forrester, and often went to see them at the studio which they had temporarily hired. Lorraine's principal branch of art was sculpture, and she was modelling a bust of Morland, who came readily for sittings, though he had refused point-blank to ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... Frank. "That is point-blank, and still she says she is not sentimental. She may not be, but she is decidedly ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... ate their supper in perplexed silence, and were shut in their room for deliberation and consultation. "I never sat in such a case before," said the foreman. "The plaintiff and defendant have sworn point-blank against each other; and how we are to tell which speaks the truth, I can not see. I should not like to make a mistake in the matter; it would be a sad affair to convict an innocent man of perjury." Again ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... too much like murder," continued the innkeeper. "Your hand would tremble so that you would miss me at point-blank. There goes the last of the ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... does I do? Why, sir, the very next time he and I meet, I says to him, 'Fitzalbert, it's very hard a man of your rank can't do something for his friends.' I knew the right way was to put the thing to him point-blank. 'So it would be,' says he, 'if it was, but it isn't.' 'Oh, isn't it?' says I; 'then, if you are the man I take you to be, you'll do the thing as is handsome by me.' He said nothing then, but took hold of my hand, and shook it like ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... obvious wonder and bent over Leah. Gordon took instant advantage of the Xoranian's diverted attention. He whipped the revolver from behind him and fired point-blank at ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... volley bursts point-blank in our faces, flinging in front of us a sudden row of flames the whole length of the earthen verge. After the stunning shock we shake ourselves and burst into devilish laughter—the discharge has passed too high. And at once, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... small boys more need of a friend, for the morning after the siege the storm burst upon the rebels in all its violence. Flashman laid wait, and caught Tom before second lesson, and receiving a point-blank "No" when told to fetch his hat, seized him and twisted his arm, and went through the other methods of torture in use. "He couldn't make me cry, though," as Tom said triumphantly to the rest of the rebels; "and I kicked his shins well, I know." And soon it crept out that a lot of the ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... while the rest engaged the battery from a distance. In the heat of action the British artillerymen never saw their real danger till, on a given signal, Miller's advanced party all sprang up and fired a point-blank volley which killed or wounded every man beside the guns. Then Miller charged and took the battery. But he only held it for a moment. The British centre charged up their own side of Battle Rise and drove the intruders back, after a terrific struggle with the bayonet. ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... no bidding. Sheets of flame leaped from the vessel's deck as the soldiers seized their rifles and fired point-blank at these mysterious assailants who spoke in a foreign language. But flame alone could not stop that desperate attack. Some fell, but the survivors sprang at the Brazilians like famished wolves on their prey. There was no more ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... enigma to her. In the middle of July, when the heat was so intense as to be almost intolerable, Daisy received a pressing invitation to visit an old friend, and to go yachting on the Broads. She refused it at first point-blank; but Muriel, hearing of the matter before the letter was sent, interfered, and practically insisted upon a ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Alice, to say such things of your sister. Well, anyhow the town is full of it. When I went out yesterday Mrs. Morris asked me point-blank if I hadn't news for her, and Miss Peters has taken so frightfully to rolling her eyes whenever Matty and Captain Bertram are seen together, that I'm quite afraid she will contract a regular squint. How long was he with Matty on ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... wrathfully—for a London street-boy's yell, let off at point-blank range, is, in effect, like the smack of an open hand—but the inscription on the staring yellow poster that was held up for my inspection changed my anger ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... man I liked had not enough to keep a wife and family; he looked before he leaped. He never leaped at all; he never even proposed to me point-blank, but it came round to me through a friend. But you working-people, you never look, and you always leap, and when you have got your ten children and nothing to feed them on, then you think that the gentlefolks who would not marry because they had not enough to keep families ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... silent at the bed-head for the space, perhaps, of ten minutes, meditating over it all. If her son was, in truth, engaged to this woman, at any rate she would find that out. If she asked a point-blank question on that subject, Margaret would not be able to leave it unanswered, and would hardly be able to give ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... arrived. It now became more certain than ever that the 16th would be the great day that should decide the fate of Germany. I expressed my conjectures to several French officers, that, according to all appearance, fresh armies of the allies were on their march toward Leipzig. They contradicted me point-blank; partly because, as they said, the crown-prince of Sweden and general Bluecher had been obliged to retreat precipitately across the Elbe, as an immense French army was in full march upon Berlin; and partly because they were convinced that the reinforcements ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... failed even more disastrously than the first, the O.C. having made a most unpleasant fuss on the discovery of two large boxes of mustard and cress "cluttering up," as he called it, the gun-mountings on one of the armored cars, and, when the section moved suddenly in the dead of night, refusing point-blank to allow any available space to be loaded up with Mary's budding garden. Mary's plaintive inquiry as to what he was to do with the boxes was met by the brutal order to "chuck the lot overboard," and the counter-inquiry as to whether ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... the way here the HERO of Gallipoli took quite a fancy to me, because I could beat him swearing perhaps.... Growing confidential over his liquor and Turkish cigarettes he asked point-blank: 'Didn't I see you at the TWELFTH DAY CEREMONY at the Winter Palace the time the Archbishop lost the golden cross in the river, a few years ago?'... I thought it better to deny the acquaintance and the incident.... I could ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... of the Hornet and Penguin, as well as those of the Reindeer and Avon, showed that the excellence of American gunnery continued till the close of the war. Whether at point-blank range or at long-distance practice, the Americans used guns as they had never been used at ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... untouched. The appalling brutality of the action seemed to awe the rest of the crew. They stood motionless, dumb with their rage; but when they recovered themselves they rushed upon us with wild ferocity; and the Yankee fired at Black point-blank. I thought, truly, that the end was then; but I heard a shout from the water, and, looking there, I saw Dr. Osbart in the launch; and there was a Maxim gun in the bows ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... wintering in a friendly country? how, again, was he to prevent Pharnabazus from overriding the Hellenic states in pure contempt with his cavalry? Accordingly he sent to Pharnabazus and put it to him point-blank: Which will you have, peace or war? Whereupon Pharnabazus, who could not but perceive that the whole Aeolid had now been converted practically into a fortified base of operations, which threatened his own homestead ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... through the sleeve of his coat; he wanted to have it attended to, and begged the Duke of Saxe-Altenburg to assist him in leaving the battle-field; at that very moment, Falkenberg, lieutenant- colonel in the Imperial army, galloped his horse on to the king and shot him, point-blank, in the back with a pistol. The king fell from his horse; and Falkenberg took to flight, pursued by one of the king's squires, who killed him. Gustavus Adolphus was left alone with a German page, who tried to raise him; the king could no longer speak; three Austrian cuirassiers ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... longed to ask her point-blank what she really knew of the yachtsman who was shrouded in so much mystery. Yet by betraying any undue anxiety I should certainly negative all my efforts to solve the puzzling enigma, therefore I was compelled to remain content with ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... everything in the way of comfort, Colonel Joe McKibben brought an order from the General for me to get fresh beef for the headquarters mess. I was not caterer for this mess, nor did I belong to it even, so I refused point-blank. McKibben, disliking to report my disobedience, undertook persuasion, and brought Colonel Thom to see me to aid in his negotiations, but I would not give in, so McKibben in the kindness of his heart rode several miles in order to procure the beef ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... not going that day," she said, point-blank, and as Katy too had asked to stay a little longer, Wilford was compelled to yield, and taking his hat sauntered off toward Linwood; while Katy went listlessly into the kitchen, where Bell Cameron sat, her tongue moving much faster than her ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... which are today publici juris. Regarding that point there was no self-deception in those English circles which did not belong to the conspiracy; Edward Dicey, one of the most eminent of English publicists, expressed it in point-blank form in February, 1910, when he wrote in The Empire Review: "If England and Germany are friends, the peace of Europe is assured; but if the two nations fall apart, it will be a very unfortunate day for humanity." At that time, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... week Miss Winchelsea was so angry at the failure of Fanny as a go-between that she could not write to her. And then she wrote less effusively, and in her letter she asked point-blank, "Have you seen Mr. Snooks?" Fanny's letter was unexpectedly satisfactory. "I HAVE seen Mr. Snooks," she wrote, and having once named him she kept on about him; it was all Snooks—Snooks this and Snooks that. He was to give a public lecture, said Fanny, among other things. Yet Miss Winchelsea, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... fathers, we find a sufficient refutation in what followed Christianity. If, at a period five, or even six hundred years after the birth of Christ, you find people still consulting the local Oracles of Egypt, in places sheltered from the point-blank range of the state artillery,—there is an end, once and forever, to the delusive superstition that, merely by its silent presence in the world, Christianity must instantaneously come into fierce activity as a regency of destruction to all forms of idolatrous error. That argument is ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... if for mutual protection, some lying on their faces, some killed in the act of firing; others hung up in the barbed wire. In one place a small group actually reached our parapet, and now lie dead on it, shot at point-blank range or bayoneted. Hundreds of others lie just outside their own trenches, where they were caught by rifle or shrapnel when trying to regain them. Hundreds of wounded must have perished ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... he did so, or bloodshed must have ensued, as at that moment a tall and powerful man, brother-in-law to the bride, lifted his stick, and after giving it the customary twirl aimed a point-blank blow at the head of the ill-omened parson. The bound of an antelope brought the girl to the spot; her small hand averted the direction of the deadly weapon, and before the action had been perceived by any present, or the attempt could be resumed, she dropped a curtesy to the assailant, and in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... natural size of objects, and is an element of the Sublime, the Colonel did not too accurately define his relations "the Digbies;" he let it be casually understood that they were the Digbies to be found in Debrett. But if some indiscreet Vulgarian (a favorite word with both the Pompleys) asked point-blank if he meant "my Lord Digby," the Colonel, with a lofty air, answered—"The elder branch, sir." No one at Screwstown had ever seen these Digbies: they lay amidst the Far—the Recondite—even to the wife of Colonel Pompley's bosom. Now and then, when the Colonel referred to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... spiteful whisperings, and would have babbled tales to the Duchess had that remarkable, ancient lady been versed in the language of brooks. As it was, she came full upon Master Milo still intent upon the heavens, it is true, but in such a posture that his buttons stared point-blank and quite unblushingly towards a certain ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... this point-blank question, the Doctor put his bit of paper inside his book, and drumming on the table with his pencil, considered a moment. Mr. Barker puffed at his ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... far short. The pistol was of large caliber but small velocity; and a hundred yards was its absolute limit of point-blank range. He lifted the gun higher and shot again. Again he shot low. But the third bullet fell just a few feet on the near ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... water-engine and new pedal-board of which you speak, and inform me as to the cost.' He took me quite aback, and was gone before I had time to say anything. It puts me in a very equivocal position; I have such an antipathy to the man. I shall refuse his offer point-blank. I will not put myself under any obligation to such a man. You would refuse in my position? You would write a strong letter of refusal at ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Gordons, Imperial Light Horse, and Engineers, under Lieutenant Digby-Jones, R.E., were still holding their ground manfully on the extreme westerly crest of Waggon Hill. The Boers were within point-blank range of them on two sides, while beyond the crest and down into Bester's Valley hundreds of others were waiting for the first sign of panic among our men to rush the position, but held in check by a company ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... beautiful face of Lady Mary. I was also going to explain how the whole scene appeared. But I can see soon enough that my language would not be appropriate to the occasion. But any how we looked each other point-blank in the eye. It was a moment in which that very circling of the earth halted, and all the suns of the universe poised, ready to tumble or to rise. Then Lady Mary lowered her glance, and a pink blush suffused ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... had named was found after some further search. He was a bronzed, clean-shaven type of about fifty, who began by refusing his services point-blank, but soon relented, on hearing the ex-brigand's recommendation of ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... these could spring only from a quiet conscience or from a heart perfectly attuned to villainy. So unconscious was his poise that one often doubted the evidence of memory, and found one's self going back over the record, only to fetch up point-blank against the incontestable fact that he had stolen his ship and had ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... aback that she could make nothing of it, but stood in a cloud of mystification. The major had to help her. "How would you like your mother to marry Mr. Fenwick?" He was one of those useful people who never finesse, who let you know point-blank where you are, and to whom you feel so grateful for being unfeeling. While others there be who keep you dancing about in suspense, while they break things gently, and all the while are scoring up a little account ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... at once. Thought old thing was going to be drowned in a shower of bullets. Germans dashed up from all sides. We fired at them point-blank. The survivors had another try. More of them went down.... A rain of bullets resumed. It was like as if hundreds of rivets were being hammered into the hide of the 'tank.' We rushed through.... Got right across a trench. Made the sparks fly. Went along ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... beyond a doubt that there was some truth in Rutter's story," I declared. "Hank Rowan was my friend. I'd go out of my way any time to help his daughter. Will you send four or five of your men with me to the Writing-Stone to look for that stuff?" I asked him point-blank. ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... parade or inspection! This is the sword of Damascus, I fought with in Flanders;[11] this breastplate, 25 Well I remember the day! once saved my life in a skirmish; Here in front you can see the very dint of the bullet Fired point-blank at my heart by a Spanish arcabucero.[12] Had it not been of sheer steel, the forgotten bones of Miles Standish Would at this moment be mould, in their grave in the Flemish morasses." 30 Thereupon answered John Alden, but looked not up ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... sermons on "The Wedding Ring," I this morning aim a point-blank shot at "Clandestine Marriages ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... Powers, apparently forgetting that they had sent ultimatums to Turkey on this subject, finally agreed that the Turkish troops should stay; but England refused point-blank to listen ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 44, September 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... From that day Lady Saltire was as rude to me as she could be, and never lost an opportunity of making attacks upon what she imagined to be my opinions. Of these I never took the slightest notice; but at last on an evil day she went for me point-blank, so that there was no getting away from her. It was just at the end of lunch, when the footman had left the room. She had been talking about Lord Saltire's going up to London to vote upon some question in ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... Gibney replied. "I'll set my fuse at zero an' at point-blank range I'll just rake everything off that schooner's decks. Guess I'll get half a dozen cartridges set an' ready for the big scene. Up with you, Admiral Scraggs, an' hold the fuse ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... bearing swiftly down upon the launch, and when the officer in command of her began to see through Beardsley's little plan, he at once proceeded to set in motion one of his own that was calculated to defeat it. His howitzer was loaded with a five-second shrapnel, and this he fired at the schooner at a point-blank range of less than a hundred yards. He couldn't miss entirely at that short distance, but the missile flew too high to hull the blockade-runner. It struck the flying jib-boom, breaking it short off and rendering that sail useless, glanced ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... magazines!" shouted Sergeant Hal to the men in the swiftly formed front rank. "Ready, aim! At will, point-blank range—fire!" ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... of the line of hard-breathing yeomen reached the plateau just as the Boers, sweeping over the remnants of the Northumberland Fusiliers, reached the brink of the cliff. One by one the yeomen darted over the edge, and endeavoured to find some cover in the face of an infernal point-blank fire. Captain Mudie of the staff, who went first, was shot down. So was Purvis of the Fifes, who followed him. The others, springing over their bodies, rushed for a small trench, and tried to restore the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but, unharmed as he was physically, it was evident to all the company that he was suffering from some mental discomposure. Miss Macdonnell, with a frank curiosity which might have been trying in any one else, asked him point-blank the reason of his absence from the meal for which, in spite of his partiality for French cookery, he had a true ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... he had said, the wind, and being able to go nearer it than the Spaniard, kept his place at easy point-blank range for his two eighteen-pounder guns, which Yeo and his ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... de rever heureusement. It is only within a few years that etymological investigations have been limited by anything; like scientific precision, or that profound study, patient thought, and severity of method have asserted in this, as in other departments of knowledge, their superiority to point-blank guessing and the bewitching generalization conjured out of a couple or so of assumed facts, which, even if they turn out to be singly true, are no more nearly related than Hecate ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... as if he had accidentally parted his anchor, turned his prow on the seaward tack, meaning to return again immediately with the same prospect of advantage possessed at first—his plan being to crash suddenly athwart the Drake's bow, so as to have all her decks exposed point-blank to his musketry. But once more the winds interposed. It came on with a storm of snow; he was obliged to give up ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... down by stages to the very moment I was shown into his office he said he should have to ask me to undergo a thorough physical—! But I was tired of being slapped and punched and breathed on and prodded, and was bold enough to refuse point-blank. I'd rather have the insomnia! We worked up quite a fuss about it, for there was something tenacious in the fellow, for all his mild, kind, gentle ways; and I had all I could do to get off by pleading press of business. But I wasn't to escape ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... midst of all this tumult, and thereupon, as by some instinct, knew that that must be the master-maker of all this devil's brew. Therewith, still kneeling upon the deck, he covered the bosom of that figure point-blank, as he supposed, with his pistol, ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... however, taken out of her hands by Nancy, who, as soon as Betty appeared to take away the tea-things, put the question point-blank: ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... ward when I saw her yesterday that she has not told you of what, I fear, will give you much pain. I asked her point-blank whether she wished the matter kept from you, and her answer was, 'He had better know—only I'm sorry for him.' In sum it is this: Bellow has either got wind of our watching him, or someone must have put him up to it; he has anticipated ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... estate. She liked to tell us how her father used to take her with him in his rides, and bid her observe this and that, and on no account to allow such and such things to be done. But I have heard that the first time she told all this to Captain James, he told her point-blank that he had heard from Mr. Smithson that the farms were much neglected and the rents sadly behind-hand, and that he meant to set to in good earnest and study agriculture, and see how he could remedy the state ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... her project to Monsieur de Trailles, and asked his assistance, while ostensibly asking only for his advice. Maxime listened to the end without committing himself, and waited till the duchess should ask point-blank ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... had offended her mortally, so to repair his social blunder he said point-blank: "Gee! Some ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... will do about it will be to make Esther miserable. They have begun to gossip already. A young man, even though he is a clergyman, can't be seen always in company with a pretty woman, without exciting remark. Only yesterday I was asked point-blank whether my niece was ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... moment's dead silence. The boys had not bargained for such a point-blank demand for help, and it took them off their feet. One looked at the other and several shuffled uncomfortably. The Forecaster watched the lads keenly, interested to see how they would face the issue. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... come to realise that Nick was, and always must be, an enigma to her. In the middle of July, when the heat was so intense as to be almost intolerable, Daisy received a pressing invitation to visit an old friend, and to go yachting on the Broads. She refused it at first point-blank; but Muriel, hearing of the matter before the letter was sent, interfered, and practically insisted upon a change ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Why don't you write to Torrance and ask him point-blank if he has had a hand in getting you nominated for Senator? Torrance is a big man in his line, and he probably ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... 'why, I want the place of your husband, my charmer, not your footman!' The dame was inexorable, said she could not take me without a character, but hinted that I might be the lover instead of the bridegroom; and when I scorned the suggestion, and pressed for the parson, she told me point-blank, with her unlucky city pronunciation, 'that she would never accompany me to ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it himself, and was so eager sometimes to be amusing that he grew earnest, and the gentle laugh would cease and the pretty lips would come gravely together. Whenever he saw this he would fall back upon his trifling again. He had the soldier's fault of point-blank compliment, but with it an open sincerity of manner which relieved his flattery of any offensiveness. He had practised it in several capitals with some success. A dozen times this evening, a neat compliment came to his lips and stopped there. ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... appearance, and alarmed the kirk-session so much, that they held several meetings to look over their spiritual artillery, if haply any of it might be pointed against profane rhymers. Unluckily for me, my wanderings led me on another side, within point-blank shot of their heaviest metal. This is the unfortunate story that gave rise to my printed poem, "The Lament." This was a most melancholy affair, which I cannot yet bear to reflect on, and had very nearly given me one or two of the principal ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... bringing up of children is religion. When two people are engaged and are making plans for living together, they are sure to discuss religion. You remember how suddenly Marguerite turned to Faust and asked him point-blank, ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... companions pressed on at a dangerous speed, they could do nothing to stop the panic. Some of the runaways almost charged into them, and seriously interfered with their view of the advancing Hadendowas. That was only for a moment, but seconds are precious when men are shooting at point-blank range, and Royson was lashing an Arab out of his path at the instant Alfieri fired the first shot at the double-laden camel. The Hadendowas scattered and fled when they caught a glimpse of the white faces. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... start the next morning; just when Applehead had the corral full of horses and his chuckwagon of grub; just when the Happy Family had packed their war-bags with absolute necessities and were justifying themselves in final arguments with Andy Green, who refused point-blank to leave the; ranch—then, at the time a dramatist would have chosen for his entrance for an effective "curtain," here came Luck, smiling and driving a huge seven-passenger machine crowded to the last folding seat and with the chauffeur riding on the running board ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... after photographs of it had first been taken. I even went the length of communicating the opinion of the surgeon consulted, that some chemical means of arresting decomposition had been used and had only partially succeeded—and I asked her point-blank if the surgeon was right? The trap was not a bad one—but it completely failed. She said in the coolest manner, "Now you are here, I should like to consult you about my play; I am at a loss for some new incidents." Mind! there was ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... having commenced the action upon our left wing, the whole line, at the centre and on the right, advancing in double-quick time, rung the war-cry, "Remember the Alamo!" received the enemy's fire, and advanced within point-blank shot before a piece was fired from our lines. Our line advanced without a halt, until they were in possession of the woodland and the enemy's breastwork, the right wing of Burleson's and the left wing of Millard's taking possession ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... almost a mother's idolatrous affection for him. She had lost her husband many years before, and had been left with considerable fortune and no family besides this one brother. So much information, after repeated and unabashedly point-blank questions, had the Joppites succeeded in extracting from Mr. Halloway, who with all his apparent frankness was the most difficult person in the world ever to be brought to talk of himself and his own affairs. But just to see Mrs. Whittridge, with her sweet face and perfect manners, ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... was casting its light on the waters like a great silvery path, and the splashing of the paddles was the only sound that awakened the echoes. Again came the sharp report of a pistol, and Dink dodged, as if by instinct. He wheeled in his seat and shot point-blank at Foley, but the ball imbedded itself in the side of the skiff behind ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... about him for a place to halt for the noon-hours. The trail led into a road which was hard packed and smooth from the tracks of cattle. He doubted not that he had come across one of the roads used by border raiders. He headed into it, and had scarcely traveled a mile when, turning a curve, he came point-blank upon a single horseman riding toward him. Both riders wheeled their mounts sharply and were ready to run and shoot back. Not more than a hundred paces separated them. They stood then for ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... honour. Enid, Winnie, and Jean were naturally willing recruits, as were also Cissie Gardiner, Maggie Woodhall, and five of the lower division, including Ethel Maitland. Beatrice Wynne, after a little hesitation, added her signature, but May Firth, Doris Kennedy, and Ella Johnson refused point-blank. ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... reappear at some other spot the instant you left him behind. The expression of his eye was perfectly respectful, but terribly fixed, holding your own as by fascination, never once winking, never wavering from its point-blank gaze right into your face, till you were completely beyond the range of his battery of one immense rifled cannon. This was his mode of soliciting alms; and he reminded me of the old beggar who appealed so ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 1914, the Germans attacked from the La Bassee region and gained several small villages. Both Allies and Germans suffered immense lasses. Much of the slaughter was due to the point-blank magazine fire and the intermittent ...
— 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
... thought he would go and get Juliott Penaluna, and persuade that young lady to come and be introduced to the Rosewarnes. At first Miss Penaluna refused point-blank. She asked him how he could expect her to do such a thing. But then her cousin Harry happened to be civil, and indeed kind, in his manner to her, and when he was in one of those moods there was nothing she could refuse him. She went and got ready with an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... building, in the stockyards district, the automobile was stopped by a wave of dead. It was for all the world like a wave tossed up by the sea. It was patent to us what had happened. As the mob charged past the corner, it had been swept, at right angles and point-blank range, by the machine-guns drawn up on the cross street. But disaster had come to the soldiers. A chance bomb must have exploded among them, for the mob, checked until its dead and dying formed the wave, had white-capped and flung forward its foam of living, fighting slaves. Soldiers and slaves lay ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... old diaries had caused him to breakfast unusually late that morning to the accompaniment of a dismal headache from over-application), he had stopped to converse with Miss Mapp immediately afterwards, with one eye on the time, for naturally he could not fire off that sort of news point-blank at her, as if it was a matter of any interest ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... English arsenals could produce, mounted on forts built at every advantageous spot. Lines of piles running out into the water, forced incoming vessels to wind back and forth across the stream under the point-blank range of massive Armstrong rifles. As if this were not sufficient, the channel was thickly studded with torpedoes that would explode at the touch of the keel of a passing vessel. These abundant ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... ask her point-blank what she really knew of the yachtsman who was shrouded in so much mystery. Yet by betraying any undue anxiety I should certainly negative all my efforts to solve the puzzling enigma, therefore I was compelled to remain content with asking ingeniously disguised questions ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... tirade one of them drew a revolver and fired point-blank at the Russian. The fellow's aim was poor, but his act so terrified Rokoff that he turned and fled ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... say with a very polite smile, and every now and then kept on taking out his watch. When I had finished, he thanked me very much, but gave me clearly to understand that he considered I had been made a fool of. I tried to persuade him to see you, but he declined point-blank. Shall I tell you ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... would draw the line at assassination, but we live and learn. Last night, as I was returning to the shelter of my humble roof, a dirty hairy fellow—but why should I describe him to you?—leapt out and fired at me point-blank with a huge old-fashioned horse-pistol, and missed. I give you my word he singed half an inch off my left whisker. Of course they say he was a ruffianly suitor offended by my just decision in favour of his opponent, but I know better. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... who had always looked with grudging sullenness upon the great Wolfhound and his doings, refused point-blank to be a party to the exodus, and croakingly warned the others against following a new-comer and an outlier such as Finn. He gave them to understand that he had been born in the shadow of Mount Desolation, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... suggested by nothing, assented with a modest air, and, shaking his head and his wig, began to talk to some one else. But M. de Gesvres had not commenced without a purpose. He went on, addressed M. de Villeroy point-blank, admiring their mutual good fortune, but when he came to speak of the father of each, "Let us go no further," said he, "for what did our fathers spring from? From tradesmen; even tradesmen they were themselves. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... wife in such an antagonistic position with regard to himself, that his intimate friends were forced to believe that one of the two had deliberately and wantonly injured the other. The published statement of Lady Byron contradicted boldly and point-blank all the statement of her husband concerning the separation; so that, unless she was convicted as a ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is point-blank, and still she says she is not sentimental. She may not be, but she is decidedly complimentary ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... to the tomb of Christ. In the later plays these interpolations developed into scenes of roaring farce. When Herod learned of the escape of the Wise Men, he would rage violently about the stage and even among {25} the spectators. Noah's wife, in the Chester play of The Deluge, refuses point-blank to go into the Ark, and has to be put in by main force. The Second Shepherds' Play of the Towneley cycle contains an episode of sheep stealing which is a complete and perfect little farce. Nor were the scenes of pathos less effective. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... my house, I have a right to all he leaves behind him, if he goes off in my debt. Indeed, I would put him in prison,-but what should I get by that? he could not earn anything there to pay me: so I considered about it some time, and then I determined to ask him, point-blank, for my money out of hand. And so I did; but he told me he'd pay me next week: however, I gave him to understand, that though I was no Scotchman, yet, I did not like to be over-reached any more than ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... last desperate effort, I cried, "Even suppose that I grant your request, even suppose I agree not to tell Sylvia the truth—still the day will come when you will hear from her the point-blank question: 'Is my child blind because of this disease?' And what will you ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... think of me being hand and glove with a secretary of state! What does I do? Why, sir, the very next time he and I meet, I says to him, 'Fitzalbert, it's very hard a man of your rank can't do something for his friends.' I knew the right way was to put the thing to him point-blank. 'So it would be,' says he, 'if it was, but it isn't.' 'Oh, isn't it?' says I; 'then, if you are the man I take you to be, you'll do the thing as is handsome by me.' He said nothing then, but took hold of my hand, and shook ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... "I take nothing for granted. If I hear anything nice, I believe it; but if I hear anything objectionable about any one, I either inquire about it or refuse to believe it point-blank. And in a case like this, I should be doubly particular, for, in one of its many moods, genius is a young child that gazes hard ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... necessarily lost, since he knew where it was; and Zoe had compromised herself beyond retreating. He intended to wear this anxious face a long while. But his artificial snow had to melt, so real a sun shone full on it. The moment he looked full at Zoe, she repaid him with such a point-blank beam of glorious tenderness and gratitude as made him thrill with passion as well as triumph. He felt her whole heart was his, and from that hour his poverty would never be allowed to weigh with her. He cleared up, and left off acting, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Groveton wood, and scarcely had they reached the railroad before the long blue lines came crashing through the undergrowth. Hill's riflemen, lying down to load, and rising only to fire, poured in their deadly volleys at point-blank range. The storm of bullets, shredding leaves and twigs, stripped the trees of their verdure, and the long dry grass, ignited by the powder sparks, burst into flames between the opposing lines. But neither flames nor musketry availed ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the galleon. Untouched, unharmed, the Osmanlis came on firing as rapidly as possible until they were absolutely within arquebuss range. Closer they came and closer; then the sides of the galleon burst into sheeted flame, and the guns levelled at point-blank range tore through the attacking host. Condalmiero was throwing away no chances; he had directed his gunners to allow their balls to ricochet before striking rather than to throw them away by allowing them to fly over ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... unornamented, unadorned, unvarnished; homely, homespun; neat; severe, chaste, pure, Saxon; commonplace, matter-of- fact, natural, prosaic. dry, unvaried, monotonous &c 575. Adv. in plain terms, in plain words, in plain English, in plain common parlance; point-blank. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... each with five-and-twenty oars, and six guns, six-pounders, of a side, and a large piece of artillery amidships, pointing ahead, which (so far as I am able to judge) can never be used point-blank, without demolishing the head or prow of the galley. The accommodation on board for the officers is wretched. There is a paltry cabin in the poop for the commander; but all the other officers lie below the slaves, in a dungeon, where they have neither light, air, nor any degree of quiet; half ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... judgment, for the world looks upon several things as dreadful or to be avoided at the expense of life, that are almost indifferent to me: partly, through a dull and insensible complexion I have in accidents which do not point-blank hit me; and that insensibility I look upon as one of the best parts of my natural condition; but essential and corporeal pains I am very sensible of. And yet, having long since foreseen them, though with a sight ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... wild hope of unexpected success was raised in his heart. And he had noted one all-important fact—the flashes, widely scattered as they were, did not extend across the exact course of his flight toward the trees. Therefore, none of the posse would have a point-blank shot at him. For those in the rear and on the sides the weaving course of the gelding, running like a deer and swerving agilely among the rocks, as if to make up for his first blunder, offered the most difficult ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... glanced off. I therefore fired again. The rhinoceros trotted off a little way from the pool, looking angrily around, but suddenly stopped, and then, much to our satisfaction, down he came to the ground. The body lay still within point-blank range of my rifle. This was a matter of great importance. It must be understood that I killed the rhinoceros, not in mere wantonness, but that the carcass might serve as a bait to a lion, of which I was so anxious to get possession. I waited for some time, during which an unusual stillness ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... to me, when in the wayfaring of my patient academic duties, I speak about Pater, and ask me point-blank to tell them what his "view-point"—so they are pleased to express it—"really and truly" was. Sweet reader, do you know the pain of these "really and truly" questions? I try to answer in some blundering manner like this. I try to explain how, for him, nothing in this world was certain or fixed; ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... to stand off at such long distances that their primitive ammunition was relatively ineffective. The result was that when attacking infantry moved in, the defending infantry and artillery were still fresh and unshaken, ready to pour a devastating point-blank fire into the assaulting lines. Thus, in spite of an intensive 2-hour bombardment by 138 Confederate guns at the crisis of Gettysburg, as the gray-clad troops advanced across the field to close range, double canister and concentrated infantry volleys cut them ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... and in such terms as to put heart into him anew. Moreover, there was other news that day to allay his terrors: the Justices, at Truro had been informed of the event and the accusation that was made; but they had refused point-blank to take action in the matter. The reason of it was that one of them was that same Master Anthony Baine who had witnessed the affront offered Sir Oliver. He declared that whatever had happened to Master Godolphin as a consequence ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... by a platoon of the former regiment, owing to the fact that they had held up their hands and made gestures that were interpreted as signs that they wished to surrender. When they were actually on the parapet of the trench held, by the Northamptons they opened fire on our men at point-blank range. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... I am? Tell me, point-blank, most self-tormenting of men, can I help you in practice, even though I choose to leave you to ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... interest in waggons, and was anxious to get among the cattle again; but with the trunks so near, the house growing rapidly, the days of sewing waiting, I refused point-blank to leave the homestead ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... to come into the field of battle. Dyck Calhoun could see the struggle going on. The two sets of enemy ships had come to close quarters, and some were locked in deadly conflict. Other ships, still apart, fired at point-blank range, and all the horrors of slaughter were in full swing. From the square blue flag at the mizzen top gallant masthead of one of the British ships engaged, Dyck saw that the admiral's own craft was in some peril. The way lay open for the Ariadne to bear down upon the French ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of victory? no trick? Can I not get them ashore? Can I not get them in the toils? try them in point-blank fight, man to man, all the strength of despair fighting with me? Ah, could they but hear me, could I but find some high place and speak to them; tell them how clear as the sun is my right, how monstrous the wrongs I have borne, what a crime is theirs in withstanding ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... reloaded, and Bill was about to fire again when the captain sang out to him to wait a little, for we were sailing two feet to the Frenchman's one, and drawing rapidly within point-blank range. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... an advantage when combined with unmistakable sincerity. There could be no sort of doubt that he meant precisely what he said, or that he was obeying the dictates of one of the warmest of hearts. But point-blank language of this kind seems to acquire a certain impropriety in print. I must ask my readers, therefore, to take it for granted that no mother could have received more genuine assurances of the love of a son; and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the destruction of English plans and men. She tried to get the courage to open one of those messages, but she was afraid that she might find confirmation. She made up her mind again and again to put the question point-blank to Sir Joseph, but her tongue faltered. If he were guilty, he would deny it; if he were innocent, the accusation would break his heart. She hated Nicky too much to ask him. He would ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... arrived at Brussels en route from Calais to Copenhagen. The carriage was a special one and was leaving the station at a slow, preliminary rate when a youth named Sipido jumped on the foot-board of the car and fired two shots, in rapid succession, point-blank at the traveller who was just taking a cup of tea with his wife. He was about to fire a third time, but was seized by the stationmaster, arrested and sent to prison. The man turned out to be a Belgian, expressed no ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... poor little expensive old woman in the following terms, converting her by a violent metonymy into a comprehensive plural. "You infernal land thieves!" I said point-blank into her face. "HAVE YOU COME TO OFFER ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... he but gives us the whole. It is the story-teller who rolls some prurient morsel under his tongue who has the taint in him: he who, to sell his books, panders to the degraded instincts of his audience. Had Balzac been asked point-blank what he deemed the moral duty of the novelist, he would probably have disclaimed any other responsibility than that of doing good work, of representing things as they are. But this matters not, if only a writer's nature be large and vigorous enough to report of humanity in a ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... continually repeated, 'but then Varia is mine! mine!' ... Yet that 'but'—alas, that but!—and then, too, the words, 'Varia is mine!' aroused in me not a deep, overwhelming rapture, but a sort of paltry, egoistic triumph.... If Varia had refused me point-blank, I should have been burning with furious passion; but having received her consent, I was like a man who has just said to a guest, 'Make yourself at home,' and sees the guest actually beginning to settle into his room, as if he were at home. 'If she had loved Kolosov,' I thought, 'how ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Beethoven well, and had never been converted to a love of music less great than his—nor was his taste very catholic—and he continually regretted Sullivan's championship of Schumann's music. But one day Sullivan, suspecting the academician didn't know what he was talking about, asked him point-blank if he had ever heard any of the music he so strongly condemned. Potter admitted that he hadn't. Whereupon Sullivan said, "Then play some of Schumann with me, Mr. Potter," and, having done so, Potter ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... delay she proceeded under a heavy fire, at first from Jackson. Thinking the burning raft, in whose light the Pinola suffered, to be on that side of the river, she tried to pass on the St. Philip side, receiving the fire of the latter fort at less than point-blank range. Shooting over to the other side again, so thick was the smoke that the ship got close to shore, and her head had to be turned down stream to avoid running on it. By this time day had broken, and the Winona, standing out against the morning sky, under the fire of both forts, and ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... never have accomplished the things he had done. However, before any proposition appealed to him he had to see money in the deal. Whether he saw it in this particular instance, nobody knew; and only one person had the courage to ask him point-blank what his intentions ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... gun at arm's length, turned their faces away and shot at random; it was clear that very few knew how to shoot, and that their Sniders could be of use only at short range. This is confirmed by the fact that all their murders are done point-blank. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... at them; in 1795, the black collar which the aristocrats substituted for the former green one, in sign of mourning, gave rise to many difficulties and altercations. In the midst of the Palais-Royal a republican received a bullet point-blank in his chest in return for an insult. Another, meeting one of these collets noirs, said to him: "B . . . of a Chouan, for whom dost thou wear mourning?" "For thee!" replied the other, and blew out his brains. When Napoleon came ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... and this disgust by a sort of paradoxical logic reawakened his animosity against Lieutenant D'Hubert. Was he to be pestered with this fellow for ever—the fellow who had an infernal knack of getting round people somehow? On the other hand, it was difficult to refuse point-blank that sort of mediation sanctioned by ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... writing, which purported to be signed by two men, and witnessed by two others; and Phillips swore he saw all of them sign it. Whereupon not only the men themselves, but the two witnesses to the paper, came up and swore, point-blank, that their alleged signatures were forgeries. There were four oaths against one. Phillips lost his case. But this was not the worst of it. The next day he was indicted for forgery and perjury; and, despite his wealth and the efforts of the ablest counsel he could ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... obedience was of greater assistance than their hands could have been; but when, after one glance at the girl's stricken face, she tried the next instant to dismiss Barbara, for once Miss Sarah's will alone proved insufficient. The girl refused, point-blank, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... liked Harry more than he did any other young man, and his present object was to draw him out of himself. He would have been glad to gain Harry's confidence, and to hear from him how matters stood, though he very well knew he should fail if he asked the question point-blank. He therefore beat about the bush for some time, talking of his own love affairs when he was a young man, and of those of ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... it?" said Mowbray. "Hoffland refused point-blank to tell me, and I am perfectly ignorant of ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... to defend, need not concern you, though (if I remember rightly) you professed yourself anxious on that account. Now for my denials. I deny flatly that I did any service to my distinguished friend at your expense. I deny it point-blank. And I deny that, when—not for the first time—you took the law into your own hands, I purposely removed myself from the city. That suspicion of yours is not worth so many words. What should my purpose be? What object ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Then he ordered his own battered ship to be abandoned for the Minion, telling Drake to come alongside in the Judith. In these two little vessels all that remained of the English sailed safely out, in spite of the many Spanish guns roaring away at point-blank range and of two fire-ships ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... at table, and John had no livery for the purpose. The family as a rule never required attendance at meals. On this occasion it was supposed to be essential, and as Betty refused point-blank to stir from the kitchen, John had to come ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... Olivier begged him to go, and promised that he would faithfully watch over her in his stead: he induced him to leave the house: and, to make sure of his not going back on his decision, went with him to the station. Christophe refused point-blank to go without having a sight of the great river, by which he had spent his childhood, the mighty echo of which was preserved for ever within his soul as in a sea-shell. Though it was dangerous for him to be seen in the town, yet for his whim ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Luther, by refusing thus point-blank to retract, effectually destroyed whatever hopes of mediation or reconciliation had been entertained by the milder and more moderate adherents of the Church who still wished for reform. Nor was any union possible with those who, while looking to a truly representative Council as the best ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... righteousness, and that I held a strong hand—a straight flush, as it were. I was well aware that the metaphor was somewhat mixed; but it expressed my sentiments and relieved my feelings, and so I fired it at her point-blank. She snorted and pawed and bellowed, and swore at me in cow-language, but I didn't care for that. So I shook the old, battered milk-pail in her face, and told her I was born in Connecticut, and did business ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... Gospels is set before us. I do not wish to dogmatize, but I will only say that the more clearly we realize the nature of the creative process on the spiritual side the more the current objections to the Gospel narrative lose their force; and it appears to me that to deny that narrative as a point-blank impossibility is to make a similar affirmation with regard to the power of the Spirit in ourselves. You cannot affirm a principle and deny it in the same breath; and if we affirm the externalizing power of the Spirit in our own case, ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... of special interest, as showing how firmly the English naval tradition was already fixed, should be noticed the twenty-fifth, relating to seamen gunners, the twenty-sixth, forbidding action at more than point-blank range, and above all the fifth and sixth, aimed at obliterating all distinction between soldiers and sailors aboard ship, and at securing that unity of service between the land and sea forces which has been the peculiar distinction of ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... part, did not very much care what impression he produced. He never did on such occasions, and just now he was rendered doubly indifferent by the fact that he was wishing himself somewhere else. True, there was a certain novelty in being asked point-blank questions about his tastes. Boston people knew what he liked, and generally only asked him about what he did. Perhaps, if he had met Josephine by daylight, instead of in the dim shadows of Miss Schenectady's front drawing-room, he might ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... marries, lives with his wife, has one or two children by her, before he will pain the heart of his adored mother by telling her the truth. The adored mother suspects her son, but no trace of the suspicion appears in her letters to him. The questions which an English parent would level at him point-blank she is entirely too delicate to address to her dear Maurice; but she puts them to the Prefect of Police, and ferrets out the marriage through legal documents, while yet no trace of this knowledge dims the affectionateness of her letters, or the serenity of her reception ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... presupposed development, and the subsequent battle for life. This view of nature you have stated admirably, though admitted by all naturalists and denied by no one of common sense. We all admit development as a fact of history: but how came it about? Here, in language, and still more in logic, we are point-blank at issue. There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well a physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly. 'Tis the crown and glory of organic science that it DOES through FINAL CAUSE, link material and moral; and yet DOES NOT allow us ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... superb charge, but though he got through himself he lost more men, amongst whom was a splendid fellow, his second in command, named Berwkoff, who was greatly loved by us all. A Magyar soldier seeing Kalmakoff with his Ataman banner borne by his side, took a point-blank shot at his head, but he forgot the high trajectory of the old Russian rifle, and the bullet merely grazed the top of the Cossack leader's head and sent his papaha into the mud. His banner-bearer could ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... gentleman's alleged objections were not entirely the outcome of Bassett's fancy. The social paragraphs themselves were clumsy and vulgar. A dull-witted account of a select party at Parson Baxter's, with a point-blank compliment to Polly Baxter his daughter, might have made her pretty cheek burn but for her evident prepossession for the meretricious scamp, its writer. But even this horse-play seemed more natural than the utterly artificial editorials with ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... possessed his chief philosophical work in its entirety, or at least larger portions of it. And I must candidly confess that if I were asked whether, in my heart of hearts, I believed that a Greek of the sixth century B.C. denied point-blank the existence of his gods, my answer ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... appeared to want to keep the site of her house a secret from all her friends. When they asked her, point-blank, where her house was, she always pretended not to hear the question and left them. Or she would begin to ask questions of her own ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... that the ex-poacher Duncan M'Rae would turn up again at the castle. He did. He went to beg money from the M'Rae. The M'Rae is a man of the world; he saw that this visit of Duncan's was but the beginning of a never-ending persecution. He refused Duncan's request point-blank. Then the man changed flank and breathed dark threatenings. The M'Rae, he hinted, had better not make him (Duncan) his enemy. He (M'Rae) was obliged to him for the house and position he occupied, but the same hand that did could undo. At this juncture the M'Rae had simply rung the bell, ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... ask very odd questions. But you cannot learn too early this fact, that irony is to the high-bred what Billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank: he implies it in the politest terms he can invent. Lord Hautfort denies my right of free warren over a trout-stream that runs through his lands. I don't care a rush about the trout-stream, but there is no doubt of my right to fish in it. He was an ass to raise the question; for, if he had not, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... accidentally parted his anchor, turned his prow on the seaward tack, meaning to return again immediately with the same prospect of advantage possessed at first—his plan being to crash suddenly athwart the Drake's bow, so as to have all her decks exposed point-blank to his musketry. But once more the winds interposed. It came on with a storm of snow; he was obliged to give up ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... in what followed Christianity. If, at a period five, or even six hundred years after the birth of Christ, you find people still consulting the local Oracles of Egypt, in places sheltered from the point-blank range of the state artillery,—there is an end, once and forever, to the delusive superstition that, merely by its silent presence in the world, Christianity must instantaneously come into fierce activity as a reagency of destruction to all forms of idolatrous error. That argument ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... he had just sprouted out of the pavement, and would sink into it again and reappear at some other spot the instant you left him behind. The expression of his eye was perfectly respectful, but terribly fixed, holding your own as by fascination, never once winking, never wavering from its point-blank gaze right into your face, till you were completely beyond the range of his battery of one immense rifled cannon. This was his mode of soliciting alms; and he reminded me of the old beggar who appealed ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ground. Even at this casual gait they would reach the point at which he and the gray must swing onto the floor of the valley before him unless he urged Molly to top speed. He must get there at a sufficient distance from them to escape close rifle fire, and certainly beyond point-blank revolver range. Accordingly he threw his weight more into the stirrups and over the withers of the mare. This brought greater poundage on her forehand and made her apt to stumble or actually miss her step, but it ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... God could see every action of His creatures, and that she would neither damn her soul nor place herself under the necessity of saying to her confessor that she had so far forgotten herself as to commit such a sin with a priest. I objected that I was not yet a priest, but she foiled me by enquiring point-blank whether or not the act I had in view was to be numbered amongst the cardinal sins, for, not feeling the courage to deny it, I felt that I must give up the argument and put an end ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the fatherly manner assumed by Balcom. Instead she almost point-blank refused to do as ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... many jogs between them, came to me through the darkness, and then a long groan and a choking. I made towards the sound, as nigh as ever I could guess, and presently was met, point-blank, by the head of a mountain-pony. Upon its back lay a man bound down, with his feet on the neck and his head to the tail, and his arms falling down like stirrups. The wild little nag was scared of its life by the unaccustomed burden, and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... action to the word himself as he said this, discharging both his revolvers point-blank at two of the Arabs, who were leading on the gang in hot pursuit of us, tumbling them ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... question at him point-blank, without reflection, and now stood looking at her lover with wide open frightened eyes, like one who in self-defence has dealt a blow without measuring his strength, and fears ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Of course, if he should ask me point-blank if I had told any one, I should answer truthfully, tell him that I had told you and explain why I did it. And some day I shall tell him whether he asks or not. But when he first comes here I want him to be—to be—well, as nearly happy as is possible under the circumstances. ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... weakness before mentioned. General Ames put him among the gunners, and we were quickly made aware of the loss we had sustained by receiving a frequent artful ball which seemed to light with unerring instinct on any nose that was the least bit exposed. I have known one of Pepper's snowballs, fired point-blank, to turn a corner and hit a boy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... cartridge and altered the sights. "It's a shocking bad light for judging distance," said he. "This is where the low point-blank trajectory of the Lee-Metford comes in useful. Well, we'll try him at five hundred." He fired, but there was no change in the white camel ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... maliciously misrepresented Koenig so much in his talks with the junior officers as to create quite a strong feeling against him. He had stated that Koenig, although abundantly able to help some momentarily embarrassed comrades out of their troubles, had not only refused point-blank, but had added insult to injury. Such supposed behavior, since Borgert's tales had found credence, had cost Koenig the sympathy of the majority of the officers, and now that trouble had overtaken him, many of them rejoiced at the fact. Lieutenant Bleibtreu would ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... Godby louder than ever, "who's for an honest life, a free pardon and a share in Black Bartlemy's Treasure—or shall it be a broadside? Here be every gun full charged wi' musket-balls—and 'tis point-blank range! Which ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... up the hill, the painted walls of a number of comfortable inns clamour loudly. One or two inhabitants in reduced circumstances would act as hotel touts, there are several hotel omnibuses and a Bureau de Change, certainly a Bureau de Change. And a small house with a large board, aimed point-blank seaward, declares itself a Gratis Information Office, and next to it rises the graceful dome of a small Casino. Beyond, great hoardings proclaim the advantages of many island specialities, a hustling commerce, and the opening of a Public Lottery. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... moment Valerie was posed as Delilah. Stidmann, too sharp to ask for Madame Marneffe, walked straight in past the lodge, and ran quickly up to the second floor, arguing thus: "If I ask for Madame Marneffe, she will be out. If I inquire point-blank for Steinbock, I shall be laughed at to my face.—Take the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Miss Jebb soon found out that they could only obtain their desires by means of carefully worded requests, or pathetic appeals to her good feelings and sense of right. An unreasonable order, or a reasonable one unexplained, promptly met with a point-blank refusal. And this characteristic still obtained, though modified by time; and even the duchess, as a ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Ticonderoga was by far the most important of these fortresses. At this place the opposite shores of New York and Vermont are pushed out into the lake toward each other, thus forming two peninsulas, with the lake contracted to a width of half a mile, or point-blank cannon range, between them: one is Ticonderoga; the other, Mount Independence. Thus, together, they command the passage of the ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... turned a blind eye. No future, however dazzling, could compensate her for the loss of her dearest possession. "I hope," said the King at last, "I may live to see you old and willing," as he walked away in high dudgeon. To the proposed match with the Duke he point-blank refused his consent, and vowed that if his sovereign will were defied, the punishment would be ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... and Racket; on his way back he called at all the shops, formerly the rivals of his own, where the young proprietors hoped to inveigle the old draper into some risky discount, which, as was his wont, he never refused point-blank. Two good Normandy horses were dying of their own fat in the stables of the big house; Madame Guillaume never used them but to drag her on Sundays to high Mass at the parish church. Three times a week the worthy ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... only sympathy expressed is, "What better could he expect?" Something of this sort befel Burns: he had already satisfied the kirk in the matter of "Sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess," his daughter, by one of his mother's maids; and now, to use his own words, he was brought within point-blank of the heaviest metal of the kirk by a similar folly. The fair transgressor, both for her fathers and her own youth, had a large share of public sympathy. Jean Armour, for it is of her I speak, was in her eighteenth year; ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... careful, but I was dreadfully upset when I wrote those letters. You see, Stanley came to my home on the evening of the day he returned from Oregon. As you know, I had decided to have a plain talk with him. It began pleasantly enough, but before it ended we were both very angry. He declared point-blank that after we were married I would positively have to give up my settlement work. He said a great many hateful, sneering things about the poor people I've been trying to help. I was going to give ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... Neuri, who assumed once a year the shape of wolves; Pliny says that one of the family of Antaeus, chosen by lot annually, became a wolf, and so remained for nine years; Giraldus Cambrensis will have it that Irishmen may become wolves; and Nennius asserts point-blank that "the descendants of wolves are still in Ossory;" they retransform themselves into wolves when they bite. Apuleius, Petronius, and Lucian have similar stories. The Emperor Sigismund convoked a council of theologians in the fifteenth century ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... of death's hurricane sprang the ladies' man, swept the ladies' men. "Battery, trot, walk. Forward into battery! Action front!" It was at that word that Kincaid's horse went down; but while the pieces trotted round and unlimbered and the Federal guns vomited their fire point-blank and blue skirmishers crackled and the gray line crackled back, and while lead and iron whined and whistled, and chips, sand and splinters flew, and a dozen boys dropped, the steady voice of Bartleson gave directions to each piece by number, for "solid shot," ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... homespun; neat; severe, chaste, pure, Saxon; commonplace, matter-of- fact, natural, prosaic. dry, unvaried, monotonous &c 575. Adv. in plain terms, in plain words, in plain English, in plain common parlance; point-blank. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... one lofty and imaginative, the other level and stern; the one taking large views on every subject, and evidently delighting in the largeness of those views, the other fixing steadily and fiercely upon the immediate object of attack, and shooting every arrow point-blank. Of course, we have no intention of wandering into a topic so thoroughly beaten as that of the authorship of Junius; but we must acknowledge, if Sir Philip Francis was not the man, no other nominal candidate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... his mind at length to take a certain step and abide by the result, and, having made up his mind, he determined to take the step at once. Luckily enough the next morning was one of Foinet's days, and he resolved to ask him point-blank whether it was worth his while to go on with the study of art. He had never forgotten the master's brutal advice to Fanny Price. It had been sound. Philip could never get Fanny entirely out of his head. The studio seemed strange without her, and now and then ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... former point-blank, and accepted the latter only provisionally, telling Sir Henry that I did not care for fossils, and that I should give up natural history as soon as I could get a physiological post. But I held the office for thirty-one years, and a large part of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... trench line of about 150 yards, the Bavarians threw during an hour about 400 5.9's, not to mention smaller shells, while two field guns galloped into Gommecourt Park and unlimbering in full view fired obliquely at the wire from point-blank range. They were harassed and eventually forced to retire by the action of Lieut. Coombes, of the Bucks, on our left, who gallantly got a machine gun into the open and took them in the flank. Our own guns were not available at the ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... seemed to contradict him point-blank. It was so magnificent that even the careless sailors, used as most of them were to the glories of the Southern sky, stood still to admire it, and pronounced it "the finest show they'd ever seen, by a long way." Not a cloud above, not a ripple below; the steamer's track ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the wine and Vichy water bottles, glasses, and plates of food, which at every performance are jeopardised by the members of the nobler sex starting off with a considerable quantity of the ample table cloth wrapped round their legs. At last I can stand it no longer, so ask the Captain point-blank what is the matter. "Nothing," says he, bounding out of his chair and flying out of his doorway; but on his return he tells me he has got a bet on of two bottles of champagne with Woermann's Agent for Njole, as to who shall reach ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... 16th would be the great day that should decide the fate of Germany. I expressed my conjectures to several French officers, that, according to all appearance, fresh armies of the allies were on their march toward Leipzig. They contradicted me point-blank; partly because, as they said, the crown-prince of Sweden and general Bluecher had been obliged to retreat precipitately across the Elbe, as an immense French army was in full march upon Berlin; and partly because they were convinced that the reinforcements ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... there was a pause, so long that the Englishman thought he was going to be refused point-blank; then an even voice said, "Come in," ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... arranging them in line, in a locality where the bushes were about eight feet in height, the Indians made so much noise as to reveal their exact position. One of our batteries was quietly placed within point-blank range of the Indians, and suddenly opened upon them with grape and canister. They gave a single yell, and scattered without waiting ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... frock, a blazing red shawl, and a yellow crape bonnet profusely decorated with azure, orange, and magenta artificial flowers. In her hand she carried a white parasol. The newly risen sun, ricocheting from the bosom of the river and striking point-blank on the top-knot of Miss Margaret's gorgeousness, made her an imposing spectacle in the quiet street of that Puritan village. But, in spite of the bravery of her apparel, she stole guiltily along by garden walls and fences until she reached ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... 525 As three or four-legg'd oracle, The ancient cup, or modern chair; Spoke truth point-blank, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Dorothy had told them every thing: if it was, never again would she utter word good or bad to one whose very kindness, she said to herself, was betrayal! The first moment therefore she saw Polwarth alone, unable to be still an instant with her doubt unsolved, she asked him, "with sick assay," but point-blank, whether he knew why she was in ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... unrest after the war, the new loan, and other matters, when, of a sudden, a black-mustached man in a dark grey overcoat and a round fur cap sprang from the bushes at a lonely spot, and, raising a big service revolver, fired point-blank at ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... Ardea, and in thus forcing the marriage. Well, it seems this personage did not think himself sufficiently well-paid for his complicity. He demanded of the Baron a large sum, with which to found some large swindling scheme, which the latter refused point-blank. The other threatened to relate their little dealing to ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... how she would take his sudden exclusion from these parties. Now Lucy missed the Dodds very much, and was surprised to see them invited no more. But it was not in her character to satisfy a curiosity of this sort by putting a point-blank question to the person who could tell her in two words. She was one of those thorough women whose instinct it is to find out little things, not to ask about them. When day after day passed by, and the Dodds were not invited, it flashed through her mind, first, that there must be some reason ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... able to break her fetters, which she abhorred, which bound her to Greece. Then, in 1876, the atrocities committed by the Turkish inhabitants of Bulgaria took place. The Porte, when besought by the Constantinople Conference to make concessions, refused point-blank. Then Russia stepped in and declared war, and proposed themselves to make a Bulgarian State. England and Austria promptly refused to lend themselves to this scheme, and a Berlin Congress was summoned. The Berlin Treaty in 1878 arranged the limits and administrative ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... their way to the tomb of Christ. In the later plays these interpolations developed into scenes of roaring farce. When Herod learned of the escape of the Wise Men, he would rage violently about the stage and even among {25} the spectators. Noah's wife, in the Chester play of The Deluge, refuses point-blank to go into the Ark, and has to be put in by main force. The Second Shepherds' Play of the Towneley cycle contains an episode of sheep stealing which is a complete and perfect little farce. Nor were the scenes of pathos less effective. The scene in the Brome play of Abraham and Isaac ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... confident and inclined to blusterous hilarity, now shuddering under an obsession of nerves. In any guise he was dangerous, but worst of all when the black fit of suspicion was upon him. So he now seemed; for being told who waited upon him, he refused point-blank to see anybody. Amilcare, at the door, heard his "Vattene, vattene! Non seccami!" ("Out, out! Don't pester me!") rocking down the dim passages of the house; and Molly, whom this sudden new expedition had bereft of what wit she had, turned pale to hear ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... made a lunge toward the speaker as if to strike him. Had Rutter fired point-blank at him he could not have been more astounded. For an instant he stood looking into his face, then whirled suddenly and swung ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... me in no doubt on this point. When I was ushered into his study, after a much-needed wash and a shave, he received me standing and said point-blank: "Your orders are to stay here until ten o'clock to-night, when you will be taken to Berlin by Lieutenant Count von Boden. I don't know you, I don't know your business, but I have received certain orders concerning you which I intend to carry out. For that ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... you write to Torrance and ask him point-blank if he has had a hand in getting you nominated for Senator? Torrance is a big man in his line, and he probably ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... frights of women utterly devoid of grace; she disturbed him ten times a day with importunate visitors, and then every evening laid out for him a dress suit and light gloves, and dragged him from drawing-room to drawing-room. You will tell me he could have rebelled, could have replied point-blank: "No!" But don't you know that the very fact of our sedentary existences leaves us more than other men dependent on domestic influence? The atmosphere of the home envelopes us, and if some touch of the ideal does not lighten it, soon wearies and drags us down. Moreover, the artist ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... do this was to abandon Dandie Dinmont to their mercy, Brown refused point-blank. Affairs were at this pass when Dandie, staggering to his feet, his loaded whip in his hand, managed to come to the assistance of his rescuer, whereupon the two men took to their heels and ran as hard as they could over ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... would not give him any peace now. His London success must not be wasted. At first his victim refused point-blank, and with great brevity. But he was overborne and persuaded, and made occasional appearances, wiring at last ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to have it attended to, and begged the Duke of Saxe-Altenburg to assist him in leaving the battle-field; at that very moment, Falkenberg, lieutenant- colonel in the Imperial army, galloped his horse on to the king and shot him, point-blank, in the back with a pistol. The king fell from his horse; and Falkenberg took to flight, pursued by one of the king's squires, who killed him. Gustavus Adolphus was left alone with a German page, who tried to raise him; the king could ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... same regiment than if he went to another. But something happens: either the other officer's suspicions are aroused, or the German does not wish to be recognised again by him. The trench is quiet; an occasional rifle is going off, so he does the bold thing. He shoots him from point-blank range—probably with a Colt. As he stands there with the dead officer in front of him, waiting, listening hard, wondering if he has been heard, he sees the two badges on the officer's coat. So, being a cool hand, he takes off the left one, puts it on his own coat, and ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... next day that Mr. Holywell had summed up the situation very accurately. No point-blank questions were asked about his religion, but he could by no means persuade his customers to give him even a small order. Every shop-window was filled with goods placarded ostentatiously as 'made in Robeen.' Every counter had tweeds, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... most other men; and this partly out of judgment, for the world looks upon several things as dreadful or to be avoided at the expense of life, that are almost indifferent to me: partly, through a dull and insensible complexion I have in accidents which do not point-blank hit me; and that insensibility I look upon as one of the best parts of my natural condition; but essential and corporeal pains I am very sensible of. And yet, having long since foreseen them, though with a sight weak and delicate ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... his curious-looking face, and his quiet ways, I wanted badly enough to know something about him, and who his connections were. First, I asked his friend who had recommended him—the friend wasn't at liberty to answer for anything but his perfect trustworthiness. Then I asked Mannion himself point-blank about it, one day. He just told me that he had reasons for keeping his family affairs to himself—nothing more—but you know the way he has with him; and, damn it, he put the stopper on me, from that time to this. I wasn't going to risk losing the best clerk that ever man had, by worrying him ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the smoke rushing out with each discharge, and then swaying back with the gun's recoil. But the guns were rarely stationary long, and we soon had the unwonted experience of finding ourselves well behind our own artillery. Finally, in places our batteries were firing at almost point-blank range; the enemy was simply blasted ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... houses to the right. Among the whisperers it was related how the Emperor—who with the greatest difficulty had been prevailed on to leave Carignan the night before about eleven o'clock—when entreated to push on to Mezieres had refused point-blank to abandon the post of danger and take a step that would prove so demoralizing to the troops. Others asserted that he was no longer in the city, that he had fled, leaving behind him a dummy emperor, one of his officers dressed in his uniform, a ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... had made him a liberal offer for "Splatchett's" about six years ago; but he had refused point-blank, being ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Brethren's rules were so strict that candidates could only be received with caution; that the Brethren had no desire to disturb those whose outward mode of religion was already fixed; that they lived in a mystical communion with Christ which others might not understand; and, finally, that they refused point-blank to rob the other Churches of their members, and preferred to act "as a seasonable assistant in an irreligious age, and as a most faithful servant to the other Protestant Churches." Thus were the society members blackballed; and thus did Zinzendorf ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... then declared that she must go and get the Doctor to look at her. She knew he must be a man of taste, he talked so beautifully about the Millennium; and so, bursting into his study, she actually chattered him back into the visible world, and, leading the blushing Mary to the door, asked him, point-blank, if he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Tabs still spoke with friendliness. "While we were together your telegram arrived and I agreed to be the bearer of her message. But as for her second request, that I should become engaged to her, I refused that point-blank." ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... waited about an hour when through the mist they saw an Indian cautiously riding in. He was reconnoitering the wallow. Their hearts sank. They kept quiet until he was within point-blank range—they could see his red ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... and the lad they gave voice to a shout of triumph, and raising their carbines fired point-blank at ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... from you. I had thought you would draw the line at assassination, but we live and learn. Last night, as I was returning to the shelter of my humble roof, a dirty hairy fellow—but why should I describe him to you?—leapt out and fired at me point-blank with a huge old-fashioned horse-pistol, and missed. I give you my word he singed half an inch off my left whisker. Of course they say he was a ruffianly suitor offended by my just decision in favour of his opponent, but I know better. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... particular point, even women managed to restrain their curiosity: and he would have been either a very bold or a very insensitive man who would have ventured to continue questioning him any further. So, though many people hazarded guesses as to where he had come from, nobody ever asked him the point-blank question: Who are you, if you please, and what ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... He listened to all that I had to say with a very polite smile, and every now and then kept on taking out his watch. When I had finished, he thanked me very much, but gave me clearly to understand that he considered I had been made a fool of. I tried to persuade him to see you, but he declined point-blank. Shall I tell you his message ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the denial he has received from the brother, roused to recklessness, he resolves on having an answer from the sister, point-blank, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... must bide in the poorhouse the Jews had built there till the elders had examined him. And there he had herded all day long with the sick and cripples and a lewd rabble, till evening brought the elders and his doom—a point-blank refusal to allow him to enter the city ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... sound, and try if Ships might come near enough to batter, who all gave it, as their Opinions, that there could not more than three Ships possibly anchor at the upper End of the Harbour; and if they were laid but in a Foot Water more than they drew, they would not be in a Point-Blank-Shot, and consequently could do no material Execution; however, to convince the General, that Ships could be of no manner of Service to him, the Admiral caused the Galicia (one of the Spanish Ships) to be fitted proper for ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... of any novelist—any painter of life—doing harm, if he but gives us the whole. It is the story-teller who rolls some prurient morsel under his tongue who has the taint in him: he who, to sell his books, panders to the degraded instincts of his audience. Had Balzac been asked point-blank what he deemed the moral duty of the novelist, he would probably have disclaimed any other responsibility than that of doing good work, of representing things as they are. But this matters not, if only a writer's nature be large and vigorous enough to report of humanity in a trustworthy ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Cossacks tried to retake the guns with a superb charge, but though he got through himself he lost more men, amongst whom was a splendid fellow, his second in command, named Berwkoff, who was greatly loved by us all. A Magyar soldier seeing Kalmakoff with his Ataman banner borne by his side, took a point-blank shot at his head, but he forgot the high trajectory of the old Russian rifle, and the bullet merely grazed the top of the Cossack leader's head and sent his papaha into the mud. His banner-bearer could not see his leader's cap so left, ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... religious ideas along the same general lines—and that even to the extent of exhibiting at times a remarkable similarity in minute details. This is a theory which commends itself greatly to a deeper and more philosophical consideration; but it brings us up point-blank against another most difficult question (which we have already raised), namely, how to account for extremely rude and primitive peoples in the far past, and on the very borderland of the animal life, ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... Upton had no sympathy with any such view as that. She had been so near to victory that she was not going to surrender now without one more charge. She tried a little sounding of Bliss herself, and finally asked him point-blank if he would take dinner with herself and Upton and Molly and make it up, and he declined absolutely; and it was just as well, for when Molly heard of it she asserted that she had no doubt it would have been a pleasant dinner, but that nothing ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... the truth. He couldn't tell a lie—to a woman. That would be it. He would pretend that Jenny had chivvied him into taking Em, that he was too noble to refuse to take Em, or to let Em really see point-blank that he didn't want to take her; but when it came to the pinch he hadn't been able to screw himself into the truly noble attitude needed for such an act of self-sacrifice. He had been speechless when a prompt lie, added to the promptitude and exactitude of Jenny's lie, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... in that direction? Why will they not come within range? I will give everything I have on earth for one good point-blank shot!" ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Louden and the doctor, and while we were there, talkin', one of Pike's clerks came with a basket full of tin boxes and packages of papers and talked to Miss Tabor at the door and went away. Then old Peter blundered out and asked her point-blank what it was, and she said it was her estate, almost everything she had, except the house. Buckalew, tryin' to make a joke, said he'd be willin' to swap HIS house and lot for the basket, and she laughed and told him she thought he'd be sorry; that ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... privately buried, after photographs of it had first been taken. I even went the length of communicating the opinion of the surgeon consulted, that some chemical means of arresting decomposition had been used and had only partially succeeded—and I asked her point-blank if the surgeon was right? The trap was not a bad one—but it completely failed. She said in the coolest manner, "Now you are here, I should like to consult you about my play; I am at a loss for some new incidents." Mind! there was nothing satirical in this. ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... suspects at another. It is no use beating about the bush. You cannot ignore such outrages as these. I wish to spare everybody's feelings—yours, mine, even the lady's, and, above all, my poor friend's; but I must tell you, point-blank, that the intimacy which I have reason to believe existed between Mr. Stanmore and Lady Bearwarden has not been discontinued since her marriage; and I come to you, as that gentleman's friend, on Lord. Bearwarden's behalf, to demand the only reparation that can be made ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... itself might fail to inspire. I sent him, therefore, the book, carefully sealed up, with an intimation that I requested the favour of his opinion upon the contents, of which I affected to talk in the depreciatory style, which calls for point-blank contradiction, if your correspondent possess ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... lelah was kept up at intervals, but every shot went over them, whether fired point-blank or made to ricochet from the sands. There was tremendous bustle and excitement on board the prau, but no fresh attempts were made to land, and as the long, hot, weary hours crept on the question rose as to what would be the enemy's ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... as to how she should answer that question. It was very tempting to say that Elaine had suggested it—but decidedly risky. Riviere might ask the girl point-blank. It was better to be prudent in this game of strategy, and accordingly ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... I have already with shame confessed to you, been out a couple of times on gallant adventure, but never with such point-blank, unabashed directness as on this summer's day in my beloved little Dutch city. I also felt none, absolutely none, of the shyness, the conscientious scruples, the nervousness that usually attend the gallant adventures of a married man. I felt like a schoolboy ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... the home government, and was, in effect, arbitrarily appropriating the property of subjects without their consent asked or obtained. Pitt disposed of the argument of virtual representation by denying it point-blank; Americans were not in the same position with those Englishmen who were not directly represented in Parliament; because the latter were inhabitants of the kingdom, and could be, and were indirectly represented in a hundred ways. But while opposing the right of Parliament to rob America, he ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... General Lucas Meyer. It is said that at the battle of Dundee General Meyer, feeling convinced that the God of Battles had decided against him and his forces, decided to surrender to the British, but Louis Botha fiercely combated his general's decision, and point-blank refused to throw down his arms or counsel his men to do so. What followed all the world knows, and Botha went up very high in the estimation of the better class of fighting burghers. At the Tugela, before the first big battle ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... would have been worse than what I did say. Remember that he asked me the question point-blank, and that no reply would have been equal to an affirmation. I should have confessed that ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Lady Davenant, "you have not told me whether you have any of you found out what changed Granville's mind about this falconry scheme—why he so suddenly gave up the whole to Mr. Churchill. Such a point-blank weathercock turn of fancy in most young men would no more surprise me than the changes of those clouds in the sky, now shaped and now unshaped by the driving wind; but in Granville Beauclerc there is always ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... day," she said, point-blank, and as Katy too had asked to stay a little longer, Wilford was compelled to yield, and taking his hat sauntered off toward Linwood; while Katy went listlessly into the kitchen, where Bell Cameron sat, her tongue moving much ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... malicious of destiny to pick him out as a victim, when there are so many worthless young men (the name of John Flemming will instantly occur to you) who deserve nothing better than rough treatment. You see, I am taking point-blank ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... argument, that he had to tell Sylvia all that had happened in those ten minutes while the grey morning grew rosy. This sense of compulsion was deaf to all reasoning, however plausible. He knew perfectly well that unless he told Sylvia who it was whom he had shot at point-blank range, as he leaped the last wire entanglement, no one else ever could. Hermann was buried now in the same grave as others who had fallen that morning: his name would be given out as missing from the ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... him point-blank just what his life had been, and why he had never been to school, Ruth did not see how she was to learn more than the white-haired boy ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... There could be no doubt about it. There in material form on the corner of his table was a point-blank, tangible contradiction of the universally accepted axiom that two bodies cannot occupy the same space, and that, come from somewhere or nowhere, there were two plainly material objects through which his daughter's hand, without her even knowing it, had passed as easily as it would ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... that a fort built on the southern end of Sullivan's Island, within point-blank shot of the channel leading into Charleston Harbor, might help prevent the British fleet from sailing up to the city. At all events it would be worth trying. So, in the early spring of 1776, Colonel William Moultrie, a veteran of the Indian wars, was ordered to build ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... anchor, one on the bow of their admiral, and the other on the bow of their vice-admiral, got astern, and could not with all our diligence be of any service for a full half hour after the action began. At length we got within point-blank shot of them, and then were forced either to anchor or drive farther off with the current, as there was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... another absurd thing I was going to have noticed, such as his utter perversion of what Mandeville said about Addison (viz., by suppressing one word, and misapprehending all the rest). Such, again, as his point-blank misstatement of Addison's infirmity in his official character, which was not that 'he could not prepare despatches in a good style,' but diametrically the opposite case—that he insisted too much on style, to the serious retardation of ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... emerged into light again close to the table with napkins on her arm. She removed the work-box reverentially, the doctor's manuscript unceremoniously, and proceeded to lay a cloth: in which operation she looked at Rose a point-blank glance of admiration: then she placed the napkins; and in this process she again cast a strange look of interest upon Rose. The young lady noticed it this time, and looked inquiringly at her in return, half expecting some communication; but Jacintha lowered her eyes and bustled about ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Varia is mine! mine!' ... Yet that 'but'—alas, that but!—and then, too, the words, 'Varia is mine!' aroused in me not a deep, overwhelming rapture, but a sort of paltry, egoistic triumph.... If Varia had refused me point-blank, I should have been burning with furious passion; but having received her consent, I was like a man who has just said to a guest, 'Make yourself at home,' and sees the guest actually beginning to settle ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... hillocks, and burst upon the machine-gun and the right front of the line. The sailors were overborne in an instant, but the Mallows, with their fighting blood aflame, met the yell of the Moslem with an even wilder, fiercer cry, and dropped two hundred of them with a single point-blank volley. The howling, leaping crew swerved away to the right, and dashed on into the gap which had already ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tracked with luminous curve and star every move of the enemy. The gashed water at every stroke of club or swish of tail or fin bled in blue and red fire, as if the very sea was wounded. The enemy's line of battle was broken and scattered, but not until more than one of the assailants had looked point-blank into the angry eyes of a shark and beaten it off with actual blows. It was the Thermopylae of sharkdom, with numbers reversed—a Red Sea passage resonant with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... sullenly. "I got up and went forward along the roof of the house, so as to have an eye on either rail. You understand, this business had to be done with. I kept straight along. Every shadow I wasn't absolutely sure of I made sure of—point-blank. And I rounded the thing up at the very stem—sitting on the butt of the bowsprit, Ridgeway, washing her yellow face under the moon. I didn't make any bones about it this time. I put the bad end of that gun against the scar on her head and squeezed the trigger. It snicked on an ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... stump, as the feller said, an' I'm above board." He paused for a moment; then he kicked a rotten spot on the log with the broad heel of his brogan till it crumbled into dust. "I've got some'n to say to you of a sort o' confidential nature, an' ef you'll let me, I may ask you a point-blank question." ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... asked, not so much from a laudable desire of obtaining information as to set the captain talking. It was a mistake on my part. Sailors do not like point-blank questions. They remind them unpleasantly, I suppose, of the Courts of Admiralty, or they betray greenness or curiosity on the asker's part, and thus effectually ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... occasions the countess showed some little curiosity about the lover; and at last, after about ten days, when she found herself beginning to be intimate with her new companion, she put the question point-blank. "I hate mysteries," she said. "Who is the young man you ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... pause, during which the young man searched wildly for some formula that would soften his point-blank refusal. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... the regiment more than a half hour to get up to it. The writer speaks of the advance of that troop as having been made "in the fool-hardy formation of a solid column along a narrow trail, which brought them, in the way I have described, within point-blank range of the Spanish rifles, and within the unobstructed sweep of their machine guns." He sums up as follows: "And if it is to be ambushed when you receive the enemy's fire perhaps a quarter of an hour ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... afraid of nothing, to speak out our minds to him without fear of offending him, to stand in no dread of rousing his anger, but only of grieving his love. And so, you see, Helen, it is the same with your boy. He never attempts to deceive you. He tells out, point-blank, the most foolish things he has done—the most ridiculous expenses he has run into. He may be extravagant, but he is not untruthful. I have no doubt, if I sent this list to his trades-people, they ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... after a few short sentences he turned on his heel and retired. I then directed Long Guled to approach the group, and say that a traveller was at their doors ready and willing to give tobacco in exchange for a draught of milk. They refused point-blank, and spoke of fighting: we at once made ready with our weapons, and showing the plain, bade them come on and receive a "belly full." During the lull which followed this obliging proposal we saddled our mules and rode off, in the grimmest of humours, loudly cursing the craven churls ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... himself with a great deal of endeavour ridiculous. The fancy of some odd quaintnesses have put him clean beside his nature; he cannot be that he would, and hath lost what he was. He is one must be point-blank in every trifle, as if his credit and opinion hung upon it; the very space of his arms in an embrace studied before and premeditated, and the figure of his countenance of a fortnight's contriving; he will not curse you without-book and extempore, but in some choice way, and perhaps as some great ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... done. The supposed prophet was the supposed historian of times to come; and if he happened, in shooting with a long bow of a thousand years, to strike within a thousand miles of a mark, the ingenuity of posterity could make it point-blank; and if he happened to be directly wrong, it was only to suppose, as in the case of Jonah and Nineveh, that God had repented himself and changed his mind. What a fool do fabulous ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... guide, entered the Shereef's grounds to prepare for our introduction; and now the ladies, who had insisted on coming with us, rebelled, and said point-blank they would not salute the Shereefa as "Your Highness." They were impatient to see her, but they declined to give countenance to a Christian who had demeaned ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... demonstration that the example of timidity is full as contagious and more masterful than that of audacity. The flag-ships and their supporters ranged themselves along the hostile line to windward, within point-blank range; according to the 20th Article of the Fighting Instructions, which read, "Every Commander is to take care that his guns are not fired till he is sure he can reach the enemy upon a point-blank; and by no means to suffer his guns to be fired over any of our own ships." The point-blank is ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... a doubt that there was some truth in Rutter's story," I declared. "Hank Rowan was my friend. I'd go out of my way any time to help his daughter. Will you send four or five of your men with me to the Writing-Stone to look for that stuff?" I asked him point-blank. ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... When things are going wrong there is a miserable fatality about them, and the worst always happens. She asked me point-blank if you shared my estimate of her, and I suppose got the impression ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... making off unseen was gone ere I could seize it. For now the man was taking long strides over the worn-out planks of the bridge, disdaining the hand-rail, and looking upward, as if to shun sight of the footing. Advancing thus, he must have had his gaze point-blank upon my lair of leafage; but, luckily for me, there was gorse upon the ridge, and bracken and rag-thistles, so that none could spy up and through the footing of my lurking-place. But if any person could have spied me, this man was the one to do ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... perched on the stack. This was apparent to me by the time he had got within thirty or forty yards, and was holding the gun ready to clap to his shoulder. Also I noticed that several other women had joined Jim, and were watching his progress. Having now approached within point-blank range, he deployed to the left, in order to outflank whatever he ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... been in direct relations with a Mussulman of education and position. To be asked point-blank whether I thought four wives better than three on general principles, and quite independently of the contemplated spouse, was a little embarrassing. He seemed perfectly capable of marrying another before dinner for the sake of peace, and I do not believe he would have ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... the first place, it is impossible to take Vicksburg in the front without too great a loss of life and material, for the reason that the river is only about half a mile wide, and our forces would be in point-blank range of their guns, not only from their water-batteries which line the shore, but from the batteries that crown the hills, while the enemy would be protected from the range ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... against the cowardly outrage, worthy of the worst days of the French monarchy, which his clients were being subjected to. The whole investigation was in keeping with the spirit evinced by the bench. The witnesses seemed to come for the special purpose of swearing point-blank against the hapless men in the dock, no matter at what cost to truth, and to take a fiendish pleasure in assisting in securing their condemnation. One of the witnesses was sure "the whole lot of them wanted to murder everyone who had any property;" another assured his ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... shall ask Sir John Sankey whether it is his," I added, as the judge joined us with genial condescension, and I recollected that his proverbial harshness toward the male offender was redeemed by an extraordinary sympathy with the women. Thereupon I laid a general case before Sir John, asking him point-blank whether he considered such conduct as Quinby's (but I did not say whose the conduct was) either justifiable in itself or conducive to the enjoyment of ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... long to wait for a billet doux from you. I had thought you would draw the line at assassination, but we live and learn. Last night, as I was returning to the shelter of my humble roof, a dirty hairy fellow—but why should I describe him to you?—leapt out and fired at me point-blank with a huge old-fashioned horse-pistol, and missed. I give you my word he singed half an inch off my left whisker. Of course they say he was a ruffianly suitor offended by my just decision in favour of his opponent, but I know better. 'Sweet Hal, ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... in his hand, and, suddenly raising it, fired point-blank at his man, not fifteen feet away. The hammer snapped on the nipple, but the cartridge did not explode. Wilbur turned to the Chinaman next him in ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... her object to bring him to a point-blank declaration and proposition of marriage, she had certainly achieved her object now. And she had that trust in her own power of management and in her mother's, that she did not fear that in accepting him she would incur the risk of being served as he was ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... by his initiation into political methods as practiced in the Twenty-first District of knowing a little more than his colleagues knew about the local issues. Three months of the session elapsed before he stood up in the Chamber and attacked point-blank,one formidable champion of corruption. Listen to an anonymous writer in the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... about Paris, where she was intending to go in a few days, of how sick she was of Germans, how stupid they were when they tried to be clever, and how inappropriately clever sometimes when they were stupid; and suddenly, point-blank, as they say—a brule pourpoint—asked him, was it true that he had fought a duel with the very officer who had been there just now, only a few days ago, on account of ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... quickly made aware of the loss we had sustained by receiving a frequent artful ball which seemed to light with unerring instinct on any nose that was the least bit exposed. I have known one of Pepper's snowballs, fired point-blank, to turn a corner and hit a boy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... come to me, when in the wayfaring of my patient academic duties, I speak about Pater, and ask me point-blank to tell them what his "view-point"—so they are pleased to express it—"really and truly" was. Sweet reader, do you know the pain of these "really and truly" questions? I try to answer in some blundering manner like this. I try to explain how, for him, nothing ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... more than a half hour to get up to it. The writer speaks of the advance of that troop as having been made "in the fool-hardy formation of a solid column along a narrow trail, which brought them, in the way I have described, within point-blank range of the Spanish rifles, and within the unobstructed sweep of their machine guns." He sums up as follows: "And if it is to be ambushed when you receive the enemy's fire perhaps a quarter of an hour before it was expected, and when the troop was in a formation, and the ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... conservatives would not allow him to return. They procured the issue of yet another Imperial decree directing that "if the English barbarians wanted a conference, they should repair to Osaka Harbour and receive a point-blank refusal; that the shogun should remain in Kyoto to direct defensive operations, and that he should accompany the Emperor to the shrine of the god of War where a 'barbarian-quelling sword' would be handed to him." Illness saved ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... while the young woman stood and waved her sunshade. Nevertheless, they made poor enough work of it. Some men let themselves be persuaded; Steiner, for instance, ventured three louis, for the sight of Nana stirred him. But the women refused point-blank. "Thanks," they said; "to lose for a certainty!" Besides, they were in no hurry to work for the benefit of a dirty wench who was overwhelming them all with her four white horses, her postilions and her outrageous assumption of side. Gaga and Clarisse looked exceedingly ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Sylvia all that had happened in those ten minutes while the grey morning grew rosy. This sense of compulsion was deaf to all reasoning, however plausible. He knew perfectly well that unless he told Sylvia who it was whom he had shot at point-blank range, as he leaped the last wire entanglement, no one else ever could. Hermann was buried now in the same grave as others who had fallen that morning: his name would be given out as missing from the Bavarian corps to which he belonged, and in time, after the war was over, she would grow to ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... go out, but he could not bring himself to do so. His self-love, his very physical strength, rebelled against so tame a surrender. One thought he gathered in from swaying vacuity—that the timid little creature whom he had patronized would not find the harsh courage to refuse him point-blank if he charged her straightly with the question, and so he again ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... last resource he thought he would go and get Juliott Penaluna, and persuade that young lady to come and be introduced to the Rosewarnes. At first Miss Penaluna refused point-blank. She asked him how he could expect her to do such a thing. But then her cousin Harry happened to be civil, and indeed kind, in his manner to her, and when he was in one of those moods there was nothing she could refuse him. She went and got ready with an air of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... once. Thought old thing was going to be drowned in a shower of bullets. Germans dashed up from all sides. We fired at them point-blank. The survivors had another try. More of them went down.... A rain of bullets resumed. It was like as if hundreds of rivets were being hammered into the hide of the 'tank.' We rushed through.... Got right across a trench. Made the sparks fly. Went along parapet, routing out Germans everywhere. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... in the sundown, chatting upon the European unrest after the war, the new loan, and other matters, when, of a sudden, a black-mustached man in a dark grey overcoat and a round fur cap sprang from the bushes at a lonely spot, and, raising a big service revolver, fired point-blank at His Excellency. ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... Austria. But unless a gunboat came for the consul that was not now possible. Neither of them had any idea England would be dragged in, and assured me I should be all right anywhere. I asked the Italian point-blank: "Are you going to war as Austria's ally?" He replied: "The Triple Alliance is a secret one. I do not know its terms. But I have my own ideas about them. My opinion is that we are not obliged to fight, and in that case we certainly shall not." A letter arrived from Mr. Lamb at Durazzo, ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... figure, standing still and motionless as a statue in the midst of all this tumult, and thereupon, as by some instinct, knew that that must be the master-maker of all this devil's brew. Therewith, still kneeling upon the deck, he covered the bosom of that figure point-blank, as he supposed, with his pistol, and instantly ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... her soul nor place herself under the necessity of saying to her confessor that she had so far forgotten herself as to commit such a sin with a priest. I objected that I was not yet a priest, but she foiled me by enquiring point-blank whether or not the act I had in view was to be numbered amongst the cardinal sins, for, not feeling the courage to deny it, I felt that I must give up the argument and put an end ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... her. One of the bullets grazed his cheek, the others swept harmlessly through the room. He seized from another table two of his remaining pistols and discharged them squarely into the face of the crowding mass at the other end of the room at point-blank range. The sounds of the shots still ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... improving the paper. Runcorn is strong on the side of blackguardism. We had a great fight the other day over a leader offered by Kenyon,—a true effusion of the political gutter-snipe. I refused point-blank to let it go in; Runcorn swore that, if I did not, I should go out. I offered to retire that moment. "We must write for our public," he bellowed. "True," said I, "but not necessarily for the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... virtually a distinct justification of each adjective employed. You soon learn that there is no random, no waste, in this man's words. But here is the promised extract from the sermon on "A Perverted Conscience." In it Bourdaloue depresses his gun, and discharges it point-blank at the audience before him. You can almost imagine you see the ranks of "the great" laid low. Alas! one fears that, instead of biting the dust, those courtiers, with the king in the midst of them to set the example, only cried bravo in their hearts at the ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... sympathy with any such view as that. She had been so near to victory that she was not going to surrender now without one more charge. She tried a little sounding of Bliss herself, and finally asked him point-blank if he would take dinner with herself and Upton and Molly and make it up, and he declined absolutely; and it was just as well, for when Molly heard of it she asserted that she had no doubt it would have been a pleasant dinner, ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... the Gustavus shook his head and his fist at the young Irishman, and discharged a double-headed oath at him, within point-blank shot. Nevertheless, Bohun continued, "If you will let me have one man, only ONE man, I may be able to ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the smoking-room or library of the club, and found them discussing the Maddison murder case, he turned on his heel and walked another way. If it were broached in his presence it was the signal for his retirement, and any question concerning it he refused point-blank to answer. Gradually the idea sprang up, and began to circulate, that Sir Allan Beaumerville had formed an idea of his own concerning the Maddison murder, and that it was one which he intended to keep to himself. Every one was curious about it, but in the face of his reticence, ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "the name of an American Indian is a sacred thing, not to be divulged by the owner himself without due consideration. One may ask a warrior of any tribe to give his name, and the question will be met with either a point-blank refusal or the more diplomatic evasion that he cannot understand what is wanted of him. The moment a friend approaches, the warrior first interrogated will whisper what is wanted, and the friend can tell the name, receiving a reciprocation of the courtesy from the other." This ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... him a liberal offer for "Splatchett's" about six years ago; but he had refused point-blank, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... in the bringing up of children is religion. When two people are engaged and are making plans for living together, they are sure to discuss religion. You remember how suddenly Marguerite turned to Faust and asked him point-blank, ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... works, the damage was soon repaired: a considerable post was taken from the enemy by assault, and afterwards regained by the French grenadiers, through the timidity of the sepoys, by whom it was occupied. By the fifteenth clay of January, a second battery being raised within point-blank, a breach was made in the curtain: the west face and flank of the north-west bastion were ruined, and the guns of the enemy entirely silenced. The garrison and inhabitants of Pondicherry were now reduced ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... process which was going on within it. I felt very strongly disposed to have the tree cut down and subjected to examination; but there were two strong arguments against this, one being the overpowering carrion-like effluvium which the tree exhaled, while the other was Piet's point-blank refusal to have anything to do ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... leaped down on to the stage, flourished a knife and shouted, "Sic semper tyrannis!" Then he vanished through the flies. It was Booth, whose plans had been completely successful. He had made his way without interruption to within a few feet of Lincoln. At point-blank distance, he had shot him from behind, through the head. In the confusion which ensued, he escaped from the theatre; fled from the city; was pursued; and was himself shot and ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... cuts and guards." Young Havelock, mounted by the side of the gallant and ill-fated Stirling trudging forward on foot, brings the 64th on at the double against the great 24-pounder on the Cawnpore road that is vomiting grape at point-blank range. The night falls and the battle ceases, but among the wearied fighting men there is none of the elation of victory; for through the ranks, after the going down of the sun, had throbbed the bruit, originating no one knew where, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... cries, of flapping canvas, rushing water, and crashing timbers, the Spaniard clambered like a catamount upon the poop, that was now high above the broken forepart of the ship, and fired his pistol at me point-blank. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... the more clearly we realize the nature of the creative process on the spiritual side the more the current objections to the Gospel narrative lose their force; and it appears to me that to deny that narrative as a point-blank impossibility is to make a similar affirmation with regard to the power of the Spirit in ourselves. You cannot affirm a principle and deny it in the same breath; and if we affirm the externalizing power of the Spirit in our own case, I do not see how we can logically ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... summer vacation and the boy's point-blank refusal to return to farm work. His father laid down an ultimatum: until he came home he should not have a cent even from his mother, and home he should not come, at all, until he was willing to carry his share of the farm work ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... At an almost point-blank range of 400 yards both bow guns were fired simultaneously. There was no need for another shot. One of the projectiles, hitting the U-boat at the base of the conning-tower, tore a jagged hole a couple of feet in diameter. The other shell hit her about 10 feet from ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... sum and, as the money is spent and the company is incessantly jogging them to deliver the goods, they're bound to put the thing through! It's said that someone asked a Member of the Government point-blank whether there was any truth in the rumour, and was told, "The answer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... no idea of letting his purpose be seen until he was fully ready. It required all his self-mastery to avoid betraying himself by look or tone, but he was so natural that Myrtle was thrown wholly off her guard. He meant to make her pleased with herself at the outset, and that not by point-blank flattery, of which she had had more than enough of late, but rather by suggestion and inference, so that she should find herself feeling happy without knowing how. It would be easy to glide from that to the impression she had produced upon him, and get the two ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the breath that men draw into their lungs of life to supply eternal combustion," was what he said when I asked him point-blank what he thought of the League. "Only let us breathe slowly as we ascend to still greater elevations with their consequent rarefied air," he added, with the most heavenly thoughtfulness in his fine face. "Did it ever occur to you, Evelina, that your Cousin James is really a radiantly ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... whom I had met at your house, came here under pretext of seeing your sons, but called upon me, and asked point-blank if I would give him my help in a charitable deed of some importance. 'What is the nature of the deed?' was my first question. 'The salvation of a soul.' 'In what form?' I did not get a direct answer, but I was told that the idea had sprung ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... of discharge for vituperative rhetoric. But before entering upon this subject I must be allowed to repeat a twice-told tale and once more to give the raison d'etre of my long labour. When a friend asked me point-blank why I was bringing out my translation so soon after another and a most scholarly version, my reply was as follows:—"Sundry students of Orientalism assure me that they are anxious to have the work in its crudest and most realistic ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... and always must be, an enigma to her. In the middle of July, when the heat was so intense as to be almost intolerable, Daisy received a pressing invitation to visit an old friend, and to go yachting on the Broads. She refused it at first point-blank; but Muriel, hearing of the matter before the letter was sent, interfered, and practically insisted upon a change ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... himself from being trampled to a jelly. Mildmay, however, was not so fortunate. He seemed to think that it mattered very little where he directed his aim, so long as he made sure of hitting the brute somewhere, and he therefore fired point-blank at the chest of the mammoth which was menacing him. The shell sped true, but, encountering the thick shaggy coat and the enormously tough hide of the creature, failed to penetrate the body, and, exploding outside, only inflicted such ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... yellow crape bonnet profusely decorated with azure, orange, and magenta artificial flowers. In her hand she carried a white parasol. The newly risen sun, ricocheting from the bosom of the river and striking point-blank on the top-knot of Miss Margaret's gorgeousness, made her an imposing spectacle in the quiet street of that Puritan village. But, in spite of the bravery of her apparel, she stole guiltily along by garden walls and fences until she reached a small, dingy frame-house near ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... Swancourt this request seemed, what in fact it was, exceptionally point-blank; though she guessed that her father had some hand in framing it, knowing, rather to her cost, of his unceremonious way of utilizing her for the benefit of dull sojourners. At the same time, as Mr. Smith's manner was ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... landlord, but the latter curtly declined, having horses enough to "eat their heads off" during the winter, as he expressed it. His Jeremy Collier aversion to players was probably at the bottom of this point-blank rebuff, however. He was a stubborn man, czar in his own domains, a small principality bounded by four inhospitable walls. His guests—having no other place to go—were his subjects, or prisoners, and distress could not find a more unfitting tribunal ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... serious nature of the duties the young people were proposing to undertake. He went so far as to put clearly before them aspects of the case which they might have overlooked and to read them legal extracts of a discouraging nature. They were unmoved, and the sindaco, still dissatisfied, asked Berto point-blank whether he really wished, under the circumstances, to take Giuseppina to be his wife. Berto replied in the affirmative. Concealing his surprise, the sindaco turned to Giuseppina and asked her whether she wished to be married ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... begin to traverse, and hastily tried to get the finishing shot into The Barbarian's tankette before the other Leaguesman could fire. But Dugald was not aiming for The Barbarian. First he had to eliminate Geoffrey from the scene entirely. When he fired, at almost point-blank range, the world seemed to explode in ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... at the stories. If a fellow asks him point-blank if they are true he tells him not to let anybody string him. He seems to regard the whole business as a weak sort of joke that some fellow is ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... temptation to think of love of country as a prejudice, or a passion for freedom as an illusion. The cosmopolitan or international idea which such teachers as Cobden have tried to impress on our stubborn islanders, would have found in Macaulay not lukewarm or sceptical adherence, but point-blank opposition and denial. He believed as stoutly in the supremacy of Great Britain in the history of the good causes of Europe, as M. Thiers believes in the supremacy of France, or Mazzini believed in that of Italy. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... been to out-stay Nicky. And as long as Nicky's approaches were so delicate as to provoke only delicate evasions, Brodrick stayed. But in the end poor Nicky turned desperate and put it to him point-blank. "Was there, or was there not to be a place for poets ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... the automobile was stopped by a wave of dead. It was for all the world like a wave tossed up by the sea. It was patent to us what had happened. As the mob charged past the corner, it had been swept, at right angles and point-blank range, by the machine-guns drawn up on the cross street. But disaster had come to the soldiers. A chance bomb must have exploded among them, for the mob, checked until its dead and dying formed the wave, had white-capped and flung forward its foam of living, fighting ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... was thin and a trifle throaty, that she was too vulgar for the true Savoy tradition, and that in five years she would have gone off to nothing. But the optimists carried the argument. Sundry men who had seen Meshach in the second row of the stalls expressed a keen desire to ask the old bachelor point-blank what he thought of his nephew's daughter; but Meshach did not happen to come ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... "That's right, Alida! You are here to stay, you know. You mustn't think it amiss that I left you a few moments alone for I had to get that talkative old man off home. He's getting a little childish and would fire questions at you point-blank." ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... resting-place. But Olivier begged him to go, and promised that he would faithfully watch over her in his stead: he induced him to leave the house: and, to make sure of his not going back on his decision, went with him to the station. Christophe refused point-blank to go without having a sight of the great river, by which he had spent his childhood, the mighty echo of which was preserved for ever within his soul as in a sea-shell. Though it was dangerous for him to be seen in the town, yet for his whim he disregarded it. They walked along the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... persecutions of fathers, the jealousies arising without any foundation, complaints, despair, running away with, and its consequences. Thus things are carried on in fashionable life, and veritable gallantry cannot dispense with these forms. But to come out point-blank with a proposal of marriage,—to make no love but with a marriage-contract, and begin a novel at the wrong end! Once more, father, nothing can be more tradesmanlike, and the mere thought of it makes me sick ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... of America he treated with some tact—with some forbearance, he himself may have thought. If asked point-blank whether he liked it, he would reply that his preference, naturally, must be for England. If asked further whether he liked Chicago—an inquiry which courtesy might well have withheld—he would answer promptly and plainly, No. And there the matter would ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... wax. He poured into her ear a vivid picture of what must inevitably result should Gabrielle reveal the ugly truth, at the same time calmly watching the effect of his words upon her. Upon her decision depended his whole future as well as hers. What was Gabrielle's life to hers, asked the man point-blank. That was the question which decided her—decided her, after long and futile resistance, to promise to commit the act which he had suggested. She gave the man her ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... the grace to spare her ears. The thought in him was: 'But that I had some faith in my wife, and don't admire the devil sufficiently, I would accuse him point-blank, for, by Bacchus! you are as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Winnie, and Jean were naturally willing recruits, as were also Cissie Gardiner, Maggie Woodhall, and five of the lower division, including Ethel Maitland. Beatrice Wynne, after a little hesitation, added her signature, but May Firth, Doris Kennedy, and Ella Johnson refused point-blank. ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... with you there, Step-hen," remarked Allan. "Like Smithy here, I found something about that man that interested me. If asked me point-blank now, possibly I couldn't tell you what it was that attracted me—his eyes, his smile, or his whole manner. But I'd be badly mistaken if he would turn ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... said Richard, as he took back the bank-note. He had learned, perhaps, in America, to be a very inquisitive man. He added point-blank, "Pray what ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... down on the embankment beside the road, and his ragged dress of muddy-brown corduroy so resembled the broken ground, on which he lay that he was not a very distinct object, even when looked at point-blank. Certainly Mr Sudberry thought him an extremely disagreeable object as he ended in an ineffective quaver and with a deep blush; for that man must be more than human, who, when caught in the act of attempting to perpetrate ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... how Tarzan felt toward her and then he himself began to speculate upon the truth of the ape-man's charges. The longer he looked at the girl, the less easy was it to entertain the thought that she was an enemy spy. He was upon the point of asking her point-blank but he could not bring himself to do so, finally determining to wait until time and longer acquaintance should reveal the truth or falsity ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... men, crouching in the bows of different canoes, produced rifles hitherto invisible and began to shoot. The bullets ricochetted across the ripples, and Courtenay saw that the savages did not understand the sighting appliances. They were aiming point-blank at the vessel, in so far as they could be said to aim at anything, and the low trajectory caused the first straight shot to rebound from the surface of the water and strike a plate amidships. The ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... on April 15, 1915, within a month of his 19th birthday. His application for a commission in the Infantry was refused point-blank because of his defective vision. The War Office authorities, much impressed by his school and athletic record, had requested him to undergo a special examination by an oculist; and on receipt of the oculist's ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Grumkow denies the Letters point-blank: Mere forgeries, these, of the English Court, plotting to ruin your Majesty's faithful servant, and bring in other servants they will like better! May have written to Reichenbach, nay indeed has, this or that trifling thing: but those Copyists in St. Mary Axe, "deciphering,"—garbling, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... do you come?" he had asked point-blank. But before her sudden change of countenance he had been quick to add: "Oh, madame, I am full conscious of the charity that brings you, and I ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... they met another man, to whom Moscione said, "What is your name, my brave fellow? Where were you born? And what can you do in the world?" And the man answered, "My name is Shoot-straight; I am from Castle Aimwell; and I can shoot with a crossbow so point-blank as to hit a crab-apple ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... what followed Christianity. If, at a period five, or even six hundred years after the birth of Christ, you find people still consulting the local Oracles of Egypt, in places sheltered from the point-blank range of the state artillery,—there is an end, once and forever, to the delusive superstition that, merely by its silent presence in the world, Christianity must instantaneously come into fierce activity as ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... keep this will secret, and of course the young people are all agog to know what is in it. One day he accidentally leaves his desk open, and realises that someone has been at his desk, and has read the will. He calls all the young people to his bed, and asks them point-blank who it was. Of course he gets various kinds of answer, from the offended, to the frightened and cowed. But by chance he finds out exactly who had peeked into his desk and read the will. We won't spoil the story for you, but would say this: that it is as good a Horne ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... brigs, getting under sail. We formed high expectations that the long wished-for opportunity was at last arrived. The Pallas remained under topsails by the wind to await them. At half-past eleven a smart point-blank firing commenced on both sides, which was severely felt by the enemy. The main topsail-yard of one of the brigs was cut through, and the frigate lost her after-sails. The batteries on I'lsle d'Aix opened on the Pallas, and a cannonade continued, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... this tirade one of them drew a revolver and fired point-blank at the Russian. The fellow's aim was poor, but his act so terrified Rokoff that he turned and fled for ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... him less and less alone, smiled at him as tenderly as ever. And then there came a day when he left me full of courage, and going to her house he asked her to marry him. He met her alone by chance, and before asking her mother he spoke to the girl herself. She said no, point-blank. She said 'Nothing would induce her to.' He was so astonished that he didn't stay a second longer in the house. He didn't even come to me, but went back into the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... buildings. A hole being made in the legation wall, Captain Halliday followed by his men crept through, and at once came upon the enemy, and before he was able to use his revolver received a serious wound from a rifle at point-blank range, the bullet breaking his shoulder and entering the lung; notwithstanding, he shot three of the enemy and walked back unaided to the hospital. For this gallant action Captain Halliday was awarded the V.C. Captain Strouts then took charge, and ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... statesman was profuse in protestations and excuses; the young one was coldly polite. At last, after a long and inconclusive conversation, the Prince, drawing himself up, said that, in order to give Lord Palmerston "an example of what the Queen wanted," he would "ask him a question point-blank." Lord Palmerston waited in respectful silence, while the Prince proceeded as follows: "You are aware that the Queen has objected to the Protocol about Schleswig, and of the grounds on which she has done so. Her opinion has been overruled, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... would have it, a certain Prince Maktuev, a wealthy man but an utterly insignificant person, had paid his addresses to her when she was living at her aunt's in Moscow. She had refused him, point-blank. But now she was fretted by the worm of repentance that she had refused him; just as a peasant pouts with repulsion at a mug of kvass with cockroaches in it but yet drinks it, so she frowned disdainfully at the recollection ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... posed as Delilah. Stidmann, too sharp to ask for Madame Marneffe, walked straight in past the lodge, and ran quickly up to the second floor, arguing thus: "If I ask for Madame Marneffe, she will be out. If I inquire point-blank for Steinbock, I shall be laughed at to my face.—Take the bull ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... secure beyond peradventure; these could spring only from a quiet conscience or from a heart perfectly attuned to villainy. So unconscious was his poise that one often doubted the evidence of memory, and found one's self going back over the record, only to fetch up point-blank against the incontestable fact that he had stolen his ship and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... scene—and that to untravelled eyes—conjoined with the sensation of freedom from supervision, revived the sparkle of a warm young nature ready enough to take advantage of any adventitious restoratives. Point-blank grief tends rather to seal up happiness for a time than to produce that attrition which results from griefs of anticipation that move onward with the days: these may be said to furrow away the ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... beneath Mme. Gougasse's comptoir, had straightway poured his grievances into a feminine ear and, figuratively speaking, rested his weary heart upon a feminine bosom. And his buffetings and grievances and wearinesses? Whence came they? I asked the question point-blank. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... The redskin had fired point-blank at the lad, but the gun had failed to go off, the weapon being an old one the Indian had found at the fort—a gun some soldier ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... crowded with a dense mass of savages, amounting probably to five or six hundred. We had not rowed off above a couple of hundred yards when a loud roar thundered over the sea, and the big brass gun sent a withering shower of grape point-blank into the midst of the living mass, through which a wide lane was cut; while a yell, the like of which I could not have imagined, burst from the miserable survivors as they fled to the woods. Amongst the heaps of dead that lay on the ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... the range," observed Ellis. "I shot my arrow with a considerable curve, for I saw that the mark was further than my bow could send it at point-blank range." ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... I addressed this poor little expensive old woman in the following terms, converting her by a violent metonymy into a comprehensive plural. "You infernal land thieves!" I said point-blank into her face. "HAVE YOU COME TO OFFER ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... the HERO of Gallipoli took quite a fancy to me, because I could beat him swearing perhaps.... Growing confidential over his liquor and Turkish cigarettes he asked point-blank: 'Didn't I see you at the TWELFTH DAY CEREMONY at the Winter Palace the time the Archbishop lost the golden cross in the river, a few years ago?'... I thought it better to deny the acquaintance and the incident.... I could have easily recalled the ceremony on the Neva, the ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... plain, simple; unornamented, unadorned, unvarnished; homely, homespun; neat; severe, chaste, pure, Saxon; commonplace, matter-of- fact, natural, prosaic. dry, unvaried, monotonous &c 575. Adv. in plain terms, in plain words, in plain English, in plain common parlance; point-blank. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... can be judged from the readiness with which he consented to her concealing anything from him. Every circumstance connected with what had happened that evening was strange, and the conclusion, instead of elucidating the mystery, only made it more mysterious still. His cousin's point-blank declaration that Faustina and Gouache were in love was startling to all his ideas and prejudices. He had seen Gouache kiss Corona's hand in a corner of the drawing-room, a proceeding which he did not wholly approve, though it was common enough. Then Gouache ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... such things of your sister. Well, anyhow the town is full of it. When I went out yesterday Mrs. Morris asked me point-blank if I hadn't news for her, and Miss Peters has taken so frightfully to rolling her eyes whenever Matty and Captain Bertram are seen together, that I'm quite afraid she will contract a regular squint. How long was he with Matty on the ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... she had known the young man some six months that she settled the question for herself by asking him point-blank if he had ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... order in a ringing voice, "Ready, aim, fire!" A flash broad as the street followed, lighting up the gloom, and revealing the scowling faces of the mob, the battered front of the jail, and the pale faces of those guarding the windows. They had not expected this close, point-blank volley, for the timid action of the authorities had not prepared them for it, and they stopped in amazement and hesitation. The commanding officer understood his business, and instead of waiting to see if they would disperse, poured in another volley. The rioters were confounded as ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... their fierce eyes shewing white as ivory in the sunlight, their cruel spears quivering in their hands, when the signal was given and every gun, some loaded with slugs and some with bullets, was discharged point-blank into ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... course, if he should ask me point-blank if I had told any one, I should answer truthfully, tell him that I had told you and explain why I did it. And some day I shall tell him whether he asks or not. But when he first comes here I want him to be—to be—well, as nearly happy ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... speaking, as though not inclined to say more just then in the presence of so many; but Thad made up his mind there was a story back of the strange actions of Jim; and that a few point-blank questions might bring it out. Before he slept he hoped he would find a chance to get Jim to one side and ask him about it; for he had reason to believe the other was ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... withdrawal of the Turks to a position well within their own territory, according to the general order to accept no combat under actual conditions, so that the least skirmish was magnified at Athens to a new victory. The summons to demobilize was met by a point-blank refusal, when the fleets of the powers—Russia and France excepted—entered on the scene, and the blockade of the Greek coast was declared. This saved the credit of the ministry with the country; and Deliyanni, protesting against intervention ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... by Major Rich, one of his subalterns, and his Hindu gun-carrier. One of the file fell at the first volley, two more broke through the line, and the remaining six or seven, led by a fierce old fellow, from whose long tusks the foam dripped, turned up the line and charged point-blank on the next gunner, who fired and missed, but succeeded in keeping them between the line and the jungle. The fourth gun brought down the second pig and wounded the boar in the shoulder. Frantic with rage and pain, ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... that should decide the fate of Germany. I expressed my conjectures to several French officers, that, according to all appearance, fresh armies of the allies were on their march toward Leipzig. They contradicted me point-blank; partly because, as they said, the crown-prince of Sweden and general Bluecher had been obliged to retreat precipitately across the Elbe, as an immense French army was in full march upon Berlin; and partly because they were convinced that the reinforcements ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... assured her that I understood the beauty of righteousness, and that I held a strong hand—a straight flush, as it were. I was well aware that the metaphor was somewhat mixed; but it expressed my sentiments and relieved my feelings, and so I fired it at her point-blank. She snorted and pawed and bellowed, and swore at me in cow-language, but I didn't care for that. So I shook the old, battered milk-pail in her face, and told her I was born in Connecticut, and did business on spot-cash principle; and that she would know more of the commandments than any cow of ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... shore. We were striving to ram the Ericsson, but we could not get close to her; our iron beak, too, was sticking in the side of the sunken Cumberland—we could only ram with the blunt prow. The Minnesota, as we passed, gave us all her broadside guns—a tremendous fusillade at point-blank range, which would have sunk any ship of the swan breed. The turtle shook off shot and shell, grape and canister, and answered with her bow gun. The shell which it threw entered the side of the frigate, and, bursting ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... been limited by anything; like scientific precision, or that profound study, patient thought, and severity of method have asserted in this, as in other departments of knowledge, their superiority to point-blank guessing and the bewitching generalization conjured out of a couple or so of assumed facts, which, even if they turn out to be singly true, are no more nearly related than Hecate ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... warships, and though, for the same reason, the gunners on the ships could not see the forts, the great steel calling-cards of the British Empire came falling out of nowhere as regularly and with as deadly precision as though they were being fired at point-blank range. ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... Dinky-Dunk asked me point-blank to-day if I'd consider the sale of Casa Grande, provided he got the right price for the ranch. I felt, for a moment, as though the bottom had been knocked out of my world. But it showed me the direction in which my husband's thoughts have been running of late. And ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... that you and I are very lucky." The Marechal, surprised at a remark which seemed to be suggested by nothing, assented with a modest air, and, shaking his head and his wig, began to talk to some one else. But M. de Gesvres had not commenced without a purpose. He went on, addressed M. de Villeroy point-blank, admiring their mutual good fortune, but when he came to speak of the father of each, "Let us go no further," said he, "for what did our fathers spring from? From tradesmen; even tradesmen they ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... him, and determined to test his sincerity. Sincerity! It seems like a profanation of the word to write it in connection with such a monster, so I asked him point-blank, "Why may I not ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... bursts," Mr. Gibney replied. "I'll set my fuse at zero an' at point-blank range I'll just rake everything off that schooner's decks. Guess I'll get half a dozen cartridges set an' ready for the big scene. Up with you, Admiral Scraggs, an' hold ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... Assailed by this point-blank question, the Doctor put his bit of paper inside his book, and drumming on the table with his pencil, considered a moment. Mr. Barker puffed at his ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... poured onward beneath the houses to the right. Among the whisperers it was related how the Emperor—who with the greatest difficulty had been prevailed on to leave Carignan the night before about eleven o'clock—when entreated to push on to Mezieres had refused point-blank to abandon the post of danger and take a step that would prove so demoralizing to the troops. Others asserted that he was no longer in the city, that he had fled, leaving behind him a dummy emperor, one of his officers dressed in his uniform, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... extraordinary venture than this British landing on a naked beach within point-blank range of the most modern firearms can be read in history or fable. It was a landing of troops upon a foreign shore thousands of miles from home, hundreds from any naval base. Without absolute command of the sea, it could not have ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... lounging against the desk, Lanyard straightened up: and the heavy humidor of brass and mahogany, on which his right hand had been resting, seemed fairly to leap from its place as, with a sweep of his arm, he sent it spinning point-blank at the younger sergent. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... hand and drop forward behind his horse's shoulders had been the act of a second, and the bullet whistled over his head. But the immediate effect of the attack had been to enrage him out of all prudence. Firing point-blank at the smudge of smoke, he jumped from his horse and rushed in pursuit ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... busily engaged in the unseamanlike operation of "catching crabs". As a matter of fact, her sweeps were proving to be a hindrance rather than a help to her, and we began to overhaul her so fast that we were soon within point-blank range of her. Tom Hardy had assumed charge of our Long Tom, and he had gradually worked himself up into such an uncontrollable condition of fidgety impatience, running his eye along the sights and then glancing round at me, ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... assault I know you to be impregnable. The reef off your harbour would infallibly wreck any ship that tried to approach within the range of your battery (270 point-blank, I believe); and my experience with a picnic party last summer convinced me that to discharge the complement of even half a dozen boats by daylight on your quay requires a degree of method which in a night attack would almost certainly ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... did the Nicene Council then decide That strong debate? was it by Scripture tried? No, sure; to that the rebel would not yield; Squadrons of texts he marshall'd in the field: That was but civil war, an equal set, 160 Where piles with piles[112], and eagles eagles met. With texts point-blank and plain he faced the foe. And did not Satan tempt our Saviour so? The good old bishops took a simpler way; Each ask'd but what he heard his father say, Or how he was instructed in his youth, And by tradition's force ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... boy to help me he refused point-blank, upon two distinct pleas: the first of which was that he saw no reason why he should work at all, seeing that I was there to do what needed to be done; while, in the second place, if he chose to work at all he would do only such work as he pleased, and ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Romanes speaks point-blank of the new-born child as "EMBODYING the results of a great mass of HEREDITARY EXPERIENCE" (p. 77), so that what he is driving at can be collected by those who take trouble, but is not seen until we call up from our own knowledge matter whose relevancy ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... accomplished the things he had done. However, before any proposition appealed to him he had to see money in the deal. Whether he saw it in this particular instance, nobody knew; and only one person had the courage to ask him point-blank what his intentions were. This ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... however, firmly refused to commit the double crime of sacrilege and murder, and, point-blank, declined all further share in the conspiracy. Here was an entirely unlooked-for situation, and an alternative plan was not easy to arrange. Francesco de' Pazzi seemed inclined to step into the breach, but detestation of Lorenzo checked his ardour—he would not soil ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... sent several Officers in to sound, and try if Ships might come near enough to batter, who all gave it, as their Opinions, that there could not more than three Ships possibly anchor at the upper End of the Harbour; and if they were laid but in a Foot Water more than they drew, they would not be in a Point-Blank-Shot, and consequently could do no material Execution; however, to convince the General, that Ships could be of no manner of Service to him, the Admiral caused the Galicia (one of the Spanish Ships) ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... soldier, I was soon in the thick of it. I scarcely know what happened for the next few moments, so terrible were the excitement and confusion. Union troops and officers were rushing in on all sides, without much regard to organization, under the same impulse which had actuated me. I found myself firing point-blank at the enemy but a few feet away. I saw a rebel officer waving his hat upon his sword, and fired at him. Thank Heaven I did not hit him! for, although he seemed the leading spirit in the charge, I would not like to think I had killed so brave a man. In spite of all our efforts, they pushed ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... simply became lieutenant-colonel commanding the 72nd Foot, now the Seaforth Highlanders. In 1758 his chance appeared to have come at last. Amherst had asked for his services at Louisbourg. But the king had neither forgotten nor forgiven the remarks about the Hanoverians, and so refused point-blank, to Wolfe's 'very great grief and disappointment... It is a public loss Carleton's not going.' Wolfe's confidence in Carleton, either as a friend or as an officer, was stronger than ever. Writing to George Warde, afterwards the famous cavalry leader, he ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... and every French finger tightened on the trigger. His colonels watched him eagerly. Up went his sword and up went theirs. READY!—PRESENT! —FIRE!! and a terrific, double-shotted, point-blank volley crashed out of that zigzag wall and simply swept away the heads of the charging columns. But the men in front were no sooner mown down than the next behind them swarmed forward. Again the French fired, again the leading British fell, ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... They held the gun at arm's length, turned their faces away and shot at random; it was clear that very few knew how to shoot, and that their Sniders could be of use only at short range. This is confirmed by the fact that all their murders are done point-blank. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... about meeting Joseph Chestermarke. Yet—now that he was there—he did not know what he should have done if Joseph had come in, as he expected he would, nor what he should, or could do now that he was in complete possession. If he had been able to face Joseph, he would have demanded information, point-blank, about the shadow on the blind; he even had some misty notion about enforcing it, if need be. But—he was now helpless. He could do no good; he could not tell Polke or anybody else what Walford had reported. And if he was to be left there all night—which ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... ability, answering with some vague generalities, but indicating sufficiently that it was not agreeable to be more explicit. He pressed me, however, to tell him candidly and explicitly whether he had succeeded, and how far. I then told him frankly that he had failed point-blank in every case. "Ah," said he, "you are skeptical." "No, sir," said I, "skepticism implies doubt, and I have no longer any doubts on the subject. My skepticism ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... the door was suddenly flung open, two half-dressed figures sprang into the room, and discharged a couple of snowballs point-blank at its occupants. One of the missiles struck Diggory on the shoulder, and the other struck Mugford fair and square on the side of the head, the fragments flying all over the floor. There was a subdued yell ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... required in the management of a Nation's affairs when the Nation has quite made up its mind to have something done which another Nation or State has made up its mind shall not be done. When there is this point-blank conflict of wills, and neither side can give way, there must be war; and the military view is that when you see war coming you should get your troops into their places, because the first moves ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... till the foremost should pass the artemisia-bush; for by that he had calculated the point-blank range of his rifle. Another moment, and its crack would have been heard; but the horseman, as if warned by instinct, seemed to divine the exact limit of danger. Before reaching the bush, his heart failed him, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... unskillfully treated by Dr. Jones. I felt that it was my duty to insist on a change of physician; but there was something else to consider before deciding who that physician should be. I was bound, as your confidante, to consult your own scruples of honour. Of course I could not say point-blank to Mrs. Ashleigh, 'Dr. Fenwick admires your daughter, would you object to him as a son-in-law?' Of course I could not touch at all on the secret with which you intrusted me; but I have not the less arrived ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... waggons, and was anxious to get among the cattle again; but with the trunks so near, the house growing rapidly, the days of sewing waiting, I refused point-blank to ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... (which might be meant for Isaak), that he was sprung from a race more honored now than a hundred years ago. But the women declared that it could not be; and the rector desiring to christen him, because it might never have been done before, refused point-blank to put any "Isaac" in, and was satisfied with "Robin" only, the name of the man who had ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... herself beyond retreating. He intended to wear this anxious face a long while. But his artificial snow had to melt, so real a sun shone full on it. The moment he looked full at Zoe, she repaid him with such a point-blank beam of glorious tenderness and gratitude as made him thrill with passion as well as triumph. He felt her whole heart was his, and from that hour his poverty would never be allowed to weigh with her. He cleared up, and left off acting, because it was superfluous; he had now ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... and swore point-blank that he heard Ralph go out of the house soon after he went to bed, and that he heard him return at two in the morning. This testimony was given without hesitation, and made a great impression against Ralph in the minds of the justices. Mrs. Jones, a poor, brow-beaten ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
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