"Point-blank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... 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
... 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
... 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
... in 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 ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... 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
... on the block, but was 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 to correct his course. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... 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
... 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 on ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... 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
... 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, ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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
... 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 my embrace and speaking almost ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... 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
... 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 ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... 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
... 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 mate worked with ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... 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
... 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 strong impression, ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... 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
... 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 to stop Hooker's onset. Bayonets flashed through the smoke, and ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... 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 lie, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... 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
... glued tightly together in one firm, thin, straight line across his face, was glaring steadfastly at the corner of the ceiling, permitting no expression whatever to flicker in his eyes; noting which, Bobby turned to him with a point-blank question: ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... 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
... 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
... 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 would ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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
... 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 took place, General Meyer ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... 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
... 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 shrapnel explosions ...
— 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
... point-blank challenge in his eyes. The doctor leaned a little toward him, as if about to speak, but caught himself. For several moments his keen eyes gazed squarely into Philip's, and when he broke the silence the same nervous flush that Philip had noticed ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... 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
... 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 ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 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
... 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 |
