"Gun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lances, and the bared swords flashed like a forest of steel. Nearer and nearer thundered the horses: their hoofs rang hard on the causeway, and I expected every moment to hear the roar of our artillery. But every gun was dumb; not one opened its mouth, and not a single musket shot came from the ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... outrageously good cook," Weldon assented. "If Paddy's ambition to shoot a gun should ever be fulfilled, England might gain a soldier; but it would lose a ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... her campaign and carefully dressed herself in anticipation of Arthur's call when his note came canceling the engagement. After rereading his lame excuse she sat down in a quiet corner and began to think. The first gun had been fired, the battle was on, and like a wise general she carefully ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... with you, Jack," announced Spouter, and he, too, armed himself with his gun, a double-barreled affair of which ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... vicinity. But the entrance was protected by a battery, and it was supposed that there were field-works in several places on the shores. One of these was discovered just inside of Palm Key, and the Bellevite opened upon it with her big midship gun. Two or three such massive balls were enough for the garrison, and they beat a precipitate retreat, abandoning their pieces. There was water enough to permit the steamer to go into the bay nearly to the town ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... on board the Seamew was spent in busy preparation and in rest. I alone was unemployed, my awkwardness with ropes and spars forbade it. I sat moodily upon a gun at the port, and fixing my eyes on shore vainly endeavored to make out what the French and Choctaws were doing there. To the left were the meager camp fires of the Indians; further up the hills a more generous blazing line marked ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... Slade. People did not much wonder at this; for while Slade was always to be found at the mill, industrious, active, and attentive to customers, Morgan was rarely seen on the premises. You would oftener find him in the woods, with a gun over his shoulder, or sitting by a trout brook, or lounging at the tavern. And yet everybody liked Joe, for he was companionable, quick-witted, and very kind-hearted. He would say sharp things, sometimes, when people manifested little meannesses; but there was so much honey ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... spontaneously without any external force, in harmony with the requirements of nature. For instance, the demand for nutrition, for sex gratification, for light, air, and exercise, is a natural law. But its expression needs not the machinery of government, needs not the club, the gun, the handcuff, or the prison. To obey such laws, if we may call it obedience, requires only spontaneity and free opportunity. That governments do not maintain themselves through such harmonious factors is proven ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... as dry Paris green, hellebore and tobacco dust, the home gardener should supply himself with a powder gun. If one must be restricted to a single implement, however, it will be best to get one of the hand-power, compressed-air sprayers—either a knapsack pump or a compressed-air sprayer—types of which are illustrated. These are used for applying wet ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... room above and shook the wall, and that the picture was heavy and the cord old and rotten. Even if two events invariably occur one after the other, as day follows night, or as the report follows the flash of a gun, they may not be cause and effect, though it is highly probable that they are closely connected by causation; and in each of these two examples the events are co-effects of a common cause, and may be regarded as elements of its total effect. Still, whilst it is not true that every antecedent, or ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... Ceylon, often attains the height of man. It is very fearless; and Bishop Heber relates that an acquaintance of his having on one occasion shot a young baboon, the mother came boldly up and wrested the gun out of his hand without doing him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... they would pass, on their road to the bushy kloof, within about five and twenty yards of me; so, taking a long breath, I got my gun well on to the lion's shoulder—the black-maned one—so as to allow for an inch or two of motion, and catch him through the heart. I was on, dead on, and my finger was just beginning to tighten on the trigger, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... he could say anything and Sid Jakes grinned and said, "O.K., O.K., darling, but if this is the way you're going to be I won't marry you. Then what will the children say? Besides, that's not what I called about. Have ballistics do up a model H gun for Ronny, will you? Be sure ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... this generosity to an object whom he professed to consider so ungrateful, "her husband was a faithful servant, and so—I wish you would not stand there staring me out of countenance, but go down to the woman at once, or Stirn will have let the land to Rickeybockey, as sure as a gun. And hark ye, Dale, perhaps you can contrive, if the woman is so cursedly stiffbacked, not to say the land is mine, or that it is any favour I want to do her—or, in short, manage it as you can for the best." Still even this charitable ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were, against the clear blue background. Suddenly Gertrudis called her companion's attention to the neighbouring mountain. "See, Ignacio!" exclaimed she, "yonder bush on the very highest point of the hill! Could not one almost fancy it to be a man with a gun in his hand? and that clump of leaves on the top bough might be the boina of one of those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Christian power has turned the bulk of its attention to finding out newer and still newer and more and more effective ways of killing Christians, and, incidentally, a pagan now and then; and the surest way to get rich quickly in Christ's earthly kingdom is to invent a kind of gun that can kill more Christians at one shot than any other existing kind. All the Christian nations are at it. The more advanced they are, the bigger and more destructive engines of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... during his career as a keeper of the peace. But we have been told that "pride goeth before a fall." His estimation of a "hustler" was not an exalted one. He was accustomed to dealing with men who shoot quick and straight—"bad men" in fact—and he was equally quick with the gun, and a dead shot himself. Possibly he was a shade quicker and a trifle more deadly than the smartest "bad man" known, but now he was dealing with a man of all these necessary attainments and whose resourcefulness and cleverness ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... revolver from the case and began to wave it about. "You get out of here!" he shrieked. "We don't want any collar fasteners here." An idea came to him. "Mind, I'm not making any threat," he added. "I don't say I'll shoot. Maybe I just took this gun out of the case to look at it. But you better get out. Yes sir, I'll say that. You better grab up your things ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... house of Van Maanen and the offices of the National were attacked, pillaged and burnt. The city was given over to wild confusion and anarchy; and many of the mob secured arms by the plunder of the gun-smiths' shops. Meanwhile the military authorities delayed action. Several small patrols were surrounded and compelled to surrender, while the main body of troops, instead of attacking and dispersing the rioters, was withdrawn and stationed in front of the royal palace. Thus ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... bunk, turned the other way. "Why don't you go aboard of him," says I. The Dutcher says nothing, but goes over to his own bunk and feels under the straw. When he comes back he's looking queer. "By God!" says he, "the devil has swiped my gun!"... Now if that's true there is going to be hell to pay in this vessel very quick I figure I'm still master ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Sunday, and perhaps just in time to avert another outbreak, there was heard the sound of a gun, and the watchers on the Santa Maria and the Pinta saw a puff of smoke coming from the Nina, which was sailing ahead, and hoisting a flag on her masthead. This was the signal agreed upon for the discovery of land, and it seemed as though their search was at last at an end. But it was a ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... snatched them from the stream of sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in their frenzied eyes;—eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... four walls was a grille, or wicket of slender iron bars, whence the open could be swept with glass, or gun at a pinch; and toward the grille looking eastward went Rezanov as swiftly as the uneven ground would permit. As Concha watched him gather form in the moonlight and saw him jerk his cloak off impatiently, she flung her soft body against the wall and shook the bars with her strong little ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... opened his big childish eyes at her and nodded his head solemnly. "This secret has been with me thousands and thousands of miles. Every time I shot off my gun, every day I went 'tramp, tramp' through the forest walking on snakes, every time I fought for my life I had this secret of mine ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... The long gun was now swung round, and the other pieces run into the opened ports. They were all double shotted and carefully primed, and the whole crew, even to a negro we had on board, stood at ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... almost all the time in range of them, and so near that they talked to one another. By that means he saved himself and his people—a thing that would have been impossible in any other manner; but his defense was so fiery that in less than half an hour he fired the gun more ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... a gun the three Indians dashed at the stake and bound fence on the farther side of the road, joyously using their heavy quirts on the Major's thoroughbreds. Skytail's horse being hurried top much, blundered ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... other boys. "I remember him before he died. He was a corker. But he did things, and he made things go. You know, Dad married his daughter, an' you ought to see the way he knocked the spots outa Dad. The Chauffeur was a son-of-a-gun. He made us kids stand around. Even when he was croaking he reached out for me, once, an' laid my head open with that long stick he kept always ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... what you are—the sort of man—or the sort of woman. And there isn't a woman in this camp, if she's been here any time, who wouldn't trust the Captain for all she's worth—who wouldn't tell him her love-affairs, or her debts—or march up to a machine-gun, if he told her. In a sense, they're in love with him, because—as you've no doubt found out, he has a way with him! But they all know that he's never been anything to them but the best of Commandants, and a good friend. Oh, I could never have run this camp but for him. He and ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... irresistible feelings of gratitude, had left these articles as a trifling testimony of respect to the railway company. There were carpet-bags here not only in large numbers but in great variety of form and size. Smelling-bottles, pocket-handkerchiefs, flasks, pocket-books, gun-cases, portmanteaux, books, cigar cases, etcetera, enough to have stocked a gigantic curiosity shop, and there were several articles which one could not account for having been forgotten on any other supposition than that ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... idea...." I hedged. It doesn't do to seem too anxious or eager in any business deal. Too, the sight of his burly figure, even without the nightmare face, was not exactly reassuring. That bulge under the native quilted coat, I knew was nothing but a gun too big for even his bulges to conceal completely. But a man needed a gun, here. Especially if he had something valuable, such as the ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... sufficiently yoked, and their fence was down in several places, yet all we could say to her could no ways pacify her; but she continued railing and scolding a great while together, calling to her son Benj. Nurse to go and get a gun and kill our pigs, and let none of them go out of the field, though my poor husband gave her never a misbeholding word. And, within a short time after this, my poor husband going out very early in the morning, as he was coming in again, he was taken with a strange fit in the entry; ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... report back to your station house, officer. There is no charge against this girl—she is merely held as material witness. She'll never testify. She's discharged. Take my advice, Burke, and play safe with these gun-men. You're in a neighborhood which needs good precaution as well as good ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... getting gray, we saw something in the shape of a man. It layed Down in the grass. We went up to it, and it was Jerry. He thought we ware Indians. You can imagine how glad he was to see me. He thought we was all dead but him, and we thought him and Tom was dead. He had the gun that he took out of the wagon to shoot the prairie Chicken; all he had was the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... never before believed that Englishmen would fight, advanced and broke up the siege. But Clive was no sooner freed than he showed equal vigour in the field. At the head of raw recruits who ran away at the first sound of a gun, and sepoys who hid themselves as soon as the cannon opened fire, he twice attacked and defeated the French and their Indian allies, foiled every effort of Dupleix, and razed to the ground a pompous pillar which ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... picket's gun on the shore of the river and the quick answer from the other side brought his dreaming to a sudden stop before the sterner fact of the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... fellows hear a gun shot a little bit ago?" he asked. "You two are making such an infernal racket, I ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... and Henry, pointing to the scar, said: "To cut down this tree was once the task assigned some lusty young fellow, but just as he had begun his work, a neighbor came along and told him that his strong arm was needed by his country; and he put down his axe and took up a gun." ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... Dierdre O'Farrell didn't appear, the Prefet took us to the streets which had suffered most from the big gun bombardment—fine old houses destroyed with a completeness of which the wickedest aeroplane bombs are incapable. "Any minute they may begin again," the Prefet said. "But sufficient for the day! We suffered so much in a few hours three years ago, that nothing which ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to his shooting, there is no scion of royalty who has been the cause of more gun accidents than the prince. He had not attained his majority before he managed, while shooting in the game preserves of his uncle, the Grand Duke of Baden, to wound a gamekeeper so severely that the man was crippled for ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... altitude but they couldn't reach the UFO. After ten minutes of unsuccessful attempts to identify the huge silver sphere or disk—because at times it looked like a disk—one of the pilots hauled the nose of his F-86 up in a stall and exposed several feet of gun camera film. Just as he did this the warning light on his radar gun sight blinked on, indicating that something solid was in front of him—he wasn't photographing a sundog, ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... the language of the eyes, which, even among savages, is eloquent, and appears to be well understood. The next indication of serious intentions on the part of the young hunter is the assumption of more industrious habits. He rises by daybreak, and, with his gun or bow, visits the woods and prairies, in search of the most rare and esteemed game. He endeavors to acquire the character of an expert and industrious hunter, and, whenever success has crowned his efforts, never fails to send ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... not be extremely apt to place his second bullet. For Donnegan had a reputation with his own revolver. Indeed, it was said that he rarely carried the weapon, because when he did he was always tempted too strongly to use it. So that the chances were large that Donnegan would not have the gun now. Yet if he did have it—if he, Lefty, did miss his first shot—then the story would ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... to a preoccupied man in shirt sleeves with a badge on an arm band near his shoulder. He looked carefully at the passes she carried, using a flashlight to make sure. Then he led them to a shaft up which a hoist ran. It was very noisy here. A rivet gun banged away overhead, and the plates of the Platform rang with the sound, and the echoes screeched, and to Joe the bedlam was infinitely good to hear. The man with the arm band shouted into a telephone transmitter, ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... took the end of the bar like a steeplechaser, for I seen 'Curly' grab at the drawer, and I have aversions to witnessing gun plays from the front end. The tenderfoot riz up in his chair, and snatchin' a stack of reds in his off mit, dashed 'em into 'Curly's' face just as he pulled trigger. It spoiled his aim, and the boy was on to ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... velocities requires more than machines and more than merely ordinary human abilities. No computer, however built, can possibly estimate the flight of a dodging spaceship with a canny human being at the controls. Even the superfast beams from a megadyne force gun require a finite time to reach their target, and it is necessary to fire at the place where the attacking ship will be, not at the position it is occupying at the time of firing. That was a bit of knowledge as old as human warfare: you must lead ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... cartridges for starting sprinters. Sitting on a bench with some friends, on Soldiers' Field, one day he reached into his hip pocket for some loose tobacco. Unconsciously he stuffed into the heel of his pipe a blank cartridge that had become mixed with the tobacco. The gun club was practicing within hearing distance of the field. As Donovan lighted his pipe the cartridge went off. He thought he was shot. Leaping to his feet he ran down the field, his friends ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... was to be the "Ben De Ford," Captain Hallett,—this being by far the largest vessel, and carrying most of the men. Major Strong was in command upon the "John Adams," an army gunboat, carrying a thirty-pound Parrott gun, two ten-pound Parrotts, and an eight-inch howitzer Captain Trowbridge (since promoted Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment) had charge of the famous "Planter," brought away from the Rebels by Robert Small; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... hastily reinforced the fort, about to be attacked by a large force confident of success. On the 15th of September the attack began; the English battered down the ramparts of the fortifications, and anchored their ships within gun-shot of the fort; but so gallant was the defence that the ships were disabled, and the enemy retreated, with a loss of about one hundred men. This victory saved Mobile; and more, it gave confidence to the small army on whom the defence of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... is more nicely understood by rooks, who are formed into societies, and build, as it were, cities over our heads; they evidently distinguish, that the danger is greater when a man is armed with a gun. Every one has seen this, who in the spring of the year has walked under a rookery with a gun in his hand: the inhabitants of the trees rise on their wings, and scream to the unfledged young to shrink into their nests from the sight of the enemy. The vulgar observing ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... his life was made up of many fits of passion. His rustication, or suspension from Trinity College, Cambridge, came about in the following manner: One evening Landor invited his friends to wine. His gun, powder, and shot were in the next room, as he had been out hunting in the morning of that day. In a room opposite to Landor's lived a young man whom Landor disliked. The two parties exchanged taunts. Finally in a spirit of bravado Landor took his gun and fired a shot ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... operations the British anticipated little or no resistance from those in command of the forts. It was conceivable that the forts could be passed—as were those at New Orleans and Mobile Bay by Farragut—but not that they could be reduced by the gun fire of ships. Information is lacking as to the damage actually done. It was probably greater than the defenders have admitted; but it evidently fell far short of silencing the forts. If the world needed a new demonstration of the power of forts to stand out against ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... horse, rushing through the wood. I rode on, and at the end of a long avenue, darkened by the approaching shades of night, I saw a man on a black horse; he seemed to fly. Then I heard again the same cry, and I distinguished before him on the saddle a woman, on whose mouth he had his hand. I had a gun in my hand—you know I aim well, and I should have killed him, but my gun ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... bad ones, from which I have suffered during a fairly peaceful life; in one instant and without the slightest warning I became aware that the great brute was climbing my tree! My tongue was paralysed with horror, I could not even shout; I endeavoured to point my gun downwards, but the barrel caught against a bough; I gasped, attempting to shriek. I heard his panting breath close beneath me; then I felt that his claws had caught the end of my long fur coat, and all the pent-up ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... had a different man to fight with in Francis Hogarth from his opponent last election, Mr. Turnbull; so he felt he needed more backing, and brought with him a Mr. Toutwell, a great gun with his party, who went his rounds both with and without him, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... it's your house," he said at last. "If you don't mind that lanky son of a gun making free, I suppose it's no business of mine. If he made that ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... waiting on table, had rings round her eyes, which told of sleepless nights. And why? We were mere spectators. We had been interested to dispute and look on. But she knew that somewhere out there in the northeast her man was carrying a gun. ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... leaning upon a gun, a boy of about seventeen looked long at a squirrel whose mangled body was staining the emerald beauty of the moss with crimson. His face was earnest and troubled, while the expression of sorrowful contempt ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... though cheerful, was not lacking in wartime features: A row of life-boats hung invitingly ready; a gun, highly dramatic in appearance, was mounted astern, with every air of meaning business should the kaiser meddle with us en route. Down below, the Italians, talking, gesticulating, showing their white teeth in flashing, boyish smiles, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the procession disappeared behind the first cottages in the village. These were moments of breathless silence. All looked steadfastly at the place where the enemy would emerge into sight. Lenore stood next to Anton, her left hand clutched a gun, and her right kept unconsciously moving the bullets in a sportsman's pouch. As soon as the horsemen appeared in the middle of the village, Fink caught up his cap, and said gravely, "Now, gentlemen, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... between Prussia and Austria for the prize of ascendency. Both parties were confident of success,—Austria as the larger State, with proud traditions, triumphant over rebellious Italy; and Prussia, with its enlarged military organization and the new breech-loading needle-gun. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... we are told that on one occasion, after a pistol shot had been fired at the place where they were heard, blood was found on the spot. In another instance, according to Mr. Mompesson's own account, there were seen figures, "in the shape of Men, who, as soon as a Gun was discharg'd, would shuffle away together ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... do you conclude from all that?" said the Man of Wrath, who had been going out by the verandah door with his gun and his dogs to shoot the squirrels before they had eaten up too many birds, and of whose coat-sleeve I had laid hold as he passed, keeping him by me like a second Wedding Guest, and almost as restless, while I gave ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... tops of trees made their appearance. We sailed towards it, and found behind it a tract covered with low wood, chiefly larch and pine: on landing we saw the tracks of rein-deer, which had just left the spot. Jonathan, in an instant, ran like a young man for his gun, and with it into the wood. We followed him for two or three miles, but saw nothing but the track of the deer. The country inland seems in general level, with some low hills, and many ponds; without wood, but overgrown with ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... every Saturday morning. In the after part of the ship was a handsome cabin, a dining-room, and a trade-room, fitted out with shelves, and furnished with all sorts of goods. Between these and the forecastle was the "between-decks,'' as high as the gun-deck of a frigate, being six feet and a half, under the beams. These between-decks were holystoned regularly, and kept in the most perfect order; the carpenter's bench and tools being in one part, the sailmaker's in another, and boatswain's locker, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... currents of an eager civilization, take on the remoteness of a dream. The peace or war of nations is less to him than the battles of Wing and Fur. His interests are all in that world over which he seeks to rule by the law of trap and gun, and in the war of defence which he wages against the aggression of the elements. He returns insensibly to the type of the primitive ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... had the good fortune to be in the advance party. Soon after starting the Duke of Norfolk's horse fell in a hole and put his thigh out, so he lost the fun, for it was not long before, from the hills ahead of us, came rap, rap, and then the rat-tat-tat-tat of a machine gun. We dismounted, advanced extended, and opened fire. I aimed at the hills, so I know I hit something. The Boers retiring, we (that is the battalion) occupied one kopje and then another, the dust flicking up in front of us. Then boom! whish-sh-sh! a cloud of red dust shot up, and crack! and their ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... joy of the English who believed him dead. But their joy was short-lived, for Maitre Jean soon returned to his post and bombarded them as before.[535] These culverins were loaded with leaden bullets by means of an iron ramrod. They were tiny cannon or rather large guns on gun-carriages. They could be moved easily.[536] And so Maitre Jean's culverin was brought wherever it ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... timber-makin', and was returnin' to their camp, when the beast bounced out of a thicket all of a suddint. Poor dad was skeered stiff. The thing screeched,—a screech so turrible that it was enough to turn a man's sweat to ice-water, an' a'most set him crazy. Dad hadn't no gun with him; so he shinned up the nighest tree like mad, an' hollered fit to bust his windpipe, hopin' t'other fellers at the ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... length. Alan Seeger had barely passed his twenty-eighth birthday, when, charging up to the German trenches on the field of Belloy-en-Santerre, his "escouade" of the Foreign Legion was caught in a deadly flurry of machine-gun fire, and he fell, with most of his comrades, on the blood-stained but reconquered soil. To his friends the loss was grievous, to literature it was—we shall never know how great, but assuredly not small. Yet this was a case, if ever there was one, in which we may not only say "Nothing is ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... gun on his saddle and took careful aim. The crack of his rifle was followed by a hoarse squawk and the tall ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... but I dare not read them now," said the cock, "for here comes a hunter—I see him, I see him with his pouch and gun." ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... party commenced it, has been a matter of dispute. Pitcairn always maintained that, finding the militia would not disperse, he turned to order his men to draw out, and surround them, when he saw a flash in the pan from the gun of a countryman posted behind a wall, and almost instantly the report of two or three muskets. These he supposed to be from the Americans, as his horse was wounded, as was also a soldier close by him. His troops rushed on, and a promiscuous fire took place, though, as he declared, he made repeated ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... dropping in occasional innocent questions to heighten the color or increase the output. Others in the circle responded in kind, feeling the same chord vibrating in themselves. Even the priest, like a repeating-gun, continually discharged his little secret pride that Byron had occupied a room in that Venetian monastery where he lived; and at last O'Malley himself was conscious of an inclination to report his own immense and recently discovered kinship with a greater soul and consciousness ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... troubles, so when Martin proposed to show me over the ship, away I went with him to look at the theodolites and chronometers and sextants, and sledges and skis, and the aeronautic outfit and the captive balloon, and the double-barrelled guns, and the place where they kept the petroleum and the gun cotton for blasting the ice, and the hold forward for the men's provisions in hermetically-sealed tins, and the hold aft for the dried fish and biscuit that were the food for the Siberian dogs, and the empty cage for the dogs themselves, which had just been ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... is as clear as the Stream; Her Character light as the Sun; Her Dealings are hard as a Stone; But her Promise as sure as a Gun. ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... of the United States, in France and Spain, to purchase and ship on continental account, in armed vessels, in addition to what has heretofore been ordered by Congress, 500 tons of lead, 400 tons of powder, one million of gun flints, tents for 50,000 men, and 10,000 yards of flannel for cartridges, to be sent to such ports and places as the said committee shall direct; and that the former orders of Congress, and of the commercial committee for clothing, fire-arms, equipage, brass field-pieces, salt, and other articles, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... have to balance on half-rotted trunks of trees, wade and stumble through pools of varying depths, crawl beneath or climb over all sorts of obstructions in the shape of uproots, spiky new growths, and old tree trunks. If he had a gun in his hands, he would furthermore be compelled, through all the vicissitudes of making his way, to hold it always at the balance ready for the snap shot. For a ruffed grouse is wary, and flies like a bullet for speed, and is up and gone almost before the roar of its wings ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... from the ground. The season before, a red squirrel had harried the nest of a wood-thrush in this same tree, and I was apprehensive that he would serve the fly-catchers the same trick; so, as I sat with my book in a summer-house near by, I kept my loaded gun within easy reach. One egg was laid, and the next morning, as I made my daily inspection of the nest, only a fragment of its empty shell was to be found. This I removed, mentally imprecating the rogue of a red squirrel. The birds were much disturbed by the event, but did not desert ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... golden helmet, O What are you guarding on my lawn? You with your green gun And your yellow beard, Why do you stand so stiff? There is only the ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... as the wind stood all that day, throughout the night, and was fresher, though more to the southward, than it had hitherto been, next morning, I had the satisfaction of seeing Montauk a little on my lee-bow, at sunrise, while my pursuer was still out of gun-shot on my ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... President of the United States has instructed the undersigned to announce to the Army that from the accidental explosion of a gun yesterday on board the United States steamship Princeton the country and its Government lost at the same moment the Secretary of State, the Hon. A.P. Upshur, and the Secretary of the Navy, the Hon. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... walked indoors to fetch his hat and his gun. Though he rarely used it, he invariably carried a gun under his arm in his walks about the Islands. It helped his sense of being monarch ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... lay on the mantelpiece. Nelka, who was there in the room, did at that moment a most risky thing. Unobtrusively she slipped my revolver into the pocket of her dress. I noticed this, but the men did not. I produced the other gun which they dutifully registered and took. They then proceeded to search the place and after examining my papers, announced that I would not be arrested in view of my service with the British. Upon that they left. Nelka had done a most risky ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... he will hang himself, but not by the neck, for fear lest his soul be defiled by exiting through an impure channel. In England hanging is the commonest form for men; then follow in due order drowning, cutting or stabbing, poison, and gun-shot: women prefer drowning (except in the cold months) and poison. India has not yet found a Dr. Ogle to tabulate suicide; but the cases most familiar to old Anglo-Indians are leaping down cliffs (as at Giruar), drowning, and starving to death. And so little is life valued that a mother will ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... on the road, they turned off to the left over plough, we knew that that was the way we must follow too. Before we came to the turning-place, before we left the road to take the fields on the left, there came from far off and on our right the sound of a gun. ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... ascended Walker River, dragging, with great difficulty, a howitzer which they had brought with them. The snows grew deeper as storm succeeded storm. Feeling that they were really lost, the disheartened men at length abandoned the gun, at a spot which has since ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... 'z the best, All he wants now is sugar-plums an' rest"; "He sarsed my Pa," sez one; "He stoned my son," Another edds. "O, wal, 't wuz jest his fun." "He tried to shoot our Uncle Samwell dead." "'T wuz only tryin' a noo gun he hed." "Wal, all we ask 's to hev it understood You'll take his gun away from him for good; We don't, wal, nut exac'ly, like his play, Seein' he allus kin' o' shoots our way. You kill your fatted calves to no good eend, 'Thout his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... early rabbit into an impenetrable, frost-incrusted brier patch. He rushed another covey, that flew away like the wind. He sat down on his haunches and with ears erect watched the distant, whirling specks scatter into the woods. He was helpless in the daylight without man and gun. He remembered a white-tiled butcher shop on upper Broadway, and licked ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... sketches upon the same subject, he found himself inspired like the rest. "Jenkins," the toady, and "Lickspittleoff," his "Russian editor," were grand sport in the office, and their example was followed—not a little to their disgust—by the "Great Gun" and other papers. Soon after his first introduction (p. 123, Vol. V.) "Jenkins" was cast aside as a joke played out, and Thackeray took leave of him in the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... struck 12, and the crowds, almost breathless and with eyes fixed upon the flagpole, watched for developments. At the sound of the first gun from Fort Morro, Major Dean and Lieutenant Castle, of General Brooke's staff, hoisted the stars and stripes, while the band played "The Star Spangled Banner." All heads were bared and the crowds cheered. Fort Morro, Fort San Cristobal and ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... down once on the Mississippi," remarked Mr. McDougall, "at the opening of the war. I met a general of the Confederate army, and I took him by the hand and took him to my state-room, on board of my gun-boat. Said he, 'General,' throwing his arms around me, 'how hard it is that you and I have to fight.' That was the generosity of a combatant. I repeated to him, 'It is hard,' and he and I drank a bottle of wine or two—just as like as not. [Laughter.] This thing of bearing malice is ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... make of this tender passage it is difficult indeed to imagine. The only plain conclusion which appears to emerge from the words is the somewhat curious one—that Browning was in the habit of taking a gun down to Wimpole Street and of demolishing the live stock on those somewhat unpromising premises. Nor will he be any better enlightened if he turns to the reply of Miss Barrett, which seems equally dominated with the ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... blubbered. 'Damn you!' And before I knew it, and with all the strength, I imagine, left in him, he was on his feet and I was looking down the barrel of his gun. It looked very round and big and black, too. Beyond it his eyes were regarding me; they were quite mad, there was no doubt about that, but, just the way a dying man achieves some of his old desire to will, there was definite purpose in them. 'You get out ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... it distinctly understood that this is no cheap, good-for- nothing 'pop-gun'; and while none can expect it to be 'silver- mounted' for $1.50, they have a right to expect the worth of their money, and in this new improved seven-shooter a want ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... rattled against its roof and windows. It was nearly midnight when a sudden thought brought him to his feet. What if SHE were exposed to the fury of such a night as this? What could he do to help her? Perhaps even now, as he sat there idle, she—Hark! was not that a gun—No? Yes, surely! ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... years ago, Jabez Woodford, a foreman of shipwrights in the Plymouth dockyard, whilst carelessly crossing one of the transverse beams of a seventy-four gun-ship, building in that arsenal, missed his footing, fell to the bottom of the hold of the huge vessel, and was killed on the spot. He left a widow and one child—a boy seven years of age, of placid, endearing disposition, but ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... stopped in the night!" They always come into town a day after the fair, and open their wares an hour after the market is over. They make their hay when the sun has left off shining, and cut their corn as soon as the fine weather is ended. They cry "Hold hard!" after the shot has left the gun, and lock the stable-door when the steed is stolen. They are like a cow's tail, always behind; they take time by the heels and not by the forelock, if indeed they ever take him at all. They are no more worth than an old almanac; their time has gone for being of ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... manner when he went out to where they were. He found them just putting up a target made of a sheet of tablet paper marked with a lead pencil into rings and an uncertain centre, and he went straight into the game with a smile. He loaded the gun for Flora, showed her exactly how to "draw a fine bead," and otherwise deported himself in a way not calculated to be pleasing to the Pilgrim. He called her Flora boldly whenever occasion offered, and he exulted inwardly at the proprietary way in which she said "Billy Boy" and ordered ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... thorn scrub, high elephant grass, all had their special bearing on the quality of the fighting. Close-quarter engagements were the rule, dirty fighting in the jungle, ambushes, patrol encounters; and the deadly machine-gun that enfiladed or swept every open space. We cannot be surprised that the mounted arm was robbed of much of its utility, that artillery work was often blind for want of observation, that the trench dug ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey |
