"Breech" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... while longer, watching at the cliff's rim. He thought it likely that Tandakora might come, and he had not long to wait. The huge Ojibway came striding through the bushes and into the circle of the firelight, his body bare as usual save for breech cloth, leggins and moccasins, and painted with the hideous devices so ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... her as a man should love all things that are swift and strong and honest, keen for marks and goals—a big, clean-limbed, thoroughbred horse that will break his heart to get under the wire first; a high-power rifle, slim of muzzle, thick of breech, with its wicked little throaty cry, doing its business over a flat trajectory a thousand yards away: I love her as a man should love those. Little did I dream that she ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men. There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between, And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... anything else. He pursued 'is investigations with the eye of an 'awk outside the galley. He knew better than to advance line-head against Retallick, so he attacked ong eshlong, speakin' his remarks as much as possible into the breech of the starboard four point seven, an' 'ummin' to 'imself. Our chief cook 'ated 'ummin'. 'What's the matter of your bowels?' he says at last, fistin' out the mess- pork agitated like. "'Don't mind me,' says 'Op. 'I'm only a mildewed buntin'-tosser,' ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... finest ship of the Spanish navy lowered her flag and was headed in for the beach. After she had thus surrendered, and before the Americans could board, she was wrecked by her own crew, who opened sea-valves, smashed out dead lights, threw overboard the breech-blocks of their great guns, and in many other ways worked what destruction they could in the time allotted. As a result of this vandalism, the fine ship rolled over on her side soon after striking, and would have slipped off into deep water had not the New York rammed her to a better position ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... a gun and a cutlass, as Dick Sand had done. A cartridge was slipped into the breech of the Remingtons, and, thus armed, all four went to the ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... proposed, "that whoever attended a first minister, after having told his business, with the utmost brevity and in the plainest words, should, at his departure, give the said minister a tweak by the nose, or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by both ears, or run a pin into his breech; or pinch his arm black and blue, to prevent forgetfulness; and at every levee day, repeat the same operation, till the business were done, or ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... The Council of Antioch lamented the practice of unmarried men and women sharing the same room. In 450, the Anchorites of Palestine are described as herding together without distinction of sex, and with no garments but a breech-clout.[133] The practice of priests travelling about with women, mothers and wives, and the scandals created thereby, is referred to in regulation after regulation. Although legislated against, it never entirely disappeared, and eventually led ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... answered Mildmay. "She is fitted with a torpedo port for'ard, for firing what the professor called 'torpedo-shells'; two 10-inch breech-loading rifled guns, fired through ports in the dining-saloon, and six Maxim guns, fired from the upper deck, to say nothing of small-arms. Such an armament is ample for every occasion which is at all likely to arise; and if the professor will only furnish me with the particulars ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Company had made its millions for the Rainey and Whittaker families during the Civil War. Whittaker had been an inventor, making one of the first practical breech-loading guns, and the original Rainey had been a dry-goods merchant in an Illinois town who backed ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... of the so-called "hand cannon," which were often used at this period, both by cavalry and by infantry—portable fire-arms, loaded sometimes at the breech and sometimes by a movable chamber. See illustrations and descriptions of these weapons in Demmin's Arms and Armor (Black's ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... that the Devil then officiated in person. Clothed in rent and soiled episcopal habits, he gave communion with round pieces of shoe leather for hosts, saying, 'This is my body.' And he gave these disgusting wafers to the faithful to eat after they had kissed his left hand and his breech. I hope that you will not be obliged to render such base homage ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... their harpoons and lances, the best of wood for their sledges, the best of cutlery, knives, hatchets, and saws for their work, and the cooking utensils of civilization. Formerly they were dependent upon the most primitive hunting weapons; now they have repeating rifles, breech-loading shotguns, and an abundance of ammunition. There was not a rifle in the tribe when I first went there. As they have no vegetables, and live solely on meat, blood, and blubber, the possession of guns and ammunition has increased the food-producing capacity of every hunter, and relieved ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... domestic arsenals commonly known as "cupboards" and "kitchens." But courage, the right, hatred of the foreigner, the yearning for vengeance, were to take the place of more perfect engines, and to replace—at least it was hoped so—the modern mitrailleuses and breech-loaders. ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... section of field artillery, seeing here and there an officer whom he knew, saluting cheerily, making a thousand excuses for his haste to the good-natured artillerymen, who only grinned in reply. As he rode, he noted with misgivings that the cannon were not breech-loaders. He had recently heard a good deal about the Prussian new model for field artillery, and he had read, in the French journals, reports of their wonderful range and flat trajectory. The cannon that he passed, with the exception of the Montigny mitrailleuses and the ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... as he led me from gun to gun slapping hand on breech or trunnion, and as I hearkened 'twas hard to recognise the merry peddler in this short, square, grave-faced gunner who spake with mariner's tongue, hitched ever and anon at the broad belt of his galligaskins, and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... point), a genus of plants belonging to the natural order Acanthaceae. The species are natives of the southern parts of Europe and the warmer parts of Asia and Africa. The best-known is Acanthus mollis (brank-ursine, or bears' breech), a common species throughout the Mediterranean region, having large, deeply cut, hairy, shining leaves. Another species, Acanthus spinosus, is so called from its spiny heaves. They are bold, handsome plants, with stately ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... midnight on 10th August Metternich had despatched the passports for the Comte Louis de Narbonne, Napoleon's Ambassador, and the war manifesto of the Emperor Francis; then he had the beacons lighted which had been prepared from Prague to the Silesian frontier, as a sign of the breech of the negotiations, and the right (i.e. power) of the Allied armies to cross the Silesian frontier ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... shall have less to doe, that's all, there's half a dozen of my friends i'th' fields sunning against a bank, with half a breech among 'em, I shall be with 'em shortly. The care and continuall vexation of being rich, eat up this rascall. What shall become of my poor familie, they are no sheep, ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... saw that; therefore he was full woe. And his heathen folk, that he had in the burgh, they betook them to counsel, what they might do. And thus spake Octa with his companion Ebissa: "I have now bethought me, what I will do. I and my knights shall forth-right in our bare-breech go out of the burgh, hang on my neck a chain, and come to the king, praying his mercy. We all shall else be dead, except we follow this counsel." And, they all did so, as Octa them advised; put off their clothes the careful knights, and proceeded out of the ...
— Brut • Layamon
... hesitate. She was accustomed to obedience—even when there were no fire-spouters astern. She bent to her paddle with Arctic skill and vigour. So did her mates, and the oomiak darted from the shore while the Indian who had fired the shot was still agonising with his ramrod—for, happily, breech-loaders ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... training of their guns, or rather in placing them so as to have been unable to take any other range than point blank! Here is a fort mounting upwards of fifty guns of large calibre, which would have commanded the bay, but the embrasures are so small as barely to admit the muzzle of the gun, the breech of which was imbedded in the earth. These were soon silenced, as may well be supposed, by the attacking squadron taking a position beyond their range, and training their own batteries to bear upon the Chinese gunners ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... watching him closely, saw that the hair along his spine had risen like a brush, and then he heard—growing slowly in Baree's throat—a snarl of ferocious hatred. It was the sort of snarl that had held back the factor from Lac Bain, and Carvel, opening the breech of his gun to see that all was right, chuckled happily. Baree may have heard the chuckle. Perhaps it meant something to him, for he turned his head suddenly and with flattened ears looked at ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... Washington," he would say, "spring from his panting horse, and seize a brass field-piece as if it had been a stick. His look was terrible. He put his right hand on the muzzle, his left hand on the breech; he pulled with this, he pushed with that, and wheeled it round, as if it had been a plaything: it furrowed the ground like a ploughshare. He tore the sheet-lead from the touch-hole; then the powder-monkey rushed up ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... the hour, minute and second determined by the commission's mathematicians the projectile will be slid into the cannon. The concussion will explode the powder in the breech. This final act is to take place"—he glanced at his ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... fitted up, were ready for the reception of Dr. Ferguson and his friend Kennedy. The latter, all the while swearing that he would not go, went on board with a regular arsenal of hunting weapons, among which were two double-barrelled breech-loading fowling-pieces, and a rifle that had withstood every test, of the make of Purdey, Moore & Dickson, at Edinburgh. With such a weapon a marksman would find no difficulty in lodging a bullet in the eye of a chamois at the distance of two thousand paces. Along with ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell into the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... clothing in winter and none in the summer. Women usually wore a primitive skirt, which consisted of a piece of cotton cloth fastened about the waist, and extending to the knees. Men wore breech cloths and moccasins. In winter they had ...
— Geronimo's Story of His Life • Geronimo
... Never pull a gun loaded or empty toward you by the muzzle. In unloading always point it toward the ground. A jar will sometimes discharge a gun and very often a discharge will take place when closing the breech on a ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... airship each one aboard was given a chance to pilot her. He was also allowed to stop and start the machinery, since it could not be told at what moment, in an emergency, someone would have to jump into the breech. ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... few seconds, the cloud dispersed, and the cannon and men re-appeared; the gun-crew had just finished rolling it slowly, correctly, without haste, into position facing the barricade. Not one of them had been struck. Then the captain of the piece, bearing down upon the breech in order to raise the muzzle, began to point the cannon with the gravity of an astronomer levelling ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... from chamberlain to cook. He forms a body-guard, whose members are dressed in silk. Two pages wait upon the king, one of whom is a son of his grace the bishop of Muenster. The great officers of state are somewhat wondrously attired, one breech red, the other grey, and on the sleeves of their coats are embroidered the arms of Sion—the earth-sphere pierced by two crossed swords, a sign of universal sway and its instruments—while a golden finger-ring is token of their authority in Sion. The ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... have not accustomed themselves to the use of flour, sugar and others of the simplest luxuries of civilization, and their food is almost wholly flesh, fish and berries. They live in the crude, primordial fashion of their forefathers. To aid them in their hunt they have adopted the breech-loading rifle and muzzle-loading shotgun, but the bow and arrow has still its place with them and they were depending wholly upon this crude weapon for hunting partridges and other small game now, as they had no shotgun ammunition. The boys ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... is seized in all his heads and arms with a great longing to know what manner of man this Rama may be, that he should prefer the yogee's breech-cloth to the royal purple, a hut of leaves, with only his Seeta, to a harem of a hundred wives, white ants and paddy to the white camel's flesh and golden partridges of Ayodhya's imperial repasts. Especially is he curious as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... characters," said Major Blowney, my employer, one afternoon, "you must see our 'Wild Irishman' here before you say you've yet found the queerest, brightest, cleverest chap in all your travels. What d'ye say, Stockford?" And the Major paused in his work of charging cartridges for his new breech-loading shotgun and turned to await his ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... under the other. Now this to Adam is one, therefore that on Sinai is one, and all one with this; and that this is a truth, I say, I know, because the sins against that on Sinai were punished by God for the breech thereof before it was given there; so it doth plainly appear to be a truth; for it would be unrighteous with God for to punish for that law that was not broken; therefore it was all one ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... mendicants go almost naked, usually with nothing but the smallest possible breech clout around their loins, which the police require them to wear; they plaster their bodies with mud, ashes and filth; they rub clay, gum and other substances into their hair to give it an uncouth appearance. Sometimes they wear their ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... its square uprights of pine wood the Stand resembled one of our own pistol-galleries at a fair, with this difference, that the amateurs brought their own weapons, breech-loading muskets of the oldest pattern, which they managed, however, with some adroitness. Tar-tarin, his arms crossed, observed the shots, criticised them aloud, gave his advice, but did not fire himself. The Russians watched him, making signs to ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... Silvertip. But how changed! Stripped of the blanket he had worn at the settlement, now standing naked but for his buckskin breech-cloth, with his perfectly proportioned form disclosed in all its sinewy beauty, and on his swarthy, evil face an expression of savage scorn, he surely looked ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... upon them a double piece of white cotton. The buckskins represented daylight, or the twilight that comes just at the dawn of day. The invalid for whom this ceremony was held took off all his clothing except the breech cloth, and sat on the outside by the entrance of the sweat house amid the din of rattle and song, the theurgist being the only one who had a rattle. The invalid propelled himself into the house feet foremost, the covering of the sweat ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... got a streak of my daddy's wild blood. He was a great hunter in his day, and that's why I prize this gun so much. It was made in London by John Armstrong in 1874—so that silver plate on the breech says—and if it is old fashioned it kin shoot. You chaps ought to be here in the fall when the ducks and geese are moving—I'd ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... in beholding breaches of the statutes. He would not have rained upon the unjust as the just if he had had the directing of the heavens. As Private Gellatly put it: "Sergeant Fones has the fear o' God in his heart, and the law of the land across his saddle, and the newest breech-loading at that!" He was part of the great machine of Order, the servant of Justice, the sentinel in the vestibule of Martial Law. His interpretation of duty worked upward as downward. Officers and privates were acted on by the force known as Sergeant Fones. Some people, like Old Brown Windsor, spoke ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... reached in and drew out a rifle. He took it over to a nearby rock, smashed the gun's breech, then flung it, useless, aside. Returning to the borer, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... joiner; Starveling, the tailor; Smooth, the silkman; Shallow and Silence, country justices; Elbow and Hull, constables; Dogberry and Verges, Fang and Snare, sheriffs' officers; Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, and Bull-calf, recruits; Feebee, at once a recruit and a woman's tailor, Pilch and Patch-Breech, fishermen (though these last two appellations may be mere nicknames); Potpan, Peter Thump, Simple, Gobbo, and Susan Grindstone, servants; Speed, "a clownish servant"; Slender, Pistol, Nym, Sneak, Doll Tear-sheet, Jane Smile, Costard, ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... demoniac, indescribable. Blood curdling, more savage infinitely than the cry of any wild beast, the others took it up, augmented it by a score, a hundred throats. Again the earth vomited the demons forth. Naked, breech-clouted, garbed in fragments of white men's dress, they swarmed into the clearing, into the cabin, about the two prisoners in their midst. Passively, patiently waiting for hours, of a sudden they seemed possessed ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... disgust, they seemed to be—and call them all by their right names with a resentful emphasis. He achieved the naked sincerity of a Hottentot—nay, he even went beyond it in rejecting the feeble compromise of the breech-clout. Not only would he be naked and not ashamed, but everybody else should be so with a blush of conscious exposure, and human nature should be stripped of the hypocritical fig-leaves that betrayed by ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... give an account of myself." And he stepped forward, grasping one of his pistols, not by the breech, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the same time he looks to the priming of his gun, and then fixes his eye on the door as it slowly opens. He drops the breech hastily to the ground as the face ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... is proposed to abandon the pike and all muzzle-loading small arms for a breech-loading carbine and pistol, with one uniform metallic cartridge for both. The revolver pistol does not realize in service with seamen the advantages claimed ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... treachery and in spite of the warnings of Antoine, offering no obstruction to their approach, has allowed them to enter the camp. What madness! They have divested themselves of their buffalo-robes, and appear naked to the breech-clout and armed with bows and arrows, tomahawks, and scalping knives. Six or seven only come in at first, but others quickly follow, dropping in by twos and threes until a score or more are collected ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... keen eyes, and a sharp nose. The midshipmen called him "Old Chili Vinegar," or, "Old Hot and Sour." He was what we term a martinet. He would keep a man two months on his black list, giving him a breech of a gun to polish and keep bright, never allowing him time to mend his clothes, or keep himself clean, while he was cleaning that which, for all the purposes of war, had better have been black. He seldom ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... destruction. When recently examining the Museum of the Arsenal at Venice, we were surprised to find numerous weapons of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries embodying the most recent English improvements in arms, such as revolving pistols, rifled muskets, and breech-loading cannon. The latter, embodying Sir William Armstrong's modern idea, though in a rude form, had been fished up from the bottom of the Adriatic, where the ship armed with them had been sunk hundreds of years ago. Even Perkins's ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... water here. So, out of this, you mis-begotten son of a red-coated ape, or I'll give you something to help you along." And the sentry quietly pulled out a cartridge, and began leisurely fitting it into the breech of ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... increasing European colony at Shanghai and the numerous mail steamers which daily arrive there, a profitable market for game has sprung up during the past few years, to supply which there are now a number of native gunners who, as a means of livelihood, scour the country with foreign breech-loaders in search of pheasants, wildfowl, etc., so that, being capital shots, within a considerable distance of this port the shooting is not so good as formerly, although in all other parts of the ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... the festivals, to prevent any innovation which the multitude thus gathered together might make,] one of the soldiers pulled back his garment, and cowering down after an indecent manner, turned his breech to the Jews, and spake such words as you might expect upon such a posture. At this the whole multitude had indignation, and made a clamor to Cumanus, that he would punish the soldier; while the rasher part of the youth, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... ear rings made of wire with three cornered pieces of tin dangling all around their ears. It was not how good, but how much, with them. How these Indians ever lived through a winter the way they dressed, I don't see. They wore only leggings, shirts, breech clouts and a blanket. Their legs were no barer than a Scotchman's though. Our Indians used to tuck things in the bosom of their shirt, as well as in their belts. They used to tuck butcher knives in their leggings. ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... of Jakoits village, rushed along the narrow path that led to his house, they heard the roar and crackle of the flames; when they gained the open they saw the bright light shining on the old cannon, whose polished brass was stained and streaked with red. Tiaru lay across the breech, dead. ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... not destined to meet the test just then, however, for just at that moment a courier in breech-clout and sandals dashed up the gallery and burst into the room, bearing in his right hand a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... the boreal areas the breech-clout was nearly universal with men, and the cincture or short petticoat with women. Even in Mexico and Mayan sculptures the gods are arrayed in gorgeous breech-clouts. The foot-gear in the tropics was the sandal, and, passing northward, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... moonlight. A sharp piercing cry rose into the air—my soul identified that death—shriek with the voice that I had heard, and I saw the man who was standing with the lanyard of the lock in his hand drop heavily across the breech, and discharge the gun in his fall. Thereupon a blood—red glare shot up into the cold blue sky, as if a volcano had burst forth from beneath the mighty deep, followed by a roar, and a shattering crash, and a mingling of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... was instilled into him in the nursery may possibly occur to some even at this day. 'In our childhood,' he complains, 'our mothers' maids have so terrified us with an ugly devil having horns on his head, fire in his mouth, a tail in his breech, eyes like a bison, fangs like a dog, a skin like a niger, a voice roaring like a lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one cry Boh!' Chaucer has expressed the belief of his age on the subject. It seems to have been a proper duty of a parish ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... squirting death out of her five barrels into the flank of the rushing stream of savages. "Oh, this bloody gun!" shouted a voice. "She's jammed again." The fierce metallic grunting had ceased, and her crew were straining and hauling at the breech. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... appeared to have any article of dress, and that was a ragged breech-clout. The others were naked as the wild beasts around them, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... had been selected for its stowage. The secret, however (if secret there was), came out next morning, when several very heavy cases of peculiar shape were brought alongside; which cases turned out to contain twelve steel 14-pounder breech-loading rifled field-pieces, with mountings, etcetera, complete, and several hundred rifles, sword-bayonets, etcetera, for the use of the colonial volunteers. The nature and destination of the contents were legibly enough set forth in stencilled lettering on the outside ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... — N. rear, back, posteriority; rear rank, rear guard; background, hinterland. occiput [Anat.], nape, chine; heels; tail, rump, croup, buttock, posteriors, backside scut^, breech, dorsum, loin; dorsal region, lumbar region; hind quarters; aitchbone^; natch, natch bone. stern, poop, afterpart^, heelpiece^, crupper. wake; train &c (sequence) 281. reverse; other side of the shield. V. be behind &c adv.; fall astern; bend backwards; bring up the rear. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... some fifteen years, rose deliberately to his feet, and stood before them in the sullen dignity of a captured warrior. Content hastily seized the stripling by an arm, and followed by Eben, who occasionally quickened the footsteps of the prisoner by an impetus obtained from the breech of his own musket, they hurriedly ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... bred. Then he reacted on himself. "The Fox might come back!" Suddenly he remembered something. He got out a common sulphur match. He wet it on his lips and rubbed it on the muzzle sight: Then on each side of the notch on the breech sight. He lined it for a tree. Yes! surely! What had been a blur of blackness had now a ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... why, wherefore, and for what cause that Alleluja was closed before the cup came once round. Why, believest thou not, forsooth, that there stood once a cock on St. Paul's steeple-top, and drew up the strapples of his breech? How provest thou that tale? By all the four doctors of Wynberryhills—that is to say, Vertas, Gadatryne, Trumpas, and Dadyltrymsert—the which four doctors say there was once an old wife had a cock to her son, and he looked out of an old ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... formulated at a desk on shore, and the mode of carrying them out notified to the service in print. All this would have been quite as astonishing to the contemporaries of Nelson or of Exmouth and Codrington as the aspect of a battleship or of a 12-inch breech-loading gun. ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... samples to be seen in Venice, showing that the principle of the modern revolver was born and partially carried out centuries before the ingenious American, Colonel Colt, perfected a weapon which has since become universal. The same remark will apply to the principle of breech-loading fire-arms, examples of which may here be seen three hundred years old. One very singular cannon was observed, actually made from closely woven rope, so strong and compact as to be capable of bearing a discharge with ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... face. He held his breath. Not a nerve trembled. The dog stopped, looked at Paul a moment, broke into a louder growl, opened his jaws wider, his eyes glaring more wildly, and stepped slowly forward. Now or never, Paul thought, was his time. The breech of the gun touched his shoulder; his eye ran along the barrel,—bang! the dog rolled over with a yelp and a howl, but was up again, growling and trying to get at Paul, who in an instant seized his gun by the barrel, and brought ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... gun to free the breech from the fork when Joe caught him by the shoulder and tried to ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... thought most suitable to each Was, for the elder and the stouter, first A Candiote cloak, which to the knee might reach, And trousers not so tight that they would burst, But such as fit an Asiatic breech; A shawl, whose folds in Cashmire had been nursed, Slippers of saffron, dagger rich and handy; In short, all things ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... right, sir," cried the gunner laughing. "You pressed on the lever and opened the breech-piece. That's where we load 'em, ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... number, are taking their seats in the luxurious chamber within. The first stop is at Sydney, Cape Breton, and the car is pointed accurately in that direction. At three minutes to 7 the engineers and conductor come on board; the former to place the powerful oxyhydrogen charge in the great breech-loading tube, the latter to close the doors against ingress or egress. Precisely at 7 the signal is given. A furious and powerful hissing is then heard, as well as a momentary scraping of the car on its runners. In another second she is high ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... without the universal serape, which often serves for both cloak and coat. Otherwise his garb was the ordinary stable wear of a Mexican gentleman's servant; wide velveteen trousers open along the outer seams, and fended with leather at breech and bottoms. "Batos" and a black glaze hat completed his habiliments, with a scarf of China crape, the chammora, around his waist. Scanning the face shadowed by the broad rim of his sombrero, it was seen to ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... Ernest R. Breech (Executive Vice President, Ford Motor, Company; member of Board of Directors of Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc., Pan-American Airways; President ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... Government system of screwing on new breech. Mexican and Civil War service possible. ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... him his hand came into contact with a polished metal surface cold as ice. It was his rifle. Naab had placed it under the blankets. Fingering the rifle Hare found the spring opening on the right side of the breech, and, pressing it down, he felt the round head of a cartridge. Naab had loaded the weapon, he had placed it where Hare's hand must find it, yet he had not spoken of it. Hare did not stop to reason with his first impulse. Without a word, with silent insistence, disregarding ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... longer there won't be enough material on land or sea to supply the demand for ready-made garments. As it is, I'm afraid the poor devils will have to go naked themselves until a new crop springs up. I saw one of Pootoo's wives patching his best suit of breech clothes to-day, so he must be ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... between a hat and a turban, and over his baggy Turkish trousers hung a long Persian coat of bright-colored, large-figured cloth, bound at the waist by a belt of cartridges. Across the shoulders was slung a breech-loading Martini rifle, and from his neck dangled a heavy gold chain, which was probably the spoil of some predatory expedition. A quiet dignity sat ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... He was oiling the breech action of a gun. It was an unusual thing for him to do, at that time of night, in his evening clothes. It never occurred to her, nevertheless, that he was going to shoot himself with that implement. She knew that he was doing it just for occupation—to keep himself from thinking. He looked ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... and the morning of the First Day has listened. God knows. God knows. What a whirl is this? Monstrous incongruity. Philosophy and fighting troopers. The Infinite and dead horses. There's humour for you. The Sublime takes off its hat to the Ridiculous. Send a cartridge clashing into the breech and speculate about the Absolute. Keep one eye on your sights and the other on Cosmos. Blow the reek of burned powder from before you so you may look over the edge of the abyss of the Great Primal Cause. Duck to the whistle of a bullet and commune with ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... hearth, in spite of the warmth of the September day. One of these two was Sir David Forster, a big man, with a light-brown beard and a florid complexion. The other was John Saltram, who sat in a lounging attitude on one of the deep window-seats examining his breech-loader. His back was turned towards the window, and the glare of the blazing logs shone full upon his dark face with ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... Chickahominy was not less peaceful. A couple of batteries lay below us, in the meadows; but the horses were dozing in the harness, and the gunners, standing bolt upright at the breech, seemed parts of their pieces; the teamsters lay grouped in the long grass. Immediately in front, Gaines's Mansion and outhouses spotted a hillside, and we could note beyond a few white tents shining through the trees. The roof of the old mill crouched ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... had passed. Clumps of palm trees were to be seen here and there. Pools of standing water, where horses and cattle stood cooling themselves, were frequent. The people whom we met wore little clothing. Men frequently had nothing but the breech-clout and hat. Women wore a skirt, but no upper garment. Children up to ten and twelve years of age ran naked. Reaching San Mateo at twelve o'clock, we found the village excited at our non-appearance. Our carretero had arrived long before with our luggage. He had told the presidente ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... the spring, ride in single file the Apaches, slowly, on tired horses, for the pursuing soldiers have given them no halting space. Naked, save for a breech-clout, with a narrow red band of dyed buckskin about his forehead, in which sticks a feather, each rides silent, grim, cruel, a hideous human reptile, as native to the desert as is the Gila monster. The horse is saddleless. For a bridle, the warrior uses a piece of grass rope twisted about the ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... which he will find enough to make him bite his nails. Still I wonder he did not come over and try his manhood otherwise. I would not have shunned him nor any Frenchman who ever kissed Bonaparte's breech. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... staying at a big hotel on the sea-shore, where a fellow is obliged to be dressed up all the time," he said when one of his sisters expressed surprise at his choice. "We shall regularly camp out, and father has given me a doubled-barreled breech-loader, to say nothing of his own rod and collection of flies. Jack and I will have the jolliest kind of a time while you're moonin' on the hot sands trying to think it ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... in the hats of its men; the 'Shine Musketoons,' after their lieutenant-colonel; the '289th Pennsylvania Volunteers,' after the State series of numbers, which began with 280 or thereabout; and the 'First Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Reserve Corps, Breech-Loading Carbineers,' and doubtless by other names, though I don't ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sides of the embrasure. The motion of the piece necessary to aim it vertically is effected around this axis of rotation. The weight of the gun is balanced by a system of counterpoises and the chains, l, and the breech terminates in a hollow screw, f, and a nut, g, held between two directing sectors, h. The cupola is revolved by simply acting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... buttocks, seat, rump, breech; ridge. Associated Words: supine, resupine, resupination, dorsigerous, dorsiferous, crick, dorsiparous, dos-a-dos, tergiferous, lumbago, notalgia, lumbar, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... clothes." He grinned again. "We'll want a breech clout, at least. I propose that we get the sheerest silk gauze we can find, and cut an eighth-inch square apiece to tie about our ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... barrel, which is octagon and extremely heavy. Ramrod under barrel. Stock extends only to breech and is inlaid with German silver. Extremely rare. This type was used ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... that there came a long, whirling, grinding noise, ending once more in a powerful click. He straightened himself then, and I saw that what he held in his hand was a sort of gun, with a curiously misshapen butt. He opened it at the breech, put something in, and snapped the breech-block. Then, crouching down, he rested the end of the barrel upon the ledge of the open window, and I saw his long moustache droop over the stock and his eye gleam as it peered along the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... visited several other chiefs, and found that all of them were taking their morning draught, or had already taken it. Returning to the king, I found him asleep in a small retired hut, with two women tapping on his breech. About eleven o'clock he arose again, and then some fish and yams, which tasted as if they had been stewed in cocoa-nut milk, were brought to him. Of these he eat a large portion, and lay down once more to sleep. I now left him, and carried to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... great waters. But it was plain that these people had achieved, without any treaty at all, a stage of civilization distinctly in advance of many of our treaty Indians to the south after twenty-five years of education. Instead of paint and feathers, the scalp-lock, the breech-clout, and the buffalo-robe, there presented itself a body of respectable-looking men, as well dressed and evidently quite as independent in their feelings as any like number of average pioneers in the East. Indeed, I had seen ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... by a friend to George, that whipp'd Jack, (52) that whipp'd the breech, That whipp'd the nation as long as it could stand over it - after which It was itself re-jerk'd by the sage author of this speech: "Methinks a Rump should go as well with a Scotch spur as with a switch." From a ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... a simple pressure of the gunner's finger over the valve. The air passes up through the center of the base, the pipe connecting with one of the hollow trunnions. The valve is a continuation of the breech of the gun. The smaller cuts illustrate Lieutenant Zalinski's plan for mounting the gun on each side of the launch, by which plan the gun after being charged may have the breech containing the dynamite depressed, and protected ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... bewildered, tempted and yet afraid to believe it true, moved to the depths of his nature, at once happy and unhappy in the gamut of his doubts. It could not be possible. No, it could not be possible. Standing at the breech of his gun, his eyes on a Spanish gunboat they had driven under the shelter of a fort, he found himself repeating: "And very much in love with my boy. And very much in love with my boy." And then, suddenly becoming intent again on the matter in hand, he slammed the breech-mechanism shut and gave ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... side of the circle appeared the Wyandot warriors, six abreast coming between the lodges. They were naked except for the breech cloth and moccasins, but their bodies were gorgeously painted in many colors. Mighty men were they. Few among them were less than six feet in height, and all were splendidly built for strength, skill and endurance. They ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the young Onondaga and was intercepted by the huge figure of Tandakora, the Ojibway, who stood erect by one of the fires, bare save for a breech cloth and moccasins, his body painted in the most hideous designs, of which war paint was ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... superior centering of the shot obtainable with the breech-loading system, Bashforth introduces a factor [sigma], called ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... repel attacks of Indians from," observed Phil; "two or three scouts with breech-loaders up on that scarlet wall there could keep off a ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... and moccasins of hide, mingling fraternally with their tufted and bepainted visitors, as well as with those rangers, both envied and hated, the savage coureurs de bois of the far Northern fur trade; men bearded, silent, stern, clad in breech-clout and leggings like any savage, as silent, as stoical, as hardy on the trail as on the ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... absence a few minutes at dinner yesterday, Professor Miller called about twenty minutes from two, and asked Mr. Thomson's foreman how many of the six shots had been fired. He added, 'Mind, it is loaded.' The foreman, instead of removing the breech or chamber to examine it, bad incautiously turned the pistol entire towards his own person, and lifting up the hammer with his fingers, while he counted the remaining loaded chambers, he must have slipped his fingers while the pistol was turned ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... meant action of some kind." The ex-rancher was silent for a moment. Then his right fist went into his left palm with a smack. "The only kind o' resolution that'll get anythin' is made o' lead and fits in a rifle breech! And I want to tell you, old man, if there ain't some pretty quick right-about-facin' in certain quarters, I'll be dashed if I ain't for it! An' I won't be standin' alone, either!" he ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... by the addition of a hideous balbriggan undershirt, sandwiched between tight trousers with innumerable buttons and a brilliantly coloured turban; while still others, in little else than a fez and breech-clout, seemed not a whit abashed. The children were either quite naked, or wrapped in sarongs, faded by the sun and weather to a dull harmony of their once too ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... weapons, and Black Eagle offered, through the interpreter, to give him a mustang and a fine wolf-skin. The pony was declined, the skin accepted, a quid pro quo being bestowed on the chief in the shape of one of Mr. Ramsay's breech-loaders, a gift that made the snake eyes glitter. But what earthly return can be made for some friendly offices? Could a thousand guns be considered as an adequate payment for the delirious thrill that Mr. Ramsay felt when he shot an arrow straight through the neck of a big ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... holding it in front of him, jerked down the lever as he had seen Dorothy do, so as to eject the old and put a fresh cartridge into the breech. But the old cartridge, in springing out, flew up and hit him such a smart rap between the eyes that Leon at once seized his little ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... change his trencher twice. Fourth, that he use all common courtesies; Sit bare at meals, and one half rise and wait. Last, that he never his young master beat, But he must ask his mother to define, How many jerks she would his breech should line. All these observ'd he could contented be To give ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... in the morning. Here they encamped at this early hour. He caught two wild geese, and told his wife to cook them. His followers all dispersed to hunt buffalo, as they were plenty about. He then put a new flint in his gun, and stripped himself all but his breech-cloth, and went out to explore the route he should pass on the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the invention of Mr. Henry Schlund. It may be regarded as the most simple in respect of lock mechanism of any existing revolver, whether single or double action. It extracts the cartridges automatically, and combines with this important feature strength and safety in the closing of the breech. Certainty of aim when firing is obtained by means of a double trigger, which serves many purposes. This secures quick repeating as in the double-action revolvers, and at the same time the revolver ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... with our chins cocked up till we were forenent the big drum, where yon old scoundrel Umgazi was standing with his young men looking as black as sin. For a moment their spears were shaking in their hands, and I heard the click of a breech-bolt. If we had winked an eye we would have become pincushions that instant. But some unearthly power upheld us. Even the laddie kept a stiff face, and for me I forgot my breeks in watching the Governor. He looked as solemn as an archangel, and comes to a halt opposite ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... enough to outlive his employer. He felt that he would fill the position of owner of Fairacres with dignity and profit. He did not like this new interest Mr. Wingate was taking, by fits and starts, in the deposed family who were his relatives and—enemies. In Marshall's opinion the breech between these kinsfolk ought not to be healed. Amy's presence in the house was a disastrous portent. She must be gotten out of it as soon as possible, and in such a way that she would not care to ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... difficulties arose too, connected with the use of the guns as a shelter from fire, and very exact rules had to be made to avoid tilting the nose and raising the breech of a gun in order to use ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... armor and disable those weapons. Even with her 12-inch guns the Texas can fire at the rate of one round per minute, and this record is as good as that made by any foreign ships. Rapid fire consists in good facilities for handling ammunition and loading the gun with a quick working breech mechanism. ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... below, with seaward port-holes blinded, and sweat dripping from our chins. Then we lay on the cabin roof again, in breech-clouts, waiting for a breeze, and showing no light except the red coals of two ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... combustion and respiration, the elevation of the continents, the laws of gravitation, the undulatory theory of light and heat, steam as a motive power in navigation, flying machines, the invention of the camera obscura, magnetic attraction, the use of the stone saw, the system of canalisation, breech loading cannon, the construction of fortifications, the circulation of the blood, the swimming belt, the wheelbarrow, the composition of explosives, the invention of paddle wheels, the smoke stack, the mincing machine! It is, therefore, easy to see why ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell
... repassed along the lagoon wall where, already curiously tired, he had halted beside an old bronze cannon—some ancient Spanish piece, if he could judge by the arms and arabesques covering the breech, dimly visible in the rays of ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... declined to do while he was prostrate. The fellow now began to beg for mercy, and pretended to be very sorry for his conduct. The parson now proposed to give him a severe hiding for his villainous treatment of the poor beast; but as the coward would not get off his breech, but remained seated upon the earth, and declared that he would not get upon his legs while I remained, he saved himself from a severe and well-merited drubbing. He very coolly offered to sell me the mutilated beast, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... was neither wind nor running water—confused, increasing, nearing! Then a shriek broke within the fort palisades,—"The enemy! the Iroquois!" and the courtyard was in an uproar indescribable. Painted redskins, naked but for the breech clout, were dashing across the cornfields to scale the palisades or force the hastily slammed gates. Father Daniel rushed from church to wigwams rallying the Huron warriors, while the women and children, the aged and the feeble, ran a terrified rabble ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... of his mind, that the dog had a turned-up tail; and that, if, in passing under the cloths, he had elevated and wagged it, their defilement must have been consummated. Ready-witted Brahmin! another idea. He called the cleverest of his children, and bade it affix to his breech-cloth a plantain-leaf, dog's-tail-wise, and waggishly. Then resuming his all-fours-ness, he passed a second time under the cloth, and conscientiously, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... perfectly flat in the vicinity of the river, and although much covered with dense bush, it was interspersed with numerous small glades, covered with parched herbage 2 or 3 feet in height. A few Tokrooris accompanied me with spare rifles (all muzzle-loaders, as the breech action had not been introduced in those days), and I was leading the way, occasionally breaking through the intervening bush, with ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... no big guns, for the reason that the uses for which she is intended will not require them. Not a gun will be in sight, and the battery will be abnormally light. There will be four six-inch breech-loading rifles, mounted in the open, and protected with heavy shields attached to the gun carriages; eight four-inch breech-loading rifles; twelve six-pounder, and four one-pounder rapid-firing guns; four machine or Gatling guns, and six ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... ye the land where dwells only mock-turtle, Where wine that should gladden but makes you fell queer. Where bayonets bend, where guns burst and hurtle Their breech in the face of their friends at the rear, Where lamps labelled 'safety' with just terrors fill you, Where water supplied you for milk is no theft, Where pills that should cure, if persisted in, kill you And the 'Hair Resurrector' takes all you've got left! Where ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... Indians. In the evening we exhibited different objects of curiosity, and particularly the air-gun, which gave them great surprise. Those people are almost naked, having no covering except a sort of breech-cloth round the middle, with a loose blanket or buffalo robe, painted, thrown over them. The names of these warriors, besides those already mentioned, were Karkapaha, or Crow's Head, and Nenasawa, or ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks |
