"Rifle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... happened on this particular night that my master was on sentinel duty for the first time in his life, and mightily proud of his charge. There he stood as stiff as a poker, with his rifle at his side, and I verily believe would have thought nothing of running his bayonet through the body of the commander-in-chief if he had presented ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... aflame with lights from top to base, you could see the buyers story after story, swarming like bees in a glass hive. Farther on in the wide space of the Infirmary square, the omnibuses gathered, and a detachment of redcoats just returned from rifle-practice on the moors crowded the pavement outside the hospital, amid an admiring escort of the youth of Manchester, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... From their far hamlets the yeomanry come; As through the storm-clouds the thunder-burst rolling, Circles the beat of the mustering drum. Fast on the soldier's path Darken the waves of wrath,— Long have they gathered and loud shall they fall; Red glares the musket's flash, Sharp rings the rifle's crash, Blazing and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... northern mountains of another continent, one has watched a leopard—mountain lions we call them there—braving the strange terrible smells and dangers of a man's camp, to stalk a sleeping fox-terrier; in absolute ignorance of the rifle barrel that covered it, yet miraculously successful in never giving the man behind the rifle the chance of a moonlight shot. Finn was sore and aching from many wounds, and stiff from long confinement. He knew that every one connected with the circus was sleeping; ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... may say,' said his father, 'Dulce et, &c. is our motto. Didn't you know what a nest of heroes we have here to receive you? Let me introduce you to Captain Ernescliffe, of the Dorset Volunteer Rifle Corps; Private Thomas May, of the Cambridge University Corps; and Mr. Aubrey Spencer May, for whom I have found a rifle, and am expected to find a uniform as soon as the wise heads have settled what ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Black Hawk made a short address. To these several speeches the governor replied collectively. Presents were then distributed among them by the governor. Keokuk received a splendid sword and brace of pistols; his son, Musanwont, a handsome little rifle: The head chiefs received long swords and the others short ones. Black Hawk was also presented with a brace of pistols and a sword. When this ceremony had ended, the Indians repaired to the common in front of the capitol, and there, ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... ample. Thar's my old dad! I can see him yet,' an' yere Enright closes his eyes some ecstatic. 'He was a shore man. He stood a hundred-foot without a knot or limb; could wrastle or run or jump, an' was good to cut a 4-bit piece at one hundred yards, offhand, with his old 8-squar' rifle. He never shoots squirrels, my father don't; he barks 'em. An' for to see the skin cracked, or so much as a drop of blood on one of 'em, when he picks it up, would have mortified the old ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... no danger," replied the lad, "it's all as quiet as——" But he did not finish the sentence; at that moment there was a crack of a rifle and a bullet passed ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... of dawn, when a round moon, solemn and immense, glowed in the south-western sky, Demid took his rifle and Finnish knife, and went on his sleigh into ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... the very top of the pass. Also there were low barracks, and soldiers. We heard firing. Standing still, we saw on the slopes of snow, under the radiant blue heaven, tiny puffs of smoke, then some small black figures crossing the snow patch, then another rattle of rifle-fire, rattling dry and unnatural in the upper, skyey air, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... arouse any false hopes, the kid might be mistaken. He also did not want to lose face in the eyes of this youngster. The question of whether he was game decided him. He stole back into the house where he took from the drawer of the living-room table a loaded revolver; he decided against a shotgun or rifle. ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... quite impracticable, though he means well. He talks about nothing but the Fianna and Finn McCool, and can't see that my fellows must have riding lessons, and must be got somehow to understand the mechanism of a rifle. Tim Halloran has been in a sulk ever since I told him what I thought of his conduct at the Rotunda. He never comes near me, and Mary O'Dwyer told me the other day that he called my volunteers a "pack of blackguards." I dare say it's perfectly true, but ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... inhabitants of an European province: that is, there are not at its head a few intelligent, but delicately-brought-up men of capital, while all the rest are ignorant laborers; but every one of these pioneers of civilization can handle the ax and the rifle, and can "calculate." If ever these magnificent dreams of the American people are realized—and all that is wanted for their realization is that things should only go on as they have been going on for the last two centuries—there will be seated upon that vast continent a population greater ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... chair with a bullet in his breast did the garrison realize that it was really under attack. The habitants had kept their secret well. There was a beating of drums and a hurrying to arms, and throughout the night a hot fusillade was kept up. By firing from behind houses and trees, and from rifle pits that were dug before the attack began, the Americans virtually escaped loss; while Hamilton's gunners were picked off as fast as they appeared at the portholes of the fort. Clark's ammunition ran ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... in canoes, whilst the passage was vigilantly guarded by ships of war, and of gaining the almost perpendicular heights of the opposite shore, were completed, soon after midnight, by the advance party, consisting of the rifle companies. While waiting for the residue of the detachment, a council of all the officers was held for the purpose of determining on their future measures. Although destitute of every implement required for ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... to live; that like the rest of these men, he had a father and mother and also his own little desires, remote from this place and sacred to him alone. He was also sorry for "uncle" and for that dying German, who lay in the puddle, and who had been killed, perhaps by a bullet from "uncle's" rifle. ...
— The Shield • Various
... Roger. "See how still he is! Whatever these jokers in uniforms are, they're not friendly!" He raised his shock rifle. "This last shot ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... prolonged struggle lies before the army of South Africa. The telegrams, however, which we receive from Great Britain of the national feeling, of the bye-election, of Lord Rosebery's speech, are full of encouragement and confidence. 'At last,' says the British colonist, as he shoulders his rifle and marches out to fight, no less bravely than any soldier (witness the casualty lists), for the ties which bind South Africa to the Empire—'at last they have made up their minds ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... venture there alone, even in broad daylight. There is, he tells us, warming up at last to the subject, much gold hidden there, which the spirits guard so jealously that they are ready to tear in pieces any mortal who is clever enough to find and bold enough to rifle their secret hoards. Only a priest, on account of his sacred office, is reckoned safe from their iniquitous spells. "But has not any one dared," we ask, "to go in company with a holy man, to search for this hidden treasure?" Well, yes, he had been told that men from ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... cups, pails, plates, and extra clothing were thrown by the board. One robe each was kept, one ax, one tin pail, and a scant supply of bacon and flour. Bacon could be eaten raw on a pinch, and flour, stirred in hot water, could keep men going. Even the rifle and the score of rounds of ammunition ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... passing opposite the main building the front door opened, and Draney, bearing a rifle in the hollow of his left arm, hastened out, holding ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... loading the gun, an old army rifle, bored out for shot. "I've got in six fingers of powder," ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... into the country again with his rifle this morning," Miss Sallie answered. "He feels as you do, Colonel, that the time has come to strike and we ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... advance by allowing the frontiersmen to come into their territory and settle on condition of becoming Spanish subjects. They hoped to make of these favored settlers a barrier against the rest of their kinsfolk. It was a foolish hope. A wild and hardy race of rifle-bearing freemen, so intolerant of restraint that they fretted under the slight bands which held them to their brethren, were sure to throw off the lightest yoke the Catholic King could lay upon them, when once they gathered strength. Under no circumstances, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... grandmotherhood had overweighted all other qualities, by reason of little Seth's numerous first cousins, made no reply, but looked uneasily at the rifle on the wall. Little Seth—her appropriated grandchild, both his parents being dead—was too small at present to do any great harm to anyone but himself; but the time might come. He was credited with having swallowed an inch-brad, without visible inconvenience; ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the fourteenth victim crouching in the shallow water, or squatting up on the bank?" whispered the boy who just then held the little Flobert rifle, with which the so-called ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... making their peculiar yell." The captain of the Pattie band replied by taking his gun and shooting the arrow in two. Driven out of the camp the following day, the chief shot a horse as he rode past it and was himself instantly pierced with four rifle balls. ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... hundred and two sub-districts under regimental commanders; for the artillery there are twelve sub-districts, and for the cavalry two districts. The brigade of an infantry sub-district comprises usually two line battalions, two militia battalions, the brigade depot, rifle volunteer corps, and infantry of the army reserve. Of the line battalions one is generally at home and one abroad. In an artillery sub-district are comprised a proportion of the royal artillery and artillery of the militia, volunteers, and army reserve respectively. In like manner a cavalry ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... state that the position chosen by them on board the Commodore's ship, was one where they apprehended the least danger to themselves—namely in the tops; for although an Indian will scorn to shrink from a rifle bullet or tomahawk, it by no means enters into his code of bravery that he is to submit himself to the terrible ordeal of being battered to a jelly by a huge globe of solid iron. With, an alertness not common to the habits and corpulence of these celebrated chiefs, and fully calculating ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... damned ice I'm going to send you and probably Metz on ahead for help. We'll make a two-man kyack for you to use when you reach the limit of the pack, but besides the kyack you'll carry nothing but your provisions, sleeping-bags, and rifle, and travel as fast as you can." Bennett paused for a moment, then in a different voice continued: "I wrote a letter last night that I was going to give you in case I should have to send you on such a journey, but I think I might as well give it to ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... make use of them in the trial instead of the expert Hamon, and that other one, Jaggerston, who, as every one knows, are professional expert witnesses, ready at all times to testify upon anything from handwriting to the velocity of a rifle bullet, providing they ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... huge proportions, were both increased by his garments, which were entirely of wolf skins. Even his cap was of this material, ornamented by a wolf's tail that streamed out behind and adorned in front with a pair of wolf ears pricked sharply forward. He carried a rifle and bore on his shoulders, as though it were a feather weight, a pack of such size than an ordinarily strong man would have found ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... rifle raised, is about to shoot the animal down. But at thought of danger to her calling "help!" he lowers his piece; and rushing in, lays hold of the bridle-rein. This instantly let go, to receive in his arms the woman, released from the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... the series known as The Leatherstocking Tales. These all have as their hero Leatherstocking, a pioneer variously known as Hawkeye, La Longue Carabine (The Long Rifle), and Natty Bumppo. A statue of this great original creation of American fiction now overlooks Otsego Lake. Leatherstocking embodies the fearlessness, the energy, the rugged honesty, of the worthiest of our pioneers, of those ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... ready for a start at six to-morrow,—put Mr. Forester's Manton alongside my Joe Spurling in the top tray of the case, my single gun and my double rifle in the lower, and see the magazine well filled—the Diamond gunpowder, you know, from Mr. Brough's. You'll put up what Mr. Forester will want, for a week, you know—he does not know the country yet, Tim;—and, hark you, what wine have ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... half-way up the mountain, and almost inaccessible—in winter entirely inaccessible—where he raised not half a support on the slips of earth among the ledges; his few starved sheep and goats did what they could for him, and his rifle did the rest. The first Raynier of them all was possibly an escaped convict, who fortified his retreat by these mountain-sides. He had no money; the women spun and wove all that was worn. He had no education; no Raynier had ever had; no Raynier had ever had occasion to sign his mark, let ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... shall be: Cunningly will I devise Colours to delight the eyes, Slipping from my fissured stem To get by stealth or stratagem The glory of the morning petal. Where the bees at noontide settle, Mine to rifle all their sweets: Honey and bee-bread on the teats Of my blossoms shall be spread, Till the lime-trees shake with dread Of the marvels still to come When their bees about ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... rifle in his right hand, while he drew the shrubbery apart with his left, and looked forth at ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... pastimes was to imagine a host of tiny soldiers each the size of my little finger, "but alive and real." These I would drill as I saw officers do their men in front of the barracks some distance from our home. Or else I would take to marching up and down the room with mother's rolling-pin for a rifle, grunting, ferociously, in Russian: "Left one! Left one! Left one!" in the double capacity of a Russian soldier and ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the shock of finding you to be—what you are, I am utterly mystified as to your object. I am a poor man. The entire contents of my house would fetch only a few hundred pounds if sold to-morrow. Yet you risk your liberty to rifle my bureau. For the last time—what have you ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... barrier of mountains behind which the sun was setting; the second depicting Don Fulano, with Dick Wade and John Brent on his back, plunging down the gorge upon the abductors, one of whom had just pulled the trigger of his rifle; while the third gives the scene in which the heroic horse receives his death-wound in carrying the fugitive across the creek away from his pursuers. At this distance of time, I am unable to bear any testimony as to the technical value of the little pictures; I am inclined to fancy that they ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... crackled again with the weight of the great body now almost upon him, the sentry raised his rifle. A shot rang out, arousing the camp not yet fully settled to sleep. The echo bounded back from the startled hills, and rolled away over the peaceful farms and orchards, growing fainter and fainter, until only a whisper of it reached the white tent ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... indecently and clamorously interrupt the conversation of their elders, tease them with the most impertinent questions, roughly collar the gentlemen, climb their knees uninvited, hang about their shoulders or rifle their pockets, pull the ladies' gowns, disorder their hair, tumble their collars, and importunately beg for ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... crowded with German troops, also with a great number of the inhabitants of the town, most of them elderly men and women with children, who had fallen into their power. The Germans, under the command of officers, were dragging the men from the arms of their wives and children to one side, and with rifle-butts beating back the screaming women. Among the men I noticed two or three priests who were doing their best to soothe their companions and even giving them absolution ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... the head of the falls to the Forks, and say it was only two hundred and ten miles and not over two hundred and fifty, that's over twenty miles a day, on foot, in the mountains, under pack and a heavy rifle, in moccasins, and over prickly-pear country that got their feet full of thorns. Clark pulled out seventeen spines, broken off in his feet, one day ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... community where the only intruder to be feared was heat, and so it had resulted that while the corrals, stables, and storehouses had their guards, only a single sentry paced the long length of the eastward side of the post, a single pair of eyes and a single rifle barrel being deemed amply sufficient to protect against possible prowlers the rear yards and entrances of the row. The westward front of the officers' homes stood in plain view, on bright nights at least, of the sentry at the guard-house, and needed no other protector. ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... shall give thee the desires of thine heart.' Does that mean that if a man loves God he may get everything he wants? Yes! and No! If it is supposed to mean that our religion is a kind of key to God's storehouse, enabling us to go in there and rifle it at our pleasure, then it is not true; if it means that a man who delights himself in God will have his supreme desire set upon God, and so will be sure to get it, then it is true. Fulfil the conditions and you are sure of the promise. If our prayer in its deepest essence be 'Not my will, but ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... India? They're going to take them away, of course. Mutiny of India's silent millions? Rubbish! Not because a mutiny would contradict the far-famed 'response of the Indian Empire,' but because India's silent millions haven't got a rifle amongst them. You needn't tell me they've given you forty reasons for getting on with that barracks. I know their reasons. All of 'em put together only mean that in a dull, dim Oxford-and-Cambridge way they see a connexion between the word 'war' ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the little imps were dancing With ready-loaded pistol and rifle-barrelled gun; All the little devils they played upon the fiddle, But for the grand piano Old Harry was ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... he discouraged a tendency to Militarism and Imperial Expansion: That was the habit of mind which a Briton's primary duty to stifle was, Seeing that the country's salvation lay rather with the intelligent, spontaneous, disinterested volunteer who didn't care how obsolete the pattern of his rifle was: Too much skill in shooting or drill was a perilous thing, and he did not mean to acquire it, For fear of alarming peace-loving Emperors and such-like by display of a combative spirit; Regular armies tended to that: and in view of the state of ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... swore if he did not come to him immediately he would shoot him. The man replied he hoped massa wan't in earnest. 'I'll show you whether I am in earnest,' said the master, and with that he levelled his rifle, took deliberate aim, and shot the negro on the spot. He died immediately. Though great efforts were made by a few colored men to bring the murderer to punishment, they were all ineffectual. The evidence against him was clear enough, but the influence in his favor was so ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... cost, but highly prized by the red-men, and for which they gave in exchange peltries of great value. The trade was one of slow returns, but of great profits to the trader. And it was of about equal advantage to the Indian; for with the trap or rifle he had gotten for a few skins he was able to secure more game in a day than his bow and arrow and rude "dead-fall" would procure for him in a month of toilsome hunting. The traders were therefore held in high esteem among the Cherokees, who encouraged their living and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... what is meant by "mamelon" and "ravelin," When I can tell at sight a Chassepot rifle from a javelin, When such affairs as SORTIES and surprises I'm more wary at, And when I know precisely what is meant by Commissariat, When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery, When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery, In short, when I've a smattering ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Melinda Jones for a teacher, had no fear of his success. And so, some time in August, when the summer work at the Jones' was nearly done, Melinda came to the farmhouse and was duly installed as mistress of the chamber which James and John had occupied—the latter removing his Sunday clothes, and rifle, and fishing lines, and tobacco, and the slippers Ethie had given him, into Andy's room, which he shared with his brother. Mrs. Markham, senior, got on better with Melinda than she had with Ethelyn; Melinda knew exactly ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... or marmot is a huge, lumbering, squirrel-like animal in the rocky regions, wholly terrestrial and feeding chiefly on roots and grass. The young are fairly good eating and to shoot them with a rifle is ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... him for the last time during the siege. He was just starting for drill with his rifle in his hand. One of the four watercolors which were his last work, stood uncompleted on his easel. There was a shapeless spot at the bottom. He held a handkerchief in his free hand. He moistened this from time to time ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... kit. And the usual wool scout clothes and good shoes and soft hat. That's about all. Two trout rods, for the mountains. One shotgun for luck, and one .22 rifle—no more. It'll make a load, but Jesse's river ship will carry it. Nasty ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... Sanders, whilom United States Consul in London, and one of the leaders of the ex-Confederacy, is here; he is preparing plans for a system of rifle pits and zigzags outside the fortifications, at the request of General Trochu. Mr. Sanders, who took an active part in the defence of Richmond, declares that Paris is impregnable, if it be only well defended. He complains, however, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... not know whether the Federals had organized cuirassiers, or were recurring to the customs of Gustavus Adolphus. I saw a poor fellow lying dead on the pike, pierced through breastplate and body by a rifle ball. Iron-clad men are of small account ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... Indians of Florida, Mr. MacCauley says that among the children's games are skipping and dancing, leap-frog, teetotums, building a merry-go-round, carrying a small make-believe rifle of stick, etc. They also "sit around a small piece of land, and, sticking blades of grass into the ground, name it a 'corn-field,'" and "the boys kill small birds in the bush with their bows and arrows, and call it 'turkey-hunting.'" Moreover, they "have also dolls ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... had reached safety. The natives were around him, feeling his arms and limbs, stuttering questions. He bade them be silent, caught up his rifle and covered the tiger, while Skag made the tilted pole, ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... to say, ma'am, that before I was as old as that little boy," pointing to John, "I could hit a mark well; and a woman ought at least to know how to prime and load a rifle, even if she does not fire it herself. It is a deadly weapon, ma'am, and the greatest leveller in creation, for the trigger pulled by a child will settle the business of the stoutest man. I don't mean to say that we may be called to use them in that way, but it's always better to have them, and ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... being said by friend er foe." "And," added ex-Corporal Grimes, stamping the sidewalk with his peg leg, "what's more, there wasn't ary one of them Johnny Rebs that couldn't pick off a squirrel five hundred yards away with a rifle—a RIFLE, mind ye, not a battery of machine guns. Every time they was a fight, big er little, we used to stand out in the open and shoot at each other like soldiers—AND gentlemen—aimin' straight at the feller we'd picked out to kill. They tell me they was ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... and Alexandria alternated in spasms of fear. Twice, what seemed like well-authenticated reports came from the former place that Stuart had passed through our lines. Chain Bridge was torn up and all the negroes in Alexandria were out digging rifle-pits. Our force was captured repeatedly (without our knowledge) and awful dangers threatened us, according to Washington authority. These, and many other equally false reports filled the air. They were probably the result of logical inferences from the actual situation. The time had arrived ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... brief interval Jack Everson had carefully examined his rifle to assure himself that it was in ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... on with a jaunty swing that somehow was reassuring. Who could he be? As he came close, he dropped his rifle on his sled and approached with ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... purpose of reporting a plan for the organization and instruction of the militia of the United States, a system of tactics for the artillery, a system of cavalry tactics, and a system of infantry and rifle tactics. The reports on the plan for the organization and instruction of the militia and that on the system of infantry and rifle tactics were written wholly by General Scott, and adopted by the board. Under a resolution of Congress in 1835 there was published ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... scowling mountaineer who held a rifle and drew it to his shoulder as Chauvenet threw out his arms, dropped them to his thighs and ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... after the sun's futile effort to appear, that Bill slipped the rifle from under the sled-lashings ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... outfit consist of two cups and saucers, two knives and forks, and two spoons; that a man may be hospitable in a cabin, twelve by fifteen, with only the forest for his larder; and that an American needs only an axe, a rifle, and nary red, for his start in life. Meshach Browning finds in his Paradise very much what our first parents found outside of theirs. At nineteen he is the husband of pretty Mary McMullen, and joint-proprietor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Eliya, a mountain health-resort. Aided by his brother, he brought emigrants thither from England, together with choice breeds of cattle, and before long the new settlement was a success. During his residence in Ceylon he published, as a result of many adventurous hunting expeditions, The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon (1853), and two years later Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon (1855). After a journey to Constantinople and the Crimea in 1856, he found an outlet for his restless energy by undertaking the supervision of the construction of a railway across the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Capt. Busby, and his gondola was chartered to carry the party to the Lake. Mr. Riddick made every preparation necessary for them, but one of the parties heard that an alligator was on exhibition near the hotel, and thinking that it was brought from the Lake, at once provided himself with a rifle and a large quantity of fixed ammunition. All were then ready and they left for the canal, where they would take the gondola. She was then at her wharf, and everything being placed in, Capt. Busby took his stand at the wheel and gave orders ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... the face of a stream of bullets from those terrible automatic pistols, what a carnage there would be! It was frightful to think of. Why does the law permit those cowards' tools to be made and sold? A pistol is the one weapon that has no legitimate use. An axe, a knife—even a rifle, has some lawful function. But a pistol is an appliance for killing human beings. It has no other purpose whatever. A man who is found with house-breaking tools in his possession is assumed to be a house-breaker. Surely a man ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... next Saturday, as Mr. Ashburn was walking over his farm, he saw a man sitting on one of his fences, dressed in a jockey-cap, and wearing a short hunting-coat. He had a rifle over his shoulder, and carried a powder-flask, shot and bird bags. In fact, he was a fully equipped sportsman, a somewhat ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... apparently was uncomfortable in the chair-like depression so different from the low stools he was accustomed to. Soriki was still in the second passenger place, but he, too, shared that with another of the men from the city who rested across bony knees a strange weapon rather like a Terran rifle. ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... hundred musketeers of the Janissary corps replied to the fire of the Spaniards. The range was a few feet. Men were firing in each other's faces, and at such close quarters the arquebuse with its heavy ball was a more death-dealing weapon than the modern rifle. Such slaughter could not last, and the caballeros were eager to end it by closing on the ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... we were given our regimental number,—Sixty-first—and thenceforth the regiment was known and designated as the Sixty-first Illinois Infantry. We also drew our guns. We were furnished with the Austrian rifle musket. It was of medium length, with a light brown walnut stock,—and was a wicked shooter. At that time the most of the western troops were armed with foreign-made muskets, imported from Europe. Many regiments had old Belgian muskets, a heavy, cumbersome piece, and awkward and unsatisfactory every ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... rifle and my helmet Keep on getting in the way, And my brains are numb and dopey Try'n' to cuss ...
— "I was there" - with the Yanks in France. • C. LeRoy Baldridge
... infatuated with the fairy-book princess who happened to be in your pathway—and it was Beatrice. She made you feel that anything your slightly mad and quite unrealizing young self might do was proper. Just as the boy with a new air rifle deliberately sets up a target to shoot away at because the savage in him must justify hitting something besides the ozone, so you have merely wooed and won your own falsehood ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Cephalonia is but slight; but Stallman, who had been there before, gave me some information about it. It is one of the Ionian Islands, under the protection of England, and had an English garrison, at that time consisting of about five hundred of the rifle brigade. Thanks to Sir Frederick Adams, the country appears to be in a flourishing condition; the roads are excellent, and the inhabitants cultivate not only the fertile valleys, but every inch of soil to be found among its rocky heights. There is another ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... Albert himself, however, stayed in the field with his army and when it fell back he was among the brave men that covered the retreat. He seemed to be everywhere that he was needed, and often in the front line the Belgian soldiers would be cheered by the sight of their King loading and firing a rifle by their side, in the place of ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... circumstance has left a lasting impression on Colonel House's mind. Ambassador Gerard took him out one evening for a little relaxation. Both Mr. Gerard and Colonel House were fond of target shooting and the two men sought one of the numerous rifle galleries of Berlin. They visited gallery after gallery, but could not get into one. Great crowds lined up at every place, waiting their turns at the target; it seemed as though every able-bodied man in Berlin was spending all his time improving ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... with which it rests in contact forming sensitive picrates that are easily set off, but TNT is inert toward metals and keeps well. TNT melts far below the boiling point of water so can be readily liquefied and poured into shells. It is insensitive to ordinary shocks. A rifle bullet can be fired through a case of it without setting it off, and if lighted with a match it burns quietly. The amazing thing about these modern explosives, the organic nitrates, is the way they will stand banging about and ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... out a butterfly net in two sections and the deeply scalloped, silver-trimmed butt of a sporting rifle. Edelweiss adorned his green felt hat; a green tin box punched full of holes was slung ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... to shoot us. There were then ten of us. The guns had already been leveled at us, when suddenly a German soldier ran out shouting that we had not fired on them. A few minutes before we had heard rifle firing and the Germans said it was the Aerschot people who were shooting, though all these had been locked up in the church and we were the only inhabitants then in the streets, cleaning them, under surveillance of Germans. It was this German ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... ways of the town till I struck the open road, where I engaged a peasant, who in four hours had driven me twenty miles from the town and set me down in the midst of a deeply forested region. On the way I bought a rifle, three hundred cartridges, an ax, a knife, a sheepskin overcoat, tea, salt, dry bread and a kettle. I penetrated into the heart of the wood to an abandoned half-burned hut. From this day I became a genuine trapper but I ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... twenty-two rifle—that island's just swarming with rabbits, and I think I heard some quail when we were there the other ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... the deadly nature of the white man's rifle, although at that time they had not themselves become possessed of it. When their comrades fell, and the two white men were seen to kneel and take deliberate aim at those who followed, the whole party scattered right and left and ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... old fashioned these days," Lester went on. "Now, in most of the whaling boats, they put the harpoon in a gun, just as you might thrust a ramrod down the muzzle of a rifle. The harpoon has an explosive shell attached to its head like the torpedo of a submarine. The harpoon is shot from the gun, and after it leaves the muzzle, a rocket charge attached to it carries it still further. When it hits ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... and I, like other emigrants, went, not to give, but to get, to rifle the wood of flowers for the service of the fire-ship. We returned with a rich booty, among which was the Uva-ursi, whose leaves the Indians smoke, with the Kinnikinnik, and which had then just put forth its highly finished little ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... arguing and persuading the woolly-headed cannibals to come and labor on the Queensland plantations Otoo kept watch. And often and often his low voice warned me of suspicious actions and impending treachery. Sometimes it was the quick shot from his rifle, knocking a nigger over, that was the first warning I received. And in my rush to the boat his hand was always there to jerk me ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... too, and it was no easy matter to find the assistance he needed. About the only group crime still flourishing was hijacking; it took him a long while to locate a small under-cover outfit which operated around St. Louie and arrange to obtain a helicopter and pilot. Getting hold of the rifle was still more difficult, but he managed. And by the time everything was assembled, he'd found out what he needed to know about Dr. Leffingwell ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... point. That which has just been said applies chiefly to things whose price is fixed by beauty. But handicraft gives us many works not pleasing to the eye, yet of the highest skill—a Jacquard loom, a Corliss engine, a Hoe printing press, a Winchester rifle, an Edison dynamo, a Bell telephone. Ruskin may scout the work of machinery, and up to a certain point may take us with him. Let us allow that works of art marked by the artist's own touch—the gates of Paradise by Ghiberti, a shield by Cellini, a statue ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... was tugging at his heart. He rode ten miles, halted and pitched camp. Early the next morning he rode back alone, leaving his rifle behind, but keeping his pistols in his belt. He wanted to see the husband of the beautiful young lady. The man must be a pretty good kind of man—a royalist by birth probably, but if he could be rightly informed might become ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... successors is a long one, but that certain something, that indefinable quality, which had made the first books great trash was irrevocably gone. Of all the flamboyant characters of the tales Mr. Barnes was deservedly the most popular, and at such times as he was not winning international rifle matches at Monte Carlo, or racing about Europe in respectable pursuit of desirable young ladies, he inhabited a dwelling on lower Fifth Avenue. Practically all Fifth Avenue were the scenes of "Miss Nobody ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... the other garments, had been fashioned and put together by the deft hands of the mother in Kentucky. Powder-horn and bullet-pouch were suspended by strings passing over alternate sides of the neck and a fine flint-lock rifle, the inseparable companion of the Western youth, rested on the right shoulder, the hand ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... first flung him astride the saddle and sent him loping off to town alone, but who had secretly followed him from thicket to thicket, and stood ready in the market-place at last to lift him down; it was Beltran who had given him his own rifle, had taught him to take the bird on the wing, had led him out at night to see the great silent alligator in his scale-armor sliding over the land from the coast and plunging into the fresh waters of the bay,—who took him with him on the long ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... stumbled along still muttering speculations. There was a subdued debate. Once a man fell down, and as he reached for his rifle a comrade, unseeing, trod upon his hand. He of the injured fingers swore bitterly and aloud. A low, tittering laugh went ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... out. Then I chuckled. Marcia was likely to have a great wolf hunt with Thompson, who knew no difference between a shotgun and a rifle, and would have legged it from a fox if he had met it alone. "Marcia Wilbraham, I'll pay you five dollars if you ever get out wolf hunting with Thompson. Why, the only thing he can do for ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... somebody addressed by the name of Lies.[1] Lies! thought I, that must be the man who came across the country from Kentucky to Monterey while we lay there in the Pilgrim in 1835, and made a passage in the Alert, when he used to shoot with his rifle bottles hung from the top-gallant studding-sail-boom-ends. He married the beautiful Dona Rosalia Vallejo, sister of Don Guadalupe. There were the old high features and sandy hair. I put my chair beside him, and began conversation, as any ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the small, clear fire of hickory logs in the big living room of the bungalow in the woods, built beside the great workshops and laboratory. With the scientist and the two boys was Andy Sudds, the old hunter, who sat cleaning his rifle, and Washington White was busy in and out of the room as he cleared away the supper and set the ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... the wings, a lackey in red livery stepped on the stage and set a number of small seats at regular distances from one another. It was not until he had left and returned again with a pea-rifle and a violin that Frederick recognised the brave private, Bulke. The next moment Stoss appeared. A frantic outburst of delight, threatening never to end, greeted him. He wore a jacket and knee-breeches of black velvet, a lace ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... to ejaculate," said Bud, "we're as hollow an' cold as a rifle bar'l. I'll turn this leetle summer matinee over ter you, my friend, ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... occupied a few weeks before. Then the pastor of a city Church, in the midst of a blessed revival, surrounded by all the comforts of civilisation; now out here in Minnesota, in this barn, sitting on a bundle of prairie grass through the long hours of night with a breech- loading rifle in hand, guarding a number of horses from ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... was standing a short rifle-shot away, bridled and with an empty saddle. Whether he was tied or not Lone could not tell at that distance, but he knew the horse by its banged forelock and its white face and sorrel ears, and he knew the owner of the horse. He ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... broke in Mrs. Cortlandt. "But times have changed. Panama has seen her last revolution, and she needs a business man at her head. Presidents are not made now by rifle and sword, and the man with the machete must give way to the man with a capacity for handling big affairs. There will be no more swineherd Presidents like your Guatemalan countryman Corera, nor tyrants like Zelaya. Panama is a ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... along, passing fortifications and rifle-pits, till we arrived at Petersburg; then onward to City Point, the place of general exchange. Here, for the first time in eleven months, we saw the "flag of the free," floating in proud beauty from ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... for communicating with a mass of desperate and furious men would not have been safe under circumstances similar to those of the present day. A man standing in this way on the deck of a boat, within speaking distance of the shore, might, with a rifle, or even with a musket, have been killed in a moment by any one of the thousands on the shore. In those days, however, when the only missiles were spears, javelins, and arrows, a man might stand at his ease within speaking distance of his enemies, entirely ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and it means that we are under penalties which are sure to follow. No deed that we do, howsoever it may fade from the tablets of our memory, but writes in visible characters, in proportion to its magnitude, upon our characters and lives. All human acts have perpetual consequences. The kick of the rifle against the shoulder of the man that fires it is as certain as the flight of the bullet from its muzzle. The chalk cliffs that rise above the Channel entomb and perpetuate the relics of myriads of evanescent lives; and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a shot, not distant, startled them. He crouched, wary as a rattlesnake about to strike. The rifle seemed almost ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... Sru and Nana—my crew—to hand my few little effects, which consisted of clothing, tobacco, and a Winchester rifle and ammunition, out of the canoe, the whole party of us started off for Kusis's house, the old pig-hunter proudly carrying the Winchester in advance, and Kusis and his wife each holding ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... recommendation of the Secretary that the three-battalion organization be adopted for the infantry. The adoption of a smokeless powder and of a modern rifle equal in range, precision, and rapidity of fire to the best now in use will, I hope, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... repeat this to the Glasgow detective when he questioned me. To think that my careless words have led them to believe Sir David capable of such a crime! But I had no idea of the meaning they would attach to it. You will understand presently how it was. 'I went to clean my rifle,' he answered, shutting the door behind him. 'I always see to that myself. And where are you off to so fast, Cousin Juliet? That is what you are to me, it appears.' And so we talked: about me, and our newly discovered relationship. I need not repeat all that, need I? ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... walls! Perchance I never shall behold you more! On father's and mother's grave the shadow falls. My love has gone under our flag to war; And I will follow him where fortune calls; I have had a rifle in my ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... deer with a single-shot rifle when it was going through thick brush almost as fast as a locomotive; and I believe that he once assisted in killing a panther in a thicket where you couldn't see two yards ahead. The point is that he meant to eat the deer—and the ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... to his thought there came the sudden crack of a rifle from the direction of the ruined temple. The figure of the rider lurched over, and, with a leap, the animal had thrown him and was off desertward. There was a fiendish yell from the mimosa bushes. Three or four dark forms rose like magic from their shadows, their spears glinting in the moonlight ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... computation. Scarcely anything seems impossible to the man who can will strongly enough and long enough. One talent with a will behind it will accomplish more than ten without it, as a thimbleful of powder in a rifle, the bore of whose barrel will give it direction, will do greater execution than a carload burned ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... skylight, on the quarter-deck, with the royal standard suspended over it, shewing the king's arms. The chair was covered with the union flag; a guard was ranged on each side the quarter-deck, consisting of the marines, and a detachment of the rifle corps; and the captains of the fleet attended in their full-dress uniforms. The royal standard was hoisted the moment of the procession's beginning, which took place in the following order—Lord Nelson came up ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... Nisbett's invitation, in visiting, in the company of that gentleman, the establishments of certain manufacturers of firearms, where he very carefully inspected and tested the several weapons submitted to him for approval; finally selecting a six-shot magazine rifle, which was not only a most excellent weapon in all other respects, but one especially commending itself to him on account of the simplicity of its mechanism, which he believed would prove to be a very strong point in its favour when put ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... tent stove and pipe; two tracking lines; three small axes; cooking outfit, con- sisting of two frying pans, one mixing pan and three aluminum kettles; an aluminum plate, cup and spoon for each man; one .33 caliber high- power Winchester rifle and two 44-40 Winchester carbines (only one of these carbines was taken with us from New York, and this was intended as a reserve gun in case the party should separate and return by different routes. The other was one used by Stanton when previously ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... round just in time to see a half a dozen spears come at him, and about a dozen natives around and painted, jumping about in great excitement. Going forward a little, he got time to clear the lock of his rifle, from the oil rag which usually protected it. He turned on his assailants, and sent a bullet amongst them; it hit a tree instead of a blackfellow, but as they still menaced him, his next shot was more successful, when seeing one of their number fall, the rest decamped. It was now ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... being thus concluded, the gratified young Indian dismounted, with his rifle and pack, containing his blanket, hunting-suit, etc., which he carried before him, laid across the shoulder of his novel steed; and, under the guidance of Gaut, he led the animal into the cow-yard, where he was tied and fed, and the fence, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... mean the major. Now, there's his bear dogs, they're a different proposition, eh; all of 'em big and fierce, just like you'd expect to find when it comes to stopping a black bear in the canebrake. And he says we might try a chance with him tomorrow after Bruin. He's got a rifle to loan ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... Tim was a very small boy," said the Indian, after a few minutes' meditation, "did he understand how to trap the beaver and the martin, and how to point the rifle so as to carry death to the ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... proposed the enlistment of 1,000 Negroes in the volunteer Marine Corps Reserve for duty in the general service in a segregated composite defense battalion. The battalion would consist primarily of seacoast and antiaircraft artillery, a rifle company with a light tank platoon, and other weapons units and components necessary to make it a self-sustaining unit.[4-9] To inject the subject of race "to a less degree than any other known scheme," the commandant ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... that Japanese lads by the time they "graduate" from the middle school into the higher school have had some elementary military training. A higher-school youth knows how to handle a rifle and has fired twice at a target. At Kami Suwa the problem of how middle-class boys should procure economical lodging while attending their classes had been solved by self-help. An ex-scholar of twenty had managed to borrow 4,000 yen and had proceeded to build on a hillside ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Mexico to push his fortunes, and went through many adventures, including service in the Mexican War. He also was for a short time settled in Philadelphia engaged in literary work. Returning to this country he began a long series of novels of adventure with The Rifle Rangers (1849). The others include The Scalp Hunters, Boy Hunters, and Young Voyagers, and had great ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... the people is a Force that must be economized, and also managed, as the blind Force of steam, lifting the ponderous iron arms and turning the large wheels, is made to bore and rifle the cannon and to weave the most delicate lace. It must be regulated by Intellect. Intellect is to the people and the people's Force, what the slender needle of the compass is to the ship—its soul, always counselling the huge mass of wood and iron, and always pointing ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... in your rear; and faithfully reserve the spoil for an equal and common partition. It would not be reasonable," he added with a laugh, "that whilst we are toiling to the destruction of the drones, our more fortunate brethren should rifle ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the enemy at least is watching, and that while we may retreat unattacked it will not be unobserved. Hark! do you hear that, George? It's rifle shots, isn't it?" ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and when they looked down they could see Tom himself get in with shooting-clothes on and a great rifle in his hand. He waved his cap to them, and Pansy cried: "Hoo-lay!" The boat pulled away and soon touched the ice; Tom sprang nimbly on shore, and before long he could be seen only as a little black dot on that dazzling plain of snow. Then he was observed ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables
... and vengeance,' Mr. Stead calls her. You are too young to know about her but I remember reading of her in 1872, during the Commune troubles in France. She is an anarchist, and she used to wear a uniform, and shoulder a rifle, and help to build barricades. She was arrested and sent as a convict to one of the French penal colonies. She has a most wonderful love for animals in her heart, and when she went home she took four cats with her. She was put into prison again in France ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... ignorance, and disappears with education and the general opening up of a country. The inquisitor can no longer boast of "strained relations"—strained physically on the rack, owing to differences of religious opinion. The state of things which made it possible for sepoys to revolt because rifle bullets were greased with the fat of a sacred animal, or for yellow men to tear up railway tracks because the magic desecrated the tombs of their ancestors, is rapidly passing away, as Orientals realize the profits to be made from ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... heart! From my stockade I saw him put out to sea in a big boat. Matara and I watched him from the fighting platform behind the pointed stakes. He sat cross-legged, with his gun in his hands, on the roof at the stern of his prau. The barrel of his rifle glinted aslant before his big red face. The broad river was stretched under him—level, smooth, shining, like a plain of silver; and his prau, looking very short and black from the shore, glided along the silver plain and over into the blue ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... good comrades as could be wished. The 52nd had a thousand men in the ranks, and there were many old soldiers of the Peninsula among them. They came from Oxfordshire for the most part. The 95th were a rifle regiment, and had dark green coats instead of red. It was strange to see them loading, for they would put the ball into a greasy rag and then hammer it down with a mallet, but they could fire both further and straighter than we. All that part of Belgium was covered ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... time discovered that I was alone and I was pursued with imprecations, arrows, and rifle balls. The fact that it is difficult to aim anything but imprecations accurately by moonlight, that they were upset by the sudden and unexpected manner of my advent, and that I was a rather rapidly moving target saved me ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cheat?—Oh, legs and feet!" in wrath young Silas cried; And springing high into the air, he jerked his quid aside. "No man shall put my dander up, or with my feelings trifle, As long as Silas Fixings wears a bowie-knife and rifle." ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... made, mostly by the right wing of the army, the left wing was engaged in constructing a strong line of defence, stretching from the White-Oak Swamp to the Chickahominy, consisting of six redoubts connected by rifle-pits or barricades. General Barnard says,—"The object of these lines (over three miles long) was to hold our position of the left wing against the concentrated force of the enemy, until communications across the Chickahominy could be established; or, if necessary, to maintain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... I can assure you. We are only going out to do a little outpost duty, to learn to hear the bullets flying without ducking, and to fire our rifles without shutting our eyes. I don't suppose there are five men in the three companies who have ever fired a rifle in their lives. ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... meant mischief. I rode towards a mob of them and cracked my whip, which had no effect in dispersing them. They made a sudden pause, and then gave a sudden shout or howl. It seemed as if they knew, or had heard something, of white men's ways, for when I unstrapped my rifle, and holding it up, warning them away, to my great astonishment they departed; they probably wanted to find out if we possessed such things, and I trust they were satisfied, for they gave us up apparently ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... pronounce it an uninteresting view. But what I consider splendid is this: with the exception of the nearest barn, which is about three hundred yards off in a straight line, there is no shelter better than that of a molehill for one of the enemy's skirmishers. Far as a rifle-ball can range, we are monarchs of the plain below; only there is a thicket in the way yonder—a plantation, I believe, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... her calf. There is no danger that a bat will ever fly against you in the dark; for they can avoid all mishap even when their eyes are put out. They have special sense organs that tell them when they are nearing an object, and can fly at headlong speed with the accuracy of a rifle bullet directly into a small opening. This power is all due to the mysterious sense located in their wings and ears, which causes even man to consider his senses ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... individuals are struck down and mauled, dragged to prison and many of them are mortally wounded. An old soldier, eighty years of age, retired to his country home three months earlier, dies after twenty days' confinement in a dungeon, from a blow received in the stomach by a rifle butt; women are flogged. "All citizens that with an interest in law and order," nearly five thousand families, have emigrated; their houses in town and in the country are pillaged, while in the surrounding ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Very soon I had an opportunity of putting my plan into execution. A significant shaking of the little curtain at the foot of the berth showed that it was being used as a scaling-ladder. I lay perfectly still, quite as much interested in the sport as if I had been waiting, rifle in hand, for big game. Soon the intruder peeped into my berth, looked cautiously around him, and then proceeded to walk stealthily across my feet. In an instant he was shot upwards. First was heard ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... examples of the army practice with the "General's" new rifle. But I must refer the curious to his instructive pamphlet. The position I am about to take up is a serious one; and I prefer to fortify it by the help of evidence which, though some of it may be anonymous, cannot ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley |
