"Blunderbuss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the voting papers, under cover of their municipal authority. There had been no respect for the law. Everywhere fraud, intrigue, even violence. At Calcatoggio an armed man sat during the election at the window of a tavern in front of the mairie, holding a blunderbuss, and whenever one of Sebastiani's electors (Sebastiani was Jansoulet's opponent) showed himself, the man took aim: "If you come in, I will blow out your brains." And when one saw the inspectors of police, justices, inspectors ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... accordingly replaced, and Tooler, on mounting the box, told the men to get a gallon of beer, when the gentleman in black generously gave them half a crown, and the horses started off, leaving Tom with his blunderbuss, Harry, Bill, Sam, and their companions, bewildered with the mystery which the whole day spent in the alehouse by no means ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... a big man with a shock of red hair and a huge beard leveled a blunderbuss at him. It flashed across him that his last moment had come, when a man behind leaped suddenly upon the ruffian's back and they fell to the ground together, the blunderbuss going off in the fall and riddling a soldier standing next to Ralph ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... words he took ten pearls from his own necklace, pearls as large and round as bullets of a blunderbuss. The merchant's wife quickly took them on his behalf and hung them around his neck; and the merchant crossed his arms like the ogres and spoke his thanks. Then the great king went off again, flying away like ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... that there's a gentleman, down in the offis, wants to intervue him. Tell him he'd better lode up his dubble-barrl'd, breech-lodin blunderbuss with dannymite cartrag cos ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... to?—That he has mistaken squibs and Chinese crackers for arms! He says not he himself touched or handled them; and judging by the sight alone, I question if the infirm old creature, when any whim or preconception hath possession of his noddle, can distinguish betwixt a blunderbuss and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... their patron, Saint James, appeared on horseback to help them. Fray Roque de Santa Monica was chased from place to place, hiding in caves and rocks. Being again met by four Mahometans, he threatened them with a blunderbuss, and was left unmolested. Eventually he was found by friendly natives, and taken by them to a wood, where he lived on roots. Thence he journeyed to Linao, became raving mad, and was sent to Manila, where he died quite frantic, in the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... that gardener, Mr. Fletcher, as the recoil of the bell-mouthed blunderbuss he had fired hurled him prone upon the gravel; the dreadful imprecations of Bill striving to clear his leg of the potting-box through whose side it had plunged; piercing screams of Mrs. Major from a ground-floor room; shrills of alarm ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... together and listened with all seriousness. I preached there again the next morning, and again in the evening. Then I took coach for London. I was nobly attended: behind the coach were ten convicted felons, loudly blaspheming and rattling their chains; by my side sat a man with a loaded blunderbuss, and another ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... done their trick," he said. "If they hadn't, that wouldn't be going on. It was to follow—a general assault—if Byng pulled it off. Old Blunderbuss has done it this time. His combination's working all right—thanks ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... valor, their decorations for gallantry under fire, their human comradeship and spiritual sincerity, would not bridge the gulf in the minds of many soldiers between a gospel of love and this argument by bayonet and bomb, gas-shell and high velocity, blunderbuss, club, and trench-shovel. Some time or other, when German militarism acknowledged defeat by the break of its machine or by the revolt of its people—not until then—there must be a new order of things, which would prevent such another massacre in the fair fields of life, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... retired to rest. He found at the side of his bed a blunderbuss, a cutlass, and a pike; and he was directed to secure the door of his chamber with a great chain and a massy iron bar. Feeling great confidence in his securities, although he was quite ignorant of the cause of alarm, and very much exhausted with the bustle of the day, he enjoyed sounder sleep ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... natives used the bow and arrow so effectively. In fact, the sword and the horse, combined with the white man's superlative self-assurance, won the contest over the aborigines more than the primitive blunderbuss of the times. The bow and arrow was still more deadly than ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... The Lieutenant carried a blunderbuss, but the five privates were more lightly armed with a collection of rapiers, carving knives, daggers, ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... with the peddler!" thought Ducklow, uneasily. Then a frightful fancy possessed him. "She has threatened two or three times to sell that old trunkful of papers. He'll offer a big price for 'em, and ten to one she'll let him have 'em. Why didn't I think on't? What a stupid blunderbuss I be!" ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... swords, firelocks, spears, arrows, darts, daggers, &c. &c. &c. Here are the pieces, esteemed most precious by reason of their histories respectively. I saw, among the rest, Rob Roy's gun, with his initials, R.M.C. i.e. Robert Macgregor Campbell, round the touch-hole; the blunderbuss of Hofer, a present to Sir Walter from his friend Sir Humphrey Davy; a most magnificent sword, as magnificently mounted, the gift of Charles the First to the great Montrose, and having the arms of Prince Henry worked on the hilt; the hunting bottle of bonnie King Jamie; Bonaparte's pistols ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... Sometimes they carried more than one barrel, and in some cases they were made revolving. They were most useful in a hand-to-hand encounter, as with footpads, or boarders; but they were useless at more than ten paces. A variation from them was the hand-cannon or blunderbuss, with a bell-muzzle, which threw rough slugs or nails. In Elizabethan ships the musketeers sometimes fired short, heavy, long-headed, pointed iron arrows from their muskets, a missile which flew very straight, and penetrated good steel armour. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... ordered the scout. "Walk backward. Stop! Take off those field-glasses and throw them to me." Without removing his eyes from the gun the stranger lifted the binoculars from his neck and tossed them to the stone wall. "See here!" he pleaded, "if you'll only point that damned blunderbuss the other way, you can have the glasses, and my watch, and clothes, and all ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... enough of it anon. A most foul, bloody, and horrible plot, quite enough to hang every soul that has meddled in it, and yet safe to do no harm—like poor Hal's blunderbuss, which would never go off, except when it burst, and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as he made a grand leap at William's throat, his blackthorn cudgel came down with a whirl and broke the forelegs of the mastiff, sending him to earth with a growl and roar that could be heard over the castle walls that loomed up in the evening gray. The gamekeeper aimed a blunderbuss at the Bard, but ere he could fire the deadly weapon, I jumped on the petty tyrant whelp, and cudgeled his ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... not play harps, but horns When I chased the unicorns— Magic tubes with pistons greasy, Slides that pushed and pulled out easy, Cylinders of snaky brass Where the fingers like to fuss, Polished like a looking-glass, Ending in a blunderbuss. ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... become rather formidable, as a murderous outrage was committed there on the head steward of the works, Mr. W. Hennessy, half-way between Clare and Ennis. He was fired upon by one of four men whom he observed inside the road ditch, as he passed along. The weapon used was a blunderbuss. It was charged with some of the blasting powder belonging to the works, and duck shot; so that although Mr. Hennessy received the contents in his right side, he was not mortally wounded, and recovered in a little time. Captain Wynne, the local inspector, giving an account of this ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... the President! How on earth do you suppose she does it? And how did she get Mall and Logue to take her to dinner and to the theater again and again? And what did she do to induce that doddering old blunderbuss, Gossitch, to tell her what Ames was up to? I'll bet he made love to her! How do you suppose she found out that Ames was hand in glove with the medical profession, and working tooth and nail to help them secure a National Bureau ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... more of religion than some other folks. I could jine the Methodist Church, and have everybody say I jined to git my wife. That may be serving God; but I can't see how. And then how long would you keep me? The very fust time I fired off my blunderbuss in class-meetin', and you heerd the buckshot and the squirrel-shot and the slugs and all sorts of things a-rattlin' around, you'd say I was makin' fun of the Gospel. I 'low they a'n't no Methodist in me. I was cut out cur'us, you know, and made ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... Frank's and my back, with a piece of chalk. John is a good hand at such things, and he did it so nicely, that the master did not see him, and neither of us saw the B on the other. When we went out to play, all the boys cried out, "B for blockhead, B for blunderbuss, B for booby," and so on, ever so many other names beginning with B, and kept pointing at us. At last, I saw Frank's mark, and he saw mine. I can tell you we were both angry enough. Now we want to be revenged on ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... made the interior of the hovel insupportable; so I was fain to bivouac, on my cloak, on the pavement, at the door of the venta, where, on waking, after two or three hours of sound sleep, I found a contrabandista (or smuggler) snoring beside me, with his blunderbuss on ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... No, it is passing strange, but he has not seen a bear. "All right! Pick up the blunderbuss, and let us ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... continued near the house, and two hours later he was seen on the bowling-green by one, Curtis, a collier. 'My lord' was then armed with a blunderbuss and a dagger and two or three pistols; but Curtis, so far from being intimidated, marched boldly up to him, and his lordship was so struck with the determinate resolution shown by this brave fellow, that he suffered him to seize him without ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... brought out in a volume were prefaced by imaginary notices of the press, including a capital parody of Carlyle, and a reprint from the "Jaalam Independent Blunderbuss," of the first sketch—afterward amplified and enriched—of that perfect Yankee idyl, The Courtin'. Between 1862 and 1865 a second series of Biglow Papers appeared, called out by the events of the civil war. Some of these, as, for instance, Jonathan ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... at the most,' replied the elderly Puritan, who was addressed by his companions as Hope-above Williams. 'John Rodway, the coachman, hath his blunderbuss. There are also two godly men from Hungerford, who are keepers of game, and who have brought their ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... accosted is more likely to close his ears, and, shuddering, run away from the booth. Poor Horace Waddlepoodle! to think that thy gentle accumulation of bricabrac should have passed away in such a manner! by means of a man who brings down a butterfly with a blunderbuss, and talks of a pin's head through a speaking-trumpet! Why, the auctioneer's very voice was enough to crack the Sevres porcelain and blow the lace into annihilation. Let it be remembered that I speak of the gentleman in ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grave—'implora pace.'[34] I hope, whoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigners' burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see those two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of 'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall.' I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my deathbed, could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carcass back to your soil. I would not even feed your worms, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... doubled over the horse's neck, he let drive with his old blunderbuss, and I caught two buckshot in my right arm where ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... Messengers' Cycle Corps. Company of Postmen. Mail Carrier Tricycle. Country Mail Cart—present day. Town Mail Van—present day. London to Bristol Royal Mail Coach of 100 years since, with Coachman and Guard in Royal livery of the Period. Guard carrying an ancient Mail Guard's blunderbuss, borrowed from the armoury of Mr. Rawlins, of Syston Court. Post Office Tableau, illustrative of the Collecting, Stamping, and Sorting of Letters, and the Despatch of Mail Bags; ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... other—the Niece of the Baby! She was a fine strapping wench of twenty. Shocked by the cruel outrage committed in her quiet Alsatian home, this brave maiden seized the family blunderbuss, and fired. It burst with such violence that both NAPOLEON and herself were killed on the spot. Nay, more—thousands within miles! Besides, at this moment there was an epidemic raging, that, in one single instant, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 12, 1890 • Various
... of them loaded,' said the widow, and indicated them— a large blunderbuss and a fowling-piece with an immensely long barrel; 'but there's powder and three sizes of shot in the right-hand drawer, there, below the dresser. You can charge the others, if ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... bought a blunderbuss; And when they saw the arm, The Bunnies all cried, "Don't shoot us! ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham
... "strictly correct, madam!" And he spread his hand out over his bosom. "Strictly!—'Blunderbuss' (my poetical name, madam) never stooped to the ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... write the Life of Bolingbroke, but no one can doubt that such was the intention of the statesman, when he bequeathed to him property which realized L10,000 in value. Every one knows the huge witticism of Dr. Johnson, who accused Bolingbroke of cowardice, under the simile of loading a blunderbuss, and then leaving a Scotchman half-a-crown to fire it when he was out of the way. When those posthumous works appeared, the grand jury of Westminster presented them to the judicial authorities as subversive of religion, morality, ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... taking effect and raking her from end to end. Morillo was standing aft by the taffrail, and as we passed near enough to hear the wash of the water about the pirate vessel's rudder, he suddenly snatched up a blunderbuss, and, singling me out, fired point-blank at me, one bullet knocking my cap off, while another lodged in my left shoulder, a third killing the man at our wheel, close behind me. The Guerrilla immediately ported her helm, while I, springing ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... do, may be sat a spinning. I desire you'll clap a pad-luck on the wind-seller, and let none of the men have excess to the strong bear — don't forget to have the gate shit every evening be dark — The gardnir and the hind may lie below in the landry, to partake the house, with the blunderbuss and the great dog; and hope you'll have a watchful eye over the maids. I know that hussy Mary Jones, loves to be rumping with the men. Let me know Alderney's calf be sould yet, and what he fought — if the ould goose be sitting; and if the cobler has cut ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... The men were armed somewhat indiscriminately, one company with Chassepots, another with Remingtons; there were carbines, and percussion rifles, and smooth-bores, and even a few flint-locks; but I failed to discern a single specimen of the trabuco, the bell-mouthed blunderbuss we are accustomed to associate with the Spanish knight of the road. Ammunition was carried in a waist-belt, with a surrounding row of leather tubes lined with tin, each of which held a cartridge—in fact, the Circassian cartouch-case. There were many grizzled weather-stained ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Next the visitor turned to news of a more thrilling character: how the down mail had been stopped again near Grantham by three men on horseback—a white and two bays; how they had handkerchiefs on their faces; how Tom the guard's blunderbuss missed fire, but he swore he had winged one of them with a pistol; and how they had got clean away with seventy pounds in money, some valuable papers, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and shall see me put in the foreigners' burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see those two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of 'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall'. I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my deathbed, could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carcass ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... of blunderbuss with a large bore, to carry several musket or pistol bullets; it was much used on boat service. They were mounted on swivel crutches, and termed top-pieces; quarter pieces in barges and pinnaces, where timbers were especially ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... ours was a young fellow, only a few years older than my Charley, whom I had known all my life, and his father before him. I would a great deal rather have had it one of the old-fashioned kind with a blunderbuss. Well, I found him, and I got back the money—the bulk of it. A part he had spent. Having secured it, my first thought was how to get home quickest, for every day's delay made a great difference to the bank. I had just time to drive over and catch the Portland ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... a big boy to scramble up, in order to sweep it. For some reason, the owners of the house had barred the chimney across so that this could not be done. They swept it, probably, in the effective old-fashioned way by shooting a blank charge of powder from a blunderbuss straight up the opening. The first two iron bars were so placed that it was only necessary to remove one to make room for my body. Further up there were others, more close together. The fire had not been lighted for many ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... determined not only that right should be done, but also that it should be done in a righteous manner. The great question now was whether they could approach the widow and her daughter otherwise than through Serjeant Bluestone. "The Serjeant is such a blunderbuss," said the Solicitor-General. But the Serjeant was counsel for these ladies, and it was at last settled that there should be a general conference at Sir William's chambers. A very short note was written by Mr. Flick to Mr. Goffe, stating that the Solicitor-General thought that a meeting might ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... butler heard him and came down with his blunderbuss, and the robbers ran off. So when the butler opened the door Thumbkin crept out and went to the stable, and laid down to sleep in a nice cozy bed of ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... was very simple; I proposed to turn one of the most likely houses in the village into a small fortress which might serve as a refuge for the children and which Gahra and I would undertake to defend. We had two muskets and a pair of double-barrelled pistols, and the priest possessed an old blunderbuss, which I thought I could convert into a serviceable weapon. In this way we should be able to shoot down four or five of the misterios before any of them could get near us, and as they had no firearms I felt sure that, after so warm a reception, they would let ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... I be gwaine to carry the auld blunderbuss what's been in Miller Lyddon's family since the years of his ancestors, and belonged to a coach-guard in the King's days. 'T is well suited to apple-christenin'. The cider's here, in three o' the biggest earth pitchers ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... to draw his pistol. The traveller rallied his horse, with apologies to the gentleman, whom he had unwillingly affrighted, and pursued his journey. The horse next made the same suspicious approach to a coach, from the windows of which a blunderbuss was levelled, with denunciations of death and destruction to the rider, who was innocent of all offence in deed or word. In short, after his life had been once or twice endangered by the suspicions to which his horse's conduct gave rise, and his liberty as often ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... was becoming animated, indeed, as he had wished, for, in the hazy opening, a man appeared, carrying under one arm what seemed a musket or blunderbuss, while leaning the other hand on a staff which might be the one to rest the firearm on. He had a flat felt hat on, with wide shaggy margins, ornamented with a yellow cord in contrast with its inky dye, and a dingy, often mended ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... head of the cabinet council who agreed to the murder of more than one hundred thousand Protestants; and the miserable bigot Charles IX. stationed during the massacre at the window of a house then belonging to the Constable of Bourbon, fired with his own hands upon the Huguenots with a long blunderbuss, whilst they were trying to escape across ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... same time the weapons that man has made, from a rude club, such as was grasped by that savage when he crawled from his den, from his hole in the ground, and hunted a snake for his dinner—from that club to the boomerang, to the sword, to the cross-bow, to the blunderbuss, to the flint-lock, to the cap-lock, to the needle-gun, up to the cannon cast by Krupp, capable of hurling a ball of 2,000 pounds through eighteen inches of solid steel. I saw, too, the armor from the turtle-shell that our ancestor lashed upon his skin when he went out ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... gave great offence to all well-principled men. Johnson, hearing of their tendency[786], which nobody disputed, was roused with a just indignation, and pronounced this memorable sentence upon the noble authour and his editor. 'Sir, he was a scoundrel, and a coward[787]: a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman, to draw the trigger after his death[788]!' Garrick, who I can attest ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... shot at him, killing poor Larry Byrne. It was only the length of the bridge from the police barracks, and as it was but nine o'clock at night, Ballinscreen people were up and about. So there wasn't much time for Black Shawn to see what mischief the blunderbuss had done. He saw at the first glance that one man was down in the dogcart, and another man swinging on by his arms to the mouth of the terrified horse. But already people were running across the bridge and shouting, and the dark quay seemed alive ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... sipping, I am sorry to say), 'ere I was a king, I needed not this intoxicating draught; once I detested the hot brandy wine, and quaffed no other fount but nature's rill. It dashes not more quickly o'er the rocks than I did, as, with blunderbuss in hand, I brushed away the early morning dew, and shot the partridge, snipe, or antlered deer! Ah! well may England's dramatist remark, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!" Why did I steal my ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Thurlow the lord chancellor, and Mr. Dundas the treasurer of the navy. Wraxall relates how these three statesmen, returning after dinner from Addiscombe, found a turnpike open and galloped through it without paying the toll. The turnpike man, fancying they were highwaymen, fired a blunderbuss after them, but missed them; ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... its own notorious nuisances— to robbers by night, to rats, to fire. But the mail laughs at these terrors. To robbers, the answer is packed up and ready for delivery in the barrel of the guard's blunderbuss. Rats again! there are none about mail-coaches any more than snakes in Von Troil's Iceland; [Footnote: "Von Troil's Iceland":—The allusion is to a well- known chapter in Von Troil's work, entitled, "Concerning the Snakes of Iceland." ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... Captain Farragut had carefully provided his ship with every apparatus for catching the gigantic cetacean. No whaler had ever been better armed. We possessed every known engine, from the harpoon thrown by the hand to the barbed arrows of the blunderbuss, and the explosive balls of the duck-gun. On the forecastle lay the perfection of a breech-loading gun, very thick at the breech, and very narrow in the bore, the model of which had been in the Exhibition of 1867. This precious weapon of American origin could throw with ease a ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... said the keeper, "he is but loading his blunderbuss for another volley; and while he turns up his eyes, and twists about his face, and clenches his fist, and shuffles and tramples with his feet in that fashion, he is bound to take no notice of any thing. I would be sworn to cut his purse, if he had one, from his side, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... like a man now who has got a blunderbuss in his house. Thieves all about know that he has got one, and so they leave him alone. Well when are you going ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... in, aunt, especially as we are quite helpless to keep them out. I could fire that gun," Sophie said, pointing to an unwieldy old blunderbuss slung by straps to the ceiling, " and I know it's loaded. But I'm afraid it wouldn't be ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... rushed to his chest and brought up two pistols, one of which he presented in the face of the captain, daring him at the same time to utter another word. The captain, highly incensed, instantly descended the companion-way to the cabin, and shortly after appeared with a blunderbuss, which he proceeded to prime. I was in a terrible state of mind at this juncture, and fully expected a fearful tragedy; this, however, was averted by the interference of another passenger, who stood between ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... occasioned by the dejected and disconsolate demeanour of the Post-Office Guard. We were stopping at some station where they take in water, when he dismounted slowly from the little box in which he sits in ghastly mockery of his old condition with pistol and blunderbuss beside him, ready to shoot the first highwayman (or railwayman) who shall attempt to stop the horses, which now travel (when they travel at all) inside and in a portable stable invented for the purpose,—he dismounted, I say, slowly and sadly, from his post, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... mob: they agreed to send him to the house with a deputation of six, to know the truth, and to ask for arms. The six men went to the back door and summoned the housekeeper; one of them pointed his blunderbuss at her, and told her that she must fetch all the arms in the house; she said she had none. Her champion asked her to say if she remembered him. "No," to her knowledge she had never seen his face. He asked if she remembered having lent a woman ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... best that which is called the Sanded Parlour. Never were wainscoted walls of a mellower tone, never was pewter more gleaming, never were things more bright and speckless, from the worn, quaint andirons on the hearth to the brass-bound blunderbuss, with the two ancient fishing-rods above. At one end of the room was a long, low casement, and here I leaned, watching the river near-by, and listening to its never-ceasing murmur. I had dined an hour ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... "If she has a blunderbuss, and fires," said I, "you must duck your head, remember; but if she springs the rattle we must cut ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... blundering interference with the land-laws. Paddy hears that they have given him some new rights and privileges, and no mock-modesty of his own will let him lose any of them, and so he claims everything. Old experience had taught him that with a bold heart and a blunderbuss he need not pay much rent; but Mr. Gladstone—long life to him—had said, "We must do something for you." Now what could that be? He'd scarcely go so far as to give them out Minie rifles or Chassepots, though arms of precision, as they call them, would have put many a poor fellow out of pain—as ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... the Major answered, and old Gid smiled. "You couldn't scare her with a bell-mouth blunderbuss," he declared. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... modestly, held itself open to accept knowledge on any and all subjects from such as had knowledge to impart. Its President was the rector of the little chapel, a man who, in spite of the Thirty-Nine Articles, could stand fire from the widest-mouthed heretical blunderbuss without flinching or losing his temper. The hall of the old Anchor Tavern was a convenient place of meeting for the students and instructors of the University and the Institute. Sometimes in boat-loads, sometimes in carriage-loads, sometimes ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... renown'd Don Quixot, never made such a Figure as a Spaniard, I there met on the Road. He was mounted on a Mule of the largest size, and yet no way unsizeable to his Person: He had two Pistols in his Holsters, and one on each side stuck in his Belt; a sort of large Blunderbuss in one of his Hands, and the fellow to it slung over his Shoulders hung at his Back. All these were accompany'd with a right Spanish Spado, and an Attendant Stiletto, in their customary Position. The Muletier that was my guide, calling out to him in Spanish, told him he was very ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... say you are to make a study of it, and digest it; and I believe it to be a true book in his intention. All travellers generally mean to tell truth; though Thicknesse observes, upon Smollet's account of his alarming a whole town in France by firing a blunderbuss[662], and frightening a French nobleman till he made him tie on his portmanteau[663], that he would be loth to say Smollet had told two lies in one page; but he had found the only town in France where these things could have happened[664]. Travellers must often be mistaken. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... end went with me, so that neither of us should get lost. This is an allusion to a habit which I and my property have of finding ourselves individually and collectively left in the lurch. After this initial shot, everybody considered himself at liberty to let off his rusty old blunderbuss, and there was a constant peppering. But my veil never lowered its colors nor curtailed its resources. Alas! what ridicule and contumely failed to effect, destiny accomplished. Softness and plenitude are no shields against the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the Catholic clergy affects the 5th article of the Union? Surely I am preserving the Protestant Church in Ireland if I put it in a better condition than that in which it now is. A tithe proctor in Ireland collects his tithes with a blunderbuss, and carries his tenth hay-cock by storm, sword in hand: to give him equal value in a more pacific shape cannot, I should imagine, be considered as injurious to the Church of Ireland; and what right has that Church to complain if Parliament chooses to fix upon the empire the burden ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... would be!" mocked the veteran. "Still, you know, if you're going to use The Patriot as a blunderbuss to point at the heads of your own enemies, you can't blame the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Nowhere, not even in the seaports, is there so mixed a population. As Mr. Edwin Arnold says, 'You see the Arab, short and square, with his silver-bound matchlock and daggers; the black-faced Sidi; the Robilla, with blue caftan and blunderbuss; the Pathan; the Afghan, dirty and long-haired; the Rajput, with his shield of oiled and polished hide; Persians, Bokhara men, Turks, Mahrattas, Madrasses, Parsees, and others.' The people are all ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... his black hair hung in long straight locks over his shoulders. A short sword, somewhat resembling that of the ancient Roman, lay on the sward beside him, and near to it a huge cavalry pistol of the olden time, with a brass barrel and a bell mouth—a species of miniature blunderbuss. Its fellow was stuck in his belt, beneath the chief's coat, as could be observed from the appearance of the butt protruding from the opening in ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the forenoon, and camping at Miry River, on the northeast side of the Missouri. On the second day they arrived at the principal village of the Minnetarees, where they were received with cordial welcome by their old friends. The explorers fired their blunderbuss several times by way of salute, and the Indian chiefs expressed their satisfaction at the safe return of the white men. One of the Minnetaree chiefs, however, wept bitterly at the sight of the whites, and it was explained by his friends that their coming reminded him of the death of his son, who ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... the price! It was the tool—a weird hybrid tool, part gun, part rake, part catapult, part curry-comb, fit apparently for almost any purpose, from the business of blunderbuss to the office of an apple-picker. Its handle, which any child could hold, was somewhat shorter and thicker than a hoe-handle, and had a slotted tin barrel, a sort of intestine, on its ventral side along its entire length. Down this intestine, their points sticking through ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... a handle about half a yard long and a thong of three yards long, of plaited bullock-hide, is a terrible instrument in the hands of a practised stockman. Its sound is the note of terror to the cattle; it is like the report of a blunderbuss, and the stockman at full gallop will hit any given spot on the beast that he is within reach of, and cut the piece away through the thickest hide that bull or bison ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... thousand other boys of fourteen, all legs, blunder, and bluster. Indeed the family called him the "Blunderbuss," and always expected to see him tumble over the chairs, bump against the tables, and knock down any small articles near him. He bragged a good deal about what he could do, but seldom did any thing to prove it, was not brave, and a little given to tale-telling. He was apt to bully the small boys, ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... circumstances will a member be suffered to sit with his blunderbuss at full cock, nor ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... every county, to draw close together. Every large country house became a fortress. Every visitor who arrived after nightfall was challenged from a loophole or from a barricaded window; and, if he attempted to enter without pass words and explanations, a blunderbuss was presented to him. On the dreaded night of the ninth of December, there was scarcely one Protestant mansion from the Giant's Causeway to Bantry Bay in which armed men were not watching and lights burning from the early sunset to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the chapel, there are a host of cherubs frescoed on the ceiling, and one of them is represented in the act of firing off a blunderbuss. "Is it true that the angels carry blunderbusses?" I asked the priest. He shrugged his shoulders with a sort of half-smile, and said nothing. In the Cathedral, on the plinths of the columns in the outer aisles, are several notices to the effect that "whoever speaks to women, either in the nave ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... Squills and I, before we left London, had carried a gigantic specimen of the Magnum Opus into the back parlors of firms the most opulent and adventurous. Publisher after publisher started, as if we had held a blunderbuss to his ear. All Paternoster Row uttered a "Lord deliver us!" Human Error found no man so egregiously its victim as to complete those two quartos, with the prospect of two others, at his own expense. Now, I had earnestly hoped ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... complexion, and auburn-haired, he stood 'four-square to all the winds'; his bold, prominent eyes recalled the muzzle of an ancient blunderbuss ready to loose off ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... many other such ghostly noises, which continued throughout the livelong night. The old lady lay in bed with the candle alight, pale and sleepless with fright, anon muttering her prayers, anon determined to fire off the rusty old blunderbuss that hung over the chimneypiece. At last the morning broke, and the cock began to crow. "Now," thought she, "the ghosts must disappear." To her infinite relief, the noise really did cease, and the poor ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... dressed in his father's clothes, shouldering a musket, which he could with difficulty lift, and eating a piece of gingerbread, and an old man with one arm and a wooden leg. The artillery consisted of a rusty blunderbuss. This derision was just what Napoleon desired. Though dwelling in the shadow of that mysterious melancholy, which ever enveloped his spirit, he must have enjoyed in the deep recesses of his soul, the majestic ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... days, when a man wanted a scrap with his neighbour, he put a double charge of powder into his blunderbuss, crammed in on top of it two horse-shoes, his latch-key, an old watch-chain, and a magnet, and then started on the trail. It was very effective, but of course some busy-body "improved" on it. Nowadays our gunners ring ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... this military expedition was a failure or that the Inca, warned by keen-sighted Indians posted on appropriate vantage points, could have succeeded in defeating a small force of weary soldiers armed with the heavy blunderbuss of the seventeenth century. In a rocky pass, protected by huge boulders, and surrounded by quantities of natural ammunition for their slings, it must have been relatively simple for eighty Quichuas, who could "hurl a huge stone with such force ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... in front of the huts, whence all the animals had now been driven, was becoming thronged with figures with the haik laid over their heads, spear or blunderbuss in hand, fine bearing, and sometimes truculent, though handsome, browse countenances. They gazed at the captives, and uttered what sounded like loud hurrahs or shouts; but after listening to Hassan, Lanty turned round trembling. 'The miserables! Some are for sacrificing us outright on the spot, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the bottom along with the ship rather than say a word to save them, till they submitted. The storm blew stronger—the danger every moment increasing. One of the mutineers came with a drawn cutlass, another levelled a blunderbuss at Walsingham, swearing to despatch him that instant, if he would not tell them where they were. 'Murder me, and you will be hanged; persist in your mutiny, you'll be drowned,' said Walsingham. 'You'll never make me swerve from my duty—and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... and shortening wars. The bow he presents to us as an old and familiar weapon even at the date of that first and greatest of pitched battles. Its claim, as the parent of projectile implements, is recognized in the common etymology of arcus, arcualia—artillery. Arblast, arquebuse, blunderbuss, mark a humbler collateral descent in the same verbal family. The ballista, or fifty-man-power bow, constituted the heavy, and the individual article the light, artillery of twenty centuries ago. Slings and javelins, being for hand-to-hand fighting (David was near enough to hold an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... hesitate to take any risks in strict attention to our business and our clients. In the mean time you will expedite matters, and give your passengers a chance to get an early tea at Three Pines, by handing down that treasure-box and mail-pouch. Be careful in handling that blunderbuss you keep beside it; the last time it unfortunately went off, and I regret to say slightly wounded one of your passengers. Accidents of this kind, interfering, as they do, with the harmony and pleasure of our chance meetings, cannot be too ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... exclaimed the boldest one or the party, who chanced to be a tall, raw-boned female, "go git gran'pap's old blunderbuss, an' shoot it." ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... hair, a Turk elegantly dressed, Mohammed in his decorous brown robes and snow-white turban, and several fellaheen. As the boat moved off the Abab'deh blazed away with their guns and Osman Effendi with a sort of blunderbuss, and as we dropped down the river there was a general firing; even Todoros (Theodore), the Coptic Mallim, popped off his American revolver. Omar keeping up a return with Alick's old horse pistols which are much admired here on account of ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... once those ever-ready tears and protestations, sorrow genuine, but fruitless. 'It was all Archie's fault, he had overtaken him, persuaded him that Mr. Salsted would not expect him, promised him that he should see the celebrated 'Blunderbuss,' Sam Shepherd's horse, that won the race last year. Gilbert had gone 'because he could ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... did not belong to me. A man was resting there already, and it my entrance, he had risen and approached his horse. He was a young fellow of medium height, but robust appearance, with a gloomy and haughty air. In one hand he held his horse's halter, in the other a brass blunderbuss. The fierce air of the man somewhat surprised me, but not having seen any robbers I no longer believed in them. My guide Antonio, however, who came up behind me, showed evident signs of terror, and drew near very much against ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... in the great Cup that now graced his kitchen was supreme. It stood alone in the very centre of the mantelpiece, just below the old bell-mouthed blunderbuss that hung upon the wall. The only ornament in the bare room, it shone out in its silvery chastity like the moon ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... pardon," rejoined the theatrical gentleman; "but till I can forget the blunderbuss fired from the upsetting coach, the cobweb over the poor's-box, and the gay parson and undertaker at the harlot's funeral, I cannot allow of the comparison. Besides, I admire Hogarth for another reason: did he consider an engraver's to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... the side of the car, yelling with fear. Kurt had heard the swishing pattering impact of those swarms of small shot. The I.W.W. gang ran pell-mell down the open track, away from Kurt and toward the light. As he reloaded the gun he saw men running from all points to join the gang. With an old blunderbuss of a shot-gun he had routed the I.W.W. It meant relief to Olsen's men; but Kurt had yet no satisfaction for the burning of his wheat, for the cruel shock that had ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... taken this action long before. There was a question of his guilt, and he should have been given the benefit of a doubt. They say he could have defeated Longstreet. There are some people, you know, who would have it that an army could be whipped by a good general with six mules and a blunderbuss. But we do not regard those people. They know no more about it than a lady who talked to me about Porter's case. She argued the question of Porter's guilt for half an hour. I showed her where she was all wrong. When she found ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... rather more refined, Gentlemen of the King's highway, Whose democratic tastes inclined To easy hours and ample pay, Would hardly ever hold their victim Engaged in academic strife, But raised their blunderbuss and ticked him Off with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... trying to repair his string, an arrow shot by one of the savages pierced his lungs, but he did not fall. On this the master gunner levelled his caliver—a sort of blunderbuss—but it missed fire, and before he could shoot it off two savages, taking sure aim at him, killed him on ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... which is more nearly rated at its worth at the present than it was in its own time. But it ceased to command confidence, or even interest. Samuel Johnson said, as to the publication of Bolingbroke's work by his executor, three years after the author's death: 'It was a rusty old blunderbuss, which he need not have been afraid to discharge himself, instead of leaving a half-crown to a Scotchman to let it off ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... not goin' to shoot," said Adams, in reply, "I'm only going up to Christian's outlook to try if I can find somethin' there, an' I always like to have the old blunderbuss with me. It feels sort of company, you know, an' minds me of old times; but you'll not understand ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... verbal blunderbuss, Major Nicholls sent a sloop-of-war to enlist the support of Jean and Pierre Lafitte, enterprising brothers who maintained on Barataria Bay in the Gulf, some forty miles south of New Orleans, a most lucrative resort for pirates and slave traders. There they defied ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... gladly, and Peterkin replied by laying down a huge bell-mouthed blunderbuss, and divesting himself of a pair of enormous horse-pistols with which he had purposed to overawe the natives! We then jumped into our ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... BLUNDERBUSS. A short fire-arm, with a large bore and wide mouth, to scatter a number of musket or pistol bullets ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... in 1751, and in 1754 his philosophical works were posthumously given to the world by David Mallet, Dr. Johnson's beggarly Scotchman, to whom Bolingbroke had left half-a-crown in his will, for firing off a blunderbuss which he was afraid to fire off himself. The world of letters had been keenly excited about Bolingbroke. His busy and chequered career, his friendship with the great wits of the previous generation, his splendid style, his bold opinions, ...
— Burke • John Morley
... regarded with the same caution as a loaded blunderbuss, which may unexpectedly go off and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... my bewildered glance downward I found myself staring squarely into the mouth of a blunderbuss. The mouth of this blunderbuss, I may say, was of about the width of a fair-sized water-pitcher; in colour it was bright and steely. Its appearance attracted me to such an extent that I lost all idea of the man behind the gun. But presently I heard ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... of Johnson's when he was asked on a certain occasion who was the man who had left the room: "I don't like saying unpleasant things about a man behind his back; but I believe he is an attorney." And Carlyle was not much more civil when he described a barrister as "a loaded blunderbuss "—if you bought him he blew your opponent's brains out; if your opponent bought him he blew yours out. His weapon is the law, but his object is not justice. As often as not he aims at defeating justice, and the more skilful a lawyer he is the more injustice he succeeds ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... before them. He soon made known his intentions, for in his belt he carried a pair of pistols, and at his shoulder, with glistening eyes glancing along the barrel, sighting the first one that offered to stir, was a heavy gun, with a bore like a blunderbuss. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... "This confounded blunderbuss must weigh a ton, I think," Loubet went on. "This is fine music to march by!" And alluding to the sum he received as substitute: "I don't care what people say, but fifteen hundred 'balls' for a job like this is downright robbery. Just ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... in a tower over the door, the rest of the party occupied the different windows. The lieutenant now landed with twenty men, and, approaching the dwelling, he took aim and fired at M. Fontaine, but missed him. The Huguenot then discharged a blunderbuss, with small leaden balls, one of which entered the neck of the privateersman, and another his side, when his men carried him back wounded to the ship. This unexpected resistance from a minister made the captain ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... islands the ghost of a certain chief made very good use of a musket which had been providentially buried with his body. When the giant drew near and was about to lunge out with the axe in his usual style, the ghost discharged the blunderbuss in his face, and while the giant was fully engaged in dodging the hail of bullets, the chief rushed past him and now enjoys celestial happiness.[779] Some lay the scene of this encounter a little beyond the town of Nambanaggatai; ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... the light of one of the big fires—"amazing old chap—real old chieftain," said Jim, "with his little fierce eyes—a pair of immense flintlock pistols on his knees. Magnificent things, ebony, silver-mounted, with beautiful locks and a calibre like an old blunderbuss. A present from Stein, it seems—in exchange for that ring, you know. Used to belong to good old McNeil. God only knows how he came by them. There he sat, moving neither hand nor foot, a flame of dry brushwood behind him, and lots ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... meant. From the moment she heard Bligh's lingo, she firmly believed that here were two Frenchies on the coach; and first she went white to the lips and shivered all over, and then she caught at the seat to steady herself, and then she flung back a look at Jim the Guard, to make sure he had his blunderbuss handy. She couldn't speak to Sammy Hosking, the coachman, or touch him by the arm without reaching across Bligh: and by this time the horses were at the top of the hill and settling into a gallop. She thought of the many times she'd sat up in bed at home ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sort of down on your friends to-day, aren't you? I'm an idiot to think of cutting down the pine grove. I'm a milksop compared with a red-headed Indian you never saw before. Now I'm a blunderbuss for answering a simple question asked me by my sister. What do you think I am, anyhow? Fit ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... No argument was needed to induce these bold men to embark in the perilous enterprise. Indeed, from the very moment of the capture, they must have cherished some such purpose; for each had hidden away in his bunk a gun and bayonet. Barney, on his part, had secreted a small brass blunderbuss and a broad-sword; and with this meagre armament the three determined to take the ship from ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... if they come across Stair and his blunderbuss. He will bring them down like so many partridges. Not even father can manage Stair. He will take orders from no one, except in matters of the farm. He is a good boy, and has great influence among the young fellows, for he will stick ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... boys who were going to Poole to try and get a ship bound for Newfoundland. I wanted some companions on my journey, so I told them not to go to Poole, as the press-gang was about, and, when I had been there myself a few days before, had fired a blunderbuss at me, but I happened to pop round the corner and so had escaped. The boys did not seem fit for soldiers, or sailors either, for they looked as if they had lain in the sun for some time, and one of them was warped. When they heard my story, they turned back and ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... he in mighty voice, peering at me over the fire. "I've a blunderbuss here and two popps, so hold hard or I'll be forced to brain ye wi' this here kettle. Now then—come forward slow, my covey, slow, and gi'e us a peep o' you churi—step cautious now or I'll be the gory ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... varied in their details; the last, however, seemed most nearly to approach the truth. Amongst the objects picked up by the Astrolabe were an anchor weighing about 1800 pounds, a cast-iron cannon, a bronze swivel, a copper blunderbuss, some pig lead, and several other considerably damaged articles of little interest. These relics, with those collected by Dillon, are now in the Naval Museum at ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... just about as comfortable as your father and mother would feel if a great giant—" But Will remembered suddenly that poor little Ranna had no mother, and, blushing fiery red, said: "I'm a good-for-nothing old blunderbuss. You tell her, Almy; it's ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... camp. But I will confess, my suspicions did not carry me so far as to conjecture that this venerable champion would be in such mighty haste to come into the field, and serve in the quality of an enfant perdu,[5] armed only with a pocket pistol, before his great blunderbuss could be got ready, his old rusty breastplate scoured, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... a leather officer's glove. I cut the fingers off to stop up the mouth of my blunderbuss with; that, that's telephone wire, the only thing to fasten buttons on your greatcoat with if you want 'em to stay there; and here, inside here, d'you know what that is? White thread, good stuff, not what you're put off with when they give you new things, a sort ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... native animal of Tibet, in various parts of which country it is found; and the Tibetans say, in reference to its size, that the liver is a load for a tame yak. The Sikkim Dewan gave Dr. Campbell and myself an animated account of the chase of this animal, which is hunted by large dogs, and shot with a blunderbuss: it is untameable and horridly fierce, falling upon you with horns and chest, and if he rasps you with his tongue, it is so rough as to scrape the flesh from the bones. The horn is used as a drinking-cup in marriage feasts, and on other ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... to assist him in his project. It shall never be said that, in a business which so nearly concerns me, I stirred no more than a post; this is the time; they will be surprised at the sight of me. Why did I not take my blunderbuss with me? But let anybody attack me who likes, I have two good pistols and a trusty sword. So ho! within there; a word ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... mortifying to observe, that among all these customers of genius whose names enrich the ledger of the bookseller, Jacob, that "blunderbuss of law," while his law-books occupy in space as much as Mr. Pope's works, the amount of his account stands next in value, far beyond many a name which ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... close to the person of the Sho[u]gun was no drawback to the close attention Aoyama Shu[u]zen gave to official duty throughout his career. The Aoyama stood high in the council of the governing power. Even an old blunderbuss like Hoki no Kami could not shake this influence. When Yukinari tore the mirror from the hands of the young Sho[u]gun Iyemitsu Ko[u], berated him roundly for effeminacy, and dashed the offending object to pieces on the stones of the garden, this wanton treatment of the ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... bound to olive trees, with the exception of two, who escaped amongst the rocks; they were then mocked and tormented by the robbers, or rather fiends, for nearly half an hour, when they were shot; the head of the corporal who commanded being blown to fragments with a blunderbuss. The robbers then burned the coach, which they accomplished by igniting the letters by means of the tow with which they light their cigars. The life of the courier was saved by one of them, who had formerly been his postillion; he was, however, robbed and stripped. As we passed ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... revenge myself, should fortune ever favor me with an opportunity. It was beyond human nature not to feel and express some indignation at such treatment.—Soon after, Bolidar, with five men, well armed, came to us; he having a blunderbuss, cutlass, a long knife and pair of pistols—but for what purpose did he come? He took me by the hand, saying, "Captain, me speak with you, walk this way." I obeyed, and when at some distance from my fellow ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... and announced one or more of the land pirates in the neighborhood! Of course, the town—of some four houses, six "groceries," a store and blacksmithery—was aroused, indignant! Impatient for a victim, the posse comitatus "fired up," armed to the teeth with pistol, bludgeon, blunderbuss, gun, bowie-knife, and—whiskey, started up the river to reconnoitre and intercept the pirate ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... on a chair before the fire, supporting himself on the chimney piece with one puny arm, while he reached overhead with the other. I stood by for an instant, glorying in the thought that he could not hear me; the next, I saw what it was he was reaching up for—a bell-mouthed blunderbuss—and I knew the little devil for the impostor ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... to resist arrest, for they were simply covered by the muzzles of fire-arms. Still, Pasmore sent two Indians reeling backwards with two right and left blows, which made them look so stupid that Poundmaker was secretly amused, and therefore stopped the pulling of the trigger of the blunderbuss that an Indian placed close to the police sergeant's head in order to effect a thorough and equal distribution of his brains. The grim and politic chief, who was not without a sense of humour, ordered that a rope be tied round the waist of the wild cat—as he was ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... another mood he wrote to Murray (June 7, 1819), "I trust they won't think of 'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall' [see The Rivals, act v. sc. 3]. I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country." In this half-humorous outburst he deprecates, or pretends to deprecate, the fate ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... on the 9th of April, soon after she had sailed from England; and they would in all probability have succeeded, but for the activity and resolution shown by the master Mr. George Bowen, who, hearing the alarm, had just time to arm himself with a loaded blunderbuss, which he discharged at one of the mutineers, William Syney (then in the act of aiming a blow with a cutlass at the man at the wheel), and lodged its contents in his shoulder. His companions, seeing what had ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... to the challenge was a discharge from the blunderbuss of the guard, which brought one of the ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... howled for mercy. My servant, who was a little way behind, heard the noise at this moment, and, seeing how I was engaged thought that I was attacked, and flew to the rescue. Six men flung themselves upon him, and during the struggle his pistol or blunderbuss went off, and the ball whizzed past our heads to lodge in the plaster wall. It might have shot me as well as Hasan, though afterwards this fact was used against me. The native Christians all threw themselves on the ground, as they ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... dogs!" cried Frank, wilfully misunderstanding their purpose; "if you do not instantly quit the house, I will fire a blunderbuss ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the remonstrances and threats of the turnpike man, who running after them, and believing them to belong to some highwaymen who had recently committed some depredation on that road, discharged the contents of his blunderbuss at their backs. Happily he ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... was cautiously hired; Riccabocca renounced his Italian name, and abjured his origin. He spoke English sufficiently well to think he could pass as an Englishman. He called himself Mr. Richmouth (a liberal translation of Riccabocca). He bought a blunderbuss, two pair of pistols, and a huge house-dog. Thus provided for, he allowed Jackeymo to write a line to Randal ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... lean kine, or squealing and dealing death in some moorland feud of the ferrets and the wild cats. One after another closed his obscure adventures in mid-air, triced up to the arm of the royal gibbet or the Baron's dule-tree. For the rusty blunderbuss of Scots criminal justice, which usually hurt nobody but jurymen, became a weapon of precision for the Nicksons, the Ellwalds, and the Crozers. The exhilaration of their exploits seemed to haunt the memories of their descendants alone, and the shame to be forgotten. Pride glowed in their bosoms ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Goldboy, however, had sufficient faith in the reality of the vision to increase his nervous condition considerably, and he resolved to lie down with his "arms handy." These arms consisted of a flint-lock blunderbuss, an heirloom in his father's family, and a bowie-knife, which had been presented to him by an American cousin on his leaving England. Twice during that day's march had the blunderbuss exploded owing to its owner's inexperience in fire-arms. Fortunately ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... deputed on special duty to Bundelkhand to investigate the grave disorders in that province. While at Jhansi in December, 1842, he narrowly escaped assassination by a dismissed Afghan sepoy, who poured the contents of a blunderbuss into a ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... who sues a fellow-citizen for alienating his wife's affections, instead of striking his trail with a bell- mouthed blunderbuss and a muzzle-loading bulldog; who asks the court to put a silver lining in the cloud of infamy that hangs over his home; who tries to make capital of his shame and heal with golden guineas the hurt that honor feels—well, he too may be a law-abiding citizen; but ten thousand such souls, ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... maybe. But don't light into me. I'm all frazzled out now. Harrison's hints are like eight inch shells; Dr. Llewellyn's like a highly charged electric battery; Jerome fires a blunderbuss every ten minutes and even Shelby and Jess use pop-guns. Good Lord, are you going to let drive with a gatling? Clear out and let me drink my cider in peace, and quit stewing, for I tell you right now the fire-brand which has kept ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... I knew it for my Cousin Tom's; so I roared at him that it was myself. There followed a great to-do of unlocking and unbarring—for they had the house—as I found presently—fortified as it were a castle; and when the door was undone there was my Cousin Tom with a great blunderbuss and two men with swords ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... in the nook made by the turn of the stair, flung thither, as it seemed, by the recoil of the great bell-mouthed blunderbuss which he was still clutching. The fall had partly stunned him, but he was alive enough to protest feebly that he would take a dozen oaths upon his loyalty to the cause; that he had mistook us for some thieving marauders of the other side; craftily leaving ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... our protection. Many attempts were made by the fanatics to force the door to accomplish our destruction. Others spit at us and abused us through a small window, through which one fellow levelled a blunderbuss at us, which was struck up by our keepers and himself thrust back. At last Ameenoollah made his appearance, and threatened us with instant death. Some of his people most officiously advanced to make good his word, until pushed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... to be their master—they knew, I say, that without great change, I would never accept that contumely. But I took little heed of them, looking in dull wonderment at John Fry, and Smiler, and the blunderbuss, and Peggy. John Fry was scratching his head, I could see, and getting blue in the face, by the light from Cop's parlour-window, and going to and fro upon Smiler, as if he were hard set with it. And all the time he was looking briskly ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore |
