"Cannon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first cannon ever brought to America, and the first church-bell ever rung in America, and picters of every place that Columbus ever had anything to do with, and a hull set of photographs of hisen. Good creeter! it is a shame and a disgrace that there is so many on 'em, and all ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... culprits were handed over to the artillerymen, who, ready prepared with strong ropes in their hands, seized their victims. Each of these, standing erect, was bound to a cannon and tightly secured, with the small of the back covering the muzzle. And then all at once the silence which reigned around was broken by the oaths and yells of those about to die. These sounds were not uttered by men afraid of death, for they showed the most stoical indifference, but were the ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... a few days after; the numbers of the contending forces were nearly equal; the royal troops were veterans, commanded by experienced officers; but the God of armies avenged the innocent blood shed in Leicester, and the royal army was cut to pieces; carriages, cannon, the king's cabinet, full of treasonable correspondence, were taken, and from that day he made feeble fight, and soon lost his crown and his life. The conquerors marched to Leicester, which surrendered by capitulation. Heath, in his Chronicle, asserts that 'no life was lost ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... here for ever!" she exclaimed, leaning back against the bush under which they sat. "Here, amidst the whispering of the winds and the dash of the waters, you would listen no more for the roll of the drum, or the booming of cannon at Saint Marc. I am weary of our life ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... right now,' he snaps; 'but they're so old and leather-headed you couldn't shoot an idea into their brains with a cannon. Gunnin' ain't the whole thing. My makin' a noise like a duck is only to get the would-be Teddy Roosevelts headed for this neck of the woods. After they get here, it's up to us to keep 'em. And I can think of as many ways to ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... young sinner (bless its heart) and a child of the devil (which is calling its dead father names); if I was to see this, and see little Jacob looking grievous likewise, I should so take it to heart that I'm sure I should go and list for a soldier, and run my head on purpose against the first cannon-ball I saw ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... ventured farther and farther out of his corner; and when one very lively boy came down so swiftly that he could not stop himself, but fell off the banisters, with a crash that would have broken any head but one rendered nearly as hard as a cannon-ball by eleven years of constant bumping, Nat forgot himself, and ran up to the fallen rider, expecting to find him half-dead. The boy, however, only winked rapidly for a second, then lay calmly looking up at the new face with ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... close up; the bayonets are fixed; and, with a cheer which strikes terror to the heart of the foe, they rush forward in one glorious charge, across the plain slippery with the blood of patriots, up the opposing hillside, even to the mouth of cannon belching forth fire and death.—But stop! Look yonder! The dying soldier raises his head. His breast is already crimson with his heart's-blood. His eye even now is dimming and glazing. The old home comes back to him in memory. He puts his hand to his ear as if listening. What does ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... side of each jaw; while the canine is moved up to the outer incisor, and there is a diastema, in the lower jaw. There are four complete toes on the hind foot, but the middle metatarsals usually become, sooner or later, ankylosed into a cannon bone. The navicular and the cuboid unite, and the distal end of the fibula is ankylosed with ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and raise the shout, And drag the massive cannon out, Let all unite as though in one To ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... appears by telegram received this morning that the Burghers started firing on Mafeking with the big cannon. The town is on fire ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... the turning-point. The boom of the first cannon trained on the island fortress deserves all the rhetoric it has inspired. Who was immediately responsible for that firing which was destiny? Ultimate responsibility is not upon any person. War had to be. If Sumter had not been the starting-point, ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... to take cannon-balls as they come, for they are apt to hit hard. But they won't fire at us if a boat comes ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... elsewhere. The demesne lands between Clonmel and Fethard are many. Fethard was an old walled town, it defied the Cromwellians, and surrendered with all the honours of war. After treaty and terms were agreed on, the Roundheads found that what they had mistaken as gaping mouths of cannon on the fortress were nothing more dangerous than innocent churns placed in positions of pretence, not defence. The bogland from Fethard to Thurles is uninteresting; the intermediate stations are Farranalleen, Laffan's ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... him to his parents was just like shooting cannon balls into a stack of feathers. His mother, tall, cadaverous, and of complaining ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... drove off to the scene of action, the distant rattle of musketry, and at short intervals the loud roar of the cannon, making his heart throb with martial enthusiasm. The young preacher communed with his own heart on the unnatural conflict between his own kinsmen after the flesh and the compatriots of his spiritual adoption—and was still. The brave old veteran, ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... thou hast talk'd Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets, Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin." ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... about as discreet as a cannon-ball. But the lady replied in the simplicity of her heart, and not in ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... me. I didn't think of pursuing them; but you may be very sure that if there had been a policeman within call—of course there wasn't one within cannon-shot—I should have handed the scoundrels ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... after this date the Taepings fought with far more skill than before. They had a very considerable European contingent, probably nearly 300 men, and these served not only as leaders, but as trainers of the rebel Chinese forces. They had also obtained some good cannon, and the steamer Kajow proved of material value on water. Gordon found on his return, therefore, that the difficulties of the campaign were materially increased. His opponents were far stronger and more confident, while ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... was Thomas, son of Geoffrey Chaucer the poet, who left an only daughter Alice, destined to become the greatest lady of her time. She married first the celebrated Earl of Salisbury, who was killed by a cannon-shot while inspecting the defences of Orleans during the siege which Joan of Arc raised. William de la Pole, then Earl of Suffolk, was appointed commander of the English forces in the Earl of Salisbury's ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... a national foundry for cannon, to be common to the service of the Army and Navy of the United States, has been heretofore recommended, and appears to be required in order to place our ordnance on an equal footing with that of other countries and to enable that branch of the service to control ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... death! But if thou lov'dst to have thy soldiers fight, Or hearten the spent courages of men, Pembrooke could use a stile invincible. Lov'dst thou a towne, Ide teach thee how to woo her With words of thunder-bullets wrapt in fire,[109] Till with thy cannon battry she relent And humble her proud heart to stoop to thee. Or if not this, then mount thee on a steed Whose courage never awde an yron Bit, And thou shalt heare me hollow to the beast And with commanding accents master him. This courtship Pembrooke knows, but idle ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... those canters, says he, preaching and picking your pocket. What about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text God is love pasted round the mouth of his cannon? The bible! Did you read that skit in the United Irishman today about that Zulu chief that's ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... twenty-second anniversary of Susanna's birth, old Commendatore Fregi, her guardian, whose charge, by the provisions of her father's will, on that day terminated, gave a festa in her honour at his villa in Vallanza. Cannon had been fired in the morning: two-and-twenty salvoes, if you please, though Susanna had protested that this was false heraldry, and that it advertised her, into the bargain, for an old maid. In the afternoon there had been a regatta. Seven ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... and it is not a pleasant feeling. It is followed by a dull roar, which often makes the dogs jump into the air — and their drivers, too, for that matter. Once we heard this booming on the plateau so loud that it seemed like the thunder of cannon. We soon ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... gathering; while, in the meantime, the fortresses along the line of the river, where the first French attack was expected to be made, were put in a proper state of defence, and now, with strong garrisons, repaired works, ditches filled, and ramparts crowned with Krupp cannon, were prepared to defy the invader. By the first week of August three great armies had taken possession of the strip of territory, lying between the lower stream of the Moselle and the Rhine, which had for centuries been a battlefield between the German and French ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Helsingborg, on the Danish side that of Helsingor, and at the extremity of a projecting neck of land the fortress Kronburg, which demands a toll of every passing ship, and shews a large row of threatening cannon in case of non-compliance. Our toll had already been paid before leaving Copenhagen; we had been accurately signalled, and sailed fearlessly ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... on shore, the same old man who had come over the river to them the first day, came again to the farther side of it, where he made a long speech, and then crossed the water. When he came up to the waterers, the officer shewed him the stones that were piled up like cannon balls upon the shore, and had been brought thither since our first landing, and some of the bags that had been taken out of the canoes, which I had ordered to be destroyed, filled with stones, and endeavoured to make him understand ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... sufficiently rough, have traced the History of the Bibliomania to the commencement of the present illustrious reign: when we discover, among its victims, a General, who had probably faced many a cannon, and stormed many a rampart, uninjured. The name of Dormer[42] will remind you of the small but choice library which affords such a melancholy proof of its owners' fate; while the more splendid examples of Smith[43] and West[44] serve to shew ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... stone, practise the javelin, the boar-spear or partizan, and the halbert. He broke the strongest bows in drawing, bended against his breast the greatest cross-bows of steel, took his aim by the eye with the hand-gun, traversed the cannon; shot at the butts, at the pape-gay, before him, sidewise, and behind him, like the Parthians. They tied a cable-rope to the top of a high tower, by one end whereof hanging near the ground he wrought himself with his hands to the very top; then came down again so sturdily and firmly ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... like the sound of a small cannon (the biggest sort of elephant-rifle is not very different from some artillery), and a double streak of flame, followed by the stinging crack of a Martini, whose long bullet makes nothing of a crocodile's plates. But the explosive bullets did the work. One of them struck just behind the Mugger's neck, ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... wrath, in the flame which leaped from the Indian's torch to the roof of yonder dwelling, and lighted with its horrid glare the darkness of midnight? Heard you not the thunders of Divine anger, as the distant roar of the cannon came rolling onward, from the Texian country, where Protestant American Rebels are fighting with Mexican Republicans—for what? For the re-establishment of slavery; yes! of American slavery in the bosom of a Catholic Republic, where ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... chap belonging to my company, named Abbott; it is not odd that I recollect it, for there was something unusual in the manner of Abbott's taking off. He was lying flat upon his stomach and was killed by being struck in the side by a nearly spent cannon-shot that came rolling in among us. The shot remained in him until removed. It was a solid round-shot, evidently cast in some private foundry, whose proprietor, setting the laws of thrift above those of ballistics, had put ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... Thep'ha Maha-Nakhon Si-ayut-thia Maha-dilok Racha-thani,—"The City of the Royal, Invincible, and Beautiful Archangel." It is ramparted with walls within and without, which divide it into an inner and an outer city, the inner wall being thirty feet high, and flanked with circular forts mounted with cannon, making a respectable show of defence. Centre of all, the heart of the citadel, is the grand palace, encompassed by a third wall, which encloses only the royal edifice, the harems, the temple of Watt P'hra Keau, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... introduced so as to produce a gentle pressure during the decomposition, then a rapid evolution of gases will result; the results of decomposition in a vacuum differ from those under atmospheric pressure or when they are burnt in a pistol, musket, a cannon, or in a mine; where we have little or no pressure it is difficult to get these substances to burn rapidly; nitro-glycerin is more difficult to explode than powder; in many respects it resembles gun-cotton which is made in a similar way; if gun-cotton be immersed in the proto-chloride ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... the produce of the very fertile country through which it would pass would find a market through that channel. Troops might be moved with great facility in war, with cannon and every kind of munition, and in either direction. Connecting the Atlantic with the Western country in a line passing through the seat of the National Government, it would contribute essentially to strengthen ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... through Newark, N. J., he was saluted by the firing of cannon. One of the cannoneers, who was strongly opposed to him, expressed the wish that he might be struck by some of the wadding. For this remark, he was arrested and compelled to pay a fine ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... anticipating now the purport of our conversation on the ride home instead of first marrying Caddy. We all went to church, and Mr. Jellyby gave her away. Of the air with which old Mr. Turveydrop, with his hat under his left arm (the inside presented at the clergyman like a cannon) and his eyes creasing themselves up into his wig, stood stiff and high-shouldered behind us bridesmaids during the ceremony, and afterwards saluted us, I could never say enough to do it justice. Miss Wisk, whom I cannot ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... New York riots had not lifted up a black and frightful cloud between us and the glorious events in Pennsylvania and the Southwest, we should have burst out into illuminations and cannon-firings all over the North. But the good time is coming FN We shall be ready when Sumter is taken. I hardly know of anything that would stir the ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... are!" he says, shrugging his shoulders. "To put you soldiers to flight no cannon is required, but only a couple of white cats. A white cat it was, which made cowards of you. I saw her bounding along before me through the great corridor, and followed her to the upper story. There she slipped into an open door, the last door in the upper ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... telling you," said old Con O'Connel, the railroad builder, his voice rolling and sweet as the bells of Shandon: "To-night I hear a footfall in the rain—that of Tim Cannon, the messenger." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... already charged. There were no loggerheads available, no matches with which to fire them, but Morgan instructed those who seemed to have some skill in gunnery, whom he placed in temporary charge of the cannon, how to fire them by snapping their pistols at the touch-holes, which were primed from a powder horn that had ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... take possession of the Government. There were street riots every day that I was there. The police station was captured by the rioters and scores of detectives and policemen were murdered by the mob. The buildings are riddled with bullets and cannon balls. Berlin is getting some of the punishment that is due for her guilt ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... grew louder and louder till they reached a shrill wild cry. There came a pause; then a deep shuddering groan. The topmost branches began to move slowly, the whole stately bulk swayed, and then shot toward the ground. The gigantic trunk bounded from the stump, recoiled like a cannon, crashed down, and lay conquered, with a roar as of an earthquake, in a cloud ...
— A Michigan Man - 1891 • Elia W. Peattie
... was th' engagement in which my true love fought, And cruel was the cannon-ball as knock'd his right eye out; He used to ogle me with peepers full of fun, But now he looks askew at me, because he's only ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Amelie in her old, familiar schoolgirl way, and led her to the sunny corner of a bastion where lay a dismounted cannon. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... cry, As stalwart columns, ambling by, Stride over graves that, waiting, lie Undug in mother earth! Their goal, the flag of fierce Castile Above her serried ranks of steel, Insensate to the cannon's peal That gives the ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... ceased. But the cannon were still calling for fodder. The draft was applied. And when it was resisted in fierce riots, the soldiers trained their guns on their own people. The draft wheel was turned by bayonets and the ranks of the army filled with fresh young ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... like a cannon-shot into the magistrate's office, knocking up against the methodical clerk in the rudest of ways, without even asking ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... no schools whar slaves could git book larnin' in dem days. Dey warn't even 'lowed to larn to read and write. When Dr. Cannon found out dat his carriage driver had larned to read and write whilst he was takin' de doctor's chillun to and f'um school, he had dat Niggers thumbs cut off and put another boy to doin' de ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... we say? We cannot alter nature, neither ought we to punish the son because the father begot him in a cowardly mood. However, I believe most men have more courage than they know of, and that a little at first is enough to begin with. I knew the time when I thought that the whistling of a cannon ball would have frightened me almost to death; but I have since tried it, and find that I can stand it with as little discomposure, and, I believe, with a much easier conscience than your lordship. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... dodged Gregor, and ran for her gray stallion—mounted the savage brute with a leap from six feet away, and rode like the wind toward the gut of the pass that shut off Zeitoon from our view. A minute later a shell from a small-bore cannon screamed overhead, and burst a hundred yards beyond us on a sheet ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... of June 15th, the loud report of a cannon told the inhabitants of Boulogne that he intended to start. At seven o'clock he and Romain stepped into the gallery and the balloon was released. With majestic slowness they rose into the air and sailed out over the sea; but ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... every sign of polish was removed, and replaced by white unsightly stains. The glass stopper of a smelling-salts bottle became fixed in its socket, and, being anointed with oil and placed before the fire to melt, popped out suddenly with a noise as of a cannon shot, aimed accurately for the centre of the mirror, and smashed it into a dozen pieces. The "safety ink-pot," out of which she indited her letters to her mother, came unfastened of its own accord and rolled up and down the clean white toilet cover. This, at least, was the impression ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... the Americans in the Revolutionary War. It is said that from his mother's side he inherited a small portion of Turkish blood. Father's childhood days were spent near some of the Revolutionary battle-fields, where he played with cannon balls that had been used during that great struggle. Perhaps his early surroundings may have developed in him the spirit of partiotism that manifested itself later when, during the Civil War, he stood by his country and defended the stars ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... really believed I'd get the chance to see any whale-spearing," he said. "Whaling with a cannon is only a make-believe. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Our worst fears were realised. Already every part was burning, while red-hot shot and cannon balls kept ever and anon plunging into the midst of it, preventing the possibility of extinguishing the flames. So dangerous was the position, that Lancelot dragged me away, and accompanied me in search of my father, to whom I wished ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... prisoners, and beheaded on Tower-Hill; as was Lord Lovat in the year following. Now also the French took all Dutch Flanders, and there was a battle between them and part of the allied army, after which the latter retreated under the cannon of Maestricht. Admirals Anson and Warren, after a hot engagement, took several French men of war in the Mediterranean, among which was the ship in which their Admiral sailed. In 1748 a Congress was held at Aix-la-Chapelle ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... wondered at on that long ride, the German regiments impressed us most. Those that passed and repassed us were mostly artillery and infantry, and surely in all the world before there never were such regiments as those—with the paint worn off their cannon, and their clothes soiled, yet with an air about them of successful plunderers, confident to the last degree of arrogance in their own efficiency—not at all like British regiments, nor like any others ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... the fiery vigour of republicanism with the perseverance of monarchy, it now carried the whole force of the country into foreign fields. Every foreign capital began to tremble. The whole European system shook before a power which smote it with the force of a cannon-ball against a crumbling bastion. The extraordinary man who now took the lead in France, had touched the string which vibrated in the heart of every native of the soil. He had found them weary of the crimes of the democracy; he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... exceedingly steep, and when the snows are melting the peak becomes a perfect catapult, volleys of ice and stones being discharged from its lofty precipices. The falling rocks, dropping, as some of them do, from ledge to ledge half a mile, acquire the velocity of cannon shots. Nobody ever lingers on this part of the route, and we had no desire to pause, although the Aiguille sends comparatively few stones down so late in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... boasted vainly to be re-discovered by the wildly eccentric, yet vividly vigorous, genius of that earl who professes to teach law to my lord chancellor, and divinity to my lords the {10} bishops, who proposes to send ship, by the force of steam, with all the velocity of a ball from the mouth of a cannon, and who pretends by the power of his steam-impelled oars to beat the waters of the ocean into the hardness of adamant; or to the burning-glasses of Archimedes, recorded in their effects by credible writers, actually ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... succeed in making the superficial imagine they represent popular sentiment and culture. It is a crying shame to-day, that with the magnificent intellectual power and influence swayed by the great divines who preside over the wealthy temples of Boston, there should be such frightful wretchedness within cannon shot of their churches and the homes of their wealthy parishioners; or that with the brilliancy and power represented in the pulpit of Chicago, there should be such iniquity flourishing unrestrained as depicted in "Chicago's Dark Places." ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... were left standing. The enemy relieved it of a very fine marble baptismal font, and also of the communion plate, which were carried to Scotland. On the gable end of the building, still fast in the wall, may be seen a cannon ball which was fired from the British ship, Liverpool. The church stands in the customary grave yard of those days, and contains the remains of persons interred as early as 1700. Near the door stands the tomb-stone of Col. ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... Certainly no cannon ball cut the waves as the "Storm King" sailed swiftly past the castle, and no signal was displayed signifying that she must ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... explaining to the crew that the Sultan was, after all, an American subject, which seemed to mollify, even if it did not entirely satisfy them. The armament of the Negros had been removed after the armistice, so that we were without anything in the nature of a saluting cannon, but, as we wished to observe all the formalities of naval etiquette, the Doctor and Hawkinson volunteered to fire a royal salute with their automatic pistols as the Sultan came over the side. That, in their enthusiasm, they lost count and gave him about ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... If a cannon-ball was fired in a straight line at a distant target, the gunner had to elevate the aim if he would hit the target, for the ball described a curve and would keep dropping to the earth until it struck the ground. Something was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... they did come, those three terrible cannon shots which announced a fire, shaking and even bursting in the windows, unbounded terror prevailed. High above the dark streets the hazy sky was glowing like a ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... brown against the profound sky. Like the great Amphitheatre, it has been buffeted in the storms of ages and is war-worn without, to the highest reach of a mounted man, and dinted above that by every missile invented in twelve hundred years, from the slinger's pebble or leaden bullet to the cannon ball of the French artillery. Like the Colosseum, it is the crestless trunk of its former self. But it has life in it still, whereas the Colosseum died to a ruin when Urban the Eighth showed his successor how to tear down ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... about as soon be in front as behind one of them cannon," answered the sutler soberly. "I toted one four years. But say, pardner, what's yer name? ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... midst of battles; the smoke of powder always in his nostrils, the crash of musketry and the thunder of cannon in his ears. He saw the cavalry sweeping over the plains, the infantry crouching behind intrenchments; he heard the yells of the combatants, the shrieks of the wounded and dying; he saw the mangled bodies, and the ground slippery with blood. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... morning a pirogue loaded with cannon balls, from Ft. Pitt and bound for Louisville, had arrived and Captain Sullivan, with his crew of three men, had demanded admittance. In the absence of Capt. Boggs and Major McColloch, both of whom had been dispatched for reinforcements, Col. Zane had placed his ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... was who met that first fierce onslaught of the Brown's tandem, and he was new to the play; but Mason was behind him, and he was sent crashing into the leader like a ball from the mouth of a cannon. The tandem stopped; a sudden bedlam of voices from the stands broke forth; there were cries of "Ball! Ball!" and Witter flung himself through, rolled over a few times, and on the twenty-yard line, with half the Erskine team striving ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... hotter, till at last it was perfectly continuous, the cannon evidently being discharged as quickly as they could be loaded, whilst their dull booming was accompanied by the unceasing crash and roll of the musketry. Towards three o'clock the firing slackened, and we thought it was all over, one way or the other, ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... was, in part, the influence of the Seneca's legend, united to the opinions and statements of the inhabitants of that region, which conspired to make our traveler start, in awe and surprise; for, certainly, the deep-mouthed cannon never gave forth a more impressive and ...
— The Lake Gun • James Fenimore Cooper
... have the family bound over by a surety of four hundred thousand francs, and by a written document stating the nature of the compromise, so as to keep a loaded cannon pointed ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... action was becoming general and bloody, the surgeons of the hospital took possession of the same place as the most convenient for the first care of the wounded. Thus was this lady in hearing of one continued fire of cannon and musketry for some hours together, with the presumption, from the post of her husband at the head of the Grenadiers, that he was in the most exposed part of the action. She had three female companions—the Baroness ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Thus this old couple had not been kept awake all night by the ringing of bells and the firing of small cannon, which had continued incessantly since the setting of the sun had ushered in the festival on the previous evening. The firing lasted all day—a popular but very startling and disturbing mode of expressing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... and embroidered with various kinds of flowers and figures. They are remarkable mechanics and puppet-showmen, and they make complicated mechanisms which, by means of figures, go through various motions with propriety and accuracy. There are some jewelers. They make powder, and cast swivel-guns, cannon, and bells. I have seen them make guns as fine as those of Europa. There are three printing houses in Manila, and all have Indian workmen. They have great ability in music. There is no village however small, that has not its suitable band of musicians for the services ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... Oxford put on a furious spurt, and got fully even with the leading boat. There was a louder roar than ever from the bank. Cambridge spurted desperately in turn, and stole those few feet back; and so they went fighting every inch of water. Bang! A cannon on the bank sent its smoke over both competitors; it dispersed in a moment, and the boats were seen pulling slowly towards the bridge—Cambridge with four oars, Oxford with six, as if that gum had winged ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... a man with fine clear-cut regular features, light reddish-brown hair and side-whiskers, and blue eyes; he was sometimes called "Englishman" on account of his regular features and blonde complexion. That picture of a stern handsome face, with flags and cannon and olive-branch—the arms of the republic—in its heavy gold frame, was one of the principal ornaments of the room, and my father was proud of it, since he was, for reasons to be stated by and by, a great ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... variety of climates, so many strange countries, to acquire what are called the blessings of fortune; and those undertaken for the sake of God and the world together are those of brave soldiers, who no sooner do they see in the enemy's wall a breach as wide as a cannon ball could make, than, casting aside all fear, without hesitating, or heeding the manifest peril that threatens them, borne onward by the desire of defending their faith, their country, and their ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... quay of the Divanbeghi, reservoirs, bordering one side of a square planted with elms. Not far off is the Arche, which is the fortified palace of the emir and has a modern clock over the door. Arminius Vambery thought the palace had a gloomy look, and so do I, although the bronze cannon which defend the entrance appear more artistic than destructive. Do not forget that the Bokhariot soldiers, who perambulate the streets in white breeches, black tunics, astrakan caps, and enormous boots, are commanded by Russian officers ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... by Savages advencing up nere to our Lines and Made from behind trees Logs &c., Grate Havoke with our Men I for Some time having no orders [indevanced?] to pervent the Soldiers from braking and Stil finding the enemy Growing More bold and Coming to the very Mouths of our Cannon and all the brave artilery officers Killed I ordered the Left whing to Charge which with the assistance of the Gallent officers that were then Left I with deficuaty prevailed on them to do, the Second U S Regt was then the Least disabled the Charge begat with them on ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a position at the opposite extremity of the town. Its crumbling tower, shattered by the cannon of Charles' army, remains, but the nave and side aisles have recently been restored—that on the south side at the sole expense of John Pritchard, Esq., M.P., in memory of his brother. The celebrated divine, Richard Baxter, began ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... a cannon ball the old man shot between the two, bringing both of them to the ground with his saber and a revolver. The next thing he did was to cut the throats of the horses—the German horses! Then, softly he re-entered the bakehouse ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... cannon cartridges gave out, the enemy brought up numerous batteries, under Colonel Carter, in close proximity to Fairview, and soon overcame all resistance in that direction, driving the troops and guns from ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... was not so easily to be entrapped; for she stretched out her long neck as far as it would go, and then, just as her nose was so near to the salt that its savour made her dart out her tongue and lick her slimy nostrils, she plunged backwards as if a cannon had exploded, and scampered half-way up the hill to her fawn. The Norwegian turned his head and smiled with us, but would ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... king was taking his bath, cannon-shots were heard. After a while Juan appeared before the palace, dressed like a prince. When he saw the king, he said, "The fort ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... Teheran is the Top Meidan or "Cannon plain," where several small and antiquated pieces of artillery are enclosed in a fence. Two parallel avenues with trees cross the rectangular square at its longest side from north to south. In the centre is a large covered reservoir. The offices of both ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... olden times, like those of to-day, have always regarded men as instruments of their ambition or even as food for cannon. When Napoleon I established a bounty for large families, he was no doubt thinking of the number of soldiers he could make for the use of his son. He had good reason to provide for the replenishment of the ranks of his army. The mental quality of the individuals mattered little ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... said she, "that you are not a girl to marry, because the day was fixed, or because things had gone so far. I give you infinite credit for your civil courage, as Dr. X—— calls it: military courage, as he said to me yesterday—military courage, that seeks the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth, may be had for sixpence a day. But civil courage, such as enabled the Princess Parizade, in the Arabian Tales, to go straight up the hill to her object, though the magical multitude of advising and abusive voices continually called to her to turn back, is ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... last desperate effort Velasco dashed forward, pursuing the veil, the fluttering cloak—and the door of the carriage closed behind them. In that moment, as it closed, the horses leaped together, as twin bullets from the mouth of a cannon; galloping, lashed and terrified through the night. It was still ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... rain the rival cannon sounded With sulky iteration boom on boom, And while assailant and defender pounded Each other with those epigrams of doom, I sat at table, by my friends surrounded, Where mirth and laughter lit the dingy room And we made merry one and all, though dinner ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... of my own birthday, but I'm wrought up over this!" declared Fay. "It's a shame there isn't a public holiday. I'd like to fire a cannon. Couldn't get any crackers at those wretched shops ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... they repaired by night. Immediately on the following day they began to call from their walls. When I asked them what they wanted they said that they wished to be friends. I was very short of ammunition, for I had only three thousand arquebus-bullets left, and very few cannon-balls; and both would be spent in one day's fighting, during which, should we not gain the fort, we would be lost—and with no power to defend ourselves while withdrawing our artillery and camp. At the same time, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... where fine crops were raised by the Saints, who had made here, as is their custom everywhere, a garden in the wilderness; the only defence was simple but strong,—an earthwork on one of the white sand-hills back of the village, over whose rampart peeped two small cannon, commanding the harbor. Once on shore, however, a foe found only a living rampart of flesh and blood, as reckless a set of villains as New World history can produce. But this rampart only came together ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... days passed, his thoughts more and more took form, though sometimes, with a sudden heart-pang, he would flinch and shrink, pierced by a consciousness of the unwieldy thing which he was at; and he would mutter: "I must be mad". Anon he would start and cower at a distinct sound of cannon ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... half-gallon bottles, are consumed annually. Native cloth from Celebes is much esteemed for its durability, and large quantities are sold, as well as white English calico and American unbleached cottons, common crockery, coarse cutlery, muskets, gunpowder, gongs, small brass cannon, and elephants' tusks. These three last articles constitute the wealth of the Aru people, with which they pay for their wives, or which they hoard up as "real property." Tobacco is in immense demand for chewing, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of the struggle between the nobility and the bourgeoisie, the royalist "cafes" displayed an unheard-of splendor, and eclipsed the liberal "cafes" so brilliantly that these gastronomic fetes were said to have cost the lives of some of their frequenters who, like ill-cast cannon, were unable to withstand such practice. The two societies ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... that Elijah had ought to of consulted him afore he printed such a article in the hind part of a uncle's store that had just laid in a new supply of two pounds of punk alone. Mr. Kimball says as he'd planned a window display o' cannon crackers pointin' all ways out of a fort built o' his new dried apples an' now here's Elijah comin' out in Saturday's paper for an old-fashioned Fourth o' July without no firecrackers a tall. Mr. Kimball says he thinks Elijah ought to remember whose nephew he is an' show some family ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... attacked and defended in a siege of that irregular kind which caused the destruction of so many baronial residences during the course of those unhappy wars. Martindale Castle, after having suffered severely from the cannon which Cromwell himself brought against it, was at length surrendered when in the last extremity. Sir Geoffrey himself became a prisoner, and while his liberty was only restored upon a promise of remaining a peaceful subject to the Commonwealth in future, his former ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... in no other way than as potential fighting men—the stern hard stuff with which you build and keep your empires. What a row Napoleon could have kicked up with half a million of these sagebrush boys to fling foeward under his cannon-clouds! ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... afterwards from not taking my advice. He was going down the hill with Rulhieres when I said to him, 'Mon General, you expose yourself too much; that which is duty in a subaltern is a fault in a general.' He very politely told me to go to where he may chance to be himself now; for a cannon-ball struck him a few seconds afterwards, and he was killed on the spot. General Perregaux was severely wounded almost at the same time. For four days the fighting was awful; battery answered to battery night and day: while from ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... to mind the effects of the lightning not one half-hour since. When the Almighty appears in all his wrath, in all his tremendous majesty, is it a time for us poor mortals to be at strife? What is our feeble artillery, what is the roar of our cannon, compared to the withering and consuming artillery of Heaven? Has he not told us so?—and do not the ship's company, by their dispirited conduct since the vessel was struck, acknowledge it? The officers all feel it, sir. Is it not presumptuous,—with ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and trusting. You see it is not much of a life to describe. There is not much of what you call incident in it. Only one feeling all day—when will he come? only one thought to sleep and wake upon. I believe George was playing billiards with Captain Cannon in Swallow Street at the time when Amelia was asking Captain Dobbin about him; for George was a jolly sociable fellow, and excellent ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hear from the Chief, nothing is to be done?' Laura said passionately. 'Are we to remain in suspense? Impossible! I cannot bear it. We have plenty of arms in the city. Oh, that we had cannon! I worship cannon! They are the Gods of battle! But if we surprise the citadel;—one true shock of alarm makes a mob of an army. I have heard my husband say so. Let there be no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is ready, so call the priest,' answered he, and when the ceremony was over a cannon was fired and music was played, and within the palace there ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... defended. (He did not know exactly what these "power-stations" were, beyond the fact that they were the lineal successors of the old gun-forts, and controlled an immense number of mines both within the city and without it, as well as some kind of "electric ray," which was the modern substitute for cannon.) Well, it was this "citadel," including the Emperor's palace, that had been suddenly seized by the revolutionaries, obviously by the aid of treachery. And the thing was done. It was impossible for the other Powers, or even for the German air-navy itself, to ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... king? And it was to this end we were fighting; for this that every village and family in England was deploring the death of beloved sons and fathers. We dared not speak to each other, even at table, of Malplaquet, so frightful were the gaps left in our army by the cannon of that bloody action. 'Twas heartrending, for an officer who had a heart, to look down his line on a parade-day afterwards, and miss hundreds of faces of comrades—humble or of high rank—that had gathered but ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hard, woody fruits; some as large and round as a cannon-ball, and some shaped like a bowl. They grow on large trees in Brazil and other parts of South America; and the natives take out the seeds, and use the fruits for holding water, or to wash ...
— The Nursery, September 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 3 • Various
... declin'd that station, and recommended Mr. Lawrence, a fine person, and man of influence, who was accordingly appointed. I then propos'd a lottery to defray the expense of building a battery below the town, and furnishing it with cannon. It filled expeditiously, and the battery was soon erected, the merlons being fram'd of logs and fill'd with earth. We bought some old cannon from Boston, but, these not being sufficient, we wrote to England for more, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... and cannon-shaped, and often 3 feet and more long and about 8 inches in diameter, is common in Benguet, and is found in Lepanto, but is not found or known in Bontoc. A skin stretched over the large end of the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... exaggerates the perils of the hour. Entire self-possession may make a battle very little more dangerous to life than a match at foils or at football. Examples are cited by soldiers of men who have seen the cannon pointed and the fire given to it, and who have stepped aside from the path of the ball. The terrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin. The drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, and his health renews itself at as vigorous a pulse under the sleet as under ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... rebellious subjects with tortures and executions more horrible than anything reported from Morocco, the case was very different. Then alliances and understandings were confirmed, substantial loans were arranged in France and England, Kings and Emperors visited the Tsar, and the cannon of our fleet welcomed him to our waters amid the applause of our newspapers and the congratulations of a ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... or purple vetch not unusual on the sand ridges, of which the cattle were very fond. In crossing the stony plains to this creek we picked up a number of round balls, of all sizes, from that of a marble to that of a cannon ball; they were perfect spheres, and hollow like shells, being formed of clay and sand cemented by oxide of iron. Some of these singular balls were in clusters like grape-shot, others had rings round them like Saturn's ring; and as I have observed, the plains were covered with them in ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... while the Romans were united by all the ties that bound them to their common fatherland. The Carthaginian officer of the ordinary type estimated his mercenaries, and even the Libyan farmers, very much as men in modern warfare estimate cannon-balls; hence such disgraceful proceedings as the betrayal of the Libyan troops by their general Himilco in 358, which was followed by a dangerous insurrection of the Libyans, and hence that proverbial cry of "Punic faith," ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... saw herself in a field somewhere. All around and before her were soldiers; by them stood lines of cannon; here and there were horses, and by the light of a few bivouac-fires she perceived some bleeding heaps of dead. Of a sudden she stumbled: a corpse was barring her way. She stooped over it: it was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Fred and Scar, home was becoming rapidly a memory. By the merest chances, they heard that all was well, and, compelled to be content with this scanty news, they plunged into their work again, till the roar of cannon and clash of steel became familiar as were the terrors of the scene of some desperate fight, such as modern soldiers would speak of as ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... French Egyptian campaigns, of the attempt to reduce a garrison posted in a bulky fort of mud. Had the defences been of timber, the besiegers might have set fire to and burned them; had they been of stone, they might have shaken and ultimately breached them by the battery of their cannon; or they might have undermined and blown them up. But the huge mound of mud had nothing susceptible of fire or any other force; the missiles from the artillery were discharged but to be buried in the dull mass; and all the means ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... cannon balls into Yorktown. These set the houses on fire. At last Cornwallis had to give up. The British marched out and laid ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... rolling along all contribute to heighten the animation of the scene. We are now at the Rue de la Paix; it is certainly a noble street, and we will turn down it to look at the statue of Napoleon on the column in the Place Vendome; the pillar, which was cast from the cannon taken from the enemies of France, is decidedly a work of extraordinary merit and beauty, and requires a good deal of study to appreciate the exquisite workmanship displayed in its execution. But if it were not for the ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... and laying it at the foot of the wall, and walking upon it; and through the seven holes I contrived to plant the muskets, of which I took notice that I got seven on shore out of the ship; these, I say, I planted like my cannon, and fitted them into frames that held them like a carriage, that so I could fire all the seven guns in two minutes time. This wall I was many a weary month in finishing, and yet never thought myself safe till it ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe |
