"Matchlock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me the men were making preparations for the morning meal, or were engaged in looking to their weapons, testing the sharpness of a cutlass or seeing to the priming of a matchlock. The big door of the stronghold was open, and through it I could see the white beach and the sea-edge, where Lancelot stood scanning the horizon with the spy-glass. The sun was very bright, and I could hear the parrots screaming away in ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... reached the city of Furri, loaded, for the thirty-fifth time, with the baggage of the British embassy. The caravan, escorted by a detachment of three hundred matchlock men, with flutes playing, and muskets echoing, and the heads of the warriors decorated with white plumes, on the 16th July entered the frontier town of the kingdom of Efat. Clusters of conical-roofed houses, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... or address a few words to the preacher, and then walk home to dinner. There are many salient points of difference. No bonnets appear in public: the squire, after prayers, gives alms to the poor, and departs escorted by two dozen matchlock-men, who perseveringly fire ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Maurice, the archers of St. Sebastian, the sword-players of St. Christopher, could not be ordered from Tournay to suppress the preaching, for they had all gone to the preaching themselves. How idle, therefore; to send peremptory orders without a matchlock to enforce ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... rapids near the lovely basin of Chambly—named after a French officer and seignior in later times—the French boat could not be taken any {73} further. It was sent back to Quebec while Champlain and two others, armed with the arquebus, a short gun with a matchlock, followed the Indians through the woods to avoid this dangerous part of the river. The party soon reached the safe waters of the Richelieu and embarked once more in their canoes. For the first time Champlain had abundant opportunities to note the customs of the Indians on a war-path, ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... stretched a wide avenue, three or four hundred paces long, flanked by a natural growth of trees,—one of those curious monuments of native industry to which allusion has already been made. Here Ottigny halted and formed his line of march. Arlac, with eight matchlock men, was sent in advance, and flanking parties were thrown into the woods on either side. Ottigny told his soldiers that, if the Indians meant to attack them, they were probably in ambush at the other end of the avenue. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... loose sand that surrounded us, but after a while we were lucky enough to recover our right line of march. The same day we fell in with a sheik, the head of a family that actually dwells at no great distance 5 from this part of the desert during nine months of the year. The man carried a matchlock, and of this he was inordinately proud, on account of the supposed novelty and ingenuity of the contrivance. We stopped, and sat down and rested awhile, for the sake of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... stand; but were shelled out, and the plain beyond the Matun river was soon covered with fugitives. Major Stewart—with forty men of the 5th Punjaub Cavalry, who accompanied the column—charged 400 of them, and cut down many; until checked by the heavy fire of matchlock men ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... to break it open, but they succeeded with a similar rock in the Hisma, finding inside only Tibn ("tribulated straw") and charcoal. Another had seen a Kidr Dahab ("golden pot"), in the 'Aligan section of the Wady el-Hakl (Hagul) where it leaves the Hisma; and a matchlock-man had brought down with his bullet a bit of precious metal from the upper part. This report prevails in many places: it may have come all the way from "Pharaoh's Treasury" at Petra, or from the Sinaitic Wady Leja. At the mouth ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... pressed into the same service. Our regular garrison consisted of only two hundred European troops, to which were added some Topasses, a mixed breed of Indians and Portuguese, very suitable to be used as mercenaries, and about a thousand of the black natives armed as buxerries, or matchlock men. Out of regard to my having been the first to volunteer and to my former service on board a man-of-war, I was presently appointed a sergeant, and put in charge of a party of twelve men, assigned to the defence of the rope-walk which joins the main ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... Well, you must know that next day we received news of large herds of elephants away to the eastward of the Ganges, so we started off with all our forces—hunters, matchlock-men, onlookers, etcetera, and about eighty tame elephants. Chief among these last were the fighting elephants, to which Junkie gave such appropriate names just now, and king of them all was the mighty Chand Moorut, ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... burst suddenly a discordant clamor, a confusion of horrible and unknown sounds, unlike, in simple Edward Dotey's mind, to anything possible this side of hell. Undaunted even thus, he answered the assault with a yell of quivering defiance, fired his matchlock into the air, and shouted at ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin |
