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More "Breech" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Constitution. It found Ireland a nation of savages and did for it what the mighty power of the Caesars could not—brought it within the pale of civilization. But for the Roman Catholic Church Slattery might be wearing a breech clout, digging roots with his finger nails and gorging himself with raw meat in Ireland to-day instead of insulting the intelligence of American audiences and wringing money from fanatics and fools by warring upon the political institutions of ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... accoutrement that was to be the final physical touch to his transition; it did not allow of skepticism; about it there was also a quiet and cold touch of romance. The rifle chilled David's bare fingers when he touched it. It was short-barrelled, but heavy in the breech, with an appearance of indubitable efficiency about it. It looked like an honest weapon to David, who was unaccustomed to firearms—and this was more than he could say for the heavy, 38-calibre automatic pistol which Father Roland thrust into ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... leaves and vines a primitive landing. It was a little dock with a thatched lodge in the rear of it and a few cords of wood stacked upon its end. There were some natives here—Indians probably,—with dark skins bared from head to foot; they wore only the breech-clout, and this of the briefest. Evidently they were ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... girdle of trenches, stern, grimy, haggard men lived, cheek to the heated rifle-breech, and ate, and snatched brief spells of sleep, booted and bandoliered, and with the loaded weapon ready for gripping. Since the attack on Maxim Kopje had choked the Hospital with wounded men and dotted ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a long rectangular, one-story building with twenty furnaces arranged, each under an open window, around the sides. In front of each heated furnace with its tray of leaves, a Japanese man, wearing only a breech cloth, and in a state of profuse perspiration, was busy rolling the tea leaves between the ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... girt in their gaunt waists: the heroic youthful sinew of the old border folk. One among them, larger and handsomer than the others, had pleased his fancy by donning more nearly the Indian dress. His breech-clout was of dappled fawn-skin; his long thigh boots of thin deer-hide were open at the hips, leaving exposed the clear whiteness of his flesh; below the knees they were ornamented by a scarlet fringe ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... even the telegrams that came from infected places; it was also he who, in compassion for the convicts that worked in the sun and with a desire of saving to the government the cost of their equipment, suggested that they be clothed in a simple breech-clout and set to work not by day but at night. He marveled, he stormed, that his projects should encounter objectors, but consoled himself with the reflection that the man who is worth enemies has them, and revenged himself by attacking and tearing to pieces any project, good or bad, presented ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... new fourteen-inch wire-wound guns, whose long chases were prevented from drooping after continuous discharge by an ingenious application of the principle of the cantilever bridge, invented by the creator of the Ithuriel. In the breech-chamber of each of them was a thousand-pound shell, carrying a bursting charge of five hundred pounds of an explosive which was an improvement on blasting gelatine, and the guns were capable of throwing these to a distance of twelve miles with precision. They were the most formidable ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... cunningly to be able to dissemble. But (if it please your Maiestie) may it not seeme inough for a Courtier to know how to weare a fether, and set his cappe a slaunt, his chaine en echarpe, a straight buskin al inglesse, a loose alo Turquesque, the cape alla Spaniola, the breech a la Francoise, and by twentie maner of new faishoned garments to disguise his body, and his face with as many countenances, whereof it seemes there be many that make a very arte, and studie who can shew ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... cylinder about twelve inches long, and almost half as much in diameter, a huge thing, constructed, it seemed, of a substance that was almost as brittle as an eggshell. Into the large hemispherical cavity in the breech of the gun he shoved it. He took another quick look at the light gleaming from the house in the darkness ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... Fannin lay against the breech of one of the cannon, blankets having been folded between to make his position easy. His wound was severe and he was suffering greatly, but he uttered no complaint. He had not shown great skill or judgment ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... may in every point and particle confer at large of your perplexity. By Saint Picot, answered Panurge, we never shall do any good that way, I see it already. And you see yourself how the world is vilely abused, as when with a foxtail one claps another's breech to cajole him. We give our souls to keep to the theologues, who for the greater part are heretics. Our bodies we commit to the physicians, who never themselves take any physic. And then we entrust our goods to the lawyers, who never go to law against one another. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... dram to the Indians. In the evening we exhibited different objects of curiosity, and particularly the air-gun, which gave them great surprise. Those people are almost naked, having no covering except a sort of breech-cloth round the middle, with a loose blanket or buffalo robe, painted, thrown over them. The names of these warriors, besides those already mentioned, were Karkapaha, or Crow's Head, and Nenasawa, or Black Cat, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... best of wood for their sledges, the best of cutlery, knives, hatchets, and saws for their work, and the cooking utensils of civilization. Formerly they were dependent upon the most primitive hunting weapons; now they have repeating rifles, breech-loading shotguns, and an abundance of ammunition. There was not a rifle in the tribe when I first went there. As they have no vegetables, and live solely on meat, blood, and blubber, the possession of guns and ammunition has increased the food-producing ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... intrigue," and gave Kate such a slap on the side of the head, as quite dislocated for a time the intellects of the poor young lassie. Next morning, Kate was solemnly advised never to write again to the laird, while the lady wrote him a letter, which, she said, would be as good as a birch to the breech of the boy. Nothing, therefore, for some time, indeed, throughout the year, came of the matter; but her ladyship, when Mrs Balwhidder soon after called on her, said that I was a nose-of-wax, and that she never would speak to me again, which surely was ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... between a hat and a turban, and over his baggy Turkish trousers hung a long Persian coat of bright-colored, large-figured cloth, bound at the waist by a belt of cartridges. Across the shoulders was slung a breech-loading Martini rifle, and from his neck dangled a heavy gold chain, which was probably the spoil of some predatory expedition. A quiet dignity sat on ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... departure from the general practice in connection with such weapons. When the gun is loaded the bolt which holds the compressor back is withdrawn, either by the hand for manual firing, or by the action of the automatic closing of the breech when the arm is being used as a quick-firer. In firing the gun is thrown forward under the pressure of the released air which occurs at the moment of discharge. The energy of the recoil brings the gun back and at the same time recharges the ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... at the same time he looks to the priming of his gun, and then fixes his eye on the door as it slowly opens. He drops the breech hastily to the ground as the ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... to the ring, he combed and dressed, Stroking the snowy coat to silken gloss; Next on the steed he laid the numdah square, Fitted the saddle-cloth across, and set The saddle fair, drew tight the jewelled girths, Buckled the breech-bands and the martingale, And made fall both the stirrups of worked gold. Then over all he cast a golden net, With tassels of seed-pearl and silken strings, And led the great horse to the palace door, Where stood the Prince; but when he saw his Lord, Right glad he waxed and joyously ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... Articles on them are very easy to write, easy to read, easy to talk about. They please the vanity of mankind. We think as we read, "Thank God, I am not as that man; I did not send green coffee to the Crimea; I did not send patent cartridge to the common guns, and common cartridge to the breech loaders. I make money; that miserable public functionary only wastes money". As for the defence of the department, no one cares for it or reads it. Naturally at first hearing it does not sound true. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... to the ground as if he had been shot. The giraffe had not seen him, for the head, having vanished for a moment, reappeared; it was feeding, plucking down small branches of leaves, and Felix, lying on his side, opened the breech of the rifle, drew the empty cartridge case, inserted a cartridge in each barrel, and closed the breech. Now, unknown to Adams, when he had fired the gun the day before, there was a plug of clay in the left-hand barrel about ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... was repeated, but much nearer, and a warrior leaped into the opening, in the full blaze of the firelight. He was entirely naked save for a breech cloth and moccasins, and he was a wild and savage figure. He stood for a moment or two, then faced the chiefs, and, bowing before them, spoke a few words in the Wyandot tongue-Henry knew already by his paint that ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... are susceptible to change, for in their application the principles are subject to the influence of successive inventions. Gunpowder abolished the bow and arrow and the knight in armour; the bayonet affixed to the musket superseded the pike; the rifle outranged the musket; the breech-loader and the magazine attachment progressively increased the rate of fire; smokeless powder rendered a firing line almost invisible; the flat trajectory of the small-arms bullet increased the danger-zone in an advance; the increased ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... sufficient for one Child, but not enough for Twins, wherefore Nature Form'd what she could. There might be many other particular Instances given of Monstrous Births, as some sticking together by the Bellies, others by the Breech; some Born without Arms or Legs others without Heads, yet have they liv'd for some time, till want of Sustenance made them pine away and Die, as having no place to receive it, and others with Heads like ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... the matter of clothes." He grinned again. "We'll want a breech clout, at least. I propose that we get the sheerest silk gauze we can find, and cut an eighth-inch square apiece to tie about ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... training of their guns, or rather in placing them so as to have been unable to take any other range than point blank! Here is a fort mounting upwards of fifty guns of large calibre, which would have commanded the bay, but the embrasures are so small as barely to admit the muzzle of the gun, the breech of which was imbedded in the earth. These were soon silenced, as may well be supposed, by the attacking squadron taking a position beyond their range, and training their own batteries to bear upon the Chinese gunners within, who kept blazing away into the ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... Washington," he would say, "spring from his panting horse, and seize a brass field-piece as if it had been a stick. His look was terrible. He put his right hand on the muzzle, his left hand on the breech; he pulled with this, he pushed with that, and wheeled it round, as if it had been a plaything: it furrowed the ground like a ploughshare. He tore the sheet-lead from the touch-hole; then the powder-monkey rushed up with the fire, when the cannon ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... industrious book-study of the subject. I did not accomplish much in outdoor study because I did not get spectacles until late in the fall, a short time before I started with the rest of the family for a second trip to Europe. We were living at Dobbs Ferry, on the Hudson. My gun was a breech-loading, pin-fire double-barrel, of French manufacture. It was an excellent gun for a clumsy and often absent-minded boy. There was no spring to open it, and if the mechanism became rusty it could be opened with a brick without ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... right bauld ye set your nose out, As plump and gray as onie grozet; [gooseberry] O for some rank mercurial rozet, [rosin] Or fell red smeddum! [deadly, dust] I'd gie you sic a hearty doze o't, Wad dress your droddum! [breech] ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... the pampas of the great Thames valley, and furnished forth abundant food for man as well as the wild beasts, when they could capture him. His skin, though, was not counted of much worth. Its short hair afforded little warmth in cloak or breech-clout, and the tanned pelt became hard and uncomfortable when it dried after a wetting. Still, there were various uses for this horse's hide. It made fine strings and thongs, and the beast's flesh, as has been said, was a staple of the larder. The first great ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... service, and they are being discharged as rapidly as they can be replaced by regular troops. The Army has been promptly paid, carefully provided with medical treatment, well sheltered and subsisted, and is to be furnished with breech-loading small arms. The military strength of the nation has been unimpaired by the discharge of volunteers, the disposition of unserviceable or perishable stores, and the retrenchment of expenditure. Sufficient war material to meet any emergency has been retained, and from ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... Swiss, in red breech-clout and spectacles, the lamplight shining on his bald head, sat in the midst of them, familiar by a score of years with their chants. Pae filled the pipe and the bowls and joined in the chorus, while the Paumotan boys, in a shadowy recess, sipped their rum and rolled their eyes in astonished ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... hastily collecting at the exposed points, seeking to drive them back. We were frequently successful; we were on the inside, and had the advantage of the short interior lines, so that our few men and our breech-loaders told to ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... fluency. Whenever a fatly provided wagon-train is to be attacked, a fine herd of emigrants' beeves stampeded, the mail to be stopped, or the Gentiles in any way harassed, these desperadoes stain their skin, exchange their clothes for a breech-clout, and rally a horde of the savages, whose favor they have always propitiated, for the ambush and massacre, which in all but the element of brute force is their work in plan, leadership, and execution. I have multitudes of most interesting facts to back ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... marble shot, each ball one hundred and fifty pounds. They knocked three port-holes into one. But we gave them better than they sent. 'Up and at them, my bull-dog!' said I, patting my gun on the breech; 'tear open hatchways in their Moslem sides! White-Jacket, my lad, you ought to have been there. The bay was covered with masts and yards, as I have seen a raft of snags in the Arkansas River. Showers ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... good earnest. How sometimes Nature will betray it's folly? It's tendernesse? and make it selfe a Pastime To harder bosomes? Looking on the Lynes Of my Boyes face, me thoughts I did requoyle Twentie three yeeres, and saw my selfe vn-breech'd, In my greene Veluet Coat; my Dagger muzzel'd, Least it should bite it's Master, and so proue (As Ornaments oft do's) too dangerous: How like (me thought) I then was to this Kernell, This Squash, this Gentleman. Mine honest Friend, Will you take ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the other. Now this to Adam is one, therefore that on Sinai is one, and all one with this; and that this is a truth, I say, I know, because the sins against that on Sinai were punished by God for the breech thereof before it was given there; so it doth plainly appear to be a truth; for it would be unrighteous with God for to punish for that law that was not broken; therefore it was all ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Sioux and their allies armed with the best modern breech-loaders, well supplied with ammunition and countless herds of war ponies, and far too numerous and powerful to be handled by the small force ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... there are many officers from chamberlain to cook. He forms a body-guard, whose members are dressed in silk. Two pages wait upon the king, one of whom is a son of his grace the bishop of Muenster. The great officers of state are somewhat wondrously attired, one breech red, the other grey, and on the sleeves of their coats are embroidered the arms of Sion—the earth-sphere pierced by two crossed swords, a sign of universal sway and its instruments—while a golden finger-ring ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... without the universal serape, which often serves for both cloak and coat. Otherwise his garb was the ordinary stable wear of a Mexican gentleman's servant; wide velveteen trousers open along the outer seams, and fended with leather at breech and bottoms. "Batos" and a black glaze hat completed his habiliments, with a scarf of China crape, the chammora, around his waist. Scanning the face shadowed by the broad rim of his sombrero, it was seen to be that of Jose, Don Ignacio's ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... time of attending to their duties." "Then a person could have escaped without their seeing him?" "A whole regiment of persons might have escaped. You will understand the situation exactly if I compare this corridor to a long cannon, the room at the end being the breech-loading chamber. Two guards were inside the room, and two others stood outside the door that communicated with this corridor. These four men were killed instantly. Of the guards inside the room not a vestige has been found. ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... handsome and picturesque; others ruining their appearance by the addition of a hideous balbriggan undershirt, sandwiched between tight trousers with innumerable buttons and a brilliantly coloured turban; while still others, in little else than a fez and breech-clout, seemed not a whit abashed. The children were either quite naked, or wrapped in sarongs, faded by the sun and weather to a dull harmony of their once too ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... meve[202] Nor I would mine own eyes in no wise believe, Until that other I beat me so, That he made me believe it, whether I would or no. And if he had yourself now within his reach, He would make you say so too, or else beshit your breech. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... threatening disdain, bade me know myself better, and remember the correction I had already received from him for my insolence; for he might not always be in the humour of sparing a wretch who abused his goodness. To this inuendo I made no reply but by a kick on the breech, which overturned him in an instant. He started up with wonderful agility, and, drawing his sword, attacked me with great fury. Several people interposed, but, when he informed them of its being an affair of honour, they retired, and left us to decide the battle by ourselves. I sustained ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... the whites, that with the exception of blankets—still much worn by both sexes at their homes, and dancing suits—their original costumes are now seldom seen. The blanket has been substituted for the sea-otter cloak, trousers and dresses for the breech cloth, and leather undergarments by woven ones. The men wear hats, but the women very rarely; a handkerchief or shawl being their most common head covering. Some of the elderly women, however, wear large hats of the Chinese pattern, ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... for his rifle true That close at his hand he kept, He pointed it straight at the voice and drew, But never a flash outleapt, For the water ran from the rifle breech — It was drenched ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... photographs, as presented in La Illustracion Espanola. These guns are breech loaders, of steel, 301/2 centimeters caliber, or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... southward the Sierra Madre reared its lofty crests toward the flaring sky; and there Cochise established another sanctuary where his people could rest and hunt when the chase became too hot in Arizona. His breech-clouted scouts discovered some dry placer diggings here, and he bade the squaws mine the dust which he exchanged with ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... encounters; but the blows from which he escaped fell with destructive force upon the vessel. A piece of broken chain remained attached to the carronade. This bit of chain had twisted in some incomprehensible way around the breech button. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... have less to doe, that's all, there's half a dozen of my friends i'th' fields sunning against a bank, with half a breech among 'em, I shall be with 'em shortly. The care and continuall vexation of being rich, eat up this rascall. What shall become of my poor familie, they are no sheep, and they ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... countenance of the old chief,—Mustapha Longchops, the sailors called him,—but whether he wished the dhow to escape or not, it was difficult to say. Jerry had again got the gun ready, and, putting it on the breech, he exhorted it this time to do its duty. Again he pulled the trigger, when the next instant down came the long yard by the run on deck. The midshipmen uttered a hearty cheer, taken up by Adair and the crew, and in a few minutes they ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... did not look European, the pistol stuck in his shawl belt was of the best, strongest, and most hard-hitting type. Old- fashioned, indeed, so far that it was not breech-loading; for he had considered that if he lost his cartridges, or spent them, his weapon would become a useless lump of iron, whereas percussion caps, powder, and lead, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... the far side of the circle appeared the Wyandot warriors, six abreast coming between the lodges. They were naked except for the breech cloth and moccasins, but their bodies were gorgeously painted in many colors. Mighty men were they. Few among them were less than six feet in height, and all were splendidly built for strength, ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wherefore, and for what cause that Alleluja was closed before the cup came once round. Why, believest thou not, forsooth, that there stood once a cock on St. Paul's steeple-top, and drew up the strapples of his breech? How provest thou that tale? By all the four doctors of Wynberryhills—that is to say, Vertas, Gadatryne, Trumpas, and Dadyltrymsert—the which four doctors say there was once an old wife had a cock to her son, and he ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... in that semi-hostile country. There were no road-agents to speak of, for sums of money large enough to tempt gentry of that ilk seldom passed over those isolated trails; but here and there stray parties of Stonies and Blackfeet, young bucks in war-paint and breech-clout, hot on the trail of their first medicine, skulked warily among the coulee-scarred ridges, keeping in touch with the drifting buffalo-herds and alert for a chance to ambush a straggling white ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... buckskin shirts and breech-clouts; in winter they were clad in the fur of the bear and wolf or of the shaggy buffalo. They had moccasins of elk or buffalo hide, and high thigh-boots of thin deer-skin, ornamented with fawns' trotters, or turkey ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... them were desired for their beautiful feather-covered skins, which make most valuable and beautiful caps and muffs, it was decided that Souwanas and Kennedy should take the missionary's breech-loading rifle, in addition to their own guns, and try to ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... and his heart beat, for there, bright and new, were the things he had been longing for: a large metal model, carriage and all, of a breech-loading cannon, and a patent ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn
... clothing in winter and none in the summer. Women usually wore a primitive skirt, which consisted of a piece of cotton cloth fastened about the waist, and extending to the knees. Men wore breech cloths and moccasins. In winter they had shirts and ...
— Geronimo's Story of His Life • Geronimo
... the brown, curling locks of his hair down droop to his bare, brawny shoulders, And his face wears a smile debonair, as he tightens his red sash around him; But stripped to the moccasins bare, save the belt and the breech-clout of buckskin, Stands the haughty Tamdoka aware that the eyes of the warriors admire him; For his arms are the arms of a bear and his legs are the legs ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... information en route as to the rate of speed at which the Indians were traveling, their numbers, etc., and from the citizens and the camp sites passed, learned that there were still over 400 of the warriors, and about 150 squaws and children in the band; that the bucks were all armed with modern breech-loading rifles, many of which were repeaters; that they were amply supplied with ammunition, and had with them over 2,000 head of good horses. Gibbon ascertained that he was covering two of their daily marches with one of his, and the question of overtaking them, became, therefore, merely ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... minute and second determined by the commission's mathematicians the projectile will be slid into the cannon. The concussion will explode the powder in the breech. This final act is to take place"—he glanced at his ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... military experts as an axiom that trained troops armed with the present breech-loading and rapid-firing arm cannot be successfully assailed by any troops who simply assault. Of course you can make the regular approaches and dig up to them. The fallacy of that proposition was made ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Chauxville and took the rifle from his hands. He opened the breech and looked into the barrels. They were clean; the rifle ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... long drawn out, demoniac, indescribable. Blood curdling, more savage infinitely than the cry of any wild beast, the others took it up, augmented it by a score, a hundred throats. Again the earth vomited the demons forth. Naked, breech-clouted, garbed in fragments of white men's dress, they swarmed into the clearing, into the cabin, about the two prisoners in their midst. Passively, patiently waiting for hours, of a sudden they seemed possessed of a frenzy of haste, of savage ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... service," said Dunlap, throwing a cartridge into the breech of the Sharp, and ejecting it to show how fast it could ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... embrasures of the earthwork, then a mounted officer upon a lively sorrel cantered as if for observation a short distance to the left of the work. Some sharpshooters in our front, protected slightly by the ground which rose gently towards the west, tried their breech-loaders upon him. At 450 yards there was certainty enough in the aim to make the music of their bullets unpleasant, and he again sought the cover of the work. An upright puff of smoke,—then a large volumed puff horizontally,—shrill music in its short flight,—a dull, heavy sound ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... and the empty shell flew out, for the rifle was an ejector. His practised hands had another cartridge in and the breech closed in an instant. He fired again and then again, aiming each time at a different spot in the palisade. There was a roar of anger from the hidden Kachins, a roar answered by an exultant shout from ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... continued. "Took you for old Gilly, you know." He snapped the empty shells from his gun, and blew into the breech, before adding, "Would you mind, then? That is, if you're bound up for Stink-Chau. It's a beastly long tramp, and I've ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... he hung the gun to the tent pole and went off, but Carrie took it down, and carefully opened and shut the breech. After doing so once or twice, she was satisfied and put back the gun. Then she went to a little bark store where their food was kept, and picking up a bag of flour that had been opened, weighed it in her hand. It was lighter than it ought to be, and this had happened before. Next she examined ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... little piece of brass!" said Roberts, slapping the gun familiarly on the breech; "only get us out of our scrape, and I'll polish ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... had a great scene with Peter yesterday. Rex has two guns, you must know—a rifle, and an old fowling-piece—good enough in its way, but awfully old-fashioned (not a breech-loader), and he determined to make old Peter a present of this, for he is a good old fellow, and does not cheat one, and we had resolved to give him something, and we knew this would delight him. I wish you could have seen him. He burst out laughing, and laughed at intervals from pure ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... country was perfectly flat in the vicinity of the river, and although much covered with dense bush, it was interspersed with numerous small glades, covered with parched herbage 2 or 3 feet in height. A few Tokrooris accompanied me with spare rifles (all muzzle-loaders, as the breech action had not been introduced in those days), and I was leading the way, occasionally breaking through the intervening bush, with as little noise ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... to the pivot gun, one on each side, stationed nearest to the base of the breech. Seventeen men were required to work the pivot gun, whose duties were defined in the names applied to them, the powderman being the odd one. The first and second captains were numbers one and two; the odd numbers being on the ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... during the night but not enough to wet a sheet of paper. At sunrise temperature 70 degrees, calm. At noon slight breeze southerly; temperature 110 degrees. Found suspended the spring of one of Terry's breech-loading rifles round the neck of a native; he describes the remaining portions of the rifle out to the north-east, which will be nearly in our north course. Highest temperature during the afternoon in the sun 129 degrees; at sunset ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... old. And a beautiful piece of workmanship it was: my new double breechloader is a coarse common thing to compare with it. Long and slender and light as a feather, it came to the shoulder with wonderful ease. Then there was a groove on the barrel at the breech and for some inches up which caught the eye and guided the glance like a trough to the sight at the muzzle and thence to the bird. The stock was shod with brass, and the trigger-guard was of brass, with a kind of flange stretching half-way down to the butt ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... Below the breech-clout the iron limbs were encased in leggings and the small feet were covered with moccasins, now faded and worn by hard usage. The Panther paused, with his left foot in advance, his right hand grasping ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... ground, looped snakily around one ankle and threw him hard. His gun flew from his hand. As he fell a tiny whispering sound flitted past, followed by a small blow somewhere behind him. Ensued a gruff grunt from Tim and the swift clatter of a breech bolt. ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... he thought was best to teach them first. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... with which these men are armed, are of all sorts, descriptions and ages, from the old flint-locks to repeating breech-loaders, and it can easily be imagined how difficult it must be to train the troops, hardly two soldiers having guns of even a similar make! A couple of American Army instructors were employed by the King to coach the soldiery in the art of foreign warfare, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... deck, walking so softly up and down as to disturb nobody. They had taken but a few turns when their attention was attracted by the sound of low voices, being those of the men constituting the anchor watch. Roger and his friend strolled up to them, and, sitting down on the breech of a gun, prepared to listen to what was evidently a yarn that the ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... 1895 model. These guns were purchased by the South African Republic during the year 1896.... The gun, which is constructed of forged and tempered steel, has a 3" bore. Its total length is 8 feet and its weight is 726 pounds. The body of the gun consists of three elements:—1. A tube in which the breech piece is fixed. 2. A sleeve covering the tube for a length of 3 feet 6 inches. 3. A chase hoop. The chamber is provided with twenty-four grooves of variable pitch which have a final inclination ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... a sense of romance as Louis himself. He returned to China with a belt of gold around his waist, a ninety dollar breech loader given him by Louis, and a boxful of belongings. His intention was to leave these great riches with a member of his family who lived outside the village, dress himself in beggar's rags, and then ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... like double pomegranates. Then the old woman bent to her and they took hold of one another, whilst Sherkan raised his eyes to heaven and prayed to God that the damsel might conquer the old hag. Presently, the former bored in under the latter, and gripping her by the breech with the left hand and by the gullet with the right, hoisted her off the ground; whereupon the old woman strove to free herself and in the struggle wriggled out of the girl's hands and fell on her ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... struggled from his cramped quarters. The savage had grabbed him about the shoulders, but his hands were still free; they held the gun on high. And in the second when he found his feet under him, as Phee-e-al dragged him clear of the chest, Rawson brought the breech of the gun crashing down upon ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... and early one afternoon the big white boat under a ragged sail shouldered its way before the sea breeze into Patusan Reach, manned by fourteen assorted scarecrows glaring hungrily ahead, and fingering the breech-blocks of cheap rifles. Brown calculated upon the terrifying surprise of his appearance. They sailed in with the last of the flood; the Rajah's stockade gave no sign; the first houses on both sides of the stream seemed deserted. A few canoes were seen up the reach in full ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... so he climbs up a very tall tree, And fixes himself to his comfort and glee, Hung up from the end of a branch by his breech, Quite out of all mischievous quadrupeds' reach. A position not perfectly easy 't is true, But yet at the same ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... the levee howled and screamed with rage. The swarming decks answered never a word; but one old tar on the Hartford, standing lanyard in hand beside a great pivot gun, so plain to view that you could see him smile, silently patted its big black breech and blandly grinned. And now the rain ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... preparation of the plans, and the acquisition of the land required. A cable was dispatched to our military adviser in London, then General Harding-Stewart, to place at once on order the armament for the fort, which it had been decided should consist of two 9.2 and two 6-inch breech-loading guns, mounted on hydro-pneumatic gun-carriages, the latest up-to-date ordnance approved of by the home government for coastal defence purposes ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... in the way of ordnance, and the principles involved in its construction can be applied to any size of gun, from a one-inch barker to a thirty-six-inch thunderer. The model as it now stands weighs 475 pounds, measures four inches at breech, and is constructed of the finest of gun brass at a cost of $3,500. There is a magazine at the breech in which a large number of heavy shells can be held in reserve, and in the action of the gun these slip down to their places and are fired at the rate ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... who may have in their possession any firearms or ammunition formerly issued to or seized by the Afghan troops, are required to produce them. For every country-made rifle, whether breech or muzzle loading, the sum of Rs. 3 will be given on delivery, and for every rifle of European manufacture Rs. 5. Anyone found hereafter in possession of such weapons will be severely punished. Finally, I notify that I will give a reward of Rs. 50 for the surrender of any ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... Strong hotly. "The assignments of the Polaris unit, whether it be to Tara or the Moon, has nothing to do with your own breech of conduct. In any case, if they were to be assigned, they'd do a better job than you 'experienced' spacemen who are disrespectful of your superior officers and break regulations! If either of you makes one more crack about the Solar Guard or Space Cadets, ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... Smooth, the silkman; Shallow and Silence, country justices; Elbow and Hull, constables; Dogberry and Verges, Fang and Snare, sheriffs' officers; Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, and Bull-calf, recruits; Feebee, at once a recruit and a woman's tailor, Pilch and Patch-Breech, fishermen (though these last two appellations may be mere nicknames); Potpan, Peter Thump, Simple, Gobbo, and Susan Grindstone, servants; Speed, "a clownish servant"; Slender, Pistol, Nym, Sneak, Doll Tear-sheet, Jane Smile, Costard, Oatcake, Seacoal, and various ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... faces. There were less of the ape characteristics about their features, and less of the negroid, too. They carried weapons, stone-shod spears, stone knives, and hatchets—and they wore ornaments and breech-cloths—the former of feathers worn in their hair and the latter made of a single snake-skin cured with the head on, the head depending to ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... works by compressed air," and Tom showed his chum how, when the gun was loaded, the projectile in place, and the breech-block screwed fast, the officer in charge of the firing squad would, on getting the range from the soldier detailed to calculate it, make the necessary adjustments, ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... the heavy grease off; then get a soft pine stick, pointed at one end, and with this point remove the grease from the cracks, crevices and corners. Clean the bore from the breech. When the heavy grease has been removed, the metal part of the gun, bore included, should be covered with a light coating of "3-in-1" oil. Heavy grease can be removed from the rifle by rubbing it with a rag which has been saturated with ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... curved at the other end. The broad portion used for throwing or carrying the ball was formed of thongs of deerskin, interwoven and drawn firm and tight. It was a picturesque sight when the opposing teams were ready to commence play. The animated warriors were nude except for a breech-cloth reaching to the knee. When all was in readiness, an Indian maiden came tripping into the centre of the field. She was prettily attired after the custom of her tribe, wore bracelets of silver and a red tiara decked with eagle feathers. ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... interesting to strike down creatures that were known above ground before the Deluge! But how? By that terrible vril, in which, from want of hereditary transmission, I could never be a proficient? No, but by a civilised handy breech-loader, which these ingenious mechanicians could not only make, but no doubt improve; nay, surely I saw one in the Museum. Indeed, as absolute king, I should discountenance vril altogether, except in cases of war. Apropos of war, it is perfectly absurd to stint a people so intelligent, so rich, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... men have the new breech-loaders now, Mr. Folsom," said the officers. "The Indians have only old percussion-cap rifles, and ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... taught me to be cruel, And dare you think of mercy? I'le tell thee fool, Those that surpriz'd thee, were my instruments, I can plot too good Madam, you shall find it: And in the stead of licking of my fingers, Kneeling and whining like a boy new breech'd, To get a toy forsooth, not worth an apple, Thus make my way, and with Authority ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... carts with wounded stopped by the side of the road close to Pierre. The driver in his bast shoes ran panting up to it, placed a stone under one of its tireless hind wheels, and began arranging the breech-band ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... what he was doing, and found that he had driven every man away from one section of a Confederate battery, tumbling over gunner after gunner as they came forward to fire. One of his victims was a general officer, whose horse he killed. At the end of an hour or so, a piece of shell took off the breech of his pet rifle, and he returned disconsolate; but after a few minutes he gathered three rifles that were left by wounded men, and went ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... however, and were puzzled by the sight of a soldier carrying simply a bayonet, and another with a bare officer's sword. A fourteen-year-old boy stood in the middle of the street with a rifle in his hand, trifling with it. It exploded in his hand, and when he saw the ruin of the breech block he unfixed the bayonet, threw down the gun, and ran around the corner. A student came up the street examining the mechanism of a revolver. There seemed to be rifle-fire in every direction, even in ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Breech, side, back, and other presentations sometimes occur; in all of which instances, the foetus must be turned in such a position that it can be brought away with as little trouble as possible. When this cannot be accomplished, the only resort is embryotomy, or cutting up of ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... ate below, with seaward port-holes blinded, and sweat dripping from our chins. Then we lay on the cabin roof again, in breech-clouts, waiting for a breeze, and showing no light except the red coals of ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... the revolver, throwing open the breech—the cylinder was empty; he had forgotten to load it. "What a fool!" he exclaimed, laughing scornfully, and still laughing he walked to the centre of the room under the chandelier and ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... "Trip that gun, and double-breech the others!" Abel Keeling's voice rang out, as if there had been any to obey him. He had braced himself within the belfry frame; and then in the middle of the next order his voice suddenly failed him. His ship-shape, that for the moment he had forgotten, rode once more ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... Teddy Worthington. Teddy and Bud Hathaway of Chicago were going on a shooting trip in the Big Woods of Minnesota, and they asked me to go with them. It was new deal for me, so of course I was for it. I hired a hammerless breech-loader for seven a week, borrowed a lot of fishing-tackle, and bought a hunting-knife with a nickel-plated handle. It was a beaut, and stood me three fifty. A fellow can never be too careful. Up there you are likely ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... height and penetrate the decks of the enemy's ships. This is known as mortar firing, but the modern ordnance used for this purpose is more of a howitzer than a mortar, being simply short rifled pieces arranged for breech loading. All our batteries should, of course, be as far from the city or other object to be protected as possible, to prevent the enemy from firing over and beyond the batteries ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... was indeed Silvertip. But how changed! Stripped of the blanket he had worn at the settlement, now standing naked but for his buckskin breech-cloth, with his perfectly proportioned form disclosed in all its sinewy beauty, and on his swarthy, evil face an expression of savage scorn, he surely looked a warrior ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... system which afterward took the whole heart of the land. Nothing could have been more striking than to cast one's eye thus over the wide cotton-fields—for one associates cotton with the New—and find them cultivated by these bare-legged and breech-clouted peasants of the Douab, with ploughs which consisted substantially of a crooked stick shod with iron at the end, and with other such farming-implements out of the time that one thinks of as forty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... formed across the deck, and out of which at two embrasures, admirably constructed, two long twenty-four pounders, loaded up to the muzzle with grape and canister shot, were pointed aft in the direction where the officers and marines were standing—a man at the breech of each gun, with a match in his hand (which he occasionally blew, that the priming powder might be more rapidly ignited), stood ready for the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... never greater than in this, my first essay as a hunter. I had not gone far from the camp before I met with pigeons, and some of them alighted in the bushes very near me. I cocked my pistol, and raised it to my face, bringing the breech almost in contact with my nose. Having brought the sight to bear upon the pigeon, I pulled trigger, and was in the next instant sensible of a humming noise, like that of a stone sent swiftly through the air. I found the pistol at the distance of some paces behind me, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... R. Breech (Executive Vice President, Ford Motor, Company; member of Board of Directors of Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc., Pan-American Airways; President of Western ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... mildly, "I was doing some investigation in the ship's library. I ran into evidence that you people had already used the blueprints for breech-loaders and mortars." ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... guns themselves stood alone and unguarded. A clasp of the hand, and the boys parted, one going, as previously arranged, each way. Ned rose very quietly by the side of the gun, keeping his head, however, below its level, and running his hand along it until it came to the breech. The touch-hole was covered by a wad of cloth to keep the powder dry from the heavy dew. This he removed, put up his hand again with the wet sponge, gave a squeeze, and then cautiously replaced ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... the Tongue of Jagai. 5 But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men. There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low 10 lean thorn between, And ye may hear a breech bolt snick where never a man ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... a great scene with Peter yesterday. Rex has two guns, you must know—a rifle, and an old fowling-piece—good enough in its way, but awfully old-fashioned (not a breech-loader), and he determined to make old Peter a present of this, for he is a good old fellow, and does not cheat one, and we had resolved to give him something, and we knew this would delight him. I wish you could ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... and with more accuracy. A long course of mathematical experiment and calculation has determined the exact pressure of a charge of powder at all points in the bore of a cannon during its combustion and evolution into gas. These experiments have proved that strength is principally required near the breech, and that a cannon need not be of so great length as was formerly supposed to be necessary. We are thus able to construct guns which can be handled, throwing balls of several hundred pounds' weight. Another splendid result of scientific investigation is the method adopted ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... encircled with wreaths of natural flowers of a brilliant carmine tint; plenty of dark men in various costumes, and some with nothing on but a battered stove-pipe hat tilted on the nose, and a very scant breech-clout; —certain smoke-dried children were clothed in nothing but sunshine —a very neat fitting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the evening. Two state-rooms, comfortably fitted up, were ready for the reception of Dr. Ferguson and his friend Kennedy. The latter, all the while swearing that he would not go, went on board with a regular arsenal of hunting weapons, among which were two double-barrelled breech-loading fowling-pieces, and a rifle that had withstood every test, of the make of Purdey, Moore & Dickson, at Edinburgh. With such a weapon a marksman would find no difficulty in lodging a bullet in the eye of a chamois at the distance of two thousand paces. Along with these implements, ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... two hundred yards east of the corral. These consist of two parties. The first, eight in number, enter in single file, preceded and followed by a man in everyday costume. These dancers, called Tsannati{COMBINING BREVE}, are nude, save for the breech-cloth, with body and face painted in white and black, and the hair hanging loose. Immediately following them are the Chanzhini{COMBINING BREVE}, six in number, accompanied by four keepers, two in front and two behind. The ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... and with no gentle hand let the breech fall upon the fellow's head. The blow loosened the skin, and let loose a ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... match and picked up the gun. It was an antique looking weapon badly-rusted. But on opening the breech he uttered a cry ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... by the table with a small rook-rifle in her hands. The breech was open. She looked down the barrel, holding up the weapon so that the light might ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... another with joy and restrained themselves from running to the defiles of the Argonne where there are defiles no longer; never mind, that is according to tradition. I have a friend in Rouen who proposed to a club the manufacture of lances to fight against the breech-loaders! ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... so, an' I reckon the ball's opened," rejoined Lash, and now that former nervous impatience so unnatural to him was as if it had never been. He was smilingly cool, and his voice had almost a caressing note. He tapped the breech of his Winchester with a sinewy brown hand, and he did not appear to be addressing any one in particular. "Yaqui's opened the ball. Look up your pardners there, gents, an' get ready ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... ear rings made of wire with three cornered pieces of tin dangling all around their ears. It was not how good, but how much, with them. How these Indians ever lived through a winter the way they dressed, I don't see. They wore only leggings, shirts, breech clouts and a blanket. Their legs were no barer than a Scotchman's though. Our Indians used to tuck things in the bosom of their shirt, as well as in their belts. They used to tuck butcher knives in their leggings. If ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... from him as from a wild beast, believing him to be a violent madman; and by such compulsion he took, without any resistance, all that he desired from the houses. I saw this man, who unexpectedly came toward me of his own accord; he was naked, his only covering being a wretched breech-cloth; he wore in his girdle a dagger, and carried in his hands his bow and arrows. I caressed him, and tried to soften him with presents and gentle treatment, and this intercourse we continued for five or six years, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... Irving that Westby hardly brought his gun to his shoulder to take aim. It could not all be luck either; that was evident when Westby demolished ten clay pigeons in rapid succession. It was Carroll's turn now; Westby, having made his perfect score, blew the smoke from the breech ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... European colony at Shanghai and the numerous mail steamers which daily arrive there, a profitable market for game has sprung up during the past few years, to supply which there are now a number of native gunners who, as a means of livelihood, scour the country with foreign breech-loaders in search of pheasants, wildfowl, etc., so that, being capital shots, within a considerable distance of this port the shooting is not so good as formerly, although in all other parts of the Empire it still remains practically untouched until ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... man must be a new arrival. He was youngish and merry-faced as he drew closer, with black curly hair and a pointed beard. There was a mental-motive look to him, as if he were a high grade engineer or machinist. He wore a breech-clint of woven grasses, ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... and their allies armed with the best modern breech-loaders, well supplied with ammunition and countless herds of war ponies, and far too numerous and powerful to be handled by the small force ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... home, you were seen tumbling through a hoop and alighting on the crupper of a barebacked piebald, and if you ever came home you came home in a gilded chariot, and you flashed upon the domestic circle in flesh-colored tights and spangled breech-cloth. As soon as the circus-bills began to be put up you began to hear that certain boys were going to run off with that circus, and the morning after it left town you heard they had gone, but they always turned up at school just the same. It was believed that the circus-men would ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... on the envelope. Then he took a cylinder about twelve inches long, and almost half as much in diameter, a huge thing, constructed, it seemed, of a substance that was almost as brittle as an eggshell. Into the large hemispherical cavity in the breech of the gun he shoved it. He took another quick look at the light gleaming from the house in ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... begun to fade when I stepped out through the dew-soaked clover, carrying in one hand a satchel containing the swimming-suit, in the other a gun-case, in which, carefully oiled and doubly cased in flannel, reposed my only luxury—my breech-loading shot-gun. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... repassed along the lagoon wall where, already curiously tired, he had halted beside an old bronze cannon—some ancient Spanish piece, if he could judge by the arms and arabesques covering the breech, dimly visible in the rays ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... servants are tempted to make as much money as possible during the short time of their annual contract engagements. In a country like Persia, where pride of arms prevails to keep up the habit of carrying them, there is a steady demand for modern breech-loading rifles. The Government is alive to the necessity of preventing the importation of firearms, and from time to time seizures are made of consignments smuggled under the guise of merchandise. With a large nomad and semi-nomad population of warlike ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... Jagai, But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men. There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between, And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen." The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he, With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell, and the head of the gallows-tree. The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat— ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... had obtained no idea of any kind of sorrow other than that coming from the blows of a baton on the rump . . . . On this idea, he thought that the soul of an honest man was no different than a soldier's breech. If Gerron caused trouble to the spirit of a man of honor, he thought that this spirit, like his own, had only a rump, and that any trouble he caused would pass likewise. He deceived himself. The breech of the spirit of an honest man is different ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... odd little difficulties arose too, connected with the use of the guns as a shelter from fire, and very exact rules had to be made to avoid tilting the nose and raising the breech of a gun in order ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... person could have escaped without their seeing him?" "A whole regiment of persons might have escaped. You will understand the situation exactly if I compare this corridor to a long cannon, the room at the end being the breech-loading chamber. Two guards were inside the room, and two others stood outside the door that communicated with this corridor. These four men were killed instantly. Of the guards inside the room not a vestige has been found. The door, one of the strongest that can be made, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... and his sappers at once got to work. The breech-block was unscrewed and taken out, falling a prize to the Light Horse, who vied with each other in carrying it home (it weighs 137lbs.) Then gun-cotton was thrust up the breech into the body of the gun. A vast explosion told the Boers that "Tom" had gone aloft, and his ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... wasn't no good then, but I guv 'em compot from the lef' flank when we opened out. No!' he said, bringing down his hand with a thump on the bedstead, 'a bay'nit ain't no good to a little man—might as well 'ave a bloomin' fishin'-rod! I 'ate a clawin', maulin' mess, but gimme a breech that's wore out a bit, an' hamminition one year in store, to let the powder kiss the bullet, an' put me somewheres where I ain't trod on by 'ulkin swine like you, an' s'elp me Gawd, I could bowl you ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... that is not so easily done as your honor may please to think. I have not any doubt but there is the print of the breech of a musket stamped on my back and shoulders, as plainly to ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... knocks staying at a big hotel on the sea-shore, where a fellow is obliged to be dressed up all the time," he said when one of his sisters expressed surprise at his choice. "We shall regularly camp out, and father has given me a doubled-barreled breech-loader, to say nothing of his own rod and collection of flies. Jack and I will have the jolliest kind of a time while you're moonin' on the hot sands trying ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... of the young Onondaga and was intercepted by the huge figure of Tandakora, the Ojibway, who stood erect by one of the fires, bare save for a breech cloth and moccasins, his body painted in the most hideous designs, of which war paint was possible, his ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Mike, springing up, his example being followed by Vince, who was riding on the breech of ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... for instant firing. This is a departure from the general practice in connection with such weapons. When the gun is loaded the bolt which holds the compressor back is withdrawn, either by the hand for manual firing, or by the action of the automatic closing of the breech when the arm is being used as a quick-firer. In firing the gun is thrown forward under the pressure of the released air which occurs at the moment of discharge. The energy of the recoil brings ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... watching the chase, could not help now and then taking a look at the countenance of the old chief,—Mustapha Longchops, the sailors called him,—but whether he wished the dhow to escape or not, it was difficult to say. Jerry had again got the gun ready, and, putting it on the breech, he exhorted it this time to do its duty. Again he pulled the trigger, when the next instant down came the long yard by the run on deck. The midshipmen uttered a hearty cheer, taken up by Adair and the crew, and in a few minutes they were ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Rather an awkward place for cavalry, should there be any infantry lurking in ambush, watching to give them a hot reception. I have said that Arthur was thoroughly armed; besides his two revolvers and sabre, he had his double-barreled tiger-rifle, a breech-loader of the newest pattern, which had only lately been introduced into India. Arthur had not long to wait for his foes, for the clattering of the armed hoofs of their troop horses were soon heard coming along at a rapid pace. There were nine of them, riding three abreast. As soon as they were ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... fifty-five years of age, handsome, portly, and genial, a keen sportsman, and sure shot with the long, single, English ducking-gun, to which he stuck, despite of the jeers and remonstrances of the owners of muzzle and breech-loading ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... Lieutenant GERARD FRETZ, of the Ceylon Rifle Regiment, whilst firing at an elephant in the vicinity of Fort MacDonald, in Oovah, was wounded in the face by the bursting of his fowling-piece, on the 22nd January, 1828. He was then about thirty-two years of age. On raising him, it was found that part of the breech of the gun and about two inches of the barrel had been driven through the frontal sinus, at the junction of the nose and forehead. It had sunk almost perpendicularly till the iron-plate called "the tail-pin," by which the barrel is made fast to ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... of its passengers, partaking the characteristics of its contrasted extremities, fantastically blending the purple and fine linen of Chowringhee with the breech-cloths of the Black Town, Cossitollah is, as I have said, preeminently the type street of Calcutta. Other localities have their peculiar throngs, and certain classes and castes are proper to certain thoroughfares;— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... he caught sight of the figure of Soa, outlined in bold relief against the background of the fire and surrounded by many of the freed Settlement men. At the instant when he saw her she was in the act of springing back from the breech of the gun, the lanyard in her hand. Then came the roar of the shot and the shriek of ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... was instilled into him in the nursery may possibly occur to some even at this day. 'In our childhood,' he complains, 'our mothers' maids have so terrified us with an ugly devil having horns on his head, fire in his mouth, a tail in his breech, eyes like a bison, fangs like a dog, a skin like a niger, a voice roaring like a lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one cry Boh!' Chaucer has expressed the belief of his age on the subject. It seems to have been a proper duty of a parish priest to bring to the notice of his ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... Provincials coolly withdrew to the summit, under the accumulating fire of the returning mountaineers, who quickly gathered in their rear. Owing to their elevated location, the British, although using the rapid-fire breech-loading rifle invented by Ferguson himself, found their vision deflected, and continually fired high, thus suffering from nature's handicap, refraction. The militia, using sharpened butcher-knives which Ferguson had taught them to utilize as bayonets, charged against ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... a breech-loader, always load it at the muzzle. This will show that you know better than the man who made it, or, at least, that he is no ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... the captain had said, "it's all very well to use breech-loaders when you've got towns and railways and suchlike to supply you wi' cartridges, but when you've got to cruise in out-o'-the-way waters, there's nothin' like the old style. It's not difficult to carry a few thousand percussion-caps an' a bullet-mould about wi' you wherever you go. As ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... fastidious joker—in his language as much as anything else. He pursued 'is investigations with the eye of an 'awk outside the galley. He knew better than to advance line-head against Retallick, so he attacked ong eshlong, speakin' his remarks as much as possible into the breech of the starboard four point seven, an' 'ummin' to 'imself. Our chief cook 'ated 'ummin'. 'What's the matter of your bowels?' he says at last, fistin' out the mess- pork agitated like. "'Don't mind me,' says 'Op. 'I'm only a mildewed buntin'-tosser,' ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... gone from the ditch to within a few feet of where I was lying. A little beyond the other end of the building stood two cannon pointing towards me with a group of rebels at the breech of each one of them trying to discharge it. They were two of our own guns that had been captured before they had been fired by our gunners and were still loaded with the double charges of canister intended for the rebels. Fortunately the gunners ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... eye. He looked the dog steadily in the face. He held his breath. Not a nerve trembled. The dog stopped, looked at Paul a moment, broke into a louder growl, opened his jaws wider, his eyes glaring more wildly, and stepped slowly forward. Now or never, Paul thought, was his time. The breech of the gun touched his shoulder; his eye ran along the barrel,—bang! the dog rolled over with a yelp and a howl, but was up again, growling and trying to get at Paul, who in an instant seized his gun by the barrel, and brought the breech down upon the dog's ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... danced, blew feathers, and vociferated jargon until he was perfectly exhausted, the old minister quietly looking at him all the time. The savage humbug was dumbfounded, but quickly recovering his presence of mind, saved his home-reputation by explaining to the red gentlemen in breech-cloths and nose-rings, that the Yankee ate so much salt that curses wouldn't take hold ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... an odd-looking object. It resembled a gigantic book, partly open, and set upon the opened edges. It was a pack-saddle, also of Mexican fashion, and in that country called an "alpareja." It had a strong leathern girth, with a breech-strap to keep it from running forward upon the shoulders of the animal that might wear it. At a short distance from the saddles, several blankets—red and green ones—with a bear-skin and a couple ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... Loring!" snapped Strong hotly. "The assignments of the Polaris unit, whether it be to Tara or the Moon, has nothing to do with your own breech of conduct. In any case, if they were to be assigned, they'd do a better job than you 'experienced' spacemen who are disrespectful of your superior officers and break regulations! If either of you makes one more crack about the Solar ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... the root of Arabi's defiance. He had some grounds for confidence. The British fleet consisted of eight battleships (of which only the Inflexible and Alexandra were of great fighting power), along with five unarmoured vessels. The forts mounted 33 rifled muzzle-loading guns, 3 rifled breech-loaders, and 120 old smooth-bores. The advantage in gun-power lay with the ships, especially as the sailors were by far the better marksmen. Yet so great is the superiority of forts over ships that the engagement lasted ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... of the tube, opened the breech-door; and, reaching in with a long, heavy wire, lifted the starting lever and water tripper that gave motion to the torpedo's engine. The exhaust of air into the tube was driven out into the boat by the rapidly moving screws, and in a few moments ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... often ornamented over the instep or toes with a three-pronged figure, worked in porcupine quills or beads, the three prongs representing, it is said, the three divisions or tribes of the nation. The men wore a shirt, breech-clout, leggings which reached to the thighs, and moccasins. In winter both men and women wore a robe of tanned buffalo skin, and sometimes of beaver. In summer a lighter robe was worn, made of cowskin or buckskin, from which ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... notable invention of gunpowder was achieved, and an enormous transformation took place in the whole terrible art. The musket, the rifle, the pistol, the cannon were one by one evolved, to develop in the nineteenth century into the breech-loader, the machine gun, the bomb, and the multitude of devices fitted to bring about death and destruction by wholesale, instead of by the retail methods of ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. I attended a banquet given him there on October 26th. I then went from Raith to Brougham and Appleby, High Legh, and Teddesley, shooting at all these places, and at Crewe likewise, where I began to shoot with a new breech-loading gun. I must have shot thirty-five or forty days this year, and paid a great number of visits in country houses. We ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... the breech of one of the cannon, blankets having been folded between to make his position easy. His wound was severe and he was suffering greatly, but he uttered no complaint. He had not shown great skill or judgment as a leader, but he was cool and undaunted in action. Now he was calling ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... practitioner rolls in undeserved affluence, I question the wisdom of our ethical code. Braddock, at the Monongahela, scorned to have his regulars, who had fought under Marlborough and Eugene, break ranks before a lot of breech-clouted savages, and take shelter that the nature of the ground and the trees could afford, thinking it an unfit action for men who had faced the veterans of Louis XIV on many a hard-fought European field. I sometimes think that if our regulars were, for only a ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... to Mr. Jewell about a single-barrel breech-loader our house was controlling, and quoted ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... laughed in good earnest, and slapped his breech-clouts repeatedly. All at once he stopped, and stared ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the twin reports of Jack's breech-loader again echoed through the house, this time it was answered by a ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... thirty feet in the air. It was proclaimed that they were rivals for the favor of a pretty freedwoman and that they had agreed on this contest as a settlement of their rivalry. Certainly the two, naked save for breech-clouts and each armed with a light lance in one hand and a thin-bladed Gallic sword in the other, neared each other with every sign of caution, enmity and courage. Their sparring for an opening lasted some time, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... fastened in the belts that girt in their gaunt waists: the heroic youthful sinew of the old border folk. One among them, larger and handsomer than the others, had pleased his fancy by donning more nearly the Indian dress. His breech-clout was of dappled fawn-skin; his long thigh boots of thin deer-hide were open at the hips, leaving exposed the clear whiteness of his flesh; below the knees they were ornamented by a scarlet fringe tipped with the hoofs of fawns and ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... wrought by the one small bomb. Three men lay dead in the bottom. One had his head almost blown off. Fortunately, perhaps, Ken had no time to dwell on such horrors. With all possible speed he got the remaining bomb out, and with a handkerchief tied it to the breech ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... happy at losing dear friends," the young man answered, gently, as he turned away and patted the breech of a gun, upon which there was a little rust next day; "that feeling comes later ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... them in the sullen dignity of a captured warrior. Content hastily seized the stripling by an arm, and followed by Eben, who occasionally quickened the footsteps of the prisoner by an impetus obtained from the breech of his own musket, they hurriedly returned ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... buckskins one upon the other, and upon them a double piece of white cotton. The buckskins represented daylight, or the twilight that comes just at the dawn of day. The invalid for whom this ceremony was held took off all his clothing except the breech cloth, and sat on the outside by the entrance of the sweat house amid the din of rattle and song, the theurgist being the only one who had a rattle. The invalid propelled himself into the house ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... remained on deck, walking so softly up and down as to disturb nobody. They had taken but a few turns when their attention was attracted by the sound of low voices, being those of the men constituting the anchor watch. Roger and his friend strolled up to them, and, sitting down on the breech of a gun, prepared to listen to what was evidently a yarn that the old quarter-master, ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... is heard in the outer darkness, and a dozen forms, lithe and lean, dressed only with the narrow white breech-clout and mocassins, and daubed with white earth until they seem a group of living marbles, come bounding through the entrance, yelping like wolves, and slowly moving round the fire. As they advance, in ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... on recapturing his pistol, but Reade shot out a foot, tripping him. Then Tom ran nimbly over to the cook tent. Here he halted, breaking the weapon at the breech and allowing the cartridges to drop into his hand. He transferred them to his pocket, then wheeled and picked up Jake's ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... not tell her father, who would have rattled her off; for his wife governed him intirely. When she had done her work, she used to go into the chimney-corner, and sit down among cinders and ashes, which made her commonly be called Cinder-breech; but the youngest, who was not so rude and uncivil as the eldest, called her Cinderilla. However, Cinderilla, notwithstanding her mean apparel, was a hundred times handsomer than her sisters, tho' they were ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... proper tying up of the patient. He should be placed with his breech projecting over the edge of a narrow table, with head slightly raised on a pillow, but the shoulders low. The hands are then to be secured each to its corresponding foot, by a strong bandage passing round wrist and instep, or by suitable ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... poop-bulwarks were fixed in sockets implements of warfare now long in disuse, but what were then known by the names of cohorns and patteraroes; they turned round on a swivel, and were pointed by an iron handle fixed to the breech. The sail abaft the mizen-mast (corresponding to the driver or spanker of the present day) was fixed upon a lateen-yard. It is hardly necessary to add (after this description) that the dangers of a long ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the title and write yourself plush-breech. Can't you be more than a footman? Try to be a man of the world; you're old enough for that by now. I know she 's good-looking; the whole tale hangs on that. You needn't be singing me mooncalf hymn tunes of "Lady Ormont, Lady Ormont," solemn as a parson's clerk; the young woman brought good looks ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... weeks earlier. Minutes passed slowly, five, ten, twenty, thirty—what on earth did this mean? The sun blazed fiercely on the flattened figures, the smell was awful, and the fire slackened not a bit. Mac had examined his breech a dozen times, adjusted and readjusted his ammunition to facilitate its easy handling, and had made certain several times of the firmness of his bayonet. He had thrown away his bayonet scabbard. It was long and might trip him up. If he came back he could ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... anything that takes me away from my Nell. But you must come out with us. There is no such fun as stumping over the moors—the Jew has got all the turn-out for that sort of thing—short frocks and knickerbockers, and a duck of a little breech-loader. She thinks she's a great shot, poor thing, and men are civil and let her imagine that she's knocked over a pheasant or a hare, now and then. As for the partridges, she lets fly, of course, but ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... the gut of the gnat was narrow, and that, in passing through this tiny passage, the air is driven with force towards the breech; then after this slender channel, it encountered the rump, which was distended like a trumpet, and there ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the indictment, which was in the usual form. It charged Laura Hawkins, in effect, with the premeditated murder of George Selby, by shooting him with a pistol, with a revolver, shotgun, rifle, repeater, breech-loader, cannon, six-shooter, with a gun, or some other, weapon; with killing him with a slung-shot, a bludgeon, carving knife, bowie knife, pen knife, rolling pin, car, hook, dagger, hair pin, with ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... substantial present of small articles and tobacco, the council was ended with a dram to the Indians. In the evening we exhibited different objects of curiosity, and particularly the air-gun, which gave them great surprise. Those people are almost naked, having no covering except a sort of breech-cloth round the middle, with a loose blanket or buffalo robe, painted, thrown over them. The names of these warriors, besides those already mentioned, were Karkapaha, or Crow's Head, and Nenasawa, or Black Cat, Missouris; ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... single-shot Springfields, with one hundred thousand rounds of 45-70 ball cartridges, had been sold to the highest bidder. In addition to the small arms, Lopez had at present in a warehouse three machine guns and four 3 inch breech-loading pieces of field artillery (the kind of guns generally designated as a "jackass battery," for the reason that they can be taken down and transported over rough country on mules)—together with a supply of ammunition ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... wagon-train is to be attacked, a fine herd of emigrants' beeves stampeded, the mail to be stopped, or the Gentiles in any way harassed, these desperadoes stain their skin, exchange their clothes for a breech-clout, and rally a horde of the savages, whose favor they have always propitiated, for the ambush and massacre, which in all but the element of brute force is their work in plan, leadership, and execution. I have multitudes of most interesting facts to back this assertion, but am already in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... fire of a covered line is simply to devote them to destruction. The greater the mass, the greater the loss—that is all. A large mass has no more chance of success than a small one. That this is absolutely true since the introduction of breech-loaders is probably not doubted by any one; and it was very nearly true with the muzzle- loading rifles used during our late war, as was abundantly ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... year. Few volunteers now remain in the service, and they are being discharged as rapidly as they can be replaced by regular troops. The Army has been promptly paid, carefully provided with medical treatment, well sheltered and subsisted, and is to be furnished with breech-loading small arms. The military strength of the nation has been unimpaired by the discharge of volunteers, the disposition of unserviceable or perishable stores, and the retrenchment of expenditure. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... and the goodman, and the goody in the byre, and Daisy the cow at the manger, and the leaf-picker in the home-field, and Mr. Stoat of Stoneheap, and Sir Squirrel of the Brake, and Reynard Slyboots, and Mr. Hopper the hare, and Greedy Graylegs the wolf, and Bare-breech the bear-cub, and Mrs. Bruin, and Baron Bruin, and a bridal train on the king's highway, and a funeral at the church, and Lady Moon in the sky, and Lord Sun in heaven—and, now I think of it, I'll ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... rage, and did not answer. There were with Manka six men—all armed with rifles which loaded at the breech like that which he had given Manaia, and Manka was too great a man for even Tamavili to hurt. But suddenly, as we in the canoe sailed in between the boat and the taumualua, the old chief found his voice, and called out to Manaia to lower ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... you saw"—that was the victor's description. It is a singular thing that during those twenty-five years of incessant fighting the material and methods of warfare made so little progress. So far as I know, there was no great change in either between 1789 and 1805. The breech-loader, heavy artillery, the ironclad, all great advances in the art of war, have been invented in time of peace. There are some improvements so obvious, and at the same time so valuable, that it ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... give a photograph of a Danish experimental gun, designed at Copenhagen, for firing Aarsen hand-grenades. The grenades are shown in the act of being introduced into the breech of the weapons, and the apparatus for holding each grenade in the hand is clearly shown. In the photograph above the shells are seen bursting at a certain distance from the firing-point. Our soldiers in the trenches in Flanders, according to "Eye-Witness," ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... adroit—writhed like a serpent before these lightning movements. He avoided encounters; but the blows from which he escaped fell with destructive force upon the vessel. A piece of broken chain remained attached to the carronade. This bit of chain had twisted in some incomprehensible way around the breech button. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... chimney smoak, or when we can kiss our owne wives or kisse our neighbour's wife with ease and delight? It is a strange thing when victualls are wanting, worke whole nights & dayes, lye downe on the bare ground, & not allwayes that hap, the breech in the watter, the feare in the buttocks, to have the belly empty, the wearinesse in the bones, and drowsinesse of the body by the bad weather that you are to suffer, having nothing to keepe you ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... Spanish navy lowered her flag and was headed in for the beach. After she had thus surrendered, and before the Americans could board, she was wrecked by her own crew, who opened sea-valves, smashed out dead lights, threw overboard the breech-blocks of their great guns, and in many other ways worked what destruction they could in the time allotted. As a result of this vandalism, the fine ship rolled over on her side soon after striking, and would have slipped off into deep water had not the ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... was hopin' it meant action of some kind." The ex-rancher was silent for a moment. Then his right fist went into his left palm with a smack. "The only kind o' resolution that'll get anythin' is made o' lead and fits in a rifle breech! And I want to tell you, old man, if there ain't some pretty quick right-about-facin' in certain quarters, I'll be dashed if I ain't for it! An' I won't be standin' ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... was not for sale. The man offered an ounce of gold, but Capt. Weber told it only cost fifty cents, and he did not wish to sell it. The man then offered an ounce and a half, when Capt. Weber had to take it. The prices of all things are high, and yet Indians, who before hardly knew what a breech cloth was, can now afford to buy the ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... semi-hostile country. There were no road-agents to speak of, for sums of money large enough to tempt gentry of that ilk seldom passed over those isolated trails; but here and there stray parties of Stonies and Blackfeet, young bucks in war-paint and breech-clout, hot on the trail of their first medicine, skulked warily among the coulee-scarred ridges, keeping in touch with the drifting buffalo-herds and alert for a chance to ambush a straggling white man and lift his hair. They weren't ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... removed his clothing, until nothing remained but the breech-cloth. Beaulieu took a rope (selected by himself for the purpose) and first tied and knotted one end about the juggler's ankles; his knees were then securely tied together, next the wrists, after which the arms were passed over the knees and a billet ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... Naab had spread for him his hand came into contact with a polished metal surface cold as ice. It was his rifle. Naab had placed it under the blankets. Fingering the rifle Hare found the spring opening on the right side of the breech, and, pressing it down, he felt the round head of a cartridge. Naab had loaded the weapon, he had placed it where Hare's hand must find it, yet he had not spoken of it. Hare did not stop to reason with his first impulse. Without a word, with silent insistence, disregarding his shattered health, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... see. How much did you get for obtaining the design of the improved breech-block of their ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... busied itself upon instruments of destruction. When recently examining the Museum of the Arsenal at Venice, we were surprised to find numerous weapons of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries embodying the most recent English improvements in arms, such as revolving pistols, rifled muskets, and breech-loading cannon. The latter, embodying Sir William Armstrong's modern idea, though in a rude form, had been fished up from the bottom of the Adriatic, where the ship armed with them had been sunk hundreds of years ago. Even Perkins's steam-gun was an old invention ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... breech, and the empty shell flew out, for the rifle was an ejector. His practised hands had another cartridge in and the breech closed in an instant. He fired again and then again, aiming each time at a different spot in the palisade. There was a roar of anger from the hidden Kachins, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... had finished he hung the gun to the tent pole and went off, but Carrie took it down, and carefully opened and shut the breech. After doing so once or twice, she was satisfied and put back the gun. Then she went to a little bark store where their food was kept, and picking up a bag of flour that had been opened, weighed it in her hand. It was lighter than it ought to be, and this had happened before. ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... away. Some of them record the days of duelling, others the dangers of the road, when highway robbers lurked in every wood, and many a family coach was waylaid and its occupants robbed of their jewels and their purses of gold. To those interested in sporting, and familiar with the breech-loading guns of the present day, much interest attaches to the old powder flasks which were once necessary accompaniments of sportsmen. There are many beautifully engraved, embossed, and decorated flasks in museums, some ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... sturdy, squat patriot as the one hope of the Empire's overthrow, and did not propose to have him taken. Scouts, spies, the entire French secret service, delved, gestured, and sweated. But they laid bare next to nothing. At the Palacio Municipal a number of functionaries told of a peon in breech clout, a wretch coated with alkali dust till the muscles of his legs looked like grayish ropes, who had emerged from the cacti plain ten days before and come running into Chihuahua. The peon had made direct for ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the tell-tale head, he dropped flat to the ground as if he had been shot. The giraffe had not seen him, for the head, having vanished for a moment, reappeared; it was feeding, plucking down small branches of leaves, and Felix, lying on his side, opened the breech of the rifle, drew the empty cartridge case, inserted a cartridge in each barrel, and closed the breech. Now, unknown to Adams, when he had fired the gun the day before, there was a plug of clay in the ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... brachial birth-paralysis met with in infants, the lesion is due to over-stretching of the plexus, and is nearly always of the Erb-Duchenne type. The injury is usually unilateral, it occurs with almost equal frequency in breech and in vertex presentations, and the left arm is more often affected than the right. The lesion is seldom recognised at birth. The first symptom noticed is tenderness in the supra-clavicular region, the child crying when this part is touched or the arm is moved. The attitude may be that ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... we'll find some in a horn flask in the bottom of my cart." His expectations in this particular were realized, and he loaded the rifle with a small blank charge. "Now," he said, shaking the powder into the pan by a succession of smart taps on the breech, "sometimes these old pieces go off and sometimes they don't; it depends on the flint, but you stand back of your Uncle Bob, sonny, and keep yo' fingers out of yo' ears, and when ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... trail, past the spring, ride in single file the Apaches, slowly, on tired horses, for the pursuing soldiers have given them no halting space. Naked, save for a breech-clout, with a narrow red band of dyed buckskin about his forehead, in which sticks a feather, each rides silent, grim, cruel, a hideous human reptile, as native to the desert as is the Gila monster. The horse is saddleless. For a bridle, the warrior uses a ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... resemble designs and samples to be seen in Venice, showing that the principle of the modern revolver was born and partially carried out centuries before the ingenious American, Colonel Colt, perfected a weapon which has since become universal. The same remark will apply to the principle of breech-loading fire-arms, examples of which may here be seen three hundred years old. One very singular cannon was observed, actually made from closely woven rope, so strong and compact as to be capable of bearing a discharge with gunpowder, and which had once seen ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... a precedent or as an estoppel (Johnson, "The Southern Presbyterians," pp. 335, 359). But it is natural, no doubt, that exscinding acts should look different when examined from the muzzle instead of from the breech. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... the prize of ascendency. Both parties were confident of success,—Austria as the larger State, with proud traditions, triumphant over rebellious Italy; and Prussia, with its enlarged military organization and the new breech-loading needle-gun. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... feeling somewhat akin to pity upon the gallant seamen, many of whom were hurrying to death. Lieutenant Morris himself stood by the long gun, holding the match in his hand, and frequently taking aim over its long breech—another moment and the fatal volley would be sped, but even as he was about to apply the match, his quick eye saw the sails filling with the breeze, and with the true magnanimity of a generous ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... these men are armed, are of all sorts, descriptions and ages, from the old flint-locks to repeating breech-loaders, and it can easily be imagined how difficult it must be to train the troops, hardly two soldiers having guns of even a similar make! A couple of American Army instructors were employed by the King ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... enemy. They kept up this protection of the retreat of the infantry so long, in fact, that the last round of all, at about 10 p.m., was fired just before the gun was hitched to the tractor, and there was yet another gun that had its breech mechanism smashed for fear it might ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... schoolchild among us knows, General George Washington was shot dead at the Battle of Germantown, in 1777, by an English, or, rather, Scottish, officer, Patrick Ferguson—the same Patrick Ferguson who invented the breech-loading rifle that smashed Napoleon's armies. Washington, today, is one of our lesser national heroes, because he was our first military commander-in-chief. But in this other world, he must have survived ...
— Crossroads of Destiny • Henry Beam Piper
... were decorated with articles that would not have been allowed inside the doors had Mrs. Morris beheld them in time to utter a protest, for she was as timid about some things as she was sharp in others. For instance, there was a fine breech-loading rifle, dear to the heart of Maxwell, that hung on the wall above a brace of handsome revolvers. These were the cause of constant terror and alarm to Mrs. Morris, for she never entered the room without a look of fear in their direction. She fully expected them to "blaze away at her," ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... afterward walked out, and visited several other chiefs, and found that all of them were taking their morning draught, or had already taken it. Returning to the king, I found him asleep in a small retired hut, with two women tapping on his breech. About eleven o'clock he arose again, and then some fish and yams, which tasted as if they had been stewed in cocoa-nut milk, were brought to him. Of these he eat a large portion, and lay down ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... some of them were desired for their beautiful feather-covered skins, which make most valuable and beautiful caps and muffs, it was decided that Souwanas and Kennedy should take the missionary's breech-loading rifle, in addition to their own guns, and try ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... De Chauxville and took the rifle from his hands. He opened the breech and looked into the barrels. They were clean; the rifle had not been ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... he would say, "spring from his panting horse, and seize a brass field-piece as if it had been a stick. His look was terrible. He put his right hand on the muzzle, his left hand on the breech; he pulled with this, he pushed with that, and wheeled it round, as if it had been a plaything: it furrowed the ground like a ploughshare. He tore the sheet-lead from the touch-hole; then the powder-monkey rushed up with the fire, when the cannon ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... of the hope was beneficial to both body and mind. We were too well watched, however, and conversation at night was even forbidden. Most of the officers were gone and this threw me pretty much on my own resources. I have forgotten to say that Lemuel Bryant, the man who fell at the breech of my gun, at Little York, and whom I afterwards hauled into the Scourge's boat, got off, very early after our arrival at Halifax. He made two that got quite clear, instead of the one I have already mentioned. Bryant's escape was so clever, as to ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... burnt pan. I whipped round and let drive a snap shot that tipped him head over heels, breaking his back within two inches of the root of the tail, and there he lay helpless but glaring. Tom afterwards killed him with his assegai. I opened the breech of the gun and hurriedly pulled out the old case, which, to judge from what ensued, must, I suppose, have burst and left a portion of its fabric sticking to the barrel. At any rate, when I tried to get in the new cartridge it would only enter half-way; and—would you believe it?—this ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... have plastered it on thick; they look like living statues. Not a rag on them except 'breech-clouts.' Hello, there comes a troop around that mound to the right. Must be ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... did not make a bad appearance. They were a trifle awkward, perhaps, in their dark-blue hooded cloaks, with their tin-plate buttons, and armed with breech-loading rifles, and encumbered with canteens, basins, and pouches, all having an unprepared and too-new look. They all came from the best parts of the city, with accelerated steps and a loud beating of drums, and headed, if you please, by their ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... 'Tis tuptu, my lad, or else 'tis tuptomai, as thy breech well knew when we followed school. But I am of a quiet turn, and would never lift my hand to pull a trigger, no, nor a nose, nor anything but a rose," and here he took and handled one of Madam Esmond's bright pink apron ribbons. "I hate sporting, which you and the Colonel love, and I want to shoot ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who went by the name of Little Benjamin, was a fellow of great oddity and humour, which had frequently let him into small inconveniencies, such as slaps in the face, kicks in the breech, broken bones, &c. For every one doth not understand a jest; and those who do are often displeased with being themselves the subjects of it. This vice was, however, incurable in him; and though he had often smarted ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the task of storming such a place. The breech-loading rifles of the Indians thrust through chinks between the rocks were ready to pick off every soldier who showed himself for a moment, while the Indians lay utterly invisible. They were familiar with byways both over and under ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... two candidates had hurried off to prepare for the long journey. Cumbersome garments were discarded, and Piang was clothed in the easy costume of the jungle traveler; breech-clout, head-cloth, a sarong, flung carelessly over one shoulder, and a panuelo (handkerchief) with a few necessary articles tied securely in it. His weapons were a bolo, a creese, and a bow and arrow. Piang's ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... elevation, so that the shell will fall from a great height and penetrate the decks of the enemy's ships. This is known as mortar firing, but the modern ordnance used for this purpose is more of a howitzer than a mortar, being simply short rifled pieces arranged for breech loading. All our batteries should, of course, be as far from the city or other object to be protected as possible, to prevent the enemy from firing over and beyond ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... to read, easy to talk about. They please the vanity of mankind. We think as we read, "Thank God, I am not as that man; I did not send green coffee to the Crimea; I did not send patent cartridge to the common guns, and common cartridge to the breech loaders. I make money; that miserable public functionary only wastes money". As for the defence of the department, no one cares for it or reads it. Naturally at first hearing it does not sound true. The Opposition have the ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... the liquor pleasing his palate, he drank it all off. There being enough of it to stupify him, he became drunk immediately; and the fumes getting into his head, he began to sing after his manner, and to dance with his breech upon my shoulders. His jolting made him vomit, and he loosened his legs from me by degrees; so that, finding he did not press me as before, I threw him upon the ground, where he lay without motion, when I took up a great stone, with which I crushed ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... what he thought was best to teach them first. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... teaching him their mode of using the most picturesquely murderous of all weapons, and Black Eagle offered, through the interpreter, to give him a mustang and a fine wolf-skin. The pony was declined, the skin accepted, a quid pro quo being bestowed on the chief in the shape of one of Mr. Ramsay's breech-loaders, a gift that made the snake eyes glitter. But what earthly return can be made for some friendly offices? Could a thousand guns be considered as an adequate payment for the delirious thrill that Mr. Ramsay felt when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... Do you think to fun me out of it? Do you think to cheat me?—Also the breech, perhaps from being the abbreviation of fundament. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... squirting death out of her five barrels into the flank of the rushing stream of savages. "Oh, this bloody gun!" shouted a voice. "She's jammed again." The fierce metallic grunting had ceased, and her crew were straining and hauling at the breech. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... however, used no spurs, his feet being shod with moccasins, and, instead of the revolver worn by the Mexicans, he carried a knife thrust in at his girdle and a breech-loading ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... blankets—still much worn by both sexes at their homes, and dancing suits—their original costumes are now seldom seen. The blanket has been substituted for the sea-otter cloak, trousers and dresses for the breech cloth, and leather undergarments by woven ones. The men wear hats, but the women very rarely; a handkerchief or shawl being their most common head covering. Some of the elderly women, however, ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... giant strength the old man swayed the breech of the heavy gun to its bearing, and then seizing the string of the lock, he stood back and watched for the next swell that would bring the shark in range. He had aimed the piece some distance ahead of his mark; but ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... gratifying to observe that here the Indians had some ranches with considerable land still left to them. We passed several such homesteads lying close together, and as many as four yokes of oxen were ploughing, each attended by a Tarahumare, whose entire clothing consisted of a breech-cloth. The Indians here are very numerous and they are still struggling to resist the encroachments of the whites upon their land, though the ultimate result is in all cases ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... have the new breech-loaders now, Mr. Folsom," said the officers. "The Indians have only old percussion-cap rifles, and not too many ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... machine pistols and belts. He checked them for loads and laid one on Clay's control seat. He strapped the other around his waist. Then he flipped up a cover in the front panel of the cab. It exposed the breech mechanisms of a pair of twin-mounted 25 mm auto-cannon. The ammunition loads were full. Satisfied, Ben shut the inspection port and climbed into his seat. Clay came forward, saw the machine pistol on his seat and strapped it on without a word. He settled himself in his seat. "Engine room check ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... skirmishing as of most importance; the whistle is used to call attention; the touch is looser in the ranks than formerly; squares to resist cavalry are no longer used; [Footnote: A British officer, who has had good opportunities, says the infantry drill is second to none.] the Berdan breech-loader is the infantry arm; sergeant-majors wear officers' swords, and together with ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... one hand fondling the breech, he regarded the fleeting figures and the hoarse-throated pursuers; then, as if to time the opportunity to the moment, he bent ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... you!" A breech-bolt clicked, and then another one. They were little sounds, but they were different, and the guard could hear them plainly. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... like a ray of sunlight piercing the blackness of a dungeon. He felt among the inner folds of his ragged blanket, withdrew a small object and thrust it into his mouth. A second later the blanket was snatched from his body leaving him clad only in a breech clout, and he was given a push into the lane as a hint that his time for running ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... subject to the influence of successive inventions. Gunpowder abolished the bow and arrow and the knight in armour; the bayonet affixed to the musket superseded the pike; the rifle outranged the musket; the breech-loader and the magazine attachment progressively increased the rate of fire; smokeless powder rendered a firing line almost invisible; the flat trajectory of the small-arms bullet increased the danger-zone in an ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... three days to get ready in, I began doing the best I could. I found an old saddle tree which had been thrown away, and managed to fix it up so I could use it. I also found an old gun some traveler had left, and with a little work I fitted the breech of that to my own gun which was broken, and had been roughly tied together with strips of raw-hide. I now had a good sound gun if it was not very handsome. I bought a Spanish blanket, not so wide as ours, but coarse and strong, and having ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... bred. Then he reacted on himself. "The Fox might come back!" Suddenly he remembered something. He got out a common sulphur match. He wet it on his lips and rubbed it on the muzzle sight: Then on each side of the notch on the breech sight. He lined it for a tree. Yes! surely! What had been a blur of blackness ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... race and prepare, —DuLuth in his breeches and leggins; And the brown, curling locks of his hair downward droop to his bare, brawny shoulders, And his face wears a smile debonair, as he tightens his red sash around him; But stripped to the moccasins bare, save the belt and the breech-clout of buckskin, Stands the haughty Tamdoka aware that the eyes of the warriors admire him; For his arms are the arms of a bear and his legs are ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... conceived that the peculiarity, 'and they sewed fig tree leaves together, and made themselves breeches,' belongs exclusively to this Bible, but it is a mistake. The Saxon version of AElfric has, {166} 'and sewed fig-leaves, and worked them WEED-BREECH, or cloaths for the breech.' Wicliffe also translates 'and maden hem breechis;' and it is singular that Littleton, in his excellent Dictionary, explains perizomata, the word used in the Vulgate, by breeches. In the manuscript French translation of Petrus Comestor's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... a 6-inch Howitzer Battery. I noticed specially how keen he was in enquiring about every little detail. Not a single thing seemed to miss his eye, from the close examination of the gun's breech, to inspecting the dug-outs of the men. He then left, and knowing he was going to inspect the Canadians I hurried off in order ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... after section of field artillery, seeing here and there an officer whom he knew, saluting cheerily, making a thousand excuses for his haste to the good-natured artillerymen, who only grinned in reply. As he rode, he noted with misgivings that the cannon were not breech-loaders. He had recently heard a good deal about the Prussian new model for field artillery, and he had read, in the French journals, reports of their wonderful range and flat trajectory. The cannon that he passed, with the exception ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... entirely naked, with the exception of a breech-cloth and pair of leggins. The leggins extended from the knee, down; and, with his moccasins, were made of buckskin, ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... sparks in the moonlight. A sharp piercing cry rose into the air—my soul identified that death—shriek with the voice that I had heard, and I saw the man who was standing with the lanyard of the lock in his hand drop heavily across the breech, and discharge the gun in his fall. Thereupon a blood—red glare shot up into the cold blue sky, as if a volcano had burst forth from beneath the mighty deep, followed by a roar, and a shattering crash, and ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the first new 1101/2 ton breech loading gun approved for H.M.'s ships Benbow, Renown, and Sanspareil was commenced recently at the Woolwich proof butts, under the direction of Colonel Maitland, the superintendent of the Royal Gun Factories. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... looked a little farther up the hillside they were startled to see great pieces of heavy field artillery, their long barrels sticking out from pits and pointing at them. They went closer to examine, and found the guns were made of wood painted black. The barrels were perfectly made, even to the breech blocks mounted on wheels, the tires of which were made of tin. They were a perfect imitation of a heavy ordnance piece in every detail. Curious, wondering what it could mean, the two explorers looked about ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... corral. These consist of two parties. The first, eight in number, enter in single file, preceded and followed by a man in everyday costume. These dancers, called Tsannati{COMBINING BREVE}, are nude, save for the breech-cloth, with body and face painted in white and black, and the hair hanging loose. Immediately following them are the Chanzhini{COMBINING BREVE}, six in number, accompanied by four keepers, two in front and two behind. The six are nude, the bodies painted solid white with six black ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... Of course. Let's see. How much did you get for obtaining the design of the improved breech-block of their ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... of one barrel, and then, as the smoke rose, Archie fired again, and opened the breech and rapidly inserted the cartridges that Peter handed to him; while, as if startled by the reports, the rowers in the far boat laid on their oars, and those astern started up, and the lads could dimly see their spears bristling ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... he climbs up a very tall tree, And fixes himself to his comfort and glee, Hung up from the end of a branch by his breech, Quite out of all mischievous quadrupeds' reach. A position not perfectly easy 't is true, But yet at the same time consoling ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... warmth of the September day. One of these two was Sir David Forster, a big man, with a light-brown beard and a florid complexion. The other was John Saltram, who sat in a lounging attitude on one of the deep window-seats examining his breech-loader. His back was turned towards the window, and the glare of the blazing logs shone full upon his dark face with a strange ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... cursing. Apart from these fleeting insults and jests, they say nothing, the primary and universal interest being but to swallow, with their mouths and the circumference thereof as greasy as a rifle-breech. Contentment is theirs. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... numerous mail steamers which daily arrive there, a profitable market for game has sprung up during the past few years, to supply which there are now a number of native gunners who, as a means of livelihood, scour the country with foreign breech-loaders in search of pheasants, wildfowl, etc., so that, being capital shots, within a considerable distance of this port the shooting is not so good as formerly, although in all other parts of the Empire it still remains practically ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... was a hunter, and allowed us, though with hesitation, to look at his rifle. It had a flint lock of curious construction, the hammer being drawn back to a horizontal position and held in place by a notched piece of bone. The breech-pin was gone, and a piece of stone fixed in the stock filled its place. The breech of the stock was but little larger than the other part, and seemed very awkwardly contrived. A forked stick is carried to form a rest, that ensures the accuracy of aim. Powder and lead are ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... "Agnolo, in time and place like this we must not yield to fright, but do the utmost to bestir ourselves; therefore, up at once, and fling a handful of that assafetida upon the fire." Agnolo, at the moment when he moved to do this, let fly such a volley from his breech, that it was far more effectual than the assafetida. [1] The boy, roused by that great stench and noise, lifted his face little, and hearing me laugh, he plucked up courage, and said the devils were taking to flight tempestuously. So we abode thus ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... of the human eye. He looked the dog steadily in the face. He held his breath. Not a nerve trembled. The dog stopped, looked at Paul a moment, broke into a louder growl, opened his jaws wider, his eyes glaring more wildly, and stepped slowly forward. Now or never, Paul thought, was his time. The breech of the gun touched his shoulder; his eye ran along the barrel,—bang! the dog rolled over with a yelp and a howl, but was up again, growling and trying to get at Paul, who in an instant seized his gun by the barrel, and brought ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... feathers. A great number were jailed for indefinite periods on indefinite charges. As an additional punishment these were frequently locked in their cells and the fire hose played on their drenched and shivering bodies. "Breech of jail discipline" was the reason given for this "cruel and unusual" form of lumber ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... that quickly befell. A very heavy fire was opened from the Boer rifle pits, and although the gunners stuck manfully to their pieces until the ammunition in the limbers was exhausted, they were compelled then to leave them on the plain, retreating for shelter to a donga. The breech-blocks, even, were not carried away; it is said because they expected to return again to action. The naval detachment, 300 yards further back, were exposed to the same fire, but received only its outer fringe. The native drivers bolted, and many of the oxen were killed or stampeded; ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... most suitable to each Was, for the elder and the stouter, first A Candiote cloak, which to the knee might reach, And trousers not so tight that they would burst, But such as fit an Asiatic breech; A shawl, whose folds in Cashmire had been nursed, Slippers of saffron, dagger rich and handy; In short, all things which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... tea-curing house. This was a long rectangular, one-story building with twenty furnaces arranged, each under an open window, around the sides. In front of each heated furnace with its tray of leaves, a Japanese man, wearing only a breech cloth, and in a state of profuse perspiration, was busy rolling the tea leaves between the palms ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... had made its millions for the Rainey and Whittaker families during the Civil War. Whittaker had been an inventor, making one of the first practical breech-loading guns, and the original Rainey had been a dry-goods merchant in an Illinois town ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... pay for a dinner at the "Freres." What fleets of Russian gunboats have I seen launched to procure a few bottles of champagne! I remember a chasse of Kersch, with the cafe, costing a whole battery of Krupp's breech-loaders!' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... was to consist of fifty soldiers, twenty-five marines, and fifty blue-jackets, who were to embark in the steamer's boats, two of which were provided with small breech-loading pieces running on slides, and under the charge of ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... In early Christian drama Christ was represented by a naked youth. Then he was represented by a youth who wore a breech cloth only. In the sixteenth century, at Naples, in a representation of the creation of Adam and Eve, the actors had only the privates covered. The stage fell and many were hurt, which was held to show God's displeasure at the show. The flagellants in the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... "This ten-inch breech-loading rifle takes a charge of one hundred and ten pounds of Dupont smokeless powder and a projectile weighing five hundred and seventy-five pounds," Captain Heath was explaining, as they stopped in front of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... proposed to abandon the pike and all muzzle-loading small arms for a breech-loading carbine and pistol, with one uniform metallic cartridge for both. The revolver pistol does not realize in service with seamen the advantages claimed for that description ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... shore with the lady and children who were my companions. There we saw a sight characteristic of these islands. Three women decently clothed in a garment which covered them from head to foot, and a man with only a breech-clout on, were dashing into the surf, picking up sea-moss, and a little univalve shell, a limpet, which they flung into small baskets which hung from their shoulders. They were, in fact, getting their suppers, and they were quite ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... them so as to have been unable to take any other range than point blank! Here is a fort mounting upwards of fifty guns of large calibre, which would have commanded the bay, but the embrasures are so small as barely to admit the muzzle of the gun, the breech of which was imbedded in the earth. These were soon silenced, as may well be supposed, by the attacking squadron taking a position beyond their range, and training their own batteries to bear upon the Chinese gunners within, ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... shall shoot much, or anything that takes me away from my Nell. But you must come out with us. There is no such fun as stumping over the moors—the Jew has got all the turn-out for that sort of thing—short frocks and knickerbockers, and a duck of a little breech-loader. She thinks she's a great shot, poor thing, and men are civil and let her imagine that she's knocked over a pheasant or a hare, now and then. As for the partridges, she lets fly, of course, but to say she ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... trait of the race, was evidenced here. The heavy steel breechblock of the seventy-five was replaced by a wooden block. When fired the explosion of the powder charge automatically blew the wooden breechblock backward, thus neutralizing the shock. But owing to the open breech much of the powder's driving force was lost. Nothing to equal the new arm had there been up to that time. The wooden breechblock completely did away with the heavy hydraulic recoil cylinders which were one of the distinguishing features of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... other chiefs, and found that all of them were taking their morning draught, or had already taken it. Returning to the king, I found him asleep in a small retired hut, with two women tapping on his breech. About eleven o'clock he arose again, and then some fish and yams, which tasted as if they had been stewed in cocoa-nut milk, were brought to him. Of these he eat a large portion, and lay down once more to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... hours later, on the arrival of the new piece. Some idea of the force of the explosion can be gathered from the fact that the barrel was found, in two pieces, some 150 yards away, having been blown over a railway embankment, while the (p. 012) breech block, which weighs about a cwt., was discovered, after a 12 hours' search, embedded in the ground six feet below the pit. At this period a considerable number of "prematures" were taking place, and, on one occasion, we ascribed this wounding ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... course, but it has taken the first place in my thoughts. I do assure you that I am not his puff. What I tell you of his reading is literally true; but it is not reading that expresses it, for I could have said as much if he had read nothing but the History of Cinder Breech and that kind of biography. He read with me English History, and stopped for information, and showed an uncommon thirst for it. He asked me as many questions in the History of George 1st concerning the South Sea Scheme, the prosecution of Lord Macclesfield, and the Barrier Treaty, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... the cave, leaning my back against a tree, when upon the sudden a gentleman came to me, and said, "Friend, what are you eating?" "Bread," (quoth I,) "For God's sake," said he, "give me some." With that, I put my hand into my breech, (being my best pantry) and I gave him a loaf, which he received with many thanks, and said, that if ever he ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... of the circle appeared the Wyandot warriors, six abreast coming between the lodges. They were naked except for the breech cloth and moccasins, but their bodies were gorgeously painted in many colors. Mighty men were they. Few among them were less than six feet in height, and all were splendidly built for strength, skill and endurance. ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the morning of the 4th posts were set up on the wide plain behind the fort, and tribe was soon opposed to tribe. The warriors appeared on the field with moccasined feet, and otherwise naked save for breech-cloths. Hither and thither the ball was batted, thrown, and carried. Player pursued player, tripping, slashing, shouldering each other, and shouting in their excitement as command of the ball passed with the fortunes of the game from Chippewa to Sac ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... be cruel, And dare you think of mercy? I'le tell thee fool, Those that surpriz'd thee, were my instruments, I can plot too good Madam, you shall find it: And in the stead of licking of my fingers, Kneeling and whining like a boy new breech'd, To get a toy forsooth, not worth an apple, Thus make my way, and with Authority ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... Major cried. A red-hot poker glowed above the cannon. Buckshot hailed from a hundred guns, and the poker fell, but soon it came again and this time flat upon the gun. The hand that held it was nervous and fumbling. Suddenly the breech of the gun slipped lower down the upright log. Up went the muzzle, and then came a deafening boom. There was a crash over-head. The cupola of the court-house was shattered, and down came the bell upon the roof, and off it rolled and fell upon the ground ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... very richly with a dozen of pewter buttons; his hose was of grey kersey, with a large slop[1] barred overthwart the pocket-holes with three fair guards, stitched of either side with red thread; his stock was of the own, sewed close to his breech, and for to beautify his hose, he had trussed himself round with a dozen of new-threaden points[2] of medley color: his bonnet was green, whereon stood a copper brooch with the picture of Saint Denis; and to want nothing that might make him amorous in his old days, he had a fair shirt-band ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... warriors present, and that one whose sinews were the best strung in fights, and by marches on the warpath. This man fully appreciated the gigantic strength of his opponent, and had carefully husbanded his own. He was also equipped in the best manner for such a conflict, standing in nothing but his breech-cloth, the model of a naked and beautiful statue of agility and strength. To grasp him required additional dexterity and unusual force. Still Hurry did not hesitate, but the kick that had actually destroyed one fellow creature was no sooner ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... rejoiced at my liberty! Upon getting to the foot of the Cotills cliff, I whistled for my faithful "Begum," but no "Begum" came, so I sat down and rested, and whistled, and whistled again, till presently away he came tumbling down the breech in the cliffs, to my great delight. After a bit I despatched him to fetch "Eddy," and while that worthy was on his way to my help, managed, with great exertion and risk, to scale the cliff. "Eddy" bore me up ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... this, my first essay as a hunter. I had not gone far from the camp before I met with pigeons, and some of them alighted in the bushes very near me. I cocked my pistol, and raised it to my face, bringing the breech almost in contact with my nose. Having brought the sight to bear upon the pigeon, I pulled trigger, and was in the next instant sensible of a humming noise, like that of a stone sent swiftly through the air. I found the pistol at the distance of some paces behind me, and the pigeon under ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... joker—in his language as much as anything else. He pursued 'is investigations with the eye of an 'awk outside the galley. He knew better than to advance line-head against Retallick, so he attacked ong eshlong, speakin' his remarks as much as possible into the breech of the starboard four point seven, an' 'ummin' to 'imself. Our chief cook 'ated 'ummin'. 'What's the matter of your bowels?' he says at last, fistin' out the mess- pork agitated like. "'Don't mind me,' says 'Op. 'I'm only a mildewed ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... yon grateful cell repose, Where Greenland odours feast the stranger's nose— "Scouts, porters, shoe-blacks, whatsoe'er your trade, All, all, attend, your master's fist to aid!" They heard his voice, and, trembling at the sound, The half-breech'd legions swarm'd like moths around; But, ah! the half-breech'd legions, call'd in vain, Dismay'd and useless, fill'd the cumber'd plain; And while for servile aid the Doctor calls, [41]By P——t subverted, prone to earth he sprawls. [42]E'en ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... spars and smoke, and set the ship reeling on her beam- ends. At the moment, I was in the act of firing the charge of the gun in my care, and remember nothing but the tremendous noise, and finding myself hurled, as it seemed, clear over the breech of the weapon out into the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... be a violent madman; and by such compulsion he took, without any resistance, all that he desired from the houses. I saw this man, who unexpectedly came toward me of his own accord; he was naked, his only covering being a wretched breech-cloth; he wore in his girdle a dagger, and carried in his hands his bow and arrows. I caressed him, and tried to soften him with presents and gentle treatment, and this intercourse we continued for five or six years, with increasing confidence and satisfaction ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... was severe. For many years a long white cicatrice recorded the fact in my right hand. The ordeal was, I fancy, unique - a prerogative of the naval 'bull-dogs.' The other torture was, in those days, not unknown to public schools. It was to hold a boy's back and breech as near to a hot fire as his clothes would bear without burning. I have an indistinct recollection of a boy at one of our largest public schools being thus exposed, and left tied to chairs while his companions ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the harness from Brigham, mounted him bareback and started after the game, being armed with my new buffalo killer which I had named "Lucretia Borgia," an improved breech-loading needle-gun which I had obtained ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... its age or nationality. It would most probably have been a twelve or eighteen-pounder howitzer, for it was about four feet in length, and disproportionately large in girth; but one of the trunnions, and the button at the breech, were broken off, the portion that had lain undermost had entirely disappeared, and the remainder was so honeycombed, that beyond ascertaining that it was a piece of ordnance, we could elicit nothing from this curious relic of a ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... simply a bayonet, and another with a bare officer's sword. A fourteen-year-old boy stood in the middle of the street with a rifle in his hand, trifling with it. It exploded in his hand, and when he saw the ruin of the breech block he unfixed the bayonet, threw down the gun, and ran around the corner. A student came up the street examining the mechanism of a revolver. There seemed to be rifle-fire in every direction, even in the same street, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Mississippi now brought his hand to one of the Colts at his belt. Most of the half-dozen men squatting on their heels about a fire were three-quarters bare, showing dusty, brown bodies. Two had dirty calico shirts loose above hide breech-clouts. Dark-brown eyes, as unreadable as Johnny Shannon's, surveyed Drew, but none of the Indians ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... from a vessel not more than 80 feet long. Experiments have been carried on in the United States by Captain Ericsson to dispense with the internal machinery of the torpedo, and to rely for its traverse through the water upon the original impulse given to it by a breech-loading gun, carried at the requisite depth below the water level in a torpedo boat. This gun, having a feeble charge of powder at a low gravimetric density, fires the torpedo, and, it is said, succeeds in sending it many ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... an army. Except that they were booted to the knees, they wore their belts and military trappings over the ordinary dress of citizens. Besides their swords and holster pistols, they carried slung from their saddles the excellent Springfield carbines, loaded at the breech. They inquired the character of our party, and were anxious to know the prospect of killing buffalo, and the chance that their horses would stand the journey to Santa Fe. All this was well enough, but a moment after a worse visitation came ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... softly up and down as to disturb nobody. They had taken but a few turns when their attention was attracted by the sound of low voices, being those of the men constituting the anchor watch. Roger and his friend strolled up to them, and, sitting down on the breech of a gun, prepared to listen to what was evidently a yarn that the old quarter-master, Cary, ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... duties are now formulated at a desk on shore, and the mode of carrying them out notified to the service in print. All this would have been quite as astonishing to the contemporaries of Nelson or of Exmouth and Codrington as the aspect of a battleship or of a 12-inch breech-loading gun. ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... proper iest as ever I heard tell! In sooth me thinkes the breech becomes her well; And might it not make their husbands feare them[127] Wold all the wives in our town might weare them. Tell me, youth, art a ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... the gun from a corner where it stood against the wall, opened the breech, shut it again, and turning to the open window lifted ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... gave orders to his mate, and leading Willems on the poop, sat on the breech of one of the brass six-pounders with which his vessel was armed. The boat went off again to bring back the messenger. As soon as it was seen returning dark forms appeared on the brig's spars; then the sails fell in festoons with a swish of their heavy folds, and hung motionless under the yards ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... gone anywhere near the gun or ammunition house on the poop. I saw afterwards some photos the Germans had taken of the gun as they said they found it when they went on board. These photos showed the gun with the breech open, thus proving, so the Germans said, that the Japanese had been preparing to use the gun. In reality, of course, it proved nothing of the sort; it is more than likely that the Germans opened the breech themselves before they took this photograph, as they ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... have any force as a precedent or as an estoppel (Johnson, "The Southern Presbyterians," pp. 335, 359). But it is natural, no doubt, that exscinding acts should look different when examined from the muzzle instead of from the breech. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... very business-like, this accoutrement that was to be the final physical touch to his transition; it did not allow of skepticism; about it there was also a quiet and cold touch of romance. The rifle chilled David's bare fingers when he touched it. It was short-barrelled, but heavy in the breech, with an appearance of indubitable efficiency about it. It looked like an honest weapon to David, who was unaccustomed to firearms—and this was more than he could say for the heavy, 38-calibre automatic pistol which Father Roland thrust into his hand, and which looked ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... and in France in the days preceding the use of modern breech-loading firearms, the gray wolves of Europe were very bold, and a great many people were ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Time as a man of business. In this capacity, our citizens are in the habit of complaining, not wholly without reason, that Time is sluggish and dull. You may see him occasionally at the end of Derby Wharf, leaning against a post, or sitting on the breech of an iron cannon, staring listlessly at an unrigged East Indiaman. Or, if you look through the windows of the Union Marine Insurance Office, you may get a glimpse of him there, nodding over a newspaper, among the old weather-beaten sea-captains who recollect ...
— Time's Portraiture - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with talk to Mr. Jewell about a single-barrel breech-loader our house was controlling, and quoted ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... Portsmouth, Plymouth, Dover, or any other fortified port in England. The sentinels would not allow us to take a minute survey of these ordnance; but as soon as we walked round from the muzzle to the breech, in order to examine their really herculean proportions, a bayonet, thrust before our eyes, would be sure to interrupt the stream of information which commenced flowing through them to the mind. I suppose the soldier had read or heard of England, and thinking ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... cleaning of rifles started, although it was dark. Mine was already in good shape, and I leaned it against the side of the trench and went below for the rest of my equipment. While I was gone, a shell fragment undid all my work by smashing the breech. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... Twice has Ladmirault come raging down from the heights of Bruville, twice has he been sent staggering back. Now, with strong reinforcements, he is preparing for a third assault. Meanwhile there is a lull in the battle. Hans, grimed and powder-blackened, may let the breech of his Zuendnadelgewehr cool and may wipe his blood-stained bayonet on the forest moss. He has a moment for a glance into the little gray volume, and it opens in his blackened ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... the chief engineer, who was a married man as well as a humorist, though working independently of his skipper, carried the matter still further. He, too, got hold of the weapon, and brazed up the breech-block immovably, so that it could not be surreptitiously reloaded. He said that his wife had instructed him to take no chances, and that meanwhile, as a fool's pendant, the revolver was as good as ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... weapons. Even with her 12-inch guns the Texas can fire at the rate of one round per minute, and this record is as good as that made by any foreign ships. Rapid fire consists in good facilities for handling ammunition and loading the gun with a quick working breech mechanism. ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... the proper tying up of the patient. He should be placed with his breech projecting over the edge of a narrow table, with head slightly raised on a pillow, but the shoulders low. The hands are then to be secured each to its corresponding foot, by a strong bandage passing round wrist ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... de Courcelles' party were of two types, the converted Indians of Canada, partly in white man's costume, and utterly savage Indians of the far west, in very little costume at all, one or two of them wearing only the breech cloth. The looks they bestowed upon Robert and his comrades were far from friendly, and he wondered if any Ojibway, a warrior who perhaps owned Tandakora as a chief, was among them. They were sitting about the fire ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... no, sir, I wouldn't; right away he went and got the cowhide, and gave me about twenty over my head with the butt. He tore my shirt off, after I would not pull it off; he ordered me to cross my hands. I didn't do that. After I wouldn't do that he went and got his gun. and broke the breech of that over my head. He then seized up the fire-tongs and struck me over the head ever so often. The next thing he took was the parlor shovel and he beat on me with that till he broke the handle; then he took the blade ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... cast, to throw. birth, coming into life. caste, an order or class. braid, to weave. cede, to yield. brayed, did bray. seed, to sow; to scatter. breach, a gap. coarse, not fine. breech, the hinder part. course, way; career. broach, a spit; to pierce. dam, mother of beasts. brooch, an ornament. damn, to condemn. but, except. cane, a reed; a staff. butt, a cask; a mark. Cain, a man's name. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... victor's description. It is a singular thing that during those twenty-five years of incessant fighting the material and methods of warfare made so little progress. So far as I know, there was no great change in either between 1789 and 1805. The breech-loader, heavy artillery, the ironclad, all great advances in the art of war, have been invented in time of peace. There are some improvements so obvious, and at the same time so valuable, that it is extraordinary that they were not adopted. Signalling, for example, whether by heliograph or by ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hotly. "The assignments of the Polaris unit, whether it be to Tara or the Moon, has nothing to do with your own breech of conduct. In any case, if they were to be assigned, they'd do a better job than you 'experienced' spacemen who are disrespectful of your superior officers and break regulations! If either of you makes ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... of the University of Edinburgh. I attended a banquet given him there on October 26th. I then went from Raith to Brougham and Appleby, High Legh, and Teddesley, shooting at all these places, and at Crewe likewise, where I began to shoot with a new breech-loading gun. I must have shot thirty-five or forty days this year, and paid a great number of visits in country houses. We did not ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... days to get ready in, I began doing the best I could. I found an old saddle tree which had been thrown away, and managed to fix it up so I could use it. I also found an old gun some traveler had left, and with a little work I fitted the breech of that to my own gun which was broken, and had been roughly tied together with strips of raw-hide. I now had a good sound gun if it was not very handsome. I bought a Spanish blanket, not so wide as ours, but coarse and ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... blue breech, now playes he the Devil. So get ye home, drink small beer, and be honest; Call in ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... of powder!" was the stern and significant reply of the other, as with one hand he struck his rattling bullet-pouch and huge powder-horn, and with the other brought down the breech of his rifle with a ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... these islands were well-sweeps, with buckets by which bronze-hued naked men with dirty breech clouts raised water from the Nile and poured it into higher reservoirs. One such place was in the prince's mind especially. That was a steep eminence on the side of which three men were working at three well-sweeps. One poured water from the river into the lowest well; another drew from the lowest ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... thick of a fleet of sampans, boats fashioned flat like overgrown rowboats, propelled each by a huge sculling oar, from the stern ... they were fishers who manned them ... two or three to a boat ... huge, bronze-bodied, fine-muscled, breech-clouted men ... as they sculled swiftly to give us sea-room each one looked fit to be ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... have escaped without their seeing him?" "A whole regiment of persons might have escaped. You will understand the situation exactly if I compare this corridor to a long cannon, the room at the end being the breech-loading chamber. Two guards were inside the room, and two others stood outside the door that communicated with this corridor. These four men were killed instantly. Of the guards inside the room not a vestige has been found. The door, one of the strongest that can ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... decides the battle. To mass troops against the fire of a covered line is simply to devote them to destruction. The greater the mass, the greater the loss—that is all. A large mass has no more chance of success than a small one. That this is absolutely true since the introduction of breech-loaders is probably not doubted by any one; and it was very nearly true with the muzzle- loading rifles used during our late war, as was abundantly demonstrated ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... a Henry-Winchester carbine, and I with a sixteen-bore breech-loading shotgun and a tomahawk. I had brought the gun instead of a rifle, feeling sure that I could get some cockatoos or pigeons on our way back, for we had heard and seen many flying about as soon as we had anchored. At the last moment I put into my canvas game bag four round bullet cartridges, ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... platform of Penalty, in beholding breaches of the statutes. He would not have rained upon the unjust as the just if he had had the directing of the heavens. As Private Gellatly put it: "Sergeant Fones has the fear o' God in his heart, and the law of the land across his saddle, and the newest breech-loading at that!" He was part of the great machine of Order, the servant of Justice, the sentinel in the vestibule of Martial Law. His interpretation of duty worked upward as downward. Officers and privates were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fire them at high elevation, so that the shell will fall from a great height and penetrate the decks of the enemy's ships. This is known as mortar firing, but the modern ordnance used for this purpose is more of a howitzer than a mortar, being simply short rifled pieces arranged for breech loading. All our batteries should, of course, be as far from the city or other object to be protected as possible, to prevent the enemy from firing over and beyond ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... Describe them—They are rifle breech-loaders, London maker, Flint Locks, silver mounted, with English coat of arms on butt; the sash was cut up; Dr. Strong has a ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... were close enough, I could see that he had a smile on his face, and I knew that he had recognized me. When we rode up to him he said: "Good mornin. Long time no see you," and at the same time presented the gun with the breech foremost. ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... is seized in all his heads and arms with a great longing to know what manner of man this Rama may be, that he should prefer the yogee's breech-cloth to the royal purple, a hut of leaves, with only his Seeta, to a harem of a hundred wives, white ants and paddy to the white camel's flesh and golden partridges of Ayodhya's imperial repasts. Especially is he curious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... thought an inspiration came to him like a ray of sunlight piercing the blackness of a dungeon. He felt among the inner folds of his ragged blanket, withdrew a small object and thrust it into his mouth. A second later the blanket was snatched from his body leaving him clad only in a breech clout, and he was given a push into the lane as a hint that his time ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... tube—a thin tapering tube with very narrow bore. Into this he poured a quantity of fine mealed powder; then he laid a train of the same powder in the little groove cut in the gun from the touch hole towards the breech. With the end of his powder horn he slightly bruised the train, and the gun only awaited a spark from ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... you up in the middle of the night, a few hours ago," said Lingard, without even looking at d'Alcacer who raised his hands a little and let them fall. Lingard sat down on the breech of a heavy piece mounted on a naval carriage so as to command the lagoon. He folded his arms on his breast. D'Alcacer ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... closely packed lines of shipping, and landing as a stranger at Port Louis, perhaps the first thing to engage attention is the strange mixture of nations—representatives, he might at first be inclined to imagine, of half the countries of the earth. He stares at a Coolie from Madras with a breech-cloth and soldier's jacket, or a stately, bearded Moor, striking a bargain with a Parsee merchant; a Chinaman, with two bundles slung on a bamboo, hurries past, jostling a group of young Creole exquisites smoking ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... new breech-loaders now, Mr. Folsom," said the officers. "The Indians have only old percussion-cap rifles, and not ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... to shoot rather deliberately. He did not see the faces of the men at whom he shot, for he always aimed at their breasts. Once, however, he took careful aim at a white face which lay against the breech of a rifle leveled at him. He aimed for the white space between the eyes quite as coolly as though he were facing a target. Yet he jumped a little in surprise as, following his report, he saw a blotch of red appear where he had aimed—saw it for just a second before the man reeled forward ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Prussian precision, the artillerymen sprang to their posts, some to a series of levers which sprouted from the rock platform without any apparent connection, and some to wheels and gauges of varying size that clustered in bewildering intricacy about the breech of the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... boat shoves off from the ship, the Kroomen, entirely naked with exception of breech-clout, strike up a song, and pulling grandly to its rhythmic time, soon reach the edge of the surf, and lie on their oars. All eyes are now cast seaward, looking for a big roller, on the top of which we shall be carried on shore, and there is a general feeling of excitement. ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... my violent love Outrun the pauser reason. Here lay Duncan, His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood; And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech'd with gore: who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage to make's ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the blacks took a gun and a cutlass, as Dick Sand had done. A cartridge was slipped into the breech of the Remingtons, and, thus armed, all four went to ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... been left at the camp a mile distant, so taking the harness from Brigham, I mounted him bareback and started out after the game, being armed with my celebrated buffalo-killer, "Lucretia Borgia,"—a newly-improved breech-loading needle gun, which I had ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... were all gone from the ditch to within a few feet of where I was lying. A little beyond the other end of the building stood two cannon pointing towards me with a group of rebels at the breech of each one of them trying to discharge it. They were two of our own guns that had been captured before they had been fired by our gunners and were still loaded with the double charges of canister intended for the rebels. Fortunately ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... looked at the breech plug before turning on the power," said the German, "but I had no reason to suspect that anything was wrong." He went on to explain that the explosion was something like that which occurs when the breech-block ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... power lies in her numbers, in the quick moving of her troops, in the little baggage they require, and in their few wants. It is known that men armed with sword and spear can overcome the best regular troops equipped with breech-loading rifles, if the country is at all difficult and if the men with spears and swords outnumber their foe ten to one. If this is the case where men are armed with spears and swords, it will be much truer when those men are themselves armed with breech ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... rifles being good slayers, and they quickly learn to take a pride in their weapons, and to strive in the race to hand the spare rifles. Dust storms, such as I have constantly witnessed in Africa, would be terrible enemies to breech-loaders, as the hard sand, by grating in the joints, would wear away the metal, and destroy the exactness of ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... chained to the sides of the hull on long runners that led up to the firing tubes, were the massive torpedoes, ready to be pushed forward for insertion in the firing chambers. Chief Gunner Mowrey was working over one of the breech caps and turned to ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... the volunteers and regulars to the right could only remain in support, it fell to the lot of the left wing of this brave brigade to assault in almost impenetrable position an enemy armed with magazine rifles or breech-loaders, and entirely at home. The bugles rang the signal; the officers in silence took their stations, and, stepping into the narrow pathways through the jungle, crouching along the road-ways or crashing through ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... the undulatory theory of light and heat, steam as a motive power in navigation, flying machines, the invention of the camera obscura, magnetic attraction, the use of the stone saw, the system of canalisation, breech loading cannon, the construction of fortifications, the circulation of the blood, the swimming belt, the wheelbarrow, the composition of explosives, the invention of paddle wheels, the smoke stack, the mincing machine! It is, therefore, easy to see why he called "Mechanics the Paradise ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell
... one upon the other, and upon them a double piece of white cotton. The buckskins represented daylight, or the twilight that comes just at the dawn of day. The invalid for whom this ceremony was held took off all his clothing except the breech cloth, and sat on the outside by the entrance of the sweat house amid the din of rattle and song, the theurgist being the only one who had a rattle. The invalid propelled himself into the house feet foremost, the covering of the sweat house ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... forward. Now or never, Paul thought, was his time. The breach of the gun touched his shoulder; his eye ran along the barrel,—bang! the dog rolled over with a yelp and a howl, but was up again, growling and trying to get at Paul, who in an instant seized his gun by the barrel, and brought the breech down upon the dog's skull, giving ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... appetite nor honor . . . . Gerron, becoming a corporal, had obtained no idea of any kind of sorrow other than that coming from the blows of a baton on the rump . . . . On this idea, he thought that the soul of an honest man was no different than a soldier's breech. If Gerron caused trouble to the spirit of a man of honor, he thought that this spirit, like his own, had only a rump, and that any trouble he caused would pass likewise. He deceived himself. The breech of the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the morning of the First Day has listened. God knows. God knows. What a whirl is this? Monstrous incongruity. Philosophy and fighting troopers. The Infinite and dead horses. There's humour for you. The Sublime takes off its hat to the Ridiculous. Send a cartridge clashing into the breech and speculate about the Absolute. Keep one eye on your sights and the other on Cosmos. Blow the reek of burned powder from before you so you may look over the edge of the abyss of the Great Primal Cause. ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... still some space betwixt them. Gisli ran right past that mountain and then across Coldriver-dale, and then through Aslaug's-lithe and above by Kolbeinstead, and then out into Burgh-lava; and by then was he in shirt and breech alone, and was now exceeding weary. Grettir still followed after him, and there was ever a stone's throw between them; and now he pulled up a great bush. But Gisli made no stay till he came out at Haf-firth-river, and it was swollen with ice and ill ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... at full length on the ground and pressed a cartridge into the breech of his rifle. His companions stood over him as he cast a hurried glance forward and adjusted ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... the healing solitudes of the crater of Haleakala and get a good rest; for the mails do not intrude there, nor yet the telephone and the telegraph. And after resting, we would come down the mountain a piece and board with a godly, breech-clouted native, and eat poi and dirt and give thanks to whom all thanks belong, for these privileges, and never ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seemed to be—and call them all by their right names with a resentful emphasis. He achieved the naked sincerity of a Hottentot—nay, he even went beyond it in rejecting the feeble compromise of the breech-clout. Not only would he be naked and not ashamed, but everybody else should be so with a blush of conscious exposure, and human nature should be stripped of the hypocritical fig-leaves that betrayed ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... was not less peaceful. A couple of batteries lay below us, in the meadows; but the horses were dozing in the harness, and the gunners, standing bolt upright at the breech, seemed parts of their pieces; the teamsters lay grouped in the long grass. Immediately in front, Gaines's Mansion and outhouses spotted a hillside, and we could note beyond a few white tents shining through the trees. The roof of the old mill crouched between a medley ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... continued motionless in the attitude he had at first assumed—his right cheek reposing on the ornamented stock of his rifle, and his quick and steady eye fixed in one undeviating line with the sight near the breech, and that which surmounted the extreme end of the deadly weapon. No sooner, however, had the head of the advancing column come within sight, than the trigger was pulled, and the small and ragged bullet sped hissing from the grooved and delicate barrel. ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... pretty boys, if they would wash their faces, and were well breech'd[23] in an hour or two. The rest of the green men have reasonable voices, good to sing catches or the great Jowben by the fire's side in a winter's evening. But let us hear what Summer can say for himself, why he should ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... must see our 'Wild Irishman' here before you say you've yet found the queerest, brightest, cleverest chap in all your travels. What d'ye say, Stockford?" And the Major paused in his work of charging cartridges for his new breech-loading shotgun and turned to await ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Beside the saddles was an odd-looking object. It resembled a gigantic book, partly open, and set upon the opened edges. It was a pack-saddle, also of Mexican fashion, and in that country called an "alpareja." It had a strong leathern girth, with a breech-strap to keep it from running forward upon the shoulders of the animal that might wear it. At a short distance from the saddles, several blankets—red and green ones—with a bear-skin and a couple of buffalo-robes, were lying upon the grass; and on a branch overhead hung whips, bridles, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... violence. In the eleventh hour, there at the peak of the German thrust, there at the climax of Germany's triumphant advances, there at the point where a military decision for the enemy seemed almost within grasp, there and then the American soldier stepped into the breech to save ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... waited until he heard the click of the gun as its breech closed after reloading, then moved forward with well-bred restraint to sniff long and inquiringly where ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... said the lieutenant in command of the turret, as the first shell appeared at the mouth of the dark tube. Into the breech with it and the two cartridges after it. When the lieutenant had taken his position at the telescope sight in order to determine the direction and distance for firing, orders came down from the commander to fire at the enemy's leading ship, the Satsuma. The distance ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... fright at a motor car but to distinguish between rehearsals and the actual taking of a scene, he observed a man who emerged from a clump of near-by shrubbery. He carried a shotgun. This was broken at the breech and the man was blowing smoke from the barrels as he ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... incarcerated. There they did not fall on such pleasant lines as afloat. The Republicans lost no time in unloading the vessel. They took off her, with a hurry that betrayed apprehension, 1,545 carbines and six Berdan breech-loaders, with a number of armourer's tools. It was remarked that the rifles supplied to the regular troops from Madrid were sighted to eight hundred metres, but that the range of those seized from the Carlists did not exceed ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men. There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between, And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen." The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he, With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell and the head of the gallows-tree. The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... heavy he knew, from the fact that the bottom of the hold had been selected for its stowage. The secret, however (if secret there was), came out next morning, when several very heavy cases of peculiar shape were brought alongside; which cases turned out to contain twelve steel 14-pounder breech-loading rifled field-pieces, with mountings, etcetera, complete, and several hundred rifles, sword-bayonets, etcetera, for the use of the colonial volunteers. The nature and destination of the contents were legibly ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... opposite directions and the prisoners were left squatting under the eyes and bayonets of a very suspicious prison guard, who made no secret of being ready for all conceivable emergencies. One enthusiast drew the cartridge out of his breech-chamber and licked it at intervals of a minute or two, to the very great interest of the Hillmen, who memorized every detail that by any stretch of imagination might be expected to improve their own shooting when they ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... on Stormberg had manifestly failed and Gatacre ordered a retreat to Molteno. Thither the weary, dispirited column trudged all through the forenoon of December 10. A gun was abandoned on the way, and even the wagon in which the breech block had been secreted fell also into the enemy's hands. But this was a comparatively insignificant loss. It was soon discovered that nearly a third of the infantry was absent. When the troops were withdrawn ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... and rub the heavy grease off; then get a soft pine stick, pointed at one end, and with this point remove the grease from the cracks, crevices and corners. Clean the bore from the breech. When the heavy grease has been removed, the metal part of the gun, bore included, should be covered with a light coating of "3-in-1" oil. Heavy grease can be removed from the rifle by rubbing it with a rag which has been saturated with gasoline or ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... hand, and the boys parted, one going, as previously arranged, each way. Ned rose very quietly by the side of the gun, keeping his head, however, below its level, and running his hand along it until it came to the breech. The touch-hole was covered by a wad of cloth to keep the powder dry from the heavy dew. This he removed, put up his hand again with the wet sponge, gave a squeeze, and then cautiously replaced ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... the best of wood for their sledges, the best of cutlery, knives, hatchets, and saws for their work, and the cooking utensils of civilization. Formerly they were dependent upon the most primitive hunting weapons; now they have repeating rifles, breech-loading shotguns, and an abundance of ammunition. There was not a rifle in the tribe when I first went there. As they have no vegetables, and live solely on meat, blood, and blubber, the possession of guns and ammunition has increased the food-producing capacity of every hunter, and relieved ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell into the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship was ringing with cries ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... a giant strength the old man swayed the breech of the heavy gun to its bearing, and then seizing the string of the lock, he stood back and watched for the next swell that would bring the shark in range. He had aimed the piece some distance ahead of his mark; but yet a little moment would ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... so that the arm is available for instant firing. This is a departure from the general practice in connection with such weapons. When the gun is loaded the bolt which holds the compressor back is withdrawn, either by the hand for manual firing, or by the action of the automatic closing of the breech when the arm is being used as a quick-firer. In firing the gun is thrown forward under the pressure of the released air which occurs at the moment of discharge. The energy of the recoil brings the gun back and at the same time ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... found on the line of the retreat of the Americans from the battle-ground at Hubbardton, Vermont. It has the date of 1774 on the breech. ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... rifle, slid a cartridge into the breech, and coaxed the trigger lovingly towards him. Three times he fired, then we went together to look at the target. Not a bullet fired by him had struck it. The instructor glared down the barrel of the gun, made some nasty remarks about deflection, ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
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