"Musket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are like otters in the water. Well, the chief was hard on the captain, and would not part with some o' his things. When their bargainin' was over they shook hands, and the chief jumped over board to swim ashore; but before he got forty yards from the ship the captain seized a musket and shot him dead. He then hove up anchor and put to sea, and as we sailed along shore, he dropped six black- fellows with his rifle, remarkin' that 'that would spoil the trade for the next comers.' But, as I was sayin', I'm up to the ways o' these fellows. One o' the laws o' the country is, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... loaded a heavy musket, and placing himself at one hundred yards from the mark, fired, and the ball lodged in the center, amid the applause of ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... hail-storm, which killed numbers of large birds and much injured the cattle. These hailstones were flat, and one was ten inches in circumference, and another weighed two ounces. They ploughed up a gravel-walk like musket-balls, and passed through glass-windows, making round holes, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... as darkness closed over the scene was far from encouraging. He had examined the position of the Union army carefully, and had satisfied himself that as regards its centre and left it was unassailable. Let any man with a musket on his shoulder, encumbered with a cartridge-box, haversack, canteen, etc., attempt to climb over a body of felled timber to get at an enemy who is coolly shooting at him from behind a log breastwork, ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... street had been occasioned by the frantic behavior of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women and children. It proved, however, to have been without ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone, D—— came from the window, whither I had followed him immediately ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... building loomed above the jungle growth. Ubbo uttered a warning sound. We could hear the regular tread and presently a form showed around the corner of the house. It was a negro in uniform with a musket held ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... than he appeased with his voice." The tumult increased; there was a rush to arms on all sides; the coadjutor was felled to the ground by a blow from a stone. He had just picked himself up, when a burgess put his musket to his head. "Though I did not know him a bit," says Retz, "I thought it would not be well to let him suppose so at such a moment; on the contrary, I said to him, 'Ah! wretch, if thy father saw thee!' He thought I was the best friend ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... finding of a court of inquiry acquitting the prisoner of all blame is not a legal bar to a prosecution, it is entitled to weight as an expression of the views of the military court of the necessity of using a musket to prevent the ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... years later, November 15, 1796, Bonaparte, commander-in-chief of the army of Italy, at the Bridge of Arcola, which was defended by two regiments of Croats and two pieces of cannon, seeing his ranks disseminated by grapeshot and musket balls, feeling that victory was slipping through his fingers, alarmed by the hesitation of his bravest followers, wrenched the tri-color from the rigid fingers of a dead color-bearer, and dashed toward the bridge, shouting: "Soldiers! ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... most part judiciously unimaginative Massachusetts Historical Society. It looks unlike anything else Emerson ever wrote, in being provided with abundant foot-notes and an appendix. One would almost as soon have expected to see Emerson equipped with a musket and a knapsack as to find a discourse of his clogged with annotations, and trailing a supplement after it. Oracles are brief and final in their utterances. Delphi and Cumae are not expected to ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... But then it had been a heavy rain. The paper boat rocked up and down, and sometimes turned round so rapidly that the Tin Soldier trembled; but he remained firm, and never changed countenance, and looked straight before him, and shouldered his musket. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... student years many a choice volume, sometimes even an Aldus or an Elzevir, have I found among the trumpery spread out on the parapets of the quays. But there is a difference between going out on the Fourth of July with a militia musket to shoot any catbird or "chipmunk" that turns up in a piece of woods within a few miles of our own cities, and shooting partridges in a nobleman's preserves on the First of September. I confess to having felt a certain awe on entering the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... referred to,—Alexis St. Martin,—was a young Canadian, of eighteen years of age, of a good constitution, and robust health, who, in 1822, was accidentally wounded by the discharge of a musket, which carried away a part of the ribs, lacerated one of the lobes of the lungs, and perforated the stomach, making a large aperture, which never closed; and which enabled Dr. Beaumont, (a surgeon of the American ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... on, a man came secretly round a rock, and diving down, took up the boat's grappling, and at the same time the people on shore who held the warp, made an effort to draw her into the surf. As soon as this was perceived by the people on board, they fired a musket over the man's head who had taken up the grappling, upon which he instantly let it go, with marks of great terror and astonishment; the people on shore also let go the rope. The boats, after this, lay some time upon their oars, but the officer, finding that he could get nothing more, returned ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... his comrades would not join him, they refused to make any movement to arrest him. General Hearsey now arrived on the parade ground with his son and a Major Ross, and at once rode at the man, who, finding that his comrades would not assist him, discharged the contents of the musket into his own body. ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... battery of one immense rifled cannon. This was his mode of soliciting alms; and he reminded me of the old beggar who appealed so touchingly to the charitable sympathies of Gil Blas, taking aim at him from the roadside with a long-barrelled musket. The intentness and directness of his silent appeal, his close and unrelenting attack upon your individuality, respectful as it seemed, was the very flower of insolence; or, if you give it a possibly truer interpretation, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... front, resolved that their dignity, as a constituent part of this republic, should not be impaired. Farmers and sons of farmers left the land but half ploughed, the grain but half planted, and, taking up the musket, learned to face without fear the presence of peril and the coming of death in the shocks of war, while their hearts were still attracted to their herds and fields, and all the tender affections of home. Whatever there was of truth and faith and public love in the common heart, broke ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... ambitious? To create a name, perhaps bequeath a title,—exalt into Sir Isaacs a progeny of slops! And, after all, it is possible (let us hope it in this instance) that a sensible young dog may learn his letters and shoulder his musket just as well, though all the appellations by which humanity knows him be condensed into a pitiful monosyllable. Nevertheless (as you will find when you are older), people are obliged in practice to renounce ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... guns were rested on it, and there came from it some irregular flashes of musketry. Then Harry saw a man moving his head and arms, as if shouting and gesticulating. The musket flashes ceased. Harry did not know it then, but the man was Putnam, and he was commanding the Yankees to reserve their fire. The British files were now ordered to deploy into line, and fire. They did so as they advanced, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... my friend," said the President, "may be a hard one, but it might be worse. If, with your musket, you had taken your chances with the boys before Richmond, you might have found your bed and board before now! But the point is, what would you have me do for you? I have much to do, and the courts have been opened to relieve me in ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... were rowing and threw every one of them overboard. The mate, a small, active man, managed to draw a heavy horse pistol from his belt, but ere he could pull the trigger he was dealt a crushing blow with a musket stock. As he fell a native thrust him through and through with one of the seamen's cutlasses. As for the unfortunate seamen, they were killed one by one as they struggled in the water. That part of the fell work accomplished, the natives pulled the boat in towards Oneaka, where some ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... Connecticut advanced to the charge late in the afternoon "as steadily as though on a battalion drill," the regimental history relates. It captured a line of rifle pits and kept on "under a combined artillery and musket fire. The air was blue with the little cast iron balls from spherical-case shot which shaved the ground and exploded among the stumps just in rear of the line at intervals of only a few seconds. Twenty of the Second Connecticut were wounded—seven of them mortally—in reaching, occupying, and ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... the guard-house sounds forth nine o'clock. The soldier-like sentinel, pacing with loaded musket, and armed with sharpest steel, cries out in hoarse accents, "All's well!" The bell is summoning all negroes to their habitations: our guide, Bill, informs the stranger that he must have a "pass" from a white man before he can venture into the street. "Mas'r may write 'um," he says, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... saw the soldier on guard, in his great gray mantle, standing back in his box like a saint in his niche; he had his sleeve wrapped about his musket where he held it, to keep his fingers from the iron, and two long icicles hung from his mustaches. No one was on the bridge, not even the toll-gatherer, but a little farther on, I saw three carts in the ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... commanding officer of the Guard, who having sworn that "the Guard died, but never surrendered," was taken prisoner the next minute by a private soldier, who broke the Frenchman's sword with the butt of his musket, when Rawdon made himself master of the shattered weapon. As for the cross and epaulets, they came from a Colonel of French cavalry, who had fallen under the aide-de-camp's arm in the battle: and Rawdon ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the soldier, laying down his musket and tightening the straps of his cross-belts. "Captain, report Private Dubois for insubordination and breach of discipline. I'm going out to bring in ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to mark the extraordinary richness of the country, and the abundance and luxuriance of its products, both animal and vegetable. Elephants existed in crowds, and ivory was so abundant that a trader was purchasing it at the rate of ten tusks for a musket worth fifteen shillings. Two years later, after effect had been given to Livingstone's discovery, the price ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... dry— No captain issues proud behest— The guard-room echoes to no jest; As I have said, within those walls The very silentness appalls! In other days it was not so— The Spanish banner, long ago, Above the turrets tall did flow. And many a gallant soldier there With musket or with gleaming spear, Pac'd on the battlements that then Were throng'd with tall and proper men. But this was many a year ago— A long shot back for mem'ry's bow! The Governor here made his home Beneath the great hall's gilded dome. And here his lady-wife he brought From Spain, across the sea; ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... any optical instrument in that way. I suppose it is from the instinct of protection to the eye, the same instinct as that which makes the raw militia-man close it when he pulls the, trigger of his musket the first time. He expressed himself highly gratified, however, with what he saw, and retired from the instrument to make ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... character after Borrow's heart, especially as he told his pupil that one day he would be a great philologist. Of course, young Borrow was by no means the sort of lad to spend all his time on books. He loved to sally forth with an old condemned musket, and did such execution that he seldom returned (sad to say!) without a string of bullfinches, blackbirds, and linnets hanging round his neck. Yet, as Mr. Jenkins says, Borrow's "love of animals was almost feminine." With less zest he went fishing—too listless a pastime to interest ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... gun to shoot bad bears," went on Paul, shouldering a wooden article, that, by a wide stretch of the imagination could be seen to somewhat resemble a musket. "Gun go bang-bang!" explained the little chap, "bad bears run 'way off. Turn on, Dodo, we go wif 'em," and he nodded at the "hikers," as Will unfeelingly characterized ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and stanch he stands; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new, And the soldier was passing fair; And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... walls of the chamber,— Cutlass and corselet[5] of steel, and his trusty sword of Damascus,[6] Curved at the point and inscribed with its mystical[7] Arabic sentence, While underneath, in a corner, were fowling-piece, musket, and matchlock.[8] 10 Short of stature he was, but strongly built and athletic, Broad in the shoulders, deep-chested, with muscles and sinews of iron; Brown as a nut was his face, but his russet beard was already, Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges sometimes ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... applied machinery is, the manufacture of fire-arms. It has long been a matter of surprise to me, why so obvious and useful an application of machinery was neglected by the Government at home. The advantages of being able to transfer all screws, springs, nipples, hammers, &c., from one musket to another, are so manifest to the most infantine comprehension, that I suppose they considered it beneath their notice; nor can I make out that they have duly inquired into the various breech-loading ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... for the Revolution, inflamed by patriotism, his spirit exalted by his reading of ancient history," as a biographer, Deleuze, wrote, he left the peaceful home of the village priest, and shouldered a musket under the tricolour. He fought in the army of the Rhine, and in an engagement against the Prussians at Kaiserslautern, was wounded and taken prisoner. Always a student, he spent the little money that he had on the purchase of books, which he devoted ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... to demolish everything; but his brother officers did not esteem him. The fortune he possessed made him cautious. He was nicknamed, for two reasons, "captain of crows." In the first place, he could smell powder a league off, and took wing at the sound of a musket; secondly, the nickname was based on an innocent military pun, which his position in the regiment warranted. Captain Montefiore, of the illustrious Montefiore family of Milan (though the laws of the Kingdom of Italy ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... ahead with my musket. We made the turn as the bear was bounding away from the well-licked ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... honest fellow soldier, "I never perplex my brain with those things. I dare say your philosophers may be right; at least once in a hundred years. But take my word for it, that musket and bayonet will be useful matters still; and that discipline and my old master Frederick, will be as good as Dumourier and desperation, when we shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... two armies remain within musket-shot of each other, when Count Terzky, from the camp of the Imperialists, appeared with a trumpeter in that of the allies, inviting General Arnheim to a conference. The purport was, that Wallenstein, notwithstanding his superiority, was willing to agree to a cessation of arms for six ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... settler, and spent all his mornings in the cowyard, had taken to the bush and tried his hand at sticking up people. When they came near enough of course he'd pop out from behind a tree in a rock, with his old musket or a pair of pistols, and when he wanted 'em to stop 'Bail up, d——yer,' would come a deal quicker and more natural-like to his tongue than 'Stand.' So 'bail up' it was from that day to this, and there'll have to be a deal ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... house a guard of twenty-four men. These soldiers wore, by way of uniform, a long blue coat with yellow; and each was armed with a musket. In front of the house, on an open square, were placed fourteen four-pounders, mounted ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... has been uncovered here. In fact, the field is known locally as "the place where the Indians made their pottery." This site seems to have been occupied within historic times; after an unusual freshet some years ago, many "round musket-balls, such as belonged to the old-fashioned muzzle loaders"—"hundreds," or "two gallons," of them is the usual version—were picked up where the loose soil had washed off. There is a local tradition, long antedating the discovery of the bullets, that a "battle" ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... in a cellar, and through the opening we thrust a pole to which the blade of a rapier was fastened. This sometimes brought us up four or five apples at once, which hung on the blade like the flock of ducks that Baron Munchausen's musket pierced with the ramrod. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... account of one who was long prisoner on board their ships; let it explain itself, while I return to my tale. For the great ship is now within two musket-shots of the Rose, with the golden flag of Spain floating at her poop; and her trumpets are shouting defiance up the breeze, from a dozen brazen throats, which two or three answer lustily from the Rose, from whose poop flies the flag of England, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the extreme verge of the platform, ready to salute them as the train went off. This poodle wore a military shako (it is unnecessary to add, very much on one side over one eye), a little military coat, and the regulation white gaiters. He was armed with a little musket and a little sword-bayonet, and he stood presenting arms in perfect attitude, with his unobscured eye on his master or superior officer, who stood by him. So admirable was his discipline, that, when the train moved, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... during the war, fourteen heavily armored gunboats, four heavy mortar boats, and converted seven transports into musket-proof gunboats, or "tin-clads," as they were called on the river. He had a share in other enterprises of a similar nature during the war, and besides rendering good service to the Union, was enabled to retire at the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... us to walk into the adjoining basement. I was a few steps in advance of him, taking a straight course to the entrance, when a sentinel, pacing to and fro in the middle of the apartment, levelled his musket so as to bar my way, saying, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... so humble, the progress of society is secured, and man is spared the humiliation of witnessing again scenes like those which followed the destruction of the Roman Empire. Now look to the warriors of modern times; you see the spear, the javelin, the shield, and the cuirass are changed for the musket and the light artillery. The German monk who discovered gunpowder did not meanly affect the destinies of mankind; wars are become less bloody by becoming less personal; mere brutal strength is rendered of comparatively little avail; all the ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... and presently forget their own shape and favor. As for business, a man may think, if he win, that two eyes see no more than one; or that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or that a man in anger, is as wise as he that hath said over the four and twenty letters; or that a musket may be shot off as well upon the arm, as upon a rest; and such other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in all. But when all is done, the help of good counsel, is that which setteth business straight. And if any man think that he will take counsel, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... at his post!" and there hailed on our houses and halls Death from their rifle bullets, and death from their cannon balls, Death in our innermost chamber, and death at our slight barricade, Death while we stood with the musket, and death while we stoopt to the spade, Death to the dying, and wounds to the wounded, for often there fell, Striking the hospital wall, crashing through it, their ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... awakened at a posada by their bringing us some hot coffee, and a man with a white nightcap on, having poked his head in at the window, in defiance of a loaded musket, I concluded he was a lepero, and sleepily told him I had nothing for him, in the phrase of the country to importunate beggars; "Perdone V. por Dios!" "Excuse me, for God's sake!"—but he proved to be a gentleman, who merely came to put himself and his property at our ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... note from a friend's hand. Swords, too, were now and then raised to strike, but were always arrested in mid-air. Even in the last stand of the Samurai, where one might reasonably have hoped for some hand-to-hand play, nothing happened except one fatal shot from an unseen musket, and even then the stricken body fell into the wings. If it hadn't been for the throttling of a spy and a touch or two of hara-kiri in the dark of the Bamboo Forest we should have had practically ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... infatuation of my kindred. My destiny had bound me down to it by the chains both of duty and pleasure, so that I could see no possibility to set myself free. I was upwards of twenty-five years of age, and I saw it was now too late to begin to carry a musket; but that which tortured me most of all was this fatal reflection, that I had spent so much of my time in too eager a pursuit of pleasure, and thereby riveted my own chains; so that it looked as if fate ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... continued, as well as the dense scrubs of casuarinae permitted, in a direction parallel to its course. Just as we found Mr. Cunningham's footsteps a column of smoke arose from the woods to the southward, and I went in search of the natives, Bulger accompanying me with his musket. After we had advanced in the direction of the smoke two miles it entirely disappeared, and we could neither hear nor see any other traces of human beings in these dismal solitudes. The density of the scrubs had obliged me ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Baron Vander Capellen, called on all Europeans between the ages of sixteen and forty-five to serve in the schuttery, or militia. An infantry and a cavalry corps were formed, and I joined the latter, preferring a ride in the evening to a walk with a fourteen-pound musket over my shoulder. After a probation of pretty tight drilling, we became tolerable soldiers, on "nothing a day and finding ourselves," and had the good town of Batavia put under our charge, the regular troops being all sent away to the scene of ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... headed towards the city. The flags of the English, German and Italian ships were dipped in salute as she moved ahead. Two American ships, the Amy and the Good News, were anchored under the guns of two of the insurgent fleet. As the Detroit passed close by the Trajano, a marine on that ship raised a musket and fired a bullet over the heads of the sailors on the Amy, which was ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... as it recommended me to the special courtesy of all whom I might encounter; but in this respect it was injurious to me rather than otherwise, as every picket by whom I was stopped found it necessary to read it to the end. The paper was almost invariably returned to me without a word; but the musket which was not unfrequently kept extended across my horse's nose by the reader's comrade would be withdrawn, and then I would ride on to the next barrier. It seemed to me that these passes were so ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... on account of some Arabs at Zanzibar. On crossing Usui, he once had a fight with one of the chiefs of the country and killed him; but he got through all right, because the natives, after two or three of their number had been killed, dispersed, and feared to come near his musket again. He visited Uganda when the late king Sunna was living, and even traded Usoga; but as he was coming down from these northern countries he lost all his property by a fire breaking out in a village he stopped in, which drove him down here a ruined man. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... of soldiers went to the house of Joseph Garniero, and before they entered, fired in at the window, to give notice of their approach. A musket ball entered one of Mrs. Garniero's breasts, as she was suckling an infant with the other. On finding their intentions, she begged hard that they would spare the life of the infant, which they promised to do, and sent it immediately ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Bologna, was, in 1796, a friar, but relinquished then the convent for the tent, and exchanged the breviary for the musket. He married a nun of one cloister, from whom he procured a divorce in a month, to unite himself with an Abbess of another, deserted by him in her turn for the wife of an innkeeper, who robbed and eloped from her husband. Last spring he returned to the bosom of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... room Achmet Zek watched the unequal struggle and urged on his minions. In his hands was a jeweled musket. Slowly he raised it to his shoulder, waiting until another move should place Mugambi at his mercy without endangering the lives of the woman or ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... musket is just heard on the picket post, three-quarters of a mile away, and the shot is being repeated by our line of sentinels. * * * The whole camp has been in an uproar. Many men, half asleep, rushed from their tents and fired off their guns in their company grounds. Others, ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... catching a few of the many millions of oysters that lined the bottom of that creek, to satisfy his hunger, the villainous Mr. Bondley, lying in ambush, without the slightest ceremony, discharged the contents of his musket into the back and shoulders of the poor old man. As good fortune would have it, the shot did not prove mortal, and Mr. Bondley came over, the next day, to see Col. Lloyd—whether to pay him for his property, or to ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... If I had received a musket-ball in the heart, and she had stood there, I almost believe I should have turned to ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... one of the original Forty-Niners pioneering along the unknown frontiers of an unknown land. I could see him duck at imaginary arrows and frenziedly defend his family from imaginary Sioux with an imaginary musket. And I stood beside it this morning, dreaming of the adventures it must have lumbered through, of the freight it must have carried and the hopes it must have ferried as it once crawled westward along the floor of the world, from water-hole to lonely ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... freedom from Great Britain broke out. All the country was aflame, and rang with the stories of what happened at Lexington and Bunker Hill. Man after man from the village took his powder horn and musket and went off to enlist for the war, and Molly grew more and more restless as ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... from the rain and snow—a sharp foretaste of the impending winter. During their encampment, they employed themselves in jerking a part of the elk for future supply. In cutting up the carcass, they found that the animal had been wounded by hunters, about a week previously, an arrow head and a musket ball remaining in the wounds. In the wilderness, every trivial circumstance is a matter of anxious speculation. The Snake Indians have no guns; the elk, therefore, could not have been wounded by one of them. They were on the borders of the country infested by the ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... afternoon the mocking-bird, the American mimic, singing in the Great Dismal Swamp, There are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree; Northward, young men of Mannahatta, the target company from an excursion returning home at evening, the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women; Children at play, or on his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!) The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi, he ascends ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... know where she is," said I, again relapsing into tears at the thought of my utter desolation. The old soldier leaned upon his musket in profound thought, and for some time did not utter a word. At ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... been increased by many hundreds of new-comers, whom the news of the successes which had been gained had induced to take up arms, and the time of the various leaders was fully occupied in giving some notion of drill and of the use of the musket ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... more or less matter to me?" he went on, after a short pause. "A convict is no more in my eyes than an emmet is in yours. I am like the Italian brigands—fine men they are! If a traveler is worth ever so little more than the charge of their musket, they ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... with the Canadians and Indians, to his knees. He had a musket. Jeannette rose, also, as the Highlanders came sweeping on in pursuit. She had scarcely been a woman to the bushfighters. They were too eager in their aim to glance aside at a rawboned camp follower in a wet shawl. ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Lamina Foffono, one of my fellow travellers in my former journey from Mandingo to Gambia, hearing that I was come to Jindey, came from Wallia to see me. He told me that Karfa was in health, but had not received the musket I sent him ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... individuals, thirty-three in number, who are known to have been on the Caroline at the time she was boarded, and twenty-one only are to be found, one of which, to wit, Amos Durfee, of Buffalo, was found dead upon the dock, having received a shot from a musket, the ball of which penetrated the back part of the head and came out at the forehead; James H. King and Captain C.F. Harding were seriously though not mortally wounded; several others received slight ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... Italian, but wished he had a master. A master was found in a French emigre, the Rev. Thomas D'Eterville, who gave private lessons to Borrow, among others, in French, Italian and Spanish. His other teachers were an old musket with which he shot bullfinches, blackbirds and linnets, a fishing rod with which he haunted the Yare, and the sporting gent, John Thurtell, who taught him to box and ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... fluttered his yellow wings. Beneath the bridge the swift current sparkled in the sun. Over the river, on each side, rose the hills. The gray stone of the government works was visible to the right through the leafless trees: nearer, square, yellow and ugly, stood the old arsenal. A soldier, musket on shoulder, marched along the river-edge: the cape of his coat fluttered in the breeze and his slanting bayonet shone like silver. Before them lay D——, the smoke from its mills and houses curling into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... entrances of the courtyard that surrounded the gloomy structure. It was a calm, tropical light, and the moon shone so brightly as to light up the grim walls and heavy arches of the building, almost as bright as if it were day. Now and then a sentinel would pause, and resting upon his musket, look off upon the silvery sea, and perhaps dream of his distant Castilian home, then starting again, he would rouse himself, shoulder the weapon, and pace his round with measured stride. Lorenzo Bezan, the ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... the noise in the palace; female shrieks, commands, a shot from a musket. What in heaven's name had happened? Where was Kathlyn? Why did she not appear? He fingered his revolvers. But Ahmed signaled to him not to stir. The knowledge of whatever had happened must be brought to them; on their lives they dared not go ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... thou forth and play thy tragick part, Stand in some window opening neere the street, And when thou seest the Admirall ride by, Discharge thy musket and perfourme his death: And then Ile guerdon thee with ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe
... a shot! The outpost stood a hundred yards to the left of him reloading. A black head started up behind a curve of rising ground, a bullet whizzed by, and the man with the musket fell in a ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... which the one advocated by the President could be defeated. It had been seen and frankly admitted that the war for the preservation of the Union could not have been brought to a successful conclusion without putting the musket in the hands of the loyal blacks. The fact was now made plain that the fruits of the victory that had been won on the battlefield could not be preserved without putting the ballot in their ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... can't touch me, Reggibald. I'm in balk." His eyes wandered round the room. "Why, there's Nobby. And what's the game? Musical Chairs? I know a better one than that." His eyes returned to the master. "Now, don't you look and I'll hide in the hassock! Then, when I say 'Cuckoo,' you put down the musket and wish. ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... clothes," said Robert. He helped the Count pull on the coat, placed the hat on his head, buckled on his knapsack, and gave him a musket. The Count's face had not been shaved during his imprisonment, so that this gave him the wild appearance which all soldiers ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... and Massachusetts share the honor of his birth,— The grand old State! to me the best in all the peopled earth! I cannot hold a musket, but I have a son who can; And I'm proud for Freedom's sake to be the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... Hyphasis (Satadru or Sutledge):- "These holy men, beloved by the gods, overthrow their enemies with tempests and thunderbolts shot from their walls." Passing over the Arab sieges of Constantinople (A.D. 668) and Meccah (A.D. 690) and the disputed passage in Firishtah touching the Tufang or musket during the reign of Mahmud the Ghaznevite[FN185] (ob. A.D. 1030), we come to the days of Alphonso the Valiant, whose long and short guns, used at the Siege of Madrid in A.D. 1084, are preserved in the Armeria Real. Viardot ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... pointed out that their own nephew Jeremiah, who was by trade a sailor, the master of a ship—which by an ill-chance for that young man had come to anchor at this season in Bridgewater Bay—had quitted the helm to snatch up a musket in defence of Right. But Mr. Blood was not of those who argue. As I have said, he was a ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... nun to Victoire: "I should know the face of that man who is loading his musket—the very man whom I nursed ten years ago, when he was ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... Chasseurs marched in to the nave, packed densely and halted. Then in close order the battery itself followed and stood. Now the loud commands were in here. Strange it was to hear them ring through the holy place (French to the Chasseurs, English to the battery), and the crashing musket-butts smite the paved floor as one weapon, to the flash of ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... other, leading a procession of armed priests, monks and scholars through the streets. Friars from the mendicant orders were among them, their habits tucked up, hoods thrown back, casques on their heads and cuirasses on their breasts. All marched sword by side, dagger in girdle, musket on shoulder, the strangest army of the church militant ever seen. As they passed the Pont Notre Dame the papal legate was crossing in his carriage, and was asked to stop and give his blessing. After this benediction a salvo of musketry was called for, and some of the host ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... seen stealing towards the camp, and evidently hoping to take the company by surprise. "Silence!" said Captain Rymer to his companions, "we will let them suppose that we are asleep, and then, if we suddenly start up and fire a musket or two over their heads they will become so alarmed that they will perhaps desist from the attack." This plan was followed out. The Frenchmen were evidently somewhat startled at finding that those they had come to attack ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... rising sun, however, began to open the horizon, the adventurous youth was discovered, with astonishment, on the ice, at a considerable distance, anxiously pursuing a huge polar bear. He carried a musket in his hand; but, the lock being injured, the piece would not go off: he was, therefore, endeavouring to weary the animal, that he might be able to effect his purpose with the butt-end. Captain Lutwidge, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... few houses for the entertainment of discarded authors, who would enter into the service with great alacrity, as most of them are zealous friends of every present government; many of them are men of able bodies, and strong limbs, qualified, at least, as well for the musket as the pen; they are, perhaps, at present a little emaciated and enfeebled, but would soon recover their strength and flesh with good ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... had led in former days, nor its delights; neither was I formed by Nature to be a pallid indoor student. No, no! I was fond of other and, I say it boldly, better things than study. I had an attachment to the angle, ay, and to the gun likewise. In our house was a condemned musket, bearing somewhere on its lock, in rather antique characters, "Tower, 1746"; with this weapon I had already, in Ireland, performed some execution among the rooks and choughs, and it was now again destined to be a source of solace and amusement to me, in the winter season, especially ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that day would be lying dead, Pierced by a British musket-ball. ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... exaggerated with all the artifices of rhetoric. One of the alien mercenaries had backed his horse against an honest citizen who pressed forward to catch a glimpse of the royal canopy. Another had rudely pushed back a woman with the but end of his musket. On such grounds as these the strangers were compared to those Lord Danes whose insolence, in the old time, had provoked the Anglo-saxon population to insurrection and massacre. But there was no more fertile theme for censure than the coronation ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "and you don't know perfectly well, I suppose, that he's been shot at along this line times enough to have turned his hair white? Or that he crossed the river for the third time last night, loaded down with musket-caps for the rebels?" ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... so obsequious to their master the day before, so prompt to sing and dance before his Northern visitors, were all swift to transform themselves into fiends of retribution now; show them sword or musket, and they grasped it, though it were an heirloom from Washington himself. The troop increased from house to house,—first to fifteen, then to forty, then to sixty. Some were armed with muskets, some with axes, some ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... and I regret much that I did not know him better." Napoleon paused; then after a minute's silence—"See," said he, "what our life is! In the action at Arcis-sur-Aube I fought with desperation, and asked nothing but to die for my country. My clothes were torn to pieces by musket balls—but alas! not one could touch my person! A death which I should owe to an act of despair would be cowardly; suicide does not suit my principles nor the rank I have holden in the world. I am a man condemned to live." He sighed almost to sobbing;—then, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... Mag. for Jan. 1766 (p. 45) records, that 'a person was observed discharging musket-balls from a steel crossbow at the two remaining heads upon Temple Bar.' They were the heads of Scotch rebels executed in 1746. Samuel Rogers, who died at the end of 1855, said, 'I well remember one of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... lantern opened the carriage-door, and said two or three words to the one who acted as driver, who immediately got down from his seat, took up a short musket which he kept under his feet, and placed its muzzle on ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... twelve men remaining. Each knew now that there was no hope of quarter, and fought with the desperation of men who cared only to sell their lives dearly. Fast as the Roundheads poured up the stairs, they fell, pierced by pike, or shot down by musket ball. For half an hour the efforts continued, and then the Roundheads, having lost over fifty men, fell back. Three times during the day the attack was renewed, and each time repulsed with the same terrible slaughter. Between the intervals the defenders ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... wear eyes of glass which they see through with facility perhaps, else they would not use them; and in the mouths of some are teeth made by the sacrilegious hand of man. The dress of the men is laughably grotesque. They carry no musket in ordinary life, nor no long-pointed pole; they wear no wide green-lined cloak; they wear no peaked black felt hat, no leathern gaiters reaching to the knee, no goat-skin breeches with the hair side out, no hob-nailed shoes, no ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... compared with the area of uninhabited country. The villages, hamlets, and single homesteads were like little islands in a wild green waste: mere specks in a vast expanse of wilderness. Every line beyond musket shot was a frontier-line. Every settlement, small or large, was surrounded by a dark circle, outside of which lurked starvation, fear, and danger. The sea and the great rivers were perilous avenues of escape for those who dwelt thereby, but the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... lifted up his nieve, and shook it at Nosey in a gude humoured way, what think ye that the cratur did? Odds man, he took the note frae his pouch, whare it lay rowed up like a baw, and, papping it at Donald, hit him as fairly upon the nose, as if it had been shot out of a weel-aimed musket. There was nae resisting this. The haill three, or rather the haill four, for Nosey joined us, set up a loud lauch; and the Heelandman's was the loudest of a', showing that he was really a man of sense, and could tak a joke ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... single nail had been used in the house. The whole of it is lashed together with rattan. The furniture consists entirely of mats, which cover a part of the floor, and are used both for sitting on and sleeping on, and a few small, hard, circular bolsters with embroidered ends. A musket, a spear, some fishing-rods, and a buffalo yoke hung against the wall of the reception room. In the back room, the province of the women and children, there were an iron pot, a cluster of bananas, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... a severe gale, the sand-bar shifted its position at the mouth of the river, and from the quantity of gun-flints, brass musket-guards, musket-barrels and bayonets washed ashore it became evident that one of the submerged boats had been uncovered and broken up, after having been in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... that night, but Letty was going back to a New Hampshire boy who was not destined to live very long, and whose father was on the way from Plymouth to see his eldest son—his eldest son who had never fought a battle, had never seen one, had never even fired his musket, but who lay dying in the nineteenth year of his age, colour corporal, loved of his ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... remained motionless, he thrust his wedge-shaped head, and turned it back above the stone as if half in mind to seize my foot; then he drew back, and presently went his way. These weasels often hunt in packs like the British stoat. When I was a boy, my father one day armed me with an old musket and sent me to shoot chipmunks around the corn. While watching the squirrels, a troop of weasels tried to cross a bar-way where I sat, and were so bent on doing it that I fired at them, boy-like, simply to thwart their purpose. One of the weasels ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... swarmed so with that kind of game. They were running in all directions, and often even right into our lines, for they are stupid animals when frightened, as they then were by the noise our men made; and I managed to kill one with the muzzle of my musket, and sold it to the captain of my ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... the two adventurers were seen, at a considerable distance from the ship, attacking a huge bear. The signal for them to return was immediately made; Nelson's comrade called upon him to obey it, but in vain; his musket had flashed in the pan; their ammunition was expended; and a chasm in the ice, which divided him from the bear, probably preserved his life. "Never mind," he cried; "do but let me get a blow at this devil with the butt-end ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... down, or thought it not worth while in the brief respites from the rain, or were profiting by such rare occasions to dry them; and some other sights remained baffling to the last. Once a man with his hands pinioned before him, and a gendarme marching stolidly after him with his musket on his shoulder, passed under their windows; but who he was, or what he, had done, or was to suffer, they never knew. Another time a pair went by on the way to the railway station: a young man carrying an umbrella under his arm, and a very ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Musket in her hand, Raft from a dying Souldiour newlie slaine, And ayming where th' vnconquered Knight did stand, Dischargd it through his bodie, and in twaine Deuids the euer holie nuptiall band, Which twixt his ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... mechanics into stern array, and spoke such brave and dangerous words as opened the war of American Independence,—the last to leave the field,—was my father's father. I learned to read out of his Bible, and with a musket he that day captured from the foe, I learned another religious lesson, that "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." I keep them both "Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind," to use them both "In the Sacred Cause of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... glasses seemed to have poured around him. Uncas again, he crawled on all fours from chair to divan to stool to the fallen log which the adults thought was an easy chair. He stuck his head from behind it and sighted along the broomstick-musket at his father. He'd shoot that white man dead and then take his scalp. He giggled at that, because his father really didn't have any hairlock ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... station off Brest, and says, "For God's sake, if you should be so lucky as to get sight of the enemy, get as close to them as possible. Do not let them shuffle with you by engaging at a distance, but get within musket shot if you can. This will be the means to make the action decisive." In these words we find an unbroken chain of tradition between Hawke and Nelson. One of Hawke's pupils was William Locker; and Locker ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... boats returned with Mr. Usborne, who had been unfortunately very severely wounded by the accidental discharge of a musket. It appeared that after a careful examination of the bay, which ended as I had anticipated, in proving that no opening to the interior would be found in it, the party were returning to the boats, when, from the accidental explosion of a musket in the hand of one of the party, a ball ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... don't you prove it—you and Colonel Shelby, and the rest of the neighbors who are saying things behind my back that they don't care to say to my face? Why don't you prove your loyalty to the South by shouldering a musket and going into ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... of an accident, though Pierce was in every way a worthy candidate. His family record begins with his father, Benjamin Pierce, who, as a lad of seventeen, stirred by the tidings of the fight at Lexington, left his home in Chelmsford, musket on shoulder, to join the patriot army before Boston. He settled in New Hampshire after the Revolution, and his son Franklin was born there in 1804. He followed the usual course of lawyer, congressman and senator, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... course of the Nile, its waters, after their first rise, run towards the east, about the length of a musket-shot; then, turning northward, continue hidden in the grass and weeds for about a quarter of a league, when they reappear amongst a quantity of rocks. The Nile, from its source, proceeds with so inconsiderable a current ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... of flame would lick up into the night towards that russet patch of sky, betraying the cause of it and proclaiming that incendiaries were at work. Above the ominous din that told of the business afoot there came now and again the crack of a musket, and dominating all other sounds was the sullen roar of the revolted peasants, the risen serfs, the rebellious vassals of the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... Brother Monsoreau, who spoke so well just now, has, I doubt not, his huntsman's knife in his belt. Brother la Huriere manages the spit; I, myself, who speak to you—I, Jacques Gorenflot, have carried the musket in Champagne. It now remains to us to speak of our chiefs, of whom it seems to me, poor monk as I am, that there is something to say. Certainly, it is very well and prudent to come at night under a monk's robe, to hear Brother Gorenflot preach; ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... record. At first the warriors had fought on equal terms, the weapons of all being the bow and arrow, the tomahawk, the knife, and the war-club. But now the Iroquois had firearms, procured from the Dutch of the Hudson, and were skilled in the use of the musket, which gave them a great advantage over their ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... hour passed without any sign that the frigate was aware that the ships were leaving the harbor; then Ralph heard the sound of a distant musket-shot, followed by several others, and had no doubt that one of the frigate's boats on watch near the channel ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... do you not know him? a rank, raw-boned anatomy, he walks up and down like a charged musket, no man dares encounter ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... light knapsack, which contained his Sunday clothes, on his back, and with his musket and his game-bag over his shoulder, Rudy started to take the shortest way across the mountain. Still it was a great distance. The shooting matches were to commence on that day, and to continue for a whole week. He had been ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... which the fortress was situated, and had begun a bombardment which soon reduced the parapets to ruins. The chief damage had been done by an English ship. Hybati and his men had made the best defense they could, but the gunners were shot down by musket fire from the round tops of the enemy, and when a shell set fire to a thatched house within the fort, the garrison were too much alarmed to attempt to extinguish the flames; the blaze spread, a powder magazine blew up, and ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... to his mates and pointed to the boy. They were too far off to help. They saw Nelson level his musket and saw the wicked head of the bear raised in front of him. They held their breath waiting for the shot. In the still air they caught the click of the hammer, but heard no report. For some reason the gun had not gone off. With a shout they scrambled over the ice to help him, ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... experimented on the pressure of powder and the velocity of the bullet in a musket barrel; this he accomplished by shortening the barrel successively, and measuring the velocity obtained by the ballistic pendulum; thus reversing Noble's procedure of gradually ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... to the armory, and provide each one with a musket. Let them handle the guns carefully, for they are heavily loaded. Bring me my pistols also. And now, away! ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... tulip-tree softly and take this musket I shall reach you. Train it on the staircase window, and fire only if ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... seen too many scalps hanging at their belts, and had heard their war whoops rather too often, to fancy such troublesome neighbors. They never felt as if they were safe, and wouldn't have thought ever of going to meeting without a loaded musket. I suppose that's the way the fashion originated for men to sit at the bottom of the pews, and women and children up at the other end. The men wanted to get on their feet quickly if a posse of Indians yelled at the door. Ah! men were ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... have done yeomen's work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at Cressy and Agincourt—with the brown bill and pike under the brave Lord Willoughby—with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and Dutchmen—with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they have carried their lives in their hands, getting hard knocks and hard work in plenty—which was on the whole what they ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... was about to take his place on the side of the pillion nearest the horse's head, when he remembered he had forgotten to fill the powder flask, for no horseman ever ventured on the Queen's highway without abundant supply for the musket, which lay ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... reply to the volley, but the skirmishing shots were answered directly by crack! crack! crack! the reports that sounded strangely different to those heavy, dull musket-shots which came from near at hand, and hardly needed glimpses of dark-green uniforms that dotted the hither slope of the mountain-side to proclaim that they were delivered by riflemen who a few minutes before were, almost ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... the science of war, and wallow in details of battle and siege, of supply, transportation, mining and countermining, grand tactics, big strategy and little strategy, signal service, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and all about siege guns, field guns, gatling guns, rifled guns, smooth bores, musket practice, revolver practice—and not a solitary word of it all could these catfish make head or tail of, you understand—and it was handsome to see him chalk off mathematical nightmares on the blackboard that would stump the angels themselves, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that portion of the troops which had entered the town, and marched up the main street towards the church, arrived within half-musket shot, they were received with a smart volley, which was fired from the large windows of the church, and which wounded a few of the men. The soldiers were then ordered to make their approaches under cover of the houses; and the artillery ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... like goats, and sometimes take leaps of most surprising extent and danger, which are scarcely to be believed. They throw stones with great strength and wonderful exactness, so as to hit whatever they aim at with almost perfect certainty, and almost with the force of a bullet from a musket; insomuch that a few stones thrown by them will break a buckler to pieces. I once saw a native Canarian, who had become a Christian, who offered to give three persons twelve oranges a-piece, and taking twelve to himself, engaged, at eight or ten ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... country there is a certain species of small vermin, which attaches itself to the trunks of the elephants, to suck their blood, by which many elephants die. The skull of this insect[24] is so hard as to be impenetrable to a musket shot. They have on their livers the figures of men and women, which the natives call Toketa, resembling a mandrake; and it is affirmed, that whoever has one of these about him cannot be killed by an iron weapon. They have also wild kine in this country, in the heads of which certain ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... Lord," says the preacher. "Because there is none other that fighteth for us but only thou O God," responds the congregation. The compilers of the Prayer Book evidently blundered, unless they secretly felt that the Lord of hosts was used up, and not worth a keg of gunpowder or an old musket. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... the carpenter's stores, two or three bags full of nails, a great jack-screw, a dozen or two of hatchets, and a grind-stone. I also took away several things that belonged to the gunner, particularly two or three iron crows, two barels of musket-bullets, another fowling-piece, a small quantity of powder, and a large bagful of small shot. Besides these, I took all the men's clothes I could find, a spare fore topsail, a hammock, and some bedding; and thus completing my second cargo, I made all the haste to shore I could, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... toward the town; the second—with a detachment of scouts—headed down the right-hand road to cross the Licking River and move in upon the enemies' rear. From the hill they could sight a stone-fence barricade glistening with the metal of waiting musket barrels. Then, suddenly, the old miracle came. Men who had clung through the hours to their saddles by sheer will power alone, tightened their ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... next morning to the prisoner's room, and then for the first time I found a sentry in occupation of the corridor. He grounded his musket ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... though the Fung might be, they were quite unaccustomed to magazine rifles. Living as they did perfectly isolated and surrounded by a great river, even if they had heard of such things and occasionally seen an old gaspipe musket that reached them in the course of trade, of modern guns and their terrible power they knew nothing. Small blame to them, therefore, if their courage evaporated in face of a form of sudden death which to them must have been almost magical. At any rate they fled incontinently, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... horseback, becoming largely helpless on foot. At length, the greatest stage in the history of war, the 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 ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... arduous enterprize merits the warmest approbation of Congress. He (p. 017) improved upon the plan recommended by me, and executed it in a manner that does signal honour to his judgment and to his bravery. In a critical moment of the assault, he received a flesh wound in the head with a musket ball, but continued leading on his men ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... my day's work, you see:—fit for nothing else now. When a musquet's halfworn out, schoolboys buy it—pop it at sparrows. I be like the musket: but never mind—have not seen the world for nothing. We get reconciled to all things: that's my way—augh! Now, Sir, you shall watch me catch the finest trout you have seen this summer: know where he lies—under the bush yonder. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... no dinner, we'll pay for it," says Low, wherewith he up with a musket, squinted along the barrel, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... at that terrific repulse we had at Cold Harbor, such absolute slaughter as I saw that afternoon on the green slope of Malvern Hill. The guns of the entire army were massed on the crest, and thirty thousand of our infantry lay, musket in hand, in front. For eight hundred yards the hill sank in easy declension to the wood, and across this smooth expanse the Rebs must charge to reach our lines. It was nothing short of downright insanity to order men to charge that hill; ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray
... The intelligence that was received of the movements of Cornwallis was both confused and contradictory; owing to the conformity of name betwixt two roads that were of equal length and parallel to each other, the best officers were mistaken in their reports. The only musket shots that had been fired were from Maxwell, who killed several of the enemy, but was driven back upon the left of the American army, across a ford by which he had before advanced. Three thousand ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... the lad sprang down upon the enemy, regardless of the steepness of the place, and in an instant the man was locked in his arms, just as the musket report came. Down the two fell, bounding over two or three shelves of rock, and then pitching headlong some twenty or thirty feet into the thick ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... itself upon every possible occasion. It was commanded up to Monday night by James Barclay, a gallant veteran, who started as a full private, was raised to commissioned rank for his bravery at the time of the Mutiny, and so lived to command the regiment in which he had once carried a musket. ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... stung in the flank, but stung only, uttered a roar of pain, and, sharp horns down, charged directly upon the young Spaniard. He was a terrifying sight as he tore up the grass of the prairie, his red eyes flaming. The Spaniard, appalled, dropped his musket and ran for the woods, the great beast thundering at his heels, and his hot breath, in fancy at least, upon his back. Both Paul and Henry at that instant recognized him. It was one of the unfortunate ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to take their places as teamsters, blacksmiths, cooks, etc. By this means the Third Division of the Army of the Cumberland, then under General James B. Steadman, was increased eight hundred men—men acclimated—men who could shoulder a musket. This was all done in less than three weeks. The negroes were ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... at intervals. A huge bunch of onions hung on a wooden peg beside the wild-cat skin. Over the window was slung an old-fashioned muzzle-loading musket. The sling which held it was made of a pair of ancient home-made suspenders fastened to the logs with nails. Beneath the gun hung a cow's horn, cut and finished for powder, and with it a dirty game-bag. Strings ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... young Pole entered he was surrounded by his friends and drawn into a corner. After some hasty questions, he seized a musket, called off a few soldiers by name, and left the room, without troubling himself ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... want a double- barreled shot-gun, muzzle-loader, go along the bank of the Missouri River, on the north side, about a mile below St. Charles bridge, and about twenty feet along the bank, just east of that dike that runs out into the river, and you will find in a little gully a shot-gun and a musket. Be careful. I left them both loaded with buckshot and caps on the tubes. They were laying, wrapped up in an oil-cloth, with some weeds thrown over them. Also, down on the river just below the guns, I left my skiff and a lot of stuff, coffee-pot, skillet, and partially ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... in the nineteenth century, and even to this hour, that cry of "Haro! Haro! a l'aide mon prince, on me fait tort!" preserves the custom of Normandy, and of Rollo the Dane, in Jersey, so that the sound of it "makes the workman drop his tools, the woman her knitting, the militiaman his musket, the fisherman his net, the schoolmaster his birch, and the ecrivain his babble, to await the judgment of ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... the rate of 50 miles an hour, backed up by, say, 30 passenger carriages, each weighing on an average 5.5 tons? If ordinary houses could suddenly be placed in its path, it would, passengers and all, run through them as a musket-ball goes through a keg of butter; but what would be the result if, at this full speed, the engine by any accident were to be diverted against a mass of solid rock, such as sometimes is to be seen at the entrance of a tunnel, it is impossible to calculate or even to conjecture. It is ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... Helena on the 13th March. This island is in lat. 16 deg. S. [15 deg. 45'.] We here found plenty of water, with abundance of figs, and as many fish as we chose to take. At sun-set, on the 15th, a caravel came into the roads, and anchored a large musket-shot to windward of us. She was totally unprepared for fighting, as none of her guns were mounted. We fought her all night, giving her in that time, as I think, upwards of 200 shots, though, in the course of eight hours, she did not return a single shot, nor seemed to regard ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... English wholly to their island territory.[31] Lord Delaware at once ordered Gates to attack and drive Powhatan's son Pochins and his Indians from Kecoughtan; and when this was done he erected two forts at the mouth of Hampton River, called Charles and Henry, about a musket-shot distance ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... the forecastle and knew not what to make of such a foray of the elements. At one moment the rain flooded down upon the decks as though a cloud had burst directly above them; then great hailstones fell, drumming on the planks like musket balls. ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... he heard the tramp of heavy feet, a few words delivered in an imperious tone, and there was the heavy rap, rap of a couple of musket butts upon the oaken floor, telling him that guards had been placed at his door. His despair now knew no bounds, for he had determined to go straight to his mother's chamber, and ask her if Master Pawson's words ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn |
