"Rifle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first; I felt the same sensation when, as a boy, I shot my first roe-deer in the Black Forest, one instant a living thing beautiful to perfection, the next my rifle spoke and a bleeding carcase lay beneath the fine trees. So with this ship. I am a sailor, and to every sailor every ship that floats has, as it were, a soul, a personality, an entity; to carry the ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... surrounded by high and thick walls, having partly, like all the old missions, the character of a fortress. Fourteen pieces of artillery were mounted for the defence, and the garrison, when it entered the Alamo, consisted of one hundred and forty-five men, untrained in arms, except in the use of the rifle. Their leader was Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis, a native of North Carolina, and second in command was Colonel James Bowie, inventor of the terrible bowie-knife. Santa Anna, the President of Mexico, was in personal command of the attacking forces, numbering between 6000 ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... housekeeper to tell Jerry he was called away and would be back next day. Putting money and a revolver in his pocket, he started out, but hesitated and halted. He happened to think that he was a poor shot with a revolver and a fine one with a rifle. So he went back for his rifle, a small high-power, repeating gun that he could take apart and hide under his coat. When he reached the porch the official glanced from the weapon to Kurt's face and said, with ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... merciful, as being most likely to discourage and deter from war. If the scalp could bo taken from the head of every Seminole shot down, be sure the survivors never after would have come within range of rifle-shot." ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... of outdoor life the hero is a young lumberjack who is a crack rifle shot. While tracking game in the Maine woods he does some rich hunters a great service. They become interested in him and take him on various hunting expeditions in this country and abroad. Bob learns what it is to face not only wildcats, foxes and deer but also bull ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... the morning the verandahs were half full of branches torn from the forest. There was a last very wild squall about six; the rain, like a thick white smoke, flying past the house in volleys, and as swift, it seemed, as rifle balls; all with a strange, strident hiss, such as I have only heard before at sea, and, indeed, thought to be a marine phenomenon. Since then the wind has been falling with a few squalls, mostly rain. But our road is impassable for horses; we hear a schooner has been wrecked and some native houses ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... near-by sea. At my hip hung a long-barreled six-shooter—somehow I had been unable to find the same sensation of security in the newfangled automatics that had been perfected since my first departure from the outer world—and in my hand was a heavy express rifle. ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... quick temper, and had never been in the habit of curbing it. He was provoked by the independent tone of the speaker, and without pausing to think of the imprudence of his actions, he raised his rifle and pointing at Fred shot ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... Wray Palliser—Waterford Militia—he was born in Dublin in 1830, and was therefore only fifty-two years of age. He was educated successively at Rugby, at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and, finally passing through the Staff College at Sandhurst, he entered the Rifle Brigade in 1855, and was transferred to the Eighteenth Hussars in 1858. He remained in the service to the end of 1871, when he retired by the sale of his commission. At the general election of 1880, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... weapon of the foot soldier, or infantryman, is the bayonet. This is a short blade which the foot soldier fixes on the muzzle of his rifle before he advances to an attack. In the trenches his weapon is the rifle; before the order is given to go "over the parapet"—that is, to climb out of the trenches, to run forward and attack the enemy at close ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... resistance are to be considered and these are largely settled by mechanism, the adjustment of which is readily learned; hence the assumption that a Negro cannot learn it is purely gratuitous. Several of the best rifle shots known on this continent are Negroes; and it was a Negro who summerized the whole philosophy of rifle shooting in the statement that it all consists in knowing where to aim, and how to pull—in knowing just what value to assign to gravitation, drift of the bullet and force ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... His mistress, seeing the arrest, came down and remonstrated vehemently against it. Finding her efforts unavailing, she went off to a barn where her husband was, who was presently perceived running briskly to the house. It was known he always kept a loaded rifle over his door. The constable now desired his company to remain where they were, taking care to keep the slave in custody, while he himself would go to the house to prevent mischief. He accordingly ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... heart's desire, and was gathering a harvest with feverish hands. Since the first Monday morning after his arrival, when he crept to the schoolhouse at break of day and waited in the opposite thicket with his long rifle to see if Tusk would come again, the mantle of civilization wrapped quickly ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... stranger." was the reply. "There is not a man on the Rio Grande border, where I came from, that can strike a center at twenty paces with a revolver as often as I. And with a rifle at one hundred yards I can most generally drop a deer with a ball between his eyes, if he is looking at me, or take a wild turkey's head without hurting ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... with a bullet in his breast did the garrison realize that it was really under attack. The habitants had kept their secret well. There was a beating of drums and a hurrying to arms, and throughout the night a hot fusillade was kept up. By firing from behind houses and trees, and from rifle pits that were dug before the attack began, the Americans virtually escaped loss; while Hamilton's gunners were picked off as fast as they appeared at the portholes of the fort. Clark's ammunition ran ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... usual, in front. The collar of his blue-striped shirt was folded back a little more carefully than usual, exposing his sun-burned and muscular throat. In fact, he wanted nothing, save the hunting-knife, the rifle, and the powder-horn, to constitute him a perfect specimen of a ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... by the rifle shot. He had fallen as a matter of precaution, fearing that a second shot would speed on the heels ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... efficiency of the aeroplane increased, so anti-aircraft guns and range-finding were improved. Before the War an aeroplane travelling at full speed was reckoned perfectly safe at 4,000 feet, but, by the first month of 1915, the safe height had gone up to 9,000 feet, 7,000 feet being the limit of rifle and machine gun bullet trajectory; the heavier guns were not sufficiently mobile to tackle aircraft. At that time, it was reckoned that effective aerial photography ceased at 6,000 feet, while bomb-dropping ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... then Private Cowan was so engrossed with the routine of his present loose trade that the name of Whipple seemed to have no room in his mind. For four hours he had held a cold rifle and thought. Now the gun was hot, its bayonet wet, and he thought not at all. When it was over he was one of fifty-two men left of his company that had numbered two hundred and fifty-one. But his own uniform would still be clean of ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... was wanted in the world, let his confounded tenants, his rifle-associations, his drunkards, reclaimed and unreclaimed, get on as they liked. Not all the hundreds and hundreds of them deserved that that poor devil should go on ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... end of the trench and somehow got out, heading, by chance, for Germany. That was her undoing. In a minute or so three machine-guns began firing, bombs and rifle shots were heard, and Verey lights innumerable flared. We never saw Ermyntrude again. But we heard of her—or rather we read of her—for the German official report wrote her epitaph, thus: "Near the village of —— hostile ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... hands: the door opened swiftly, and Nic stepped outside. In an instant Ferrol was at the loophole. Raising a rifle, he fired, then again and again. Through the loophole he could see a half-dozen men lift a log to advance on the door as Nic passed a couple of officers, coughing hard, and making spasmodic motions with his hand, as though exhausted ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... saddle, the hunter wore English riding breeches and leggins. Otherwise he was dressed as a Texas cowboy of the past generation. His sombrero was almost Mexican in its size and ornateness. But his rifle was of the latest American pattern, and in place of the conventional Colt's he carried an automatic pistol. As his horse patiently clambered with him up towards the top of the escarpment the man gazed indolently about between half-closed eyelids and inhaled the smoke ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... might have been there, but he was a genius deserving the fame of a Chatterton if he really did this. Three of that party I personally knew—one (Sawyer) was a cousin of my grandfather. His sleight of hand, his skill with rifle, his being a 'votary of chance,' ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... was stern. The clergyman went out, and I heard him emptying the magazine of his rifle. When he returned he sat nearer the door than before, and from that moment until we left the tent he never once took his eyes from the figure of Dr. Silence, silhouetted there against ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... not answer, and Stanton said, "Never fear for me, Fred, but rather keep your own heart safely locked away, for fear some of those dark-eyed Kentucky girls will, ere you are aware, rifle you ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... rifle to his shoulder, so as to be ready to fire if the man remained. He held it thus full a minute, at the end of which he discerned the foolhardy being who had not changed his position in the least. Hesitating no longer, he pointed his piece directly ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... of Ordez lay in the bare cut of the abandoned road, and beside it, bedded in the damp clay where he had knelt down to rifle the pockets of the murdered body, were the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... Continental Army created "for the Defense of American Liberty, and for repelling every hostile invasion thereof." The army of 15,000 formed to defend Boston and New York would be supported by the congress with payments from all the colonies. Eight rifle companies, including two led by Captain Daniel Morgan of Frederick County and Captain Hugh Stephenson of Berkeley County were ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... everything that moves in this land. Hawks, of course; eagles for their rarity; foxes for their pelts; red-shouldered blackbirds and Baltimore orioles because they are pretty, and the other small things for sport—French fashion. You can get a rifle of a kind for twelve shillings, and if your neighbour be fool enough to post notices forbidding 'hunting' and fishing, you naturally seek his woods. So the country is ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... the nature of a passion that impels men to self-exposure and privation, in a pursuit which presents nothing but the monotonous recurrence of scenes of blood and suffering. Mr. BAKER, who has recently published, under the title of "The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon" an account of his exploits in the forest, gives us the assurance that "all real sportsmen are tender-hearted men, who shun cruelty to an animal, and are easily moved by a tale of distress;" ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Sandoe? You know you like him, Rady. But, if you've missed me, I'm sorry. Rip and I have had a beautiful day. We've made new acquaintances. We've seen the world. I'm the monkey that has seen the world, and I'm going to tell you all about it. First, there's a gentleman who takes a rifle for a fowling-piece. Next, there's a farmer who warns everybody, gentleman and beggar, off his premises. Next, there's a tinker and a ploughman, who think that God is always fighting with the devil which shall command the kingdoms of the earth. The tinker's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stood on the plastic flooring, a rifle at his shoulder. The front sight weaved almost imperceptibly, then steadied. He seemed completely unaware of his ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... the window, into the dark front basement room. There was only silence, and our faintly padding footsteps on the carpeted floor. The furniture was shrouded with cotton covers standing like ghosts in the gloom. I clutched the loaded rifle which Alten had given me. Larry was similarly armed; and ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... on the Ridge," the mountaineer said, "an' I don' believe it would do yo' any good anywhar else. On the mount'ns, I know, courtesy is a whole lot bigger word than constitution. Up hyeh, we follow the law when we're made to, follow an idee backed up by a rifle-barrel because we have to, but there's not many men hyeh that won' do anythin' yo' ask if yo' jes' ask ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... entertainments. He would fain have refused Mrs. Barton's hospitalities, but so pressing was she that this seemed impossible. There were times when he started at the postman's knock as at the sound of a Land Leaguer's rifle. Too frequently his worst fears were realized. 'Mon cher Marquis, it will give us much pleasure if you will dine with us to-morrow night at half-past seven.' 'Dear Mrs. Barton, I regret extremely that I am engaged for to-morrow ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... days later a Sydney Jackaroo visited the station. He had a good pea-rifle, and one afternoon he started to teach Mary to shoot at a target. They seemed to get very chummy. I had a nice time for three or four days, I can tell you. I was worse than a wall-eyed bullock with the pleuro. ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... Boers began to trek away from the sphere of British rule. They were trekkers before that, indeed. Even in the days of Van Riebeck (1650) they had trekked away from the crowded parts, and opened up with the rifle and the plough new reaches of country; pioneering in a rough but most effective way, driving back the savage races, and clearing the way for civilization. There is, however, a great difference to be noted between the early treks of the emigrants and the treks 'from British rule.' In the former (with ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... of Nature, his skill in woodland lore, his unerring moral sense, his strong affections, and the veins of poetry that run through his rugged nature like seams of gold in quartz. Long Tom Coffin may be described as Leatherstocking suffered a sea-change,—with a harpoon instead of a rifle, and a pea-jacket instead of a hunting-shirt. In both the same primitive elements may be discerned: the same limited intellectual range combined with professional or technical skill; the same generous affections and unerring moral instincts; the same religious feeling, taking the form at times ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Bryerson!" flew the whisper from lip to ear; but the man with the trembling madness in his eyes was backing toward the door. Suddenly he stooped and rose again with a backwoodsman's rifle in his hands, and his voice sheared the breathless silence like the snarl of ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... one, but that certain something, that indefinable quality, which had made the first books great trash was irrevocably gone. Of all the flamboyant characters of the tales Mr. Barnes was deservedly the most popular, and at such times as he was not winning international rifle matches at Monte Carlo, or racing about Europe in respectable pursuit of desirable young ladies, he inhabited a dwelling on lower Fifth Avenue. Practically all Fifth Avenue were the scenes of "Miss Nobody of Nowhere," with its charming heroine and her adopted parents, its wicked ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... the shooting-galleries, looking like enormous chimneys that had blown down. A sharp, spitting crack came from each rifle as ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... for me to offer apologies for my blunt way of writing. I can but say in excuse of it that I am more accustomed to handle a rifle than a pen, and cannot make any pretence to the grand literary flights and flourishes which I see in novels—for sometimes I like to read a novel. I suppose they—the flights and flourishes—are desirable, and I regret not being able to supply them; but at the same ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... be asleep by now," he muttered, and, rolling his blanket, kicked snow over the remnant of his camp-fire, picked up his rifle, and ascended the steep side of a deep ravine lying some two hundred yards to the westward of the clearing where Bill Carmody had encamped ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... and mean her gifts looked, after all, and how lonely in the toes of the long, thin stockings! She could have cried, as she stood there looking at them; but what was the use of crying? Tears wouldn't bring Willie the air-rifle for which he sighed, nor Ernest the fine new sled and knife that he had so innocently mentioned in his prayers. No, crying wouldn't help the matter any; so she smiled instead, as she went back to the sitting-room; but it was a ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... wisely to have ascertained beforehand the precise nature of the trap set for him. As it was, he gathered his lithe and graceful form for his leap, every muscle quivering with eagerness, and he put all his strength into one great, splendid bound. It was as sure as a rifle-shot, and it landed him upon the shoulders of the big-horn. He had seized his prize, but he had done too much: he had fallen with a weight and force which sent him and his antelope irresistibly over the rocky edge, and down, down, down they came together with a great thud ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... powder-horn, who undauntedly discharged the fatal bullet into the shoulder of the great bull bison, charging home to within a yard of his muzzle. To me was allotted the subsidiary character of the friend who had succeeded in bringing down a cow; while Harold had to be content to hold Edward's spare rifle in the background, with evident signs of uneasiness. Farther on, again, where the magnificent chamois sprang rigid into mid-air, Edward, crouched dizzily against the precipice-face, was the sportsman from whose ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... almost inaccessible—in winter entirely inaccessible—where he raised not half a support on the slips of earth among the ledges; his few starved sheep and goats did what they could for him, and his rifle did the rest. The first Raynier of them all was possibly an escaped convict, who fortified his retreat by these mountain-sides. He had no money; the women spun and wove all that was worn. He had no education; no Raynier had ever had; ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... coat upon the wall. It is worn, a little. The barrels of the old gun are worn; and the stock of the rifle, broken in the mountains long ago, is mended but rudely; and the tip of the old rod is broken, and the silk is fraying in the lashings, and upon the hand-grasp the cord is loose. The silver cord will loosen and break in the best of men ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... daughter in his arms and told how dear she was to him. It was not a proper thing for so young a girl to go on a hunt, but Arline was a spoiled young countess. When a huntsman handed a rifle to Florestein, that young man shuddered and rejected it—which left one to wonder just what he was going to do at a hunt without a rifle, but the others were less timid, and all separated to go to their various posts, Arline going by a foot-path in charge ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... dry stick checked her. The next instant she picked up his rifle, seized his arm, and fairly dragged ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... or reluctance up to this time, they were now completely swallowed up in the excitement of the moment and the desire to maintain the high reputation he had previously gained. So he threw his whole soul into the contest, and with steady eye and unwavering hand pointed his rifle towards the target. Bang! a cloud of smoke. Well shot! the bullet had struck the target, but not very near the centre. A second and third were equally but not more successful. The fourth struck the bull's-eye, the fifth the ring next it, and the sixth the bull's-eye again. ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... and fresh, and our streets (for we have real ones) are kept as clean as a pin. Not an end of a cigar, or an inch of potato peeling, dare to show themselves. Directly back of the camp strong earthworks have been thrown up, with rifle pits in front; and these are manned by four artillery companies from New York. Our commissary is a very good fellow, but I wish he would buy pork with less fat. I am like the boy in school, who wrote home to his mother, his face all puckered up with disgust: "They ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... rivers full of fish, forest and prairie teeming with game, pasture for millions of cattle, wheat land and corn land, cotton land and orchard for any man who chose to take them;—the wretches struggling and stifling in the London slums having nothing to do but grasp axe and rifle and go out to subdue the wilderness;—farms, not by the half-acre, but by the hundred acres for every one of the unemployed. Is it possible to doubt that the race would be strengthened, not materially only, but in ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... opportunity of proving once and for ever their ability to defend themselves and consequent right to independence, regret for friendships about to be severed—these were the chief emotions of the younger generation. The elder thought of past wrongs, long cherished, and silently took down the rifle from behind the door. ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... shot first, far off," he said, "and then a rifle shot. That metallic clang always means a ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... he says, "each of the 500,000 Socialist voters, and of the two million workingmen who instinctively incline our way, should, besides doing much reading and still more thinking, also have a good rifle and the necessary rounds of ammunition in his home and be prepared to back up his ballot with his bullets if necessary.... Now, I deny that dealing with a blind and greedy plutocratic class as we are dealing in this country, the outcome can ever be peaceable, or that any reasonable change ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... But," he added, his voice growing stern and menacing for the first time, "I do not intend to be robbed, my girl. Fleece Hathaway if you can; it is none of my business; but you must not pry into my personal affairs or rifle my poor rooms. Do ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... a stool at a desk filling-in army forms or conducting a card index; and lo, at a whisper from some unseen Nabob in the War Office, he finds himself hooked willy-nilly off his stool and dumped into the Rifle Brigade. This is what it means to be in khaki, and it is hardly the place of persons not in khaki to bandy sneers about the comfortableness of the Linseed Lancers whose initials, when not standing for Rob All My Comrades, can be interpreted to mean Run Away, Matron's ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... finished the letter we walked a long way down the other shore toward the Fort. The wind was blowing right, and we could hear bits of what the band was playing and now and then peppery sounds from the rifle practice. It's not a very big fort, but it squats on the other side of Wecanicut, watching the bay, and real cannon stick out at loopholes in the wall. The ferry really only goes to Wecanicut on account of the Fort, because there's nothing else there but a few ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... laughter, your sides, Sirs, would crack, To see General Convict and Colonel Shoe-black, With their hunting-shirts and rifle-guns, See Cobblers and quacks, rebel priests and the like, Pettifoggers and barbers, with ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... were given by Morgan to that effect. We entered. This was near day-light. The houses were a shelter, from which we might fire with much accuracy. Yet, even here, some valuable lives were lost. Hendricks, when aiming his rifle at some prominent person, died by a straggling ball through his heart. He staggered a few feet backwards, and fell upon a bed, where he instantly expired. He was an ornament of our little society. The amiable ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... picked up the rifle that Furlong pointed out to him. Then, trying to look very grave in order to hide the extreme sheepishness that he really felt, Mr. Briggs brought the rifle ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... and obeyed. As he did so, the other man stole out from behind a bush and sprang for the chauffeur, who under cover of the car was stealing off. There was a brief struggle, then the dull thud of the railway man's rifle falling on the former's head. The chauffeur rolled over and lay in ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... meantime, Bill had bethought himself of the rifle. But it was jammed beneath the overturned sled, and by the time Henry had helped him to right the load, One Ear and the she-wolf were too close together and the distance too ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... his rifle. Corporal Sam made a clutch at his arm to drag it down, and in the scuffle both men swayed out upon the roadway. And with that, or a moment later, he felt the rifleman slip down between his arms, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Grangemouth, and his mother was a daughter of Alexander Milne of Carron Works. When he was but sixteen, young Mitchell joined the army of the Peninsula as a volunteer. Three years later he received a commission in the 95th Regiment or Rifle Brigade. He was employed on the Quartermaster General's staff at military sketching; and he was present in the field at Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, the Pyrenees, and St. Sebastian. After the close of the war he went to Spain and Portugal to survey the battlefields. He received promotion ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... when the soul has no more reason to keep up its defenses against the world outside it, when the Beautiful Gate is battered down and the Veil of the Temple rent, while the Holy of Holies lies open for any eye to rifle. It was probably because this was so that Guion, on coming back to his seat, began at once to be more explanatory than there was any ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... tinkling sound told of peace and purity, and we moved happily along the dank roads, enjoying not such privacy as the day leaves when it withdraws, but such as it has not profaned. It was solitude with light; which is better than darkness. But anon, the sound of the mower's rifle was heard in the fields, and this, too, mingled with the ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... composed the Chicago party were E.P. Green,—son-in-law of Remington, the rifle manufacturer,—Alexander Sample, Mr. Milligan, of the firm of Heath & Milligan, of Chicago, and several others, whose names I do not now remember. Mr. Milligan was a man full of life, and was continually "boiling over with fun." He was a regular velocipede, so to speak, and ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... exposed, simply laid out in the fields, and so close to the roadside—I mean to the main roads built by Europeans near their settlements—that you can almost touch them with the end of your walking-stick as you pass. The stench from such coffins became so offensive last year at the rifle range that the European authorities had to enter complaint to the Chinese Mandarin. I was, like all others, at first much shocked at the sight of these evidences of mortality. One day I stood and counted a hundred ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... caution in the grip of his craving, and all fear. A line of loaded burros rounded a point ahead and came toward him, picking their way delicately with small deliberate feet and walking on the outer edge of the trail, after the way of pack animals the world over. Behind them was a horseman, rifle in the scabbard on his saddle and spurs jingling. Dick watched him with thirsty, feverish eyes as he drew near. He could hardly ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... bank, he understood. It was like a Monte Devine play. Presently the dry grass would be burning all along the draw; the flames would sweep by him and in their light he would stand forth as in the light of day. Then, if there were a single rifle among the three men, he would have not so much as a chance to fight. Even if they had nothing but revolvers, the odds were all on ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... usually labeled as 'slight technical difficulties,' in this case the difficulty of avoiding having a hole shot in our camera or in your commentator's head. Yes, that's shooting you hear; there, somebody's using an auto rifle! ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... stumbled along still muttering speculations. There was a subdued debate. Once a man fell down, and as he reached for his rifle a comrade, unseeing, trod upon his hand. He of the injured fingers swore bitterly and aloud. A low, tittering laugh went among ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... serene. The air was cool and vivified by the gust and shower of the afternoon. Fresh spring was in every breath. Our fellows had forgotten that this morning they were hot and disgusted. Every one hugged his rifle as if it were the arm of the Girl of his Heart, and stepped out gayly for the promenade. Tired or foot-sore men, or even lazy ones, could mount upon the two freight-cars we were using for artillery-wagons. There were stout arms enough to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... the famous mahseer—some of them over eighty or a hundred pounds weight? We have none of these in Behar, but the huge porpoise gives splendid rifle or carbine practice as he rolls through the turgid streams. They are difficult to hit, but I have seen several killed with ball; and the oil extracted from their bodies is a splendid dressing for harness. But the most ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... bands of green (top), black, and yellow with a red isosceles triangle based on the hoist side; the black band is edged in white; centered in the triangle is a yellow five-pointed star bearing a crossed rifle and hoe in black superimposed on an ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... rested for a moment on a tree it would pick at the bark as if it were trying to play a tune with its beak. Each time it struck the bark its head bobbed up and down in a queer way for a bird. But the boys could not get it. They set Hal's trap, and even used an air rifle in hopes of bringing it down without killing it, but the bird puttered from place to place, not in a very great hurry, but just fast enough to keep the boys busy ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... people,—I called my fable "The Unsunned Corner:" I mean to quote some of it in a future political page of this book. Also other papers, as "Bits of Ribbon," suggesting as just and wise the more profuse distribution of honours,—in particular recommending an Alfred or an Albert Order. Also, many of my Rifle ballads,—whereof, more anon. And "The Over-sharpened Axe"—applicable to modern Boardschool Educationals: and Colonel Jade's matrimonial tirades, all real life: and "The Grumbling Gimlet," a fable on Content, &c. &c. With plenty more notabilia—which ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a black "arbiyeh" being worn over the "khaftan," or inner robe, of white or coloured stripes, and their boots are of soft leather. Though the traditional spear is still retained, all are armed with some firearm—ancient flint-locks of great length, or more commonly nowadays with a modern rifle, and many of the sheykhs wear a long, curved sword of beautiful workmanship, which is slung across their shoulders by a silken cord. All have strong, deep voices, and impress you with the idea that these are manly and courageous fellows, and ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... in Smaaland the little imps were dancing With ready-loaded pistol and rifle-barrelled gun; All the little devils they played upon the fiddle, But for the grand piano Old ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... men dropped rapidly, the officers in greater number than the men. At first, as I said, these cheered and answered the enemy's fire, our guns even opening on the wood, and seeming to silence the French in ambuscade there. But the hidden rifle-firing began again. Our men halted, huddled up together, in spite of the shouts and orders of the General and officers to advance, and fired wildly into the brushwood—of course making no impression. Those in advance came running back on the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "As we spread and multiply over the land, things will fall more into shape. We shall have tailors and dressmakers to take the heavy part of our work in this way, and the wild beasts will retire before the rifle and the plough of civilised man; no doubt, also, shops will ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... was of a somewhat different construction. The defences consisted of three rows of palisades, those of the middle row being probably planted upright, and the other two set aslant against them. Below, along the inside of the triple row, ran a sort of shallow trench or rifle-pit, where the defenders lay ensconced, firing through interstices left for the purpose ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... knew that the young man had a private's rifle dragged along for his own use, and had sacrificed all his savings for special field-glasses in order to be quite on the safe side and know exactly how many enemy lives he had snuffed out. Since they had ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... shoot us. There were then ten of us. The guns had already been leveled at us, when suddenly a German soldier ran out shouting that we had not fired on them. A few minutes before we had heard rifle firing and the Germans said it was the Aerschot people who were shooting, though all these had been locked up in the church and we were the only inhabitants then in the streets, cleaning them, under surveillance of Germans. It was this German who ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... time and means to destroy them, had been left standing. That nearest the confluence of the Antietam and the Potomac, at the Antietam Iron-works, by which A. P Hill was expected, was defended by rifle-pits and enfiladed by artillery. The next, known as the Burnside Bridge, was completely overlooked by the heights above. That opposite Lee's centre could be raked throughout its length; but the fourth, at Pry's Mill, by which Hooker and Mansfield had ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... was re-loading his rifle. His foot slipped in the blood of the man who had been shot in the throat, and the military boot made a greasy red streak ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... the wreck was out now, save that here and there little blazes appeared, only to be quenched at once. But smoldering timbers crackled like rifle-shots, and there ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... him to go? Why, home of course, before he does any more mischief. I wish he was dead; that I do! And he shall be too. Here, Jem, run back to Number One—here's the key—and bring my rifle and the powder-flask and bullet-bag. I'm sick of him. He'll be killing somebody before he's done—a beast!—Tigers is angels to him, sir," he continued appealingly to Morris. "He's the wickedest elephant I ever see, and I've spent more ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... of day, as the groans of the evidently fallen tiger had not ceased, some of the men went to ascertain its refuge whilst I, with my loaded rifle, kept myself prompt to defend them in case of an ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... shoulders. His belt was heavy with little leather pockets; a pair of prismatic field-glasses, suspended from a strap around his neck, swung across his chest; in the crook of his left arm he carried a light rifle. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... account in a community where the only intruder to be feared was heat, and so it had resulted that while the corrals, stables, and storehouses had their guards, only a single sentry paced the long length of the eastward side of the post, a single pair of eyes and a single rifle barrel being deemed amply sufficient to protect against possible prowlers the rear yards and entrances of the row. The westward front of the officers' homes stood in plain view, on bright nights at least, of the sentry at the guard-house, and needed no other protector. On dark nights it ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... rifle and my helmet Keep on getting in the way, And my brains are numb and dopey Try'n' to cuss and try'n' ...
— "I was there" - with the Yanks in France. • C. LeRoy Baldridge
... maidens fought in defence of their European peninsula; and the Portuguese women fought on the same soil, against the armies of Philip II. The king of Siam has, at present, a body-guard of four hundred women: they are armed with lance and rifle, are admirably disciplined, and their commander (appointed after saving the king's life at a tiger-hunt) ranks as one of the royal family, and has ten elephants at her service. When the all-conquering Dahomian army marched upon Abbeokuta, in 1851, they numbered ten thousand men and six thousand ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... faithfully reserve the spoil for an equal and common partition. It would not be reasonable," he added with a laugh, "that whilst we are toiling to the destruction of the drones, our more fortunate brethren should rifle and enjoy the honey." ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... was his definition of character. Much would have depended upon that. If he had decreed that cruelty to animals indicates a lack of character and then proceeded to denominate as cruelty to animals such innocent diversions as shooting woodpeckers in a cherry-tree with a Flobert rifle, or smoking chipmunks out from a hollow log, or tying a strip of red flannel to a hen's tail to take her mind off the task of trying to hatch a door-knob, or tying a tin can to a dog's tail to encourage him in his laudable enterprise of demonstrating the principle ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... Urnans and a party of friends from New York were returning to their camp near Mount Phoenix, they came across the body of a man in a deserted gorge half-way down the mountain. He had apparently been shot through the heart by a rifle bullet, and must have been dead for some weeks. From papers and other belongings found in his possesion, the deceased gentleman appears to have been a Mr. ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... He noted the piles of bales and boxes as he passed in, a veritable mountain of wealth; he saw the tall white men in their buckskin and white blanket suits, befringed and beribboned, their long, light hair, their bushy beards, and each carrying a well-oiled rifle. Ah, a rifle! That was what the Bat wanted; it displaced for the time all other thoughts of the young warrior. He had no robes and came naked among the traders—they noted him—only an Indian boy, and when all his group had bartered what ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... meditated over what had occurred. I could not help but think that the handkerchief I had found spread over my face had been saturated with chloroform, and that my fellow-passenger had endeavored to put me in a sound sleep and then rifle my bag. Of course I might be mistaken, but still I was positive that Mr. Allen Price ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... hobbies, but not one that interested him like this. There were hundreds of rare birds shot by him in different parts of the world; the corridors and floors were covered by skins, the spoil of his rifle; here and there a stuffed bear pranced startlingly; but the pictures and prints were the great amusement of ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... that," said Raymond. "I'd set in the schoolhouse do' with my rifle and shoot anybody that'd come to th'ow Mr. Jim outen ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... country with Kossuth to America. His camp circumstances were not very luxurious, nor was his table very richly spread; but he received us with the ease and courtesy of a gentleman. He showed us his sword, his rifle, his pistols, his chargers, and daguerreotype of a friend he had loved in his own country. They were all the treasures that he carried with him—over and above a chess-board and a set of chessmen, which sorely tempted me to ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... comfortable. It was early in the spring when they re-moved, and though the right time for planting corn and the ordinary table vegetables, yet it would be months before they would be fit to use. In the mean time, a subsistence must be had. The quickest way to obtain food Warburton found in the use of his rifle, for wild turkeys and deer abounded in the forest. He also managed to take a few dozen turkeys now and then to a neighbouring town, and dispose of them for corn-meal, flour, and groceries. In about a month he was enabled to sell one hundred acres of his land for three ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... upon our outposts, so far with no harmful result; but after a while it grew to be a serious matter. The Rebels would crawl out on all-fours from the wood into a field covered with underbrush, and lie there in the dark for hours, waiting for a shot. Then our men took to the rifle-pits,—pits ten or twelve feet long by four or five feet deep, with the loose earth banked up a few inches high on the exposed sides. All the pits bore names, more or less felicitous, by which they were known to their transient tenants. One was called "The Pepper-Box," another ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... years after, this old Indian chief came "a long way" to see the Virginia officer at whom he fired a rifle fifteen times without hitting him, during the Monongahela fight. Washington never received ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... "I reject what he calls mercy. He has no rights of judgment over me, and his pretended mercy is an assumption which, as a true Scot, I despise. He may rifle me of my life, but he shall never beguile me into any acknowledgment of an authority that is false. No wife, nor aught of mine, shall ever stand before him as a suppliant for William Wallace. I will die as I have lived, the equal of Edward in all things but a crown, and his superior ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... commenced early, by an attack of General Slocum's men, who, determined to regain the rifle-pits they had lost the evening before, descended like an avalanche upon the foe. The attack met with a prompt response from General Ewell. But after several hours of desperate fighting, victory perched upon the Union banners, and with great loss and slaughter, the rebels were driven ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... have been asked, and Tom, quick as thought, raised his rifle and sighted it; but with his finger upon the trigger, he refrained, lowered the piece and shook his head, muttering as ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... the team in my stead. Gladly I accepted his invitation. He arranged a pillion for his saddle and mounted me behind him, facing the horse's tail. Then he passed a broad strap around his waist and my body and armed me with a Henry repeating rifle, then a new invention and a very serviceable gun. In this manner I had both hands free and made him the best sort of a rear guard. We cantered toward a sandy hill on our left. A coyote came our way, appearing ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... prolonged struggle lies before the army of South Africa. The telegrams, however, which we receive from Great Britain of the national feeling, of the bye-election, of Lord Rosebery's speech, are full of encouragement and confidence. 'At last,' says the British colonist, as he shoulders his rifle and marches out to fight, no less bravely than any soldier (witness the casualty lists), for the ties which bind South Africa to the Empire—'at last they have made ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Alchise was standing stolidly covering them with his rifle. Kut-le was walking coolly toward them, while the ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... it must go with something of the consolation of the poem written by Rifleman S. Donald Cox of the London Rifle Brigade. ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... would ride in front with a rifle and he would be in the rear with a big gun swinging down from his hip. There wae one Nigger who got out and went down to Alexandria (Louisiana). He wrote to the officers and they caught the Nigger and put him into the stocks and brought him back, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... no doubt that boys between the ages of seventeen and twenty can very well be taught to handle a rifle, and the time required for such instruction and practice is so small that it would in no way affect or interfere with the ordinary occupations of the boys, whatever their ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... LEALE, of Guernsey, has shot with considerable success. Miss LEALE, though only nineteen years old, is a shooting member of the National Rifle Association, and has won several prizes at the meetings ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... fact of St Xavier's immediately before him. There would be new boys to condescend to, and there would be tales of holiday adventures to hear. Young Martin, son of the tea-planter at Manipur, had boasted that he would go to war, with a rifle, against the head-hunters. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... Even when the distant sound of the big guns and the rattle of small arms touched his ear, the slumber of unbelief was only broken—not quite dispelled. But now, weighted with the deadly missiles, with rifle in hand, with ears alert to every sound, and eyes open to every object that might present itself on the sandy waste beyond the redoubt, and a general feeling of expectancy pervading his thoughts and feelings, ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... for a man named Halyard," I said, dropping rifle and knapsack on the fresh-cut, fragrant pile of pine. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... of mountains behind which the sun was setting; the second depicting Don Fulano, with Dick Wade and John Brent on his back, plunging down the gorge upon the abductors, one of whom had just pulled the trigger of his rifle; while the third gives the scene in which the heroic horse receives his death-wound in carrying the fugitive across the creek away from his pursuers. At this distance of time, I am unable to bear any testimony as to the technical value of the little pictures; I am inclined to fancy that they would ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... construed into insolence, and in a great rage he swore if he did not come to him immediately he would shoot him. The man replied he hoped massa wan't in earnest. 'I'll show you whether I am in earnest,' said the master, and with that he levelled his rifle, took deliberate aim, and shot the negro on the spot. He died immediately. Though great efforts were made by a few colored men to bring the murderer to punishment, they were all ineffectual. The evidence against him was clear enough, but the influence ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... right, fellows," he announced, "and believe me he's some size in the bargain. If I had a rifle along I wouldn't mind dropping down there and rustling him. But what ails you, Tom? You seem bothered about something. Gee! you're as white as ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... what was almost a breastwork of fallen logs, and Merrifield, who was leading, passed by the upright stem of a great pine. As soon as he was by it, he sank suddenly on one knee, turning half round, his face fairly aflame with excitement; and as I strode past him, with my rifle at the ready, there, not ten steps off, was the great bear, slowly rising from his bed among the young spruces. He had heard us, but apparently hardly knew exactly where or what we were, for he reared up on his ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... remove Drood's pin, watch, and chain. Drood would have coins of the realm in his pockets, gold, silver, bronze. Quicklime would not destroy these metallic objects, nor would it destroy keys, which would easily prove Drood's identity. If Jasper knew his business, he would, of course, rifle ALL of Edwin's pockets minutely, and would remove the metallic buttons of his braces, which generally display the maker's name, or the tailor's. On research I find "H. Poole & Co., Savile Row" on my buttons. ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... know that he was safe, for we were like brothers. His safe arrival, together with the motherly care I had received and was receiving, put me rapidly on the gain. Not a morning passed that the daughter did not shoulder her trusty rifle and go out in search of some refreshment for me, always returning with a number of chickens of the prairie. She was a sure shot, as were the entire family, for they were all born and brought up on the border, moving farther West as the country ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... Governor General, which has been done. * * * * The company is already organized. Mr. Howard was elected Captain; J.H. Hill, 1st Lieutenant; Hezekiah Hill, Ensign; Robert Jones, 1st Sergeant. The company's name is, Queen Victoria's Rifle Guards. You may, by this, see what I have been doing since I have been in Canada. When we receive our appointments by the Government. I will send by express, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... can do," said Barnes, "except try to stanch the flow of blood. He is bleeding inwardly, I'm afraid. It's a clean wound, Mr. Jones. Like a rifle shot, I should say." ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... Cuesta Grade, he saved his horse a little. From the top of the mountain, before he again followed a winding road back to the river's side, he saw a horseman riding a distant ridge; the glinted upon the rider's rifle. ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... to the nearest soldier, the panic-crazed corporal snatched the private's rifle and fired three times, blindly, at Bruce. Then, foaming at the mouth, Freund fell heavily to earth again, chattering ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... carelessness. "Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics," says Thoreau, himself by no means a careless writer, "think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The ART of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them." This true saying introduces us to the hardest problem of criticism, the paradox of literature, the stumbling-block of rhetoricians. To analyse the precise method whereby a great personality can make itself ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... for his profession, in which he has served in America, and other places, and is now a Captain in the Rifle Brigade. Married on the 2nd July 1838, to Caroline, eldest daughter of William Rhodes, Esq. of Bromhope Hall, and Kirskill in the county ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... word, their three guns go off together; and then, to make sure, another shot additional from the double barrelled piece of Cypriano; Ludwig's gun being the rifle that belonged to his father, found where ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... Mr. Ashburn was walking over his farm, he saw a man sitting on one of his fences, dressed in a jockey-cap, and wearing a short hunting-coat. He had a rifle over his shoulder, and carried a powder-flask, shot and bird bags. In fact, he was a fully equipped sportsman, a somewhat rara avis in ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur |
