"Gunner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sir, you are as cunning as a dead pig; but you forgot one thing. My friend is a left-handed gunner, though never a bit the worse for that; so you see there is no odds as far as ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... battle-ax of the Middle Ages. It was about three feet long. The shaft consisted of a rocket gun, with an ax-blade near the muzzle, and a spike at the other end. It was a terrible weapon. Jointed leg-guards protected the ax-gunner below the rim of his shield, and a hemispherical helmet, the front section of which was of transparent ultron reaching down to the chin, completed ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... the boatswain and I, The gunner and his mate, Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian and Margary, But none of us cared for Kate. For she had a tongue with a twang, Would cry to a sailor, go hang! She loved not the savor of tar or of pitch,— Then to sea, boys, ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... made for Charles I when Prince of Wales. The gun is not quite perfect, but the two weapons are the earliest examples of flint locks in the collection. Note also a fine wheel lock of about 1600. The gunner's axe was used for laying cannon, and has on its shaft scales showing the size of cannon balls of stone, iron, lead, and slag. It belonged to the Duke of Brunswick Luneburg. The last enclosure contains a suit ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie
... it was levelled to his mind, and then his movements were as quick as they had hitherto been slow. In a moment he stood erect in the half-fencing attitude of a gunner, and his linstock at the touch-hole: a huge tongue of flame, a volume of smoke, a roar, and the iron thunderbolt was on its way, and the Colonel walked haughtily, but rapidly, back to the trenches: for in all this no bravado. He was there to make ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the Rook and Crow; From field to field the flock increasing goes; To level crops most formidable foes: Their danger well the wary plunderers know, And place a watch on some conspicuous bough; Yet oft the sculking gunner by surprise Will scatter death amongst them as they rise. These, hung in triumph round the spacious field, At best will but a short-lived terror yield: Nor guards of property; (not penal law, But harmless riflemen of rags and straw); Familiariz'd to these, they boldly rove, Nor heed such centinels ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... sphere, there is no doubt, is that indicated by his name, and it is in a country of bogs and marshes, like the south and west of Ireland, of which he was originally a native, where snipe and wildfowl provide the staple sport of the gunner, that he is in his element and seen at his best, though, no doubt, he can do excellent work as an ordinary retriever, and is ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... all got to take our chance in this war,' said Sir Henry gravely. 'And the artillery is a bit safer than the infantry. You know my son Arthur's a gunner.' ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on the peninsula his attention had been directed to a bright and intelligent young Eskimo woman, lithe and lively, a good swimmer, trapper and hunter. Like a typical Indian, she had a clear, keen eye, steady nerves and common sense. She was a good gunner and seldom missed her mark. She was fearless on land or sea, loved her free out-door life, and was a true child of nature. Her ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... sworn," said Hatchway: "for the day we made the Triumph you ordered the men to fire when she was hull-to, by the same token we below pointed the guns at a flight of gulls; and I won a can of punch from the gunner by killing ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... (That was his noble name): The Master—he was called John Mines— A mariner of fame: The Gunner, Thomas Watson, A man of perfect skill: With many another valiant heart In the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... out over the North Sea, keeping their stations accurately apart. At a given signal all the guns are trained on a target which (the master gunner counts the seconds, watch in hand—at the sixth he looks up) flames into splinters. With equal nonchalance a dozen young men in the prime of life descend with composed faces into the depths of the sea; and there impassively (though with perfect mastery of machinery) ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... it abreast. It was sometimes called forskali. Internally the hall consisted of three divisions, a nave and two low side aisles. The walls of these aisles were of stone, and low enough to allow of their being mounted with ease, as we see happened both with Gunner's skali, and with Njal's. The centre division or nave on the other hand, rose high above the others on two rows of pillars. It was of timber, and had an open work timber roof. The roofs of the side aisles were supported by posts as well as by rafters and cross-beams ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... boats were launched; the men tossed in their belongings and, jumping in, took their places at the oars. It need hardly be said that we, on the other hand, were pleased with our capture. I have often shaken hands with the gunner who had fired the last deadly shot, for we waste no emotion over our adversary's fate. With every enemy's ship sent to the bottom, one hope of the hated foe is annihilated. We simply pay off our account against their criminal wish to starve all our ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... that horse back to the circus," thus causing him, the chaplain, to be scandalized. He said he would have stood that, but the horse carried him to a battery of artillery which was in position, and began to jump over the guns, and that a gunner took a swab with which he had been cleaning a gun, and punched him, the chaplain, in the face, covering his face with burnt powder which ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... no more to sea, to sea, Here shall I die a-shore. The master, the swabber, the bosun, and I, The gunner, and his mate, Lov'd Mall, Meg, Marian, and Margery, But none of us car'd for Kate; For she had a tongue with a tang, Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang, Then to sea, boys, ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... up the component parts of what, upon completion, proved to be a Maxim gun, constructed entirely of aethereum, with an aethereum shield or turret, cylindrically shaped in such a manner as to protect completely the entire person of the gunner, the whole affair being so arranged that the gun could be trained in any direction by the inmate of the shield. The mounting of this gun and shield, and the placing in position of an entire case of cartridges in readiness ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... to the Capitana, was not the only one that befell the Spaniards. While Oquendo was absent from his galleon a quarrel arose among the officers, who were furious at the ill result of the day's fighting. The captain struck the master-gunner with a stick; the latter, a German, rushed below in a rage, thrust a burning fuse into a powder barrel, and sprang through a port-hole into the sea. The whole of the deck was blown up, with two hundred sailors and soldiers; but the ship was so strongly built that she survived the ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... reinforcements for the British, he slipped away with his men to Morristown, New Jersey, while the cannon were still booming on the battle-field, their noise being mistaken in Trenton for thunder. With the Continental troops went John Hays, gunner, and as soon as Molly heard of the engagement, and the retirement of General Washington's troops, she hastened to the field of action to seek out any wounded men whom she could care for or comfort in their last hours. Picking her way across ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... midst of the smouldering mutiny the ship's gunner died, and probably because the gutter boy, Greene, was the most poorly clad of all, Hudson gave the dead man's overcoat to the London lad. Instantly there was wild outcry from the other men. It was customary to auction a dead seaman's clothes from the mainmast. Why had the commander ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... towards the Chetera Bougori to the Pauoses to bring word whether they would come to the ship or not, the wind then at Northeast with fogge. The 11 day the winde Northerly with fogge, the ship rode still. The 12 day Amos Riall, Christopher Fawcet, and a new gunner came to the ship, and with them the M. Thomas Hudson returned; but the Stroog with the gunners remained at the Chetera Bougori; and from thence (when it begun to freese) returned to Astracan. Amos Riall declared that he sent the carpenter backe from the Chetera Bougori in a small boat ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... the gunner's daughter; to be tied to a gun and flogged on the posteriors; a mode of punishing boys on board a ship ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... night, ere the dawn flamed red, For each man there should be twain Upon the ships that make their bed Where England rules the Main. They pledged—and the ghost of Nelson led— When the last ship's gunner fell, They would man the guns—these men long dead— And ram the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... much about the old city, and a gunner piloted me through the galleries of the rock as far as a stranger is permitted to go. There is no excavation in the world, for military purposes, at all approaching these of Gibraltar in conception or execution. Viewing the stupendous works, it became ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... gunner on my piece, is busy all day fixin things up. He says if were goin to be here the rest of our lives we mights well have things homelike. He dug up an old rug an a lace curtin somewhere that the Germans ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... prisoner. At the third charge a tall, broad-shouldered captain, who seemed, like another son of Thetis, almost invulnerable, darted impetuously ahead of his men and reached the summit of the defence. Useless bravery! In an instant a volley point blank swept away the charging men behind him, and a gunner's sabrethrust bore him to the ground within the works, where he lay stunned and bleeding beside the gun he had striven so hard to take. The man who had captured him, wild with excitement and maddened with the powder that blackened him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... fiction, you must surprise. They no more court observance than the birds in whose seasonable slaughter society from the King down delights. In fact, it is probable that, if you looked for both, you would find the gunner shyer than the gunned. The pheasant and the fox are bred to give pleasure by their chase; they are tenderly cared for and watched over and kept from harm at the hands of all who do not wish to kill them for the joy of killing, and they are not so elusive but they can be seen ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... front, unload, and get out again before the enemy could zero in on her, and armed to fight off any Army Air Force combat craft. The delay had been in recruiting officers and crew. The captain and chief engineer were out-of-work shipline officers, the gunner was a former Federation artillery officer, and the crew looked more like pirates than most ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... succeed in hitting the crippled ship again. Three more shells were fired, but each projectile screamed harmlessly far out to sea. A trained gunner, noting these facts, would reason that the shore battery made good practice in the first instance solely because its ordnance was trained at a known range. Indeed, he might even hazard a guess that the Andromeda's ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... halted at a farm and told that we were to go into bivouac and would probably remain there for a week or more. Now, one characteristic of the good machine gunner is that he is always about two jumps ahead of the other fellow, so, there being a big barn with lots of clean straw in it, we just naturally took possession while the rest of the troops were patiently waiting for the Quartermaster to assign them to billets. Of course we had a fight ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... moon, as it hung over the southernmost shore of Esthwaite, with Gunner's How, as seen from Hawkshead rising up boldly to the spectator's left hand, would ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... exhibited traces of the battle. A caisson burst close by, and I heard the howl of dying wretches, as the fires flashed like meteors. A solid shot struck a field-carriage not thirty yards from my feet, and one of the flying splinters spitted a gunner as if he had been pierced by an arrow. An artillery-man was standing with folded arms so near that I could have reached to touch him; a whistle and a thumping shock and he fell beneath my nag's head. I wonder, as I calmly ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... ever seen one? Can you appreciate the fact that its weight is equal to thirty-eight carts of coals? Did you ever see the powder with which it is fed? One grain of it was given to me as a great favour, by the chief gunner's mate—I think that is his correct title, but am not quite sure. He presented it in a cardboard box. I now send ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... letter from the fiscal of the Filipinas, that but one pilot is sufficient for the ships; that the troops should be under the command of the captain or master of the ship, without increase of salary to said captain or master. Thus the aforesaid officers of the troops may be dispensed with, and one gunner suffices for each piece or every two pieces ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... the ranks of "the great" laid low. Alas! one fears that, instead of biting the dust, those courtiers, with the king in the midst of them to set the example, only cried bravo in their hearts at the skill of the gunner:— ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... March's hobbies. He believed in military mobilisation based on occupational qualifications. In other words, he believed that a man who had been a telephone operator in civilian life would make a better telephone operator in the army than he would make a gunner. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... could be made was seasonably provided, to supper they went, merry on all hands, especially Iapazeus and his wife, who to expres their joy would ere be treading upon Captaine Argall's foot, as who should say tis don, she is your own. Supper ended Pocahuntas was lodged in the gunner's roome, but Iapazeus and his wife desired to have some conference with their brother, which was onely to acquaint him by what stratagem they had betraied his prisoner as I have already related: after which discourse to sleepe they went, Pocahuntas ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... piece, an ancient machine, made of copper and strengthened by bands of iron. A handsome face; dead to morality, alive to pleasure; the face of a man past thirty, the expression of immortal one-and-twenty! A figure from the pages of Ovid, metamorphosed to a gunner of Santa Anna! The bright radiance from a cloudless sky, the smoke having drifted westward from the summit, fell ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... main deck in due season, I found I had contrived to miss the Chief Gunner's lecture on the great guns, whereupon who so agitated and bitterly apologetic as my Midshipmite, who there and then ushered me hastily down more awkward stairs and through narrow openings into a place of glistening, gleaming ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... his sixty-six Indians along the walls with muskets rammed through the loopholes. Then, with an unearthly yell, the Le Moyne brothers were over the tops of the pickets, swords in hand, before the English soldiers had awakened. The English gunner reeled from his cannon at the main gate with head split to the collar bone. The gates were thrown wide, trees rammed the doors open, and Iberville had dashed halfway up the stairs of the main house before the inmates, rushing out in their nightshirts, realized what ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... of the horse, and Sir John Carew, of Devonshire, were appointed captains of her, and in company with several others she was sent to fight the French fleet near Brest haven. An action accordingly ensued, and the Regent grappled with a French carrick, which would have been taken, had not a gunner on board the vessel, to prevent her falling into the hands of the English, set fire to the powder-room. This communicating the flames to both ships, they shared the same fate together, being both burnt. On the part of the French 900 ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... worse, the whole station wore a subdued air. The Club compound was practically deserted; and Evelyn's first outing in that direction left her with no desire to repeat the experiment for the present. The Sikhs had lost a popular captain; while a Gunner subaltern, who had returned seriously wounded, was being nursed by Mrs Conolly and the only woman ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... gundeloe [? gondola] towards the town, to give warning. But our Captain perceiving it, cut betwixt her and the town, forcing her to go to the other side of the bay: whereby we landed without impeachment, although we found one gunner upon the Platform [battery] in the very place where we landed; being a sandy place and no key [quay] at all, not past twenty yards from ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... invariably interested himself in the local archaeological and historical associations. Thus at Santos he explored the enormous kitchen middens of the aboriginal Indians; but the chief attraction was the site of a Portuguese fort, marked by a stone heap, where a gunner, one Hans Stade, was carried off by the cannibals and all but eaten. Burton used to visit the place by boat, and the narrative written by Hans Stade so fascinated him that he induced a Santos friend, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... of a lonely candle in the machine-gunner's dugout of the front-line trench, I wrote two letters. One to Pete's mother, the other to his sweetheart. While doing this I cursed the Prussian war-god with all my heart, and I think ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... Signal Corps; electrician sergeant, first class, Coast Artillery Corps; electrician sergeant, Artillery Detachment, United States Military Academy; assistant engineer, Coast Artillery Corps; (c) master gunner, Coast Artillery Corps; master gunner, Artillery Detachment, United States Military Academy; band sergeant and assistant leader, United States Military Academy band; assistant band leader; sergeant bugler; electrician sergeant, ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... utility as a reconnaissance machine. In 1916 the "pusher" type was superseded by the Sopwith "1-1/2 Strutter" armed with a synchronized Vickers gun, which for its 130 horse-power was never surpassed. The pilot was close to the engine and had a good view of the ground, while the gunner was placed behind him with a rotary Lewis gun turret. Early in 1917 these qualities were further developed ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... "Mebbe," rejoined the gunner, "but I don't believe that any man what writes about whalin' bein' easy, has ever tried ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... two more machine guns and were planting Stokeses under them when we heard the Lewises giving the recall signal. A good gunner gets so he can play a tune on a Lewis, and the device is frequently used for signals. This time he thumped out the old one—"All policemen have big ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... story was that Captain Brand and his gunner, and Captain Malyoe of the Adventure and the sailing master of the Adventure all went ashore together with a chest of money (no one of them choosing to trust the other three in so nice an affair), and buried the treasure somewhere on the beach of Port ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... nose-bag on the saddle would be all the better for emptying. On each side of the road were gun positions, and Vane kept a sharp look out as he trotted on. If there was one thing he loathed above all others it was the gunner humorist who, with malice aforethought, deliberately waited to fire his gun until some helpless passer by was about a yard from the muzzle. But at the moment everything seemed quiet. The evening hate was not due yet; and Vane reached Brandhoek cross roads ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... describe, for the simple reason that I don't remember. I know that it was a short, sharp dash, that the fight was a fight of fists in which guns were discharged wildly in the air against the will of the gunner. But from the moment when Kennedy's voice rang out in the door, "Hands up!" to the time that I saw that we had the robbers lined up with their backs against the heavy cases of the precious metal for which they had planned and risked so much, it is a ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... latitudes twice before; a Surgeon and his Mate, or Loblolly Boy; Self as Secretary and Purser; two young lawyers, designed to act as Midshipmen; Giles Cash, as Reformado,—that was the title of courtesy given to those who were sent to sea in lieu of being hanged; a Gunner and his crew; a Boatswain, cooper, carpenter, sailmaker, smith, and armourer, ship's corporal, Sergeant of Marines, cook; a Negro that could shave and play the fiddle; and the Ship's company as aforesaid, one-third ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Colonel Collett—"The results of the four classes attending this School from your Battalion, viz., officers, N.C.Os., signallers and machine gunners, are most satisfactory. I would especially draw your attention to the roll of gunners; there is not a second class gunner among the whole section, which is most gratifying to myself and the instructors." A feature of this School was an officer of its staff who was not favourably disposed towards Dominion troops. He was known to commence ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... court-martialled, but it all come out all right When they signalled us to join the main command. There was every round expended, there was every gunner tight, An' the Captain waved a corkscrew in 'is 'and. But the Captain 'ad 'is ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... family of man into one household, by that feeling which, more perhaps than any other, distinguishes us from the brute creation,—I mean the feeling to which we give the name of sympathy,—the feeling for each other! The herd of deer shun the stag that is marked by the gunner; the flock heedeth not the sheep that creeps into the shade to die; but man has sorrow and joy not in himself alone, but in the joy and sorrow of those around him. He who feels only for himself abjures his very nature as man; for do we not ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... In descending the grade, at the spot where, on his little map, Joslyn made the more westerly X, they were more than eleven hundred feet above the spot where he had made his second, or easterly X. All this descent was to the advantage of the experiment. A gunner would have said that the first X "commanded" the second X, and that a battery there would inevitably silence a battery at ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... Eyes, I do assure you. And here my first Instruction shall be, where she may most probably be found: For he is a bad Huntsman who would beat about the Royal Exchange for a Hare or a Fox; and not a much better Gunner or Fisherman, who goes a shooting in Somerset-Gardens, or attempts to angle in the magnificent Bason there. As these all know the Places where their Game ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... possible second reason for preferring to attack inside bullet-proof steel; not that death is less likely in a tank, but there seems to be a more sporting chance with a shell than with a bullet. The enemy infantryman looks along his sight and he has you for a certainty, but the gunner cannot be so accurate and twenty yards may mean a world of difference. Above all, the new monster had our imaginations in thrall. Here ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... the boots of a German soldier, nearly new, and with horseshoes on the heels. Caron entrusted them to Poterloo when he was sent back on account of his arm. Caron had taken them himself from a Bavarian machine-gunner, knocked out near the Pylones road. I can hear Caron telling about ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... of the same general principles are used by airmen in search of a landing for himself or for a destructive bomb; in signaling to a gunner, and in many other ways. They are simple in construction because they need not withstand the stresses of being fired from a gun; they are merely dropped from the aircraft. The mechanism of ignition and the cycle of events which follow are ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... in position somewhat in advance of the line was so much exposed to the enemy's fire that it was abandoned. Later in the day the battery being ordered to move, the captain directed the sergeant to take his detachment and bring in the gun. The sergeant and his gunner, with a number of men, went out to bring in the gun by hand. Two men lifted the trail and the sergeant ordered, "All together!" The gun moved, but moved in a circle. The fire was hot, and all hands were on the same side—the side farthest from the enemy! After some ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... of a scarecrow, giving it odd attributes. From different points of view, it should appear to change,—now an old man, now an old woman,—a gunner, a ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... column in the road, and these, with bayonets fixed, dashed into the town. The enemy had not waited for them, but retreated out of the place by the Hagerstown road. Moor had been ridden down, unhorsed, and captured. The artillery-men had unlimbered the gun, pointed it, and the gunner stood with the lanyard in his hand, when he was struck by a charging horse; the gun was fired by the concussion, but at the same moment it was capsized into the ditch by the impact of the cavalry column. The enemy had no time to right the gun or carry it ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... bide in bed, let be that the gale by this time was pretty near lifting the thatch over his head. Besides which, he'd fenced a small 'taty-patch that winter, down by Lowland Point, and he wanted to see if it stood the night's work. He took the path across Gunner's Meadow—where they buried most of the bodies afterward. The wind was right in his teeth at the time, and once on the way (he's told me this often) a great strip of oarweed came flying through the darkness and fetched him ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... between Lynn and Wisbeach, of mud inside, brought down by the fen rivers; but outside (contrary to the usual rule) of shifting sand, which has come inward from the sea, and prevents the mud's escape—banks parted by narrow gullies, the delight of the gunner with his punt, haunted by million wild-fowl in winter, and in summer hazy steaming flats, beyond which the trees of Lincolnshire loom up, raised by refraction far above the horizon, while the masts and sails of distant vessels ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... the stern with fearful momentum, so close—but clear of the giant hull—that the gunner's mate at the stern torpedo tube took his chew of tobacco and, as he afterwards put it, "torpedoed the battleship with his eyes shut." Now the stern was pointed directly toward the Arizona, hardly five yards away. Armitage, bending over the telegraph, jerked ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... he said, as he knelt down, took off his dripping gloves, and held his blue fingers to the flame. "What a night! It isn't fit for a dog to be out in. 'Pon my soul, gunner, I feel ashamed to come in and get shelter, and leave my poor boys in ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... 'nd the medal, 'Beauty,'" chirrups a Sydney gunner, "but I know what they'll give us in Australia if we go back without ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... the way paused in the act of tapping a cigarette on his case. "Little gunner man, wore red plush bags and a blue velvet hat? Yes, up in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... with their comrades bellowing in an adjacent hut. And so I understood and knew at length how Camp Commandants manage the maintenance and improvement of their domain. I devote myself now to warning the simple-hearted gunner against unfurnished huts and the hospitality of Camp Commandants. And some day I hope to be in a position to lend that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... difficult at first for the officers in charge of the Federal batteries to make sure that the advancing troops were not their own. A moment more and the doubtful regiment proved its identity by a deadly volley, delivered at a range of seventy yards. Every gunner was shot down; the teams were almost annihilated, and several officers fell killed or wounded. The Zouaves, already much shaken by Stuart's well-timed charge, fled down the slopes, dragging with them another regiment ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... one fellow whisper, "There goes the little beagle." When I entered the gunroom, the first lieutenant, master, and purser, were sitting smoking and enjoying themselves over a glass of cold grog—the gunner taking the watch on deck the doctor was piping any thing but mellifluously on the double flageolet, while the Spanish priest, and aide—de—camp to the general, were playing at chess, and wrangling in bad French. I ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the gunner's accounts, wherein the articles consumed are charged under the title of ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... given to the Portuguese by a Sanjak. Upon this, one of these Christian gunners at the third shot broke down the standard, which stood on the top of a great tower, on which the Turks made great rejoicings and published the news with much exultation throughout the fleet. The gunner was rewarded ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... In this situation, Sir Richard proposed to the ship's company, to trust to the mercy of God, not to that of the Spaniards, and to destroy the ship with themselves, rather than yield to the enemy. The master gunner, and many of the seamen, agreed to this desperate resolution; but others opposed it and obliged Greenville to surrender himself prisoner. He died a few days after; and his last words were, "Here die I, Richard Greenville, with a joyful and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... intercept them; but it again fell calm, and the boats were therefore hoisted out, with directions to proceed along the shore, as it was supposed that the vessels could not now be far distant. Mr Sawbridge had the command of the expedition in the pinnace; the first cutter was in charge of the gunner, Mr Linus; and, as the other officers were sick, Mr Sawbridge, who liked Jack more and more every day, at his particular request gave him the command of the second cutter. As soon as he heard of it, Mesty declared to our hero that he would go with him; but without ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... the difficulty of securing a supply of reinforcements adequate for the performance of our duties is greater with the Cavalry than with any other Arm. A few days' training at a pinch will turn out an Infantry soldier or gunner, whose presence need not necessarily be either dangerous or even detrimental to the efficiency of his company or battery. An unbroken horse or a bad rider may create confusion in the ranks of the ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... long walk round the edge of the fen and the bringing back of a fairly miscellaneous bag of wild-fowl, the engineer having become a skilful gunner during his stay in the wild ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... be gunners to take up their position on the other. Vogt and his new friend Weise placed themselves with the gunners, Vogt in this acting after his father's advice. "Youngster," the old man had said, "first and foremost be a good gunner. Then if you want to go on serving and become a corporal, you will get on faster than you would otherwise. You will know your gun and will only have to ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... of control for a moment, started to go into a nose dive, but Tom let go the lever of his machine gun, and took charge of the craft, since it was one capable of dual manipulation. Tom now had to become the pilot and gunner, too, and he had yet a long way to go to reach his own lines, while Jack was huddled, before him, ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... 'those of the 28th Regiment are our "boys,"' gunner Purs, of Benatky, was sentenced to four years' imprisonment. He was sent in chains to the military prison ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... vengeance on some innocent Infantry Subaltern, who had dared to suggest that he had been shooting short. The Infantryman would be led down to the gun pit, and told to stand with one leg on each side of the trail, "so that he could watch the shell leave the gun"; some Gunner would then pull a string and the poor spectator, besides being nearly deaf, would see some hideous recoiling portion shoot straight at his stomach, stop within an eighth of an inch of his belt buckle, and slide slowly ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... cables. Argall bore down on them, with a furious din of drums and trumpets, showed his broadside, and replied to their hail with a volley of cannon and musket shot. "Fire! Fire!" screamed Fleury. But there was no gunner to obey, till Du Thet seized and applied the match. "The cannon made as much noise as the enemy's," writes Biard; but, as the inexperienced artillerist forgot to aim the piece, no other result ensued. Another storm of musketry, and Brother Gilbert ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... de do? By all means ow de do? Lemme introjuice you all round. I'm Mr. Lanyon, commonly called Lushy, because? one? me failins: Gunner aboard this packet by rights, and Actin Fust Lieutenant by the grace o God—there bein no one else to act, see? This ere," he continued, smacking the bulwark, "is His—Majesty's—ship—Tremendous, well known and respected ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... AND TRAP-SHOOTING, by Charles Askins. Contains a full discussion of the various methods, such as snap-shooting, swing and half-swing, discusses the flight of birds with reference to the gunner's problem of lead and range and makes special application of the various points to the different birds commonly shot in this country. A chapter is included on trap shooting and the book closes with a forceful and common-sense presentation ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... flints, but which really are intended for the slow-match. Sometimes these men had good bags of snipe, but only once have I seen such a gun fired, which was at a pigeon sitting about fifteen yards high in a tree. The gunner blew his slow-match into a glow and pressed it into the slit in the hammer, placed the pistol handle to his hip and pulled the trigger, which brought the hammer slowly forward until the slow-match rested on the powder in the pan, when the gun went off and the pigeon fell dead. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... granted, but as he turned to go he was shot dead. Another of the name of Rambert tried to escape by disguising himself as a woman, but was recognised and shot down a few yards outside his own door. A gunner called Saussine was walking in all security along the road to Uzes, pipe in mouth, when he was met by five men belonging to Trestaillon's company, who surrounded him and stabbed him to the heart with their knives. The elder of two brothers named Chivas ran across some fields to take shelter ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the crew on shore with him, soon beat off the natives; inflicting some loss upon them. These took to the woods, in which they could not be followed; and Captain Francis, mourning for the loss of his three adventurers, and of the gunner killed by his side; and despairing of ever recovering the bodies of those who were, as he believed, cut off and murdered; embarked on board ship, and sailed down the coast. A few days later he put in to another bay, ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... crew to assist us, we cast the gun loose, loaded it, and fired it off. This we did several times, Uncle Denis desiring me to watch carefully how each movement was made. I worked away with him till my arms and back ached. By that time I began to feel myself an accomplished gunner. We then ran in the gun ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... have been done by a man to whose nature such grim irony was thoroughly congenial. [Sidenote: Stories of Sulla.] He evinced it on this occasion in another way, which may have suggested to Victor Hugo his episode of Lantenac and the gunner. He gave the slave who betrayed Sulpicius his freedom, and then had him hurled from the Tarpeian Rock. After this he set to work to restore such order as would enable him to hasten ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... when the German shells seemed to be falling in every street and on every house, I saw this car again, going forward at not less than forty miles an hour. The turret was being swung to bring the gun-muzzle forward, as if the gunner were expecting to go into action almost immediately. As the last of the Belgian trenches were just the other side of the town, I have no doubt ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... brigantine and completed his education on board of a galley. His training was that which makes the best of fighting seamen, as from contemporary records he appears to have passed all his life actively engaged on board ship. At a very early age he entered the service of a master gunner who served on board the galleys of the Grand Turk. Under his auspices the youngster became an expert pilot in his own home waters, and likewise a most excellent gunner. Dragut was evidently a youth of ability and determination, as almost before he reached ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... patriotic noises until they were hoarse. At midnight our supporters had nearly all gone away. We who had seen our motor-cycles carefully hoisted on board ate the buns and apples provided by "Friends in Dublin" and chatted. A young gunner told me of all his amours, and they were very ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... consideration for others. 'Tell the admiral, if you survive,' said he, to a lad named Wilson, 'that my men have done their duty, and that no blame is attached to them. I have but one favour to ask, and that is, that he will promote Meldrum to be a gunner,' (p. 270.) And richly did Meldrum deserve the distinction. When all in the boat had perished but himself and another, a brig hove in sight, but did not seem to notice the speck on the ocean. Meldrum sprang overboard, and swam towards the ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... An old gunner with a grey beard—that I can see now—with steady eye and grave face, went up to the gun and took a long aim. A loud report was heard, with which were mingled the cheers of ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... lesser degree, perhaps, the Englishman is, too. But where he can work the range out on paper, where he has to do with mechanics instead of a shifting mark, where he can apply to the details of gun firing the exact principles of arithmetic, I am pretty sure the German is as good a gunner as may be found on the Continent of Europe to-day. This may not apply to him at sea, for he has neither the sailor traditions nor the inherited naval craftsmanship of the English; but judging by what I have seen I am quite certain that with the solid earth beneath ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... one or two occasions reliefs had to be carried out over the top under cover of darkness. It was risking a good deal to line up a whole company outside the trench a few yards in rear of the front line, knowing that an enemy machine gun was located about a hundred yards away, and that the machine gunner might fire an illuminating flare at any moment, and so expose the men to ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... Destroyer Cassin he was merely gunner's mate, But up there to-day, I fancy, he is standing with the great. On that grim day last October his position on the craft Was that portion of the vessel which the sailors christen aft; There were deep sea bombs beside him to be dropped upon the Hun Who makes women folks his victims and ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... guard of as many Protestants; having taken this admirable method of defending himself against his infidel opponents, he goes upon deck, reminds the sailors in a very bitter harangue, that they are of different religions; exhorts the Episcopal gunner not to trust to the Presbyterian quartermaster; issues positive orders that the Catholics should be fired at upon the first appearance of discontent; rushes through blood and brains, examining his men in the Catechism and thirty-nine Articles, and positively forbids every one to ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... direction and elevation of the guns is calculated beforehand. The enemy can therefore be continuously located and fired at, although from smoke or other cause the object may be quite invisible to the gunner. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... near approach it is found to be but a relic of former ages, a crumbled-down ruin, too weak to bear any longer its three old rusty guns now lying on the ground: it is the terror, not of the neighbourhood, but of the unfortunate gunner, who has already lost an arm whilst endeavouring to return a salute through their honeycombed tubes. On the other hand, the mission-house, garbed in immaculate whiteness, smiles radiantly around, inviting ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... thicket, and found it to be a thatch of branches woven to screen the muzzles of a battery. The big guns were all about us, crouched in these sylvan lairs like wild beasts waiting to spring; and near each gun hovered its attendant gunner, proud, possessive, important as a ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... great utility of this corps must appear obvious when it is considered that the only person supposed to be qualified and experienced in gunnery on board His Majesty's ships, is the gunner, who, too often ignorant of his own duty, is totally unable to instruct others. In the quarter bills of most ships, it is well known that a very small proportion of the marines are reserved for musketry, the greater part being in general divided on the different batteries. With what advantage would ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... however, a gunner, casually looking round, observed the remarkable phenomenon of a kerosene tin perched on the top of one of several trees near which his battery was placed, and glinting in the bright sunlight. Continuing the movement he ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... had no sooner disappeared than I shifted my ground, and pulling slowly down in the shore's shadow (I had greased the leathers of my oars for silence), ran the boat in by the point under Gunner's Meadow, beached her cunningly between two rocks, and pulled a tarpaulin over to hide her white-painted interior. My only danger now lay in blundering against the coastguard: but by dodging from one big boulder to another and ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... The saliva continually dribbled from the mouth and from the inferior internal portion of his mask, compelling him to carry some substance to receive the dribblings. Whymper mentions an analogous instance of a gunner who had his whole lower jaw torn away by a shell, but who recovered and used an ingenious contrivance in the shape of a silver mask for remedying the loss of the parts. Steiner mentions a wound from a cannon-ball, which carried away the left half of the inferior maxilla, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... board the Tigre in five minutes, and he said that we could go on board with him, and we had better do so, as there was no time to be lost. Mason, one of the gunner's mates, is to go with us. We are to have sixty blue-jackets and five marines for sentries, and so on. He thinks that we can't do better than take the Turk who has been cooking for him, and our cook here. They are both very good fellows. One will ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... a machine gunner too, and you know he traverses the Maxim after me by patting it on the cheek. I just step short two ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... sir," cried the sergeant. "Macdonald is my name—Sergeant Macdonald, of H Battery, Southern Artillery Division. I have called as the spokesman of my mates at the gunner's barracks to say that we are proud to have ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from Mare Island with orders to check the conflagration at any cost of property. With them they brought a ton and a half of guncotton. The terrific power of the explosive was equal to the maniac determination of the fire. Captain MacBride was in charge of the squad, Chief Gunner Adamson placed the charges and the third gunner set ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... council, overcome resistance by their speeches and commands. 'After all," says one of them, named Mouchet, "the right of petition is sacred."—" Open the gate!" shout Sergent and Boucher-Rene, "nobody has a right to shut it. Every citizen has a right to go through it!"[2546] A gunner raises the latch, the gate opens and the court fills in the winkling of an eye;[2547] the crowd rushes under the archway and up the grand stairway with such impetuosity that a cannon borne along by hand reaches the third room on the first story before it stops. The doors crack under the blows ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sink the cutter, sir?" said the gunner, now advancing towards Captain Paul. "If it is to be done, now is the time. She is close under us, astern; a few guns pointed downwards will settle her ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... A gunner opened the great tube as Summers led Pauline into the torpedo room. Obediently she entered the strange passageway of ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... napping that way. As he rushed down upon them there came into his head one of the most daring ideas that has ever flashed across a seaman's brain. Hastily summoning Braziliano he bade him take a dozen of his men, descend to the after magazine, procure two or three barrels of powder from the gunner, and stow them in the cabin under the poop-deck. He charged him to do it as quietly as possible and take only men for the purpose upon whom he could depend. While this was being done young Teach was also summoned from the forecastle, his place being taken by old Velsers, whose division in the ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... chaperoning infantry advances, while balloons might be set on fire, dumps blown up, or leave cancelled at special rates. There might also be an assortment of inexpensive and amusing side-shows, such as a Second-in-command trying to check a monthly return of dripping, or a conscientious gunner ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... Fox, who was as national as Nelson, went to his death with the firm conviction that England had made Napoleon. He did not mean, of course, that any other Italian gunner would have done just as well; but he did mean that by forcing the French back on their guns, as it were, we had made their chief gunner necessarily their chief citizen. Had the French Republic been left alone, it would probably have followed the example of most other ideal experiments; and ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... Hill 70 stood a little group of seven palms. Away to the east rose great hills of golden sand, very beautiful when the rays of the setting sun struck upon them. To show our unsophisticated attitude at this time, it may be admitted that when a credulous machine gunner informed us—doubtless on Australian authority—that the trails of two "Arabian" lions had been found not a mile away, we more than ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... of her human crew we had speedily further sign; for, almost as I answered, there was some belching of flame from her turret, and this time the shell, hurtling through the air with that hissing song which every gunner knows so well, crashed full upon the fore-part of the great liner, and we heard the shout of terror which rose from those upon her decks. The men appeared at the signal-mast of the pursuer, and rapidly made signals in ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... on their carriages, With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur; ... and the nimble gunner With linstook now the devilish cannon touches, And down ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... "child" delighted in trying to hit the head-gear of the Premier Mine. Whether it was the red flag that floated at the top or the thing itself he sought to tatter is uncertain. At any rate, it was no easy matter to hit the head-gear, as the gunner had long since discovered, nor, could he hit it, to smash it. Hundreds of shells were thrown at it, but it was never struck, and to damage it materially it would be necessary to strike it more than once. Its substance was tough—what Bismarck would have called iron painted to look like ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... and they were wasting it. After a while the captain came on deck, and ordered all the carronades to be scaled. The eight heavy reports bellowed the great ship's impatience across the water and out pulled two boats with the passengers. While they were coming, Dodd sent and ordered the gunner to load the carronades with shot, and secure and apron them. The first boat brought Colonel Kenealy, Mr. Fullalove, and a prodigious negro, who all mounted by the side-ropes. But the whip was rigged for the next boat, and the Honourable Mrs. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... pursuers. Those who succeeded in crossing drew up with a few guns, but the fire of the artillery caused their speedy departure, leaving their cannon behind. Lieutenant Holmes, of the irregular cavalry, and gunner Scott, of the 2nd brigade horse-artillery, here performed a gallant exploit; they swam their horses across the stream, and spiked the guns, exposed to the fire of the enemy's skirmishers, but covered ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... treatment which our voyagers met with at Otaheite, that one of the gunner's mates was induced to form a plan for remaining in the country. As he knew that he could not execute his scheme with success, while the Resolution continued in Matavai Bay, he took the opportunity, when she was ready to quit it, and the sails ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... something he might kill, and he found a wounded pigeon which had fluttered into his refuge from the shot of some gunner. But he could not bring himself to eat it raw, and if he could have kindled a fire to cook it, he reflected, it would have betrayed him to his pursuers who must now be searching the woods for him. He wrung the pigeon's neck and flung it into the bushes, and then fell down and wept with his face ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... grenadier, fusileer[obs3]; archer, bowman. horse and foot; horse soldier; cavalry, horse, artillery, horse artillery, light horse, voltigeur[Fr], uhlan,mounted rifles, dragoon, hussar; light dragoon, heavy dragoon; heavy; cuirassier[Fr]; Foot Guards, Horse Guards. gunner, cannoneer, bombardier, artilleryman[obs3], matross[obs3]; sapper, sapper and miner; engineer; light infantry, rifles,chasseur[Fr], zouave; military train, coolie. army, corps d'armee[Fr], host, division, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was silent thereafter. He observed a bo'sun and his mates staggering in the waist under loads of cutlasses and small arms which they stacked in a rack about the mainmast. Then the gunner, a swarthy, massive fellow, stark to the waist with a faded scarf tied turban-wise about his head, leapt up the companion to the brass carronade on the larboard quarter, followed by a ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini |
