"Musket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Doctor von Bethmann-Hollweg, would be glad to divide the Reichstag as definitely and easily as I have done. Theoretically these divisions may be useful to the reader, but practically to the leader they are useless. Bebel, the leader of the Social Democrats, declares himself ready to shoulder a musket to defend the country; Heydebrandt, the leader of the Conservatives, and possibly the most effective speaker in the Reichstag, has spoken warmly in favor of social reform laws; the Clericals are for peace, almost at any price; the Agrarians or Junkers ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... evidently a stir in that boat, and two forms that he had no difficulty, now, in recognizing as those of Wallace and Mulford, were standing on the grating in the eyes of the cutter, or forward of the foresail. The former appeared to have a musket in his hand, and the other a glass. The last circumstance admonished him that all that was now done would be done before dangerous witnesses. It was too late to draw back, however, and the captain turned to look ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... begun life as a blacksmith's helper, and had run away to join the Union army, where he had made his first acquaintance with "graft," in the shape of rotten muskets and shoddy blankets. To a musket that broke in a crisis he always attributed the death of his only brother, and upon worthless blankets he blamed all the agonies of his own old age. Whenever it rained, the rheumatism would get into his joints, and then he would screw up his face and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... rescued Majesty, determined to be more cautious in Pandour Countries for the future! [Hildebrandt, Anekdoten, i. 1-7. Pandour proper is a FOOT-soldier (tall raw-boned ill-washed biped, in copious Turk breeches, rather barish in the top parts of him; carries a very long musket, and has several pistols and butcher's-knives stuck in his girdle): specifically a footman; but readers will permit me to use him withal, as here, in the generic sense.]—Which story, as to the body of it, is all myth; though, as is oftenest ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 27th of July, 1830, my father went out very early. That evening, at ten o'clock, he was brought back to us on a litter, dying. He had received a bullet in the chest. Beside him on the litter was his musket. ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... and at the same time they were plagued with flies, and those in such multitudes that they were scarce able to defend themselves. They saw at a distance eight savages, with each a staff in his hand, who advanced towards them within musket-shot; but as soon as they perceived the Dutch sailors moving towards them, they fled as fast as they were able. It was by this time about noon, and, perceiving no appearance either of getting water, or entering into any correspondence with the natives, ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... laird's, but to a blithe birling at the Brokenburn-foot, where there will be mony a braw lad and lass; and maybe there may be some of the laird's folks, for he never comes to sic splores himsell. He is all for fowling-piece and salmon-spear, now that pike and musket ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... their objections to the cartridges, having seen them. I had no idea they contained, or rather are smeared with such a quantity of grease, which looks exactly like fat. After ramming down the ball, the muzzle of the musket is ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... suddenly awakened by a violent motion, as if his skiff were capsizing. Starting up, he saw in the imperfect light a huge tiger, that had swam, apparently, from the neighbouring jungle, in the act of boarding the boat. So much was he taken aback, that though a loaded musket lay beside him, it was one of the loose beams, or foot-spars, used as fulcrums for the feet in rowing, that he laid hold of as a weapon; but such was the blow he dealt to the paws of the creature, as they rested on the gunwale, that it dropped off with ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... approached within musket-shot of the shore. They could see that a venerable-looking old man stood a few paces in front of the group of natives. He held a green branch in one hand, and pressed with the other a long flowing white beard to ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... the lad sprang down upon the enemy, regardless of the steepness of the place, and in an instant the man was locked in his arms, just as the musket report came. Down the two fell, bounding over two or three shelves of rock, and then pitching headlong some twenty or thirty feet into the thick ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... earnestly to his brother's words, and seemed to be thinking over them still. Perhaps he felt that the knapsack and musket were too heavy for his little shoulders, and that he was, as yet, too weak ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... little boy, my mother kept me in, Now I am a great boy, and fit to serve the king; I can handle a musket, I can smoke a pipe, I can kiss a pretty girl ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous
... unconscious, and was bleeding profusely from a wound in the right shoulder. Robert seized his wrist and felt his pulse. He was not dead, because he detected a faint beat, but it was quite evident that the wound from a big musket bullet had come near to ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to their wounds in the boat a few hours previously, so Villari, the mate, told me. Marston, who had been shot in the neck, was unconscious, and his wife who, as you saw, is little more than a girl, was herself wounded in the arm by a musket ball. ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... sometime ago the Bharata (a Bengali periodical of Calcutta edited by Babu Dwijendra Nath Tagore) in a paper on Hindu weapons of warfare from certain quotations from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, argued that the nalika must have been some kind of musket vomiting bullets of iron in consequence of some kind of explosive force. The Rishis discouraged use of nalika, declaring them to be barbarous and fit only for kings that would ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... his narrative. "We remained concealed until it was dark, and then Hastings and Romer, each with a musket on his shoulders and a ham at his back; and I, being the smallest, with the rifle and the great loaf of bread, set off on our journey. Our intention was to travel north, as we knew that was the road leading from the colony; but ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Gent. Mag. for Jan. 1766 (p. 45) records, that 'a person was observed discharging musket-balls from a steel crossbow at the two remaining heads upon Temple Bar.' They were the heads of Scotch rebels executed in 1746. Samuel Rogers, who died at the end of 1855, said, 'I well remember one of the heads of the rebels upon a pole at Temple ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... personality of the singer. It awakened in my mind the scenes in the French Revolution so vividly described by Carlyle. The man's facial expression and whole personality suddenly appeared changed; he planted his foot firmly forward on the ground, striking the attitude of a man carrying a musket, a flag, or a pike; his eyes gleamed with fire and the lack-lustre expression had changed to one of delirious excitement. A pike in his hand and a red cap on his head would have completed the picture of a sans culotte. Dramatic song therefore that does not evoke an emotional ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... a carpet-knight and have not idled in ladies' bowers. I have worked hard and dreamed of you. I am willing to do all that a man can to win you. Cowardice has not kept me from the war, but you. If it would please you I would put on the blue and shoulder a musket to-morrow. If you will permit more discretion and time, I can soon obtain a commission as an officer. But before I fight other battles, I wish to win the supreme victory of my life. Whatever orders I may take from others, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... ammunition very valuable. In 1635 musket-balls passed for farthings, and to see a New England peasant making change with the red brother at thirty yards was a ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... our part we would agree to pay him well and do as he said. We were now humble. We promised, and the Kurd came riding to the gates of the convent the next morning at the hour fixed for our departure. He was immensely long and lean. He looked hungry all over. Even his musket, longer by some inches than himself, had the appearance of existing on a very low diet of powder and ball. An awful doubt of its efficacy crept into my heart, but we gave him the matutinal greetings of the country, and our cavalcade ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... suffered a heavy loss in the death of Colonel Phelypeaux, who died of fever brought on by want of rest and exposure to the sun. On the same day another, and almost as serious a loss, was sustained, for Captain Wilmot was killed by a musket shot while in the act of mounting a ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... hand a little higher on the barrel of your musket. As you were; support—the word support is ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... the city by a narrow street which scarcely allowed two persons to walk abreast; I was with him. We were stopped by some musket-shots fired from a low window by a man and a woman. They repeated their fire several times. The guides who preceded their General kept up a heavy fire on the window. The man and woman fell dead, and we passed on in safety, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... village gates. The Sheik, momentarily stunned by the blow that had felled him, now staggered to his feet, shouting lustily to his followers to stop the escaped Arab. A dozen blacks leaped forward to intercept the horseman, only to be ridden down or brushed aside by the muzzle of Abdul Kamak's long musket, which he lashed from side to side about him as he spurred on toward the gate. But here he must surely be intercepted. Already the two blacks stationed there were pushing the unwieldy portals to. Up flew the barrel of the fugitive's weapon. With reins flying ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... neighborhood families; before the Swedish and Irish invasion had made servants of us in turn. Mary was the youngest of an ancestored county family. Her great-grandfather had fought in the Revolution, as you might know by the great flint-lock musket over the Rexes' fireplace. A brother of his had formed part of a British square at Waterloo; and if Mary's own father had not lost his right hand at Gettysburg he would never have let his children go out to service. Poor soul, he ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... swept out of my tent into the darkness. The instant that the fellow disappeared from my sight I recovered from my lethargy which had fallen upon me. Springing to my feet, I rushed to the opening and looked out. A Sepoy sentry was standing leaning upon his musket, a ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to give him a fair chance, as there was no enemy in the vicinity who could possibly intend to capture the battalion. But while he was waiting, the fellow suddenly grasped his musket, and attempted to wrest it from his hands. But this was a game at which two could play as well as one; and Richard, instead of giving the alarm, as he should have done, threw himself upon his muscle, and attempted to beat off ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... we had started from Holland to go towards the kingdom of China, and all that had happened, in order that, if by chance, some one should come after us, it might be known what had befallen us. This note he enclosed in the case of a musket which he hung up in ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... of St. Martin, [Footnote: The individual here referred to—Alexis St. Martin—was a young Canadian, eighteen years of age, of a good constitution and robust health, who, in 1822, was accidentally wounded by the discharge of a musket which: carried away a part of the ribs, lacerated one of two lobes of the lungs, and perforated the stomach, making a large aperture, which never closed; and which enabled Dr. Beaumont (a surgeon of the American army, stationed at Michilimackanac, under whose care the ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the chief of the guard, pitched the camp very near the ditches of the city of Rachol, and every captain halted his people according to the commands given. The people of the City received them with many shots from heavy cannon that they had, and from many firelocks, and many arrows and musket-shots, so that those of the besiegers who arrived close to the ditches suffered heavily and wanted to retreat. But the King would not permit this, saying that he would not have sent them there were it not that ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... July, Anno 1626, by the help of God, I arrived with the ship The Arms of Amsterdam, before the bay of the great Mauritse River, sailing into it about a musket shot from Godyn's Point, into Coenraet's Bay; (because there the greatest depth is, since from the east point there stretches out a sand bank on which there is only from 9 to 14 feet of water), then sailed on, ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various
... helm there!" shouted the skipper to Bonney, who was at the wheel. The old sea-dog, Trull, caught up a tin bucket setting near, and began drumming furiously; while the skipper, diving down the companion way, brought up a loaded musket, which he ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... led up to the Haymarket tragedy, dynamite had always been glorified as the poor man's weapon. It was the power that science had given to the weak to protect them from injustice and tyranny. As powder and the musket had destroyed feudalism, so dynamite would destroy capitalism. In the issue of the Freiheit, March 18, 1883, Most printed an article called "Revolutionary Principles." Many of the phrases are evidently taken from ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... this, young man, and deliver it to the Duchesse de Montmorency." He then fainted from exhaustion, and his captors hastened to relieve him of his cuirass and his cape of buff leather, which was pierced all over by musket balls. While they were thus engaged, the Marquis de Breze,[175] who had been informed of his capture, hastened to the spot, and, taking his hand, bade him be of good cheer; after which he caused him to be placed ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... nomination being in the nature of an accident, though Pierce was in every way a worthy candidate. His family record begins with his father, Benjamin Pierce, who, as a lad of seventeen, stirred by the tidings of the fight at Lexington, left his home in Chelmsford, musket on shoulder, to join the patriot army before Boston. He settled in New Hampshire after the Revolution, and his son Franklin was born there in 1804. He followed the usual course of lawyer, congressman and senator, and served throughout the war with Mexico, rising ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... before he was entirely awake, he found himself running down a wood road in the midst of men who were panting from the first effects of speed. His can teen banged rhythmically upon his thigh, and his haversack bobbed softly. His musket bounced a trifle from his shoulder at each stride and made his cap feel uncertain ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... sensation of his feet, he knew that he was going up hill; and if he but went upward, he cared not whither he went. The rain gushed through, where the lightning pierced the cloud, in drops like musket balls. He was drenched to the skin in a moment; dazzled and giddy from the flashes; stunned by the everlasting roar, peal over-rushing peal, echo out-shooting echo, till rocks and air quivered alike beneath the continuous ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... and the stranger. They carried the two best rifles, with a supply of powder and bullets. I found that Jack and Timbo had been busily employed in manufacturing a sort of infernal machine for the destruction of wild beasts. They had selected a musket with a large bore, and they proposed using this as a sort of spring-gun. Jack told me that while we had been away, a huge hyena had been seen in the neighbourhood, and as they are cunning animals and not easily overtaken, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... loaded a heavy musket, and placing himself at one hundred yards from the mark, fired, and the ball lodged in the center, amid the applause of ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... hands and ply it with desperate energy. Yet in spite of our utmost exertions when the attack came we had only succeeded in throwing up a slight embankment, which was high enough to give good protection against musket balls to the man squatting down in the ditch from which the earth had been thrown; but on the outside, where there was no ditch, it was so low that a battle line could march over it without halting. ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... the Guards and blowing up people at Court. He made the Guards, both horse and foot, perform their evolutions before him; he examined their barracks, clothes, arms, and accoutrements, and had a musket brought to him, that he might show them the way to use it in some new sort of exercise he wanted to introduce; in short, he gave a great deal of trouble and made a fool of himself. He was very angry with Lord de Saumarez ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... upon them. The English loss was 34 killed and wounded, while 250 of the Spaniards were slain, and three of their colours captured. Among the wounded on the English side was the very noble knight Sir Philip Sidney, who was shot by a musket-ball, ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... making for, when he said that fire-arms would be the end of all your old knights and gentlemen in armour, that hewed down unarmed innocents as if they had been sheep. Gunpowder is your true leveller—dash physical strength! A boy's a man with a musket ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... and closing both eyes. I confess that my blood stood on tip-toe; but what was death to the loss of that jam-bucket, let alone everyone's apparel which everyone had so generously loaned? We kept on hauling silently. Out of the corner of my eye I beheld the planton—now on both knees, musket held to his shoulder by his left arm and pointing unflinchingly at us one and all—hunting with his right arm and hand in his belt for cartridges! A few seconds after this fleeting glimpse of heroic devotion had penetrated my considerably heightened ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... dropped down on his knees, bellowing most furiously. Thinking that the animal was mortally wounded, the foremost of the huntsmen walked out in front of the bushes from which they had fired, and began to reload his musket as he advanced, in order to give the animal a finishing shot. But no sooner did the enraged animal see the man advancing, than he sprang up and charged headlong at him. The man threw down his gun, and ran towards the ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... smile right along the level of the sight into your eyes. It was disturbing to Pete's sense of etiquette on such occasions. It threw him off. There are similar instances in history. A soldier once put a musket at Bonaparte's head. Some of Caesar's legionaries once pressed their swords at his breast. Such old hands in human psychology had the presence of mind to smile. And the history of the West is full of examples which have not ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... its narrow, crabbed, crooked streets. Behind this the old pier and the herring boats rocking in the harbour, with their brown sails half set, waiting for the top of the tide. In the distance the broad breast of Contrary Head, and, a musket-shot outside of it, the little rocky islet whereon stand the stately ruins of the noble old Peel Castle. The beach is dotted over with people—old men, in their curranes and undyed stockings, leaning on their sticks; children playing ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... irresistible desire for change; and was still the son of his old self: for if he had nothing to keep him at home, he said (slightly jerking his hat and his thumb towards the window of the room in which the old lady sat, as we stood talking in front of the house), he would clean up his musket, and be off to Texas to-morrow morning. He was one of the very many descendants of Cain proper to this continent, who seem destined from their birth to serve as pioneers in the great human army: who gladly go on from year to year extending ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... in the street had been occasioned by the frantic behavior of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women and children. It proved, however, to have been without ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone, D—— came from the window, whither ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... that portion of the troops which had entered the town, and marched up the main street towards the church, arrived within half-musket shot, they were received with a smart volley, which was fired from the large windows of the church, and which wounded a few of the men. The soldiers were then ordered to make their approaches under cover of the houses; and the artillery being brought up, commenced firing ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... as it should be, a peaceful spot. It was not always so. There was a time when its inhabitants had to toil, so to speak, with the spade in one hand, and the musket in the other. It lies in a hollow of the great rolling plains, and was founded, like many of the eastern towns, in the memorable "1820," when the "British settlers" came out, and a new era ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... of such a Toryism is a conceivable political programme. In France it was created by the division of property consequent on the Revolution. Thiers said truly enough that in the cottage of every French peasant owning an acre of land would be found a musket ready to be used in the defence of property. In fact, the five million peasant proprietors now existing in France represent an eminently conservative class. But, so far as I know, there is not a trace to be found in any of Disraeli's utterances that he wished to ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... military weapons. They had heard much of the formidable arquebuse from their townsmen who had come in the vessel, and they besought Candia "to let it speak to them." He accordingly set up a wooden board as a target, and, taking deliberate aim, fired off the musket. The flash of the powder and the startling report of the piece, as the board, struck by the ball, was shivered into splinters, filled the nativeswith dismay. Some fell on the ground, covering their faces with their hands, and others approached the cavalier with feelings of awe, which ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... to massacre my collection—rather theft!' And dashing upstairs to the drawing-room, he helped himself to a few of his uncle's curiosities: a pair of Turkish babooshes, a Smyrna fan, a water-cooler, a musket guaranteed to have been seized from an Ephesian bandit, and a pocketful of curious but ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... guns started our rifle guns on the hill behind. They opened furiously, and we could hear their shells screeching over our heads, on into this enemy's columns. We did our best, and the Texans did what musket fire they could. The enemy still advanced at a run, but this storm was too much for them. Their columns were torn to pieces, were thrown into hopeless confusion. They had, by this time, gotten half way or more across the field, and they ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... settled in this part of the County Limerick. They were allowed eight acres of land for each man, woman, and child, at 5s. per acre; and the Government engaged to pay their rent for twenty years, and supplied every man with a musket to protect himself. Industrious and frugal, the exiles throve in the land of their adoption; many of them emigrated to America, and only a comparatively small number of families still remain. These, however, preserve, besides ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... and ammunition to be found on board collected, each of his crew being provided with a musket and a brace of pistols, in addition to their cutlasses; he and Desmond also armed themselves. A dozen spare muskets which he had carefully looked to and loaded were arranged, some aft, others midships and forward. There were also two small brass guns, used for signals rather ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... musketry training was not so generally recognized as it is now, especially by the senior officers, who had all entered the service in the days of 'Brown Bess.' Some of them had failed to note the remarkable alteration which the change from the musket to the rifle necessitated in the system of musketry instruction, or to study the very different conditions under which we could hope to win battles in the present day, compared with those under which some of our most celebrated victories ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... up with us," cried the latter, "we are discovered," In the movement of speech he was turning to Archdale, preparatory to dropping measuring eyes upon the musket, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... up and down; sometimes it turned round so quickly that the Tin Soldier trembled; but he remained firm, he did not move a muscle, and looked straight forward, shouldering his musket.'" ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... on his head, With strap beneath his chin, On his legs some battered leggins, And his shoes were old and thin. On his shoulder was a musket, Red with the rust of years, Like himself, the whole equipment, Seemed to justify ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... opportunity to mark the extraordinary richness of the country, and the abundance and luxuriance of its products, both animal and vegetable. Elephants existed in crowds, and ivory was so abundant that a trader was purchasing it at the rate of ten tusks for a musket worth fifteen shillings. Two years later, after effect had been given to Livingstone's discovery, the price had risen ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... little boy called Albert agreed to come with us, but the old man would not allow him—I suppose on account of the poor reward he got for his salt. A young black fellow here said he had found a white man's musket a long way up the creek, and that he had got it in his wurley, and would give it to me for flour, tea, sugar, tobacco, matches, and clothes. I only promised flour, and away he went to get the weapon. Next day he returned, and before reaching the camp began to yell, "White fellow mukkety, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... with an iron ferrule, and accompanied by other villains like himself, to relieve the governesses from their fears, I made his successor sleep in the house with us; and this not being sufficient to remove their apprehensions, I sent to ask M. d'Epinay for a musket, which I kept in the chamber of the gardener, with a charge not to make use of it except an attempt was made to break open the door or scale the walls of the garden, and to fire nothing but powder, meaning only to frighten the thieves. This was certainly the least precaution a man indisposed ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of Jan. 18, Company A was on picket duty. It had been raining incessantly and was so dark that it was with difficulty that pickets could be relieved. Just at daybreak the rebel advance struck the pickets of the Union lines, and several musket shots rang out with great distinctness, and in quick succession, it being the first rebel shot that the boys had ever heard. Then all was quiet for a time. The firing soon commenced again, nearer and more distinct than at first, and thicker and faster as the rebel ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... hour the flames of hell swirled in an endless whirlwind around this "Bloody Angle." Battle line after battle line rushed in never to return. Ned saw an oak tree two feet in diameter gnawed down by musket balls. It fell with a crash, killing and ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... than an artificial ditch; its front facing the river and the heights was composed of strong thick and high palisades planted perpendicularly with gunholes pierced for several pieces of large cannon in it, the river is deep and only fordable at low water at a musket shot before the fort: this made it more difficult to be forced on that side than on its other side of earthworks facing Beauport which had a more formidable appearance and the hornwork certainly ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... after a night's patrol with his seven policemen, Michele went down the road, musket in hand, to meet the Assistant Collector, who had ridden in to quell Tibasu. But, in the presence of this young Englishman, Michele felt himself slipping back more and more into the native, and the tale of the Tibasu Riots ended, with the strain on the teller, in an hysterical ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the narrative. Lamina Foffono, one of my fellow travellers in my former journey from Mandingo to Gambia, hearing that I was come to Jindey, came from Wallia to see me. He told me that Karfa was in health, but had not received the musket I ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... filled, and the sweet-smelling stacks outside properly built and thatched, the scythe was laid aside for the musket, the sickle for the sword and pistol. All up the Valley the drums' rattle drowned the drone of the locusts in the stubble. The women moulded bullets now and filled powder-horns instead of making drinks for the hay-field. There was ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... prove it—you and Colonel Shelby, and the rest of the neighbors who are saying things behind my back that they don't care to say to my face? Why don't you prove your loyalty to the South by shouldering a musket and ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... "come home and go to the war like a man! I will take your place in the Dry Goods store. True, a musket is a little heavier than a yardstick, but isn't it a ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... months of each year at this pleasant retreat; and it was no small calamity to him when the civil war that broke out on the death of Ferdinand, rendered it scarcely safe, in Navarre at least, to live out of musket-shot of a garrison. Sometimes, however, and in spite of the advice of his friends, who urged him to greater prudence, the worthy Riojano would mount his easy-going round-quartered cob, and leave the town for a few hours' rustication at his Retiro. After a time, finding himself unmolested ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... in the hurry of spirits I then was, I did not take for a man; but, indeed, had he been the fiercest of wild beasts, I should have rejoiced at his devouring us both. I scarce perceived he had a musket in his hand before he struck my ravisher such a blow with it that he felled him at my feet. He then advanced with a gentle air towards me, and told me in French he was extremely glad he had been luckily present ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... Hamish. "Allan Breack is a wise man and a kind one, and comes of a good stem. It may be, he can promise for our officers that they will touch me with no infamous punishment; and if they offer me confinement in the dungeon, or death by the musket, to that I ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... boy as ever shouldered a musket, John Ham, of the Seventy-seventh regiment, had sworn never to retreat before the enemy. Faithful to his word, when the handful of pickets were compelled to retreat (and this was the first time that any part of his regiment had ever fallen back before the enemy), ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... I went a good way up the harbour in the boat, and having landed on the north side, we soon after found an old oar of a very singular make, and the barrel of a musket, with the king's broad arrow upon it. The musket-barrel had suffered so much from the weather, that it might be crumbled to dust between the fingers: I imagined it had been left there by the Wager's people, or perhaps by Sir John Narborough. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... mind, I was startled and astonished at its effect on him; for he has always been to me a man who would be calm in a tornado, and who would meet shipwreck or earthquake without a tremor. I have seen him standing in his place in the ranks with his comrades falling all about loading and firing his musket, with no more change in his expression than a cold light of battle in his mild buttermilk eyes. I have seen him wipe from his face the blood of a fellow-soldier spattered on him by a fragment of shell, as if it had been a splash of water from a puddle. But ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... What dignity, what nobleness, what magnanimity! No; men of such a temper cannot die. The Lord goes with them, and the bullet and the steel of the enemy are arrested in their course; they do not dare—how should they dare—to touch them, coming from the musket and the hand of heretics? Dear Caballuco, seeing you, seeing your bravery and your nobility, there come to my mind involuntarily the verses of that ballad on the conquest ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... not in the pages of history, perhaps, to furnish a case like ours. To maintain a post within musket shot of the enemy, for six months together, without and at the same time to disband one army, and recruit another, within that distance of twenty-odd British regiments, is more, probably, than was ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... arrival it was my fortune to be ordered on a sally party, in which my left leg was broke with a musket-ball; and I should most certainly have either perished miserably, or must have owed my preservation to some of the enemy, had not my faithful servant carried me off on his shoulders, and afterwards, with the assistance of ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... Second Kentucky, and an equal, if not greater number of the Third Kentucky were left in the rear because arms could not be gotten for them. In November one or two regiments of the Kentucky brigade were given the Belgian in place of the flint-lock musket, and in December flint-lock guns, altered to percussion locks, were given the other regiments of the brigade. Proper accouterments were as scarce as guns. Cartridge-boxes, knapsacks, canteens, when they could be gotten at all, were very inferior. By ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... look at your writing to-day. It resembles a company of soldiers, each of whom carries his musket to suit himself, this one to the right, that to the left, a third horizontally, a fourth perpendicularly, and all the rest of the letters with broken backs and crooked legs. Just ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... drifted slowly across the river, clinging with one arm thrown over a log, expecting each moment the musket of some startled picket would spit red through the dark, and scarcely daring to guide my unwieldy support by the slightest movement of hand in the water. The splash of motion might mean death in an instant, for keen eyes, sharpened by long night vigils, were on ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... wounded, I couldna say where at the time. When I came to myself and, finding that all was quiet, sat up and felt myself over, I found that it was a musket bullet that had ploughed along the top of my head, and would ha' killed me had it not been that my skull was, as my father had often said when I was a boy, thicker than ordinary. There were dead men lying all about me; but it was a dark night, and as there was ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... as it's much to tell," said that gentleman, somewhat crestfallen. "This here old musket of mine is the hardest shooting gun in our country. I've kilt me a goose with it many a time, at a hundred yards. She's a Harper's Ferry musket that done good service in the Civil War. She's been hanging in my room, ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... awaits his approach with his gun extended: if his aim is not sure, he permits the animal to grasp the barrel, and as he carries it to his mouth (which is his habit) he fires. Should the gun fail to go off, the barrel (that of the ordinary musket, which is thin) is crushed between his teeth, and the encounter soon proves fatal to ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... is covered with dust, But sturdy and stanch he stands; And the little toy soldier is red with rust, And his musket molds in his hands. Time was when the little toy dog was new And the soldier was passing fair, And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue Kissed them and ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... Austrian Government frequently gives its less able-bodied men in times of peace. He had been at home some years, and did not expect to be again called into the service. He liked much better to be in charge of the cave at Oliero than to carry the musket, though he confessed that he liked to see the world, and that soldiering brought one acquainted with many places. He had not many ideas, and the philosophy of his life chiefly regarded deportment toward strangers who visited the cave. He held it an error in most custodians ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... which the fortress was situated, and had begun a bombardment which soon reduced the parapets to ruins. The chief damage had been done by an English ship. Hybati and his men had made the best defense they could, but the gunners were shot down by musket fire from the round tops of the enemy, and when a shell set fire to a thatched house within the fort, the garrison were too much alarmed to attempt to extinguish the flames; the blaze spread, a powder magazine blew up, and the inhabitants, with the greater part of the soldiers, fled ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... smoke rising from camp fires. Just below me is a collection of hospital tents, with a yellow flag elevated on a stick, and moving languidly in the breeze. Two discharged men (I know them both) are just leaving. One is so weak he can hardly walk; the other is stronger, and carries his comrade's musket. They move slowly along the muddy road toward the depot. The scenery is full of breadth, and spread on the most generous scale (everywhere in Virginia this thought fill'd me.) The sights, the scenes, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... know about them? Battles and victories, treasons, kings, and beheadings, literary gentlemen, and the like, what have they ever been to her? Granny, did you ever hear of General Wolfe? Your mother may have seen him embark, and your father may have carried a musket under him. Your grandmother may have cried huzza for Marlborough; but what is the Prince Duke to you, and did you ever so much as hear tell of his name? How many hundred or thousand of years had that toad lived who was in the coal at the ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... Carewe, who sat upon the veranda consulting a brown Principe, and less that the intended insult was accomplished. For an expression of a vindictive nature was precipitated in that quarter so simultaneously that the bang of the piano-lid and the curse were even as the report of a musket and the immediate cry ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... were simply ignorant. I knew all these facts, because I have passed a part of every year since 1847 in Paris; because I walked along the Boulevards on the 20th of December 1851, and saw the walls of every house, from the Bastille to the Madeleine, covered with the marks of musket-balls; because I heard in every society of the thousands who had been massacred, and of the tens of thousands who had been deportes; but the untravelled English, and even the travelled English, except the few ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... no Indian tongue of which he knew a word was also quickly made clear. They were not white Indians, though they were taller and heavier than the Indians of the Yukon basin. Five of them carried the old-fashioned, long-barreled Hudson Bay Company musket, and in the hands of the sixth was a Winchester rifle which Smoke knew ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... with me, among men Like the dark spirits of your haunted dreams,— Suspect all eyes, all voices, every footstep,— Sleep on the grass, drink of the torrent, hear By night the sharp hiss of the musket-ball Whistling too near your ear,—a fugitive Proscribed, and doomed mayhap to follow me In the path leading ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Alexis St Martin; he was a Canadian, and about eighteen years of age, of good constitution, robust, and healthy. He had been engaged in the service of the American Fur Company as a voyageur, and was accidentally wounded by the discharge of a musket, on the 9th of June, 1822. The charge, consisting of powder and duck-shot, was received in his left side; he being at a distance of not more than one yard from the muzzle of the gun. The contents entered posteriorly, and in an oblique direction, forward and inward, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... damn it, Lieutenant, they will not let us fight. They ordered us to retreat before a musket was fired." ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... was only two natives killed; one was shot in the dusk of the evening, two nights before the people surrendered, by one of the centinels, who had his musket twice beat out of his hand from the natives pelting our party with large stones; but the instant he was shot, some of his friends rushed in and carried ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... he frequently exclaims, with all the energy of a discoverer,—a fact! that men in these ages prayed, and had a religious faith. Our churches and chapels are not facts. The control—none the worse for being exercised without pike or musket—which the religious public, meeting in that very Exeter Hall, have over the measures of government, and all political transactions,—is not a fact. Were he writing, some centuries hence, the history of this our age, he would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... tankard; above him hung an engraving of the "wonderfully fat boar formerly in the possession of Mr. Fattem, grazier." To his left rose the dingy form of a thin, upright clock in an oaken case; beyond the clock, a spit and a musket were fastened in parallels to the wall. Below those twin emblems of war and cookery were four shelves, containing plates of pewter and delf, and terminating, centaur-like, in a sort of dresser. At ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... leather breaks, and the motion of continuity yields. A certain quantity of water flows through a chink, and so far the motion of greater congregation predominates over that of continuity; but if the chink be smaller, it yields. If a musket be charged with ball and powdered sulphur only, and the fire be applied, the ball is not discharged, in which case the motion of greater congregation overcomes that of matter; but when gunpowder is used, the motion of matter in the sulphur ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Alive in this Year Forty-three, able and willing to do his work. In dim old centuries, with William Rufus, William of Ipres, or far earlier, he began; and has come down safe so far. Catapult has given place to cannon, pike has given place to musket, iron mail-shirt to coat of red cloth, saltpetre ropematch to percussion-cap; equipments, circumstances have all changed, and again changed: but the human battle-engine in the inside of any or of each of these, ready still to do battle, stands there, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... duck gun on his shoulders, or laying down beneath some shady tree poring over the same wild legends when abroad. His aunt could make nothing of him, and nobody else took the trouble. The curate, indeed, tried to teach him once or twice, but he disconcerted the old man so by discharging his musket at an old wig, hanging by the wall in the midst of a lecture on the propriety of going to school, that he gave ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... firm, and with pike and musket repelled the attack; and after hard fighting Pappenheim was obliged to fall back, setting fire as he retired to the village of Podelwitz. The smoke of the burning village drifted across the plain, and was useful to the Swedes, as under ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... receive in defence of thy country and thy honour?" On the youth's reply, "I have no other resolve," arms were presented, drums rolled, and the senior officer girded the new soldier with his sword, and placed his musket in his hand to the accompaniment of moral formulas. The young man then made a solemn promise not to disgrace his comrades by any crime or want of application to his duties. Led to his place in the ranks, he presented arms, each brigade marched away, led by its brigadier, and the ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... combat but a single end Inspires the formidable to contend. Not by the raw recruit's ambition fired, By whom foul blows, though harmless, are admired; Not by the coward's zeal, who, on his knee Behind the bole of his protecting tree, So curves his musket that the bark it fits, And, firing, blows the weapon into bits; But with the noble aim of one whose heart Values his foeman for he loves his art The veteran debater moves afield, Untaught to libel as untaught to yield. Dear foeman ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... comfortable, that, with the exception of curtains and windows, I was nearly as well off in this absolutely naked lazaretto as in my lodgings in Paris. My meals were served with much pomp; two grenadiers, with bayonets at their musket-ends, escorted them; the staircase was my dining-room, the landing did for table and the lower step for a seat, and when my dinner was served, they rang a little bell as they withdrew, to warn me to seat myself at table. Between my meals, when I was neither writing nor reading, nor busy with ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... than that of Revere. "This offer, extraordinary as it was, we could by no means refuse," remarks Henderson, who shed tears of gratitude as he proffered his sincere thanks and wrung the brave messenger's hand. Equipped with "a good Queen Anne's musket, plenty of ammunition, a tomahawk, a large cuttoe knife [French, couteau], a Dutch blanket, and no small quantity of jerked beef," Cocke on April 10th rode off "to the Cantuckey to Inform Capt Boone that we were on the road." The fearful apprehensions ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... Red-coats charged, our boys ran at the first crack of a gun. They ran so well that they all got away except one little fellow who had a game leg. He stumbled and fell in a hole. A big British soldier raised a musket to brain him. The little fellow looked up and cried: 'All right. Kill away, ding ye—ye ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... Arnold advanced with the utmost intrepidity, along the St. Charles, against the battery. The alarm was immediately given, and the fire on his flank commenced, which, however, did not prove very destructive. As he approached the barrier he received a musket ball in the leg which shattered the bone, and he was carried off the field to the hospital. Morgan rushed forward to the battery at the head of his company, and received from one of the pieces, almost at its mouth, a discharge of grape shot which killed only ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... had overlooked one difference between her own farm and a military encampment. She had not proceeded a dozen yards before a figure apparently started out of the ground beneath her, and, levelling a bayoneted musket across her ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... singing in the Great Dismal Swamp, There are the greenish waters, the resinous odor, the plenteous moss, the cypress-tree, and the juniper-tree; Northward, young men of Mannahatta, the target company from an excursion returning home at evening, the musket-muzzles all bear bunches of flowers presented by women; Children at play, or on his father's lap a young boy fallen asleep, (how his lips move! how he smiles in his sleep!) The scout riding on horseback over the plains west of the Mississippi, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... be understood that Captain Trevor lived at this time with his family in a strong bourge or tower, situated by the river side, near the Kuzzilbash quarter, which, on the west, is wholly distinct from the remainder of the city. Within musket-shot, on the opposite side of the river, in the direction of the strong and populous village of Deh Affghan, is a fort of some size, then used as a godown, or storehouse, by the Shah's commissariat, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... where the road cross'd I noted that many men and horses had lately pass'd hereby to westward, and, by their footmarks, at a great speed. A little further, and I came on a broken musket flung against the hedge, with a nauseous mess of blood and sandy hairs about the stock of it; and just beyond was a dead horse, his legs sticking up like bent poles across the road. 'Twas here that my blood went cold on a sudden, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... and a leg of the horseman, and protect him when riding through the brush. This apron was called the armas. Their offensive arms were the lance, which they managed with great dexterity on horseback, the broadsword, and a short musket, carried in a case. Costanso, who was an officer of the regular army, bears testimony to the unceasing labor of the presidial soldiers of California on this march, and says they were men capable of enduring much fatigue, obedient, resolute, and ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... that fighteth for us but only thou O God," responds the congregation. The compilers of the Prayer Book evidently blundered, unless they secretly felt that the Lord of hosts was used up, and not worth a keg of gunpowder or an old musket. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... and I'd just whipped a quid in my mouth and leaned atop of my musket for forty winks after dinner. The second-timers was codding afront of me, and 2001 and the young chap as was dying of the consumption was wheeling and filling ahead. Well, up comes the governor right ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... if there was any lead in the gun!" said Joe. "I drew the bullets out yesterday, and forgot to put them in again. But no matter—he can't run through the snow—I'll kill him with the butt of my musket." ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... balls, except round shot and musket-balls," answered the first lieutenant. "For my part, if I'm asked the use of a ship-of-war, I should say that it is to be afloat, looking after the interests of the country. I don't know, however, since the Government have thought fit to shake hands with the French and Spaniards, and to ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... The shrilling girls sit here between school hours, And play at What's my thought like? while the boys, With whom the age chivalric ever bides, Pricked on by knightly spur of female eyes, Climb high to swing and shout on perilous boughs, Or, from the willow's armory equipped 260 With musket dumb, green banner, edgeless sword, Make good the rampart of their tree-redoubt 'Gainst eager British storming from below, And keep alive the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... inquired Mr. Archer of himself. 'Courage, the footstool of the virtues, upon which they stand? Courage, that a poor private carrying a musket has to spare of; that does not fail a weasel or a rat; that is a brutish faculty? I to fail there, I wonder? But what is courage? The constancy to endure oneself or to see others suffer? The itch of ill-advised activity: mere shuttle-wittedness, or to be still and patient? ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of whip, he carried in his hand a great gold-headed cane, as large as any footman carries in these days, and his various modes of holding this unwieldy weapon—now upright before his face like the sabre of a horse-soldier, now over his shoulder like a musket, now between his finger and thumb, but always in some uncouth and awkward fashion—contributed in no small degree to the absurdity of his appearance. Stiff, lank, and solemn, dressed in an unusual manner, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... personally encountered the latter. The prisoner, mounted upon a tall steed, had pressed him very closely; nay, the Eletto's victory was not decided, until a musket-shot had stretched the other's horse ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Women and children were alike taught the use of the rifle, that in case of an attack by any blood-thirsty gang, the whole family might resolve itself into a military garrison. Not a tree or stump was left, within musket shot of the house, behind which an ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... Felix had made were about as simple as anything could be. The farm hand possessed an old musket that had been used in the Civil war, and which, muzzleloader that it was, had probably brought down many a plump rabbit when held in the hands of the owner, as well as black ducks in the marshes along the shore of ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... old man, who had seen service in his time. When a lieutenant, he served in the late war with England; and in the gun-boat actions on the Lakes near New Orleans, just previous to the grand land engagements, received a musket-ball in his shoulder; which, with the two balls in his eyes, he carries about with him ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... defense. Having seen and reconnoitered all this, although not with impunity, because the enemy had killed six soldiers with the artillery and wounded Alferez Joan de la Rambla in the knee with a musket-ball, the Spaniards returned to the army. A trifle past noon, a lofty site was reconnoitered, in the direction of the bastion of Cachiltulo, whence the enemy could be attacked and driven from the wall; and Captain Cuevas was ordered to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... edge of the American camp. There they saw the assemblage spread out in all the array of war, with its host of tents, stacked guns, flags, moving men and sentries, and he prepared to strike it as ordered. One of his Indians indiscreetly discharged his musket. The camp was in alarm in an instant. De Salaberry, finding his approach discovered, immediately collected about fifty of his Voltigeurs, with whom and the Indians he pushed into the enemy's advanced camp, consisting of about 800 men, and, catching them in their confusion, ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... knew that the gigantic chief would carry the news to my mother. I no longer fretted at being shut up in the valley, but passed my time merrily with the boys and younger men of the tribe, learning their patois, riding, and practising shooting with the musket, and with bow ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... impetuous men of the South. They are trencher-soldiers who enlisted to make war upon rations, not upon men. They are such as marched through Baltimore, squalid, wretched, ragged, half-naked, as the newspapers of that city report them; fellows who do not know the breech of a musket from its muzzle; white slaves, peddling watches; small-change knaves and vagrants. These are the levied forces which Lincoln arrays as candidates for the honor of being slaughtered by gentlemen such as Mobile sends to battle. Let ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... Two thickets of mastic-trees and arbutus enclosed the road on the right and left. From each tuft of trees protruded three or four musket-barrels. A voice cried out in Greek, "Seat yourselves on the ground!" This operation was the more easy to me, as my legs gave way under me. But I consoled myself by thinking that Ajax, Agamemnon, and the fiery Achilles, if they had found themselves in the same situation, would not have ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... advance of the rest, until I was within about thirty paces of the enemy, who at once noticed me, and, halting, gazed at me, as I did also at them. When I saw them making a move to fire at us, I rested my musket against my cheek, and aimed directly at one of the three chiefs. With the same shot, two fell to the ground; and one of their men was so wounded that he died some time after. I had loaded my musket with four balls. When our side saw ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... sound of tabors, beaten without any attempt at a tune, but with unremitting monotony, then the baying of many hounds more distant. There was a bustle. Many Sheikhs slowly rose; their followers rushed about; some looked at their musket locks, some poised their pikes and spears, some unsheathed their handjars, examined their edge, and then returned them to their sheath. Those who were in the interior of the castle came crowding into the great court, which, in turn, poured ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Spaniardes, the one was a small Barke, and came from Cape de Blanco in 21. degrees, loaden for Woluis in the Condate where they dwelled. In the same ships was a marchant of Cyuill with 47. men, each of their ships hauing two cast peeces, and euery man his musket, but they made no shewe of defence, or offending. There was also found laden in the same ships, sixty thousand drie hides or skins, esteemed to bee worth 6000. duckets as they reported, there were also found two bags with mony, in the one was 11. hundred single ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... veritable jewels, either from their elegance of form, or from the richness of their material, or the grace of their details. We find chefs-d'oeuvre, for instance on a geographical map, on the handle of a chisel, on the barrel of a musket. Our ancestors were not possessed with the same passion for speed and cheapness that possesses us. Industry lost, perhaps, but the arts were the gainers. The aim of the retrospective exhibition is well defined. It is to retrace with broad strokes by means of the reproductions of diagrams and authentic ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... saying anything about it, an unknown country, Nova Zembla; that the capture had taken place in June, 1596; that in that country people were eaten by bears; and that the manner of passing the winter was described on a paper enclosed in a musket-case hanging in the chimney of the wooden house built in the island, and left by the Dutchmen, who were all dead: and that the chimney was built of a barrel with the end knocked out, sunk into ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo |
