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More "Muzzle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inhabits these trees, of which the muzzle is that of the fox, while the tail resembles that of a marmoset, and the ears those of a bat. Its hands are like man's, and its feet like those of an ape. This beast carries its young wherever it goes in a sort of exterior pouch, or large bag. ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... rifle, so leaning slightly forward he drew his right foot back, and with eyes fixed steadily on the little patch amidst the fern, trusted to them and the balance as he flung the long barrel up. Few men can use the rifle as the Canadian bush rancher can, and there was a flash from the muzzle as the heelplate touched his shoulder. Alton had not glanced along the barrel, but the curious thud which he heard in place of the explosion told him that the heavy bullet was smashing through bone and muscle. Then thin ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... Free from attack, in hope of larger spoil From fresh adventures; for the peaceful sea May tempt them, and their goal in safety reached, To dare a second voyage. Round the stag Thus will the cunning hunter draw a line Of tainted feathers poisoning the air; Or spread the mesh, and muzzle in his grasp The straining jaws of the Molossian hound, And leash the Spartan pack; nor is the brake Trusted to any dog but such as tracks The scent with lowered nostrils, and refrains From giving tongue ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... relenting face, and began swiftly to fasten up her already short dress in disregard of the exposure of trim ankles. The agitated Mr. Brown coughed, his uneasy glances straying down the open shaft. He would gladly, and with extreme promptness, have shoved the cold muzzle of his Colt beneath the nose of any man at such moment of trial; but this young girl, with a glance and a laugh, had totally disarmed him. Disturbed conscience, a feeling akin to disloyalty, pricked him, but the temptation left him powerless to resist—those black eyes held him already captive; ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the dog's muzzle, and with difficulty restraining him from burying his teeth in the tramp's shin, "what shall we do with this heroic specimen of manhood? Shall we cart him over to the jail in Port Vigor, or shall we ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... hyar's Whitefoot's muzzle jes' ez nat'ral—an' Me—waal, sir! don't I look proud!" he cried suddenly, with a note of such succulent vanity, so finely flavored a pride, that the stranger could but laugh at ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... did muzzle him. He fought like a little demon, and hit out right and left, and one of his blows gave the Bavarian a black eye. But he was soon mastered by four grown men, and his father flung him with no light hand out from the door of the back ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... thicket to the knight's assistance. It was a large wolf-dog, in strength a mastiff, in form and almost in fleetness a greyhound. Bevis was the noblest of the kind which ever pulled down a stag, tawny coloured like a lion, with a black muzzle and black feet, just edged with a line of white round the toes. He was as tractable as he was strong and bold. Just as he was about to rush upon the soldier, the words, "Peace, Bevis!" from Sir Henry, converted ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... briskly. And the rider turned his head, eyed the girl sharply as she came up, and nodded a cursory greeting. His horse lifted its head to look, decided that it wanted another swallow or two, and lowered its muzzle again ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... animal or an insect, they may, perchance, destroy the life of an ancestor, develops their love and care for every living creature to an almost incredible extent. Not only is there a hospital for invalid animals in every town and village, but their priests always wear a muslin muzzle, (I trust they will pardon the disrespectful expression!) in order to avoid destroying even the smallest animalcule, by inadvertence in the act of breathing. The same fear impels them to drink only filtered water. There are a few millions of Jainas ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... with a cup at the butt and a cork at the muzzle. Skate off now, like an angel, and get it. Bring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... turned the Count jumped and started for the door like a flash. With a quick side step, however, Edestone threw himself between him and the only exit from the room, and giving the fugitive a good poke in the stomach with the muzzle of his gun, said: ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... and ladders and ropes, from the midst of which a vast tube, looking as if it might be a piece of ordnance such as the revolted angels battered the walls of Heaven with, according to Milton, lifted its muzzle defiantly towards the sky. Why, you blessed old rattletrap, said I to myself, I know you as well as I know my father's spectacles and snuff-box! And that same crazy witch of a Memory, so divinely wise and foolish, travels thirty-five hundred miles or so in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "The muzzle of the gun happened to be pointed towards Mr. Davis's garden; and, just as he was in the midst of his military exercises, a stone thrown by William hit him directly in one of his eyes. The fright and pain together made Harry drop the gun, which went off, and in a moment both ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... and stroking the fox skin the while. And Samur, who sat in front of him, cocked his head first on one side, then on the other, and gave him a knowing look. At last the dog stretched out his neck, raised his muzzle into the air and howled, using every variation of key known to him. At this Arni stopped short and stared at him, then bending his head slightly to one side to study him, he ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... was peaceably enough disposed, and, contrary to the usual habit of Asiatics, made no objections to our examining the small cannon he carried. On inspecting the deadly instrument we discovered it to be loaded to the very muzzle, a mixture of pebbles, slugs, and bits of iron being crammed into the barrel over a charge of a couple of ounces of powder. On our inquiring why it was so heavily charged, the man told us with much naivete, that it was to kill nine men, illustrating the method by ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... behind the beast slid back into the hollow and disappeared. Then, from the left of the house came a volley that woke the echoes all round; it was the explosion of the Captain's blunderbuss. The detective ran along the fence to Mr. Terry's beat, and found the veteran reloading his rifle from the muzzle. "Keep your post, Mr. Terry," he cried, "while I run and see what it is you have bagged. I imagine your son-in-law will look after the Captain." Mr. Nash ran down the hill, closely followed by the lawyer, who had come out to see the fun. All the bedroom windows ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... people passin' an' talkin'. But I knew well I was far from home. There is a queer smell upon our cantonments—a smell av dried earth and brick-kilns wid whiffs av cavalry stable- litter. This place smelt marigold flowers an' bad water, an' wanst somethin' alive came an' blew heavy with his muzzle at the chink av the shutter. "It's in a village I am," thinks I to mysilf, "an' the parochial buffalo is investigatin' the palanquin." But anyways I had no desire to move. Only lie still whin you're in foreign parts an' the standin' luck av the British Army will carry ye through. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... impatient. 'That dalled keeper has left an earth open,' remarks one of the riders. His companion points with his whip at the hedge just where it joins the wood. A long slender muzzle is thrust for a moment cautiously over the bare sandy mound under cover of a thorn stole. One sniff, and it is withdrawn. The fox thought also to steal away along the copses, the worst and most baffling course he could choose. Five minutes ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... woman. I can understand what Phillida's about. But Miss what's-her-name, in Fourteenth street, can't explain to save her life, so's you can understand, how she cures people, or what she's about, except to earn money in some way easier than hard work. There comes your uncle, loaded to the muzzle for a dispute," said Aunt Hannah, laughing mischievously as she heard her ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... see my rifle lying on the ground and Joe's big gun standing with its muzzle pointed skyward, leaning against a boulder. They were only six feet away, but six feet were six feet: we could not reach them without climbing up, and that was out of the question—the bear could get there much more quickly ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... her elder daughter in the muzzle department of the Army and Navy Stores the next week. That was one of the annoying aspects of the muzzling order; one met in muzzle shops people with whom neither temperament nor circumstances ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... counter-advancing, trying to gain the advantage of number or position so that the other would be forced to retreat. It became a war of nerves; a game of seeing who had the most guts; who could walk closer to the muzzle of an ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... this wild breed is invariably white, the muzzle being black; the whole of the inside of the ear, and about one-third of the outside, from the tips downward, red; horns white, with black tips, very fine, and bent upward; some of the bulls have a thin, upright mane, about an inch and a half or two inches long. The beef is finely ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... still clinging to the candle, Aunt Olive seized the gun, and, dragging it along by the muzzle, she cried: ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... was that of a Roman centurion—bold, cruel as a hawk's beak, strong-nostriled as a wolf's muzzle. His firm white teeth, as they crunched on the cracker suggested, even stronger, the semblance to a carnivorous animal of prey. A benevolent-looking pair of gold-rimmed glasses sat astride that nose, but Burke noticed that, oddly enough, Trubus did not need them for his reading, nor later ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... sound issued from the mouth of Captain Asher; he was choking to death. In the same second that she heard it Olive thrust the muzzle of the pistol against the side of the man's head and ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... pistol drew and held it muzzle end, "Ye have taken the one from a foe," said he; "will ye take the mate from ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... or cannon, were muzzle-loading. The secondary armament, mounted in tops, cageworks, bulkheads, etc., were breech-loading; but these smaller pieces fell out of favor as time went on owing to reliance on long-range fire and rareness ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... him what to do when the time came. I guess thet thet nigger knew thet ef he didn't play straight he was a dead coon. Tia sat down jest behind him, and every now and then touched his backbone with the muzzle ev her pistol—jest ter show him she was keepin' awake. At the same time he wasn't unwillin', for he hed told us thet he and his dead mate were not Baian's men—they were slaves he had captured from a town he had ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... evening, and I still laboring along, when, over the low hedge to my right, a man on a sorrel mare leap'd easily as a swallow, and alighted some ten paces or less in front of me; where he dismounted and stood barring my path. The muzzle of his pistol was in my face before I could lay ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... wholly gone, and he found himself standing by the ashes of the fire in a state of amazement and stupid terror that left him the helpless prey of anything that chose to happen. Had a muskrat poked its pointed muzzle over a rock, or a squirrel scuttled in that instant down the bark of a tree, he would most likely have collapsed without more ado and fainted. For he felt about the whole affair the touch somewhere of a great Outer Horror ... and his scattered powers had not as yet had time to collect themselves ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... galloped awkwardly a few rods, the branch trailing from his mouth. Then, with the ponderous but sudden shift of bull psychology, indignation rose in his bosom. He stopped himself so short that his fore-hoofs plowed two long furrows in the soft earth; whirled, lifted his muzzle, and bellowed. One fore-hoof tore up the dirt and showered it over his back. He dropped to his knees and rubbed the ground with his neck in sheer abandonment to the joy of his own abandoned wickedness. He ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... chin. His face was broad, but his features were sharp; his cheeks were scorched into a dusky red by two fiery little gray eyes, his nose turned up, and the corners of his mouth turned down, pretty much like the muzzle of ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... muzzle full of dreadful threat, In thy weak hand thou took'st withouten dread; The gentle beast with milk-outstretched teat, As nurses' custom, proffered thee to feed. As one that wondereth on some marvel great, I stood this while amazed at the deed. When thee she saw well filled and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... among the bullocks, now jammed and goring one another at the entrance of a narrow alley. And his shots seemed to be a signal for a general salvo of random musketry. I saw a woman cross the roadway with a rifleman close behind her; he swung up his rifle, holding it by the muzzle, and clubbed her between the shoulders with ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the road. The artillerymen had turned the gun and loaded it with a solid shot. Instantly a wide lane opened through our ranks; the man with the lanyard drew the fatal cord, fire burst from the primer and the muzzle, the long gun sprang up and recoiled, and there seemed to be a demoniac yell in its ear-splitting crash, as the heavy ball left the mouth, and tore its bloody way through the bodies of the struggling ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Jack, Ned and Harry saw Jimmie standing in the street, surrounded by German soldiers wearing the uniforms of Uhlans. Directly behind the lad stood one of the soldiers with the muzzle of a gun pressed against Jimmie's back. Before him an officer stood, apparently administering some form of oath. The three boys could see Jimmie's lips move in response to the prompting of ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... his adversary miserably collapse, his legs grotesquely curving inwards under him,—without even the dignity of death in his fall,—and so sink helplessly like a felled bull to the ground. Still erect, and lowering only the muzzle of his pistol, as a thin feather of smoke curled up its shining side, he saw the doctor and seconds run quickly to the heap, try to lift its limp impotence into shape, and let it drop again with the words, "Right through the ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... his gun out, pressed the muzzle against the prisoner's chest and brought his finger against the trigger slowly ... slowly.... The prisoner turned pale as a corpse; his face lengthened; his eyelids were fixed in a glassy stare. He breathed in agony, his whole body shook as with ague. Blondie kept his gun in the same position ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... when I thought how long that cargo had taken to get on board, it was wonderful how soon they whipped it out of her. When they had stripped her of all they thought worth taking, they ran one of the cannon to the open hatch, loaded it and crammed it full of balls to the muzzle; then they pointed it down the hold and fired it, and were soon on board ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... the close of the Civil War our navy was suffered to fall into neglect and decay. The thirty-seven cruisers, all but four of which were of wood; the fourteen single-turreted monitors built during the war; the muzzle-loading guns, belonged to a past age. By 1881 this was fully realized and the foundation of a new and splendid navy was begun by the construction of three unarmored cruisers—the Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago. Once started, the new navy grew ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... my middle and draw the pistol from its case. I drew and cocked it. Now the tree was coming over, and there, within three feet of my head, was the great brown trunk of the elephant. I placed the muzzle of the pistol within an inch of it and fired. The result was instantaneous. Down sunk the tree again, giving one of my legs a considerable squeeze, and next instant I heard a crashing sound. ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... following the man along the palings with the muzzle of his Deckard, "by the etarnal! 'tis like ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as I have shown, was fond of hunting in his early manhood, and was the owner of an excellent muzzle-loading rifle, which was as good as when his keen eye glanced along the brown barrel and the bullet was buried in the unsuspicious deer, so far away as to be scarcely visible to ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... Hill's strong countenance. It was almost a smile of understanding. "I am—indebted to you—boss," he said, and with the words very calmly he took his revolver by the muzzle and held it out. "I surrender to ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... themselves against the gun's defenders. They would seize that demon of machinery and hurl it over into the gully below. But the doughboys, with bayonets stationed on the sides of the gun, thrust or stabbed them back. No native approached the muzzle of the Gatling and lived to cause further trouble. In as wide an arc as possible Sergeant Hal swung the nose of the piece ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... black belt about his waist. Attached to the belt were at least a dozen weapons: several grenades, a pistol, another pistol with a flaring muzzle, a long knife, a glassy looking tube fitted to a pistol-butt, and a blue-black ugly thing which was shaped like ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... wrong. You don't carry a rifle with the muzzle pointing towards your left ear. Here, give the thing ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... arranged tangentially to an arc of a circle whose center was occupied by the pivot of the gun, and consequently at right angles with the latter. The piece employed was a 6 in. gun, 35 calibers in length. The distance of its muzzle from the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... slave merely for this seemed such a mockery! Day after day sped swiftly by, made up of nothing but this infernal drudgery, and I said to myself—Is this life? But I made up my mind that NEVER WOULD I GIVE MYSELF TONGUE. I clapped a muzzle on my mouth. Had I followed my own natural bent, I should have become expressive about what I had to endure, but I found that expression reacts on him who expresses and intensifies what is expressed. If we break out into rhetoric over a toothache, the pangs are not the easier, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... kneeling in the dust, His holy master had implored, in true Assurance he was heard, he downward thrust A heap of stones. O what things may he do That in the Saviour wholly puts his trust! The stones beyond the use of nature grew; Which rolling to the sandy plain below, Next, neck and muzzle, legs and belly show. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... negroes, was entirely open on one side; on that side a fire is lighted at night, and a person sleeping puts his feet towards it. One night I was awoke by some animal smelling my face, and snuffing strongly; I felt its cold muzzle. I suddenly thrust out my arms, and shouted with all my might; it was frightened, and made off. I do not know whether it was a bear or a panther; but it seemed as tall as a large calf. I slept, of course, no more that night. I put my trust in the Lord, and continued on the ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy
... a mere word to him," said Mowbray; "I believe that he no more realized the fact that you would direct the muzzle of a pistol toward his breast, than that you would stab ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... gun was empty. I had him at the foot of the ladder, not ten feet from the muzzle, and click—nothing doing. The beggar turned and laughed ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... cliff, soon to be joined by the boys' father, tall, gaunt and bearded. His hair, untrimmed for many weeks, was long and snarled. He was nearly barefooted and his clothing hung in tatters. In one hand he carried a rusty old trade gun, (a single-barreled, old-fashioned muzzle loading shotgun), in the other he clutched by its wing a gull that he had recently shot. Following the father came an older lad, perhaps fourteen years of age, little better clothed than his two brothers and as wild and unkempt in appearance ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... spoke he drew a pistol from his pocket and turned the muzzle towards himself,—at which unexpected action there was a hasty movement of surprise, terror ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... circle of seething flame and rolling smoke here, too,—a malodorous neighborhood, around which fatigue-parties are working with averted heads; and among them some surly and unwilling Indians, driven to labor at the muzzle of threatening revolver or carbine, aid in dragging to the flames carcass after carcass of horse and mule, and in gathering together and throwing on the pyre an array of miscellaneous soldier garments, blouses, shirts, and trousers, all more or less hacked and blood-stained,—all of ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... the fire in the twilight, in a somewhat forlorn mood, when the door was pushed ajar, and the muzzle of a gun entered, causing her to start up in alarm, scarcely diminished by the sight of an exultant visage, though the words were, 'Your ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... perhaps suspended for a while; but, if all progress is evidently suspended, recourse must be had to the hook or the forceps. By gentle but continued manipulation much may be done, especially when the muzzle of the puppy can be brought into the passage. As little force as possible must be used, and especially the foetus little broken. Many a valuable animal is destroyed by the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... whispered the Sergeant over my shoulder, "if a scandal was to burst up in the house to-night. Don't be alarmed! I have put the muzzle on worse family difficulties than ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... beat upward against the hatch and ceased. He sprang erect, slid an arm around her and dragged her back—not a second too soon. A gun exploded against the hinges at their feet, blowing one loose. John saw the crevice gaping and the muzzle of a gun pushed through to prise it open. He leaped upon the hatch, pistol ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "God and the Queen!" "God and St. George for England!" sweeping them back by showers of arrows and musket balls, thrusting them down with pikes, hurling grenades from the tops; while the swivels on both sides poured their grape, and bar, and chain, and the great main-deck guns, thundering muzzle to muzzle, made both ships quiver and recoil, as they smashed the round shot through and ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... he howl that Tha heard him and said, 'What is the sorrow?' And the First of the Tigers, lifting up his muzzle to the new-made sky, which is now so old, said: 'Give me back my power, O Tha. I am made ashamed before all the Jungle, and I have run away from a Hairless One, and he has called me a shameful name.' 'And why?' said Tha. ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... he could, went into his house and smelled all around and finally lay down, his muzzle sticking out of ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... at the back of the kitchen with her face in her hands, and Jack was off his horse and stooping by her side with his hand on her shoulder. She kept saying, 'I thought you were——! I thought you were——!' I didn't catch the name. An old single-barrel, muzzle-loader shot-gun was lying in the grass at her feet. It was the gun they used to keep loaded and hanging in straps in a room of the kitchen ready for a shot at a cunning old hawk that they called ''Tarnal Death', and that used to be always ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... sir, I suppose not, unless we got the cook up with a pudding-bag to hold it over the muzzle and catch them again." ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... and deliberate abandon of a big dog courted and caressed by a blazing fire and a soft rug? Man has not the dignity of soul to be so grandly natural. Yet his very pert self-consciousness, the fringed petticoats of affectation which he wears, give him the kennel, the collar, the muzzle, the whip, weapons of power to bring the dog to subjection. And Julian, as he watched Rupert and Mab wrapped in large lethargic dreams, found himself pitying them, as civilized man vaguely pities all other inhabitants of the round world. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... graceful curves we were met by a duck flying close over our heads with noisy quacks. A little farther we came upon the cause of the bird's lively flight in an Indian boy, not above nine years old, paddling a large birch canoe, over the gunwale of which peeped the muzzle of a sanguinary-looking old shot-gun. The diminutive sportsman was for a moment dashed by our sudden and novel appearance, but, from the way he urged his canoe and from the determined set of his dirty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... an adventurer who went to Alaska and laid the foundations of his fortune before the gold hunters arrived. Bringing his fortunes to the States he is cheated out of it by a crowd of money kings, and recovers it only at the muzzle of his gun. He then starts out as a merciless exploiter on his own account. Finally he takes to drinking and becomes a picture of degeneration. About this time he falls in love with his stenographer and wins her heart but not her hand and ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... was empty, the post-trader turned from arranging cans of condensed milk upon an upper shelf to face the sergeant's revolver. He threw up his hands to the level of his ears as though expressing sharp unbelief, and waited in silence. The sergeant advanced until the gun rested on the counter, Its muzzle pointing at the pit of Cahill's stomach. "You or me has got to leave this post," said the sergeant, "and I can't desert, so I ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... could take an old muzzle-loader and knock over plenty of ducks in the city limits, and Chicago wasn't Cook County then, either. You can get them still, but you've got to go to Kankakee and take a hammerless along. And when I started in the packing ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... his head bowed, spoke quietly to the dog at his feet. Rising, Czar laid his soft muzzle on his master's knee and looked up into the homely, world-worn face. Gently, the strange man—so lonely and embittered in the fame that he had won—at a price—stroked the brown head. "Your mother knew best, Aaron," he said slowly, without looking at his companion. ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... feel anything," I whispered; as with the cold sweat pouring from me I placed the muzzle within an inch of her forehead and began to press the trigger. My God! yes, I actually began to press the trigger softly and steadily, for I wished to ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... wolfhound raised its head and stared into the ashes also, as if it saw something there that no man saw, for the bristles lifted on its neck, and it whined a little. O'Donnell dropped his hand to the thin muzzle, and the dog was quiet again. But after that the men stared at the ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... the winged fleet was circling almost overhead at this moment and seemed tantalizing near. With a twist of the wheel Mowrey swung the muzzle of his gun up a couple of inches and gave the signal again to fire. Following the shot for a moment the frenzied gunner was elated to note that the machine just above sagged suddenly to one side. Like a bird with a broken pinion it swerved drunkenly in its ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... the black dog, stretched at his wife's feet, muzzle on paws and blinking yellow eyes, growled discontentedly at the noise. Mrs. Travers laughed a faint, bright laugh, that seemed to escape, to glide, to dart between her white teeth. D'Alcacer, concealing his amazement, was looking down at her gravely: and after a slight gasp, she said ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... boat was so near that we were soon alongside and looking into her. There were three dead, two badly wounded, one slightly wounded man, and one unhurt man in her. The latter looked at us without the slightest fear, even when Tepi, picking up a carbine, thrust the muzzle of it almost into his face. Niabon gently took the weapon from Tepi's hand, laid it down and waited for me to question ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... brought the day's bag home at night. Prominent figures there were two brothers Stevenson, Willie and Jamie, known for twenty miles round as the "fox-hunters," known to us, after the southern sporting slang had been brought among us by our neighbour Captain Barclay, as "Pad-the-hoof" and "Flash-the-muzzle[7]" The fox-hunting was on foot, but let no mounted hunter sneer. The haunts of the game were continuous woods and bogs, hard to ride and from which no fox could be forced to break. "Pad-the-hoof" looked no ignoble sportsman as he cheered his great slow-hounds through the thicket, and ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... strides brought him up to the mare, Then they rushed to wild shouting through a whirl of blown air; Then Gavotte died to nothing; Soyland came once again Till his muzzle just reached to the knot on ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... to be fully a finger-nail high.—[My own expression, and a quite happy one. I said to the Duke: "Your Grace, they're just about finger-milers!" "How do you mean, m'lord?" "This. You notice the stately General standing there with his hand resting upon the muzzle of a cannon? Well, if you could stick your little finger down against the ground alongside of him his plumes would just reach up to where your nail joins the flesh." The Duke said "finger-milers was good"—good and exact; and he afterward used it several times himself.]—Everywhere ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... reject, but if it accompanies words, and together with an ode feasts and delights our reason, we gladly introduce it. And we believe the famed Marsyas was punished by Apollo for pretending, when he had nothing but his single pipe, and his muzzle to apply to his lips, to contend with the harp and song of the god. Let us only take care that, when we have such guests as are able to cheer one another with philosophy and good discourse we do not introduce anything that may rather prove an uneasy hindrance ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the town, that the countess seated herself on a mossy bank in the shade. Wilhelm sat down beside her on the gnarled root of a tree; Anne was sent home, to return in two hours' time, but Fido was allowed to remain. He was a silvery-white sheepdog with a sharp muzzle, stiff little pointed ears, and a bushy tail curling tightly over his back. He had attached himself to Wilhelm from the first moment, and gave vent to his delight when caressed by having a severe attack of asthmatic ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... took a look at the guns with his glass, and I knew he must have been thinking of how he stood tied to the muzzle of one of them, for he gave a sort of shudder as he closed his glass with ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... that swarmed so with that kind of game. They were running in all directions, and often even right into our lines, for they are stupid animals when frightened, as they then were by the noise our men made; and I managed to kill one with the muzzle of my musket, and sold it to the captain of ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... to sally forth. They plunged into the water, and swimming on each side, got at length right before the animal, and then seized the reins. Thus they continued swimming on each side, like tritons, holding the muzzle of Sphinx, while I, sallying forth astride upon the creature's back, steered forward on our voyage to the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... cut loose with that thing," Loudons said, looking apprehensively at the brass-rimmed black muzzle that was covering them from the belfry. "I wonder if we ought to—Oh-oh, ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... excitedly halted within pistol range. Dell fingered the trigger in vain. "Throw in a cartridge!" breathlessly suggested Sargent. The lever clicked, followed by a shot, which tore up the sod within a few feet of the muzzle of the rifle! ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... pensioner, lent me his piece and loaded it to me. Not being well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me, as it is every man's duty not to throw his precious life into jeopardy. A bench was set before the sessions-house fire, which bleezed brightly. My spirits rose, and I wondered, in my bravery, that a man like me should be afraid of anything. Nobody was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... guns in the streets. A small swivel, used by the younger population of Salem to celebrate Christmas and the Fourth of July, had been planted to receive us: about eighteen inches long, it was loaded to the muzzle, and mounted in the public square by being propped against a stick of fire wood. It was not fired, however, for the man deputed to perform that important duty, somewhat astounded by the sudden dash into the town, dropped the coal of fire with which he should have touched it off, and ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... around you, as must have been evident to the dullest, like the care-burthened honey-fly, possessed with the fixed desire to hide his murmurs in the rose. When for months I have been, in fact, like a dog with his nose on your footprints, asking nothing but to lie down at your feet with his muzzle on your shoe." ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... while others began to collect them in a large stack, properly disposed for burning, as close to the iron-grate as they could be piled. Fire was speedily obtained from one of their guns, and Hobbie was already advancing to the pile with a kindled brand, when the surly face of the robber, and the muzzle of a musquetoon, were partially shown at a shot-hole which flanked the entrance. "Mony thanks to ye," he said, scoffingly, "for collecting sae muckle winter eilding for us; but if ye step a foot nearer ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... yell of rage from the Mexicans as the machine gun barked forth. With the muzzle describing an arc of several degrees, many of the flankers were hit. The others threw themselves flat on the ground to escape its ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... it! The neutralizer may be all right, in its way, but personally I'm rather strong for these!" He laid a hand on the breech of the Lewis machine-gun mounted in the gallery, its grim muzzle pointed out through a slit in the colloid screen. "The six guns we've got aboard, in strategic positions, look like good medicine to me! Wouldn't it be the correct thing to call the gun-crews and limber up a little? These chaps aren't ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... been the moment before, the kiss of the cold muzzle turned his purpose to ice. The desire to live was all-compelling. Choking, gasping, his eyes rolling appealingly, he nodded assent. With the revolver at his back he ran down the corridor, and, as he ran, without further direction, fumbled frantically at ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... the heat blazing and dancing across objects, and the pale brassy dome of the sky cloudless over all, the sun a glaring white disc with its edges almost melting into the sky. Job held his gun carelessly ready (it was a double-barrelled muzzle-loader, one barrel choke-bore for shot, and the other rifled), and he kept an eye out for dingoes. He was saving his horse for a long ride, jogging along in the careless Bush fashion, hitched a little to ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... to be thought of that he should give up his Lankester, and the first thing to be done was to muzzle Furnival's young men. I went to Furny the next day and told him plainly that his joke had gone too far, that he knew what Burton was and that it wasn't a bit of good trying ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... iniquitous vitality. But at the end of a quarter of an hour, dropping his eyes, he perceived a small pug-dog squatted upon the path near his feet—a diminutive but very perfect specimen of its interesting species. The pug was sniffing at the fashionable world, as it passed him, with his little black muzzle, and was kept from extending his investigation by a large blue ribbon attached to his collar with an enormous rosette and held in the hand of a person seated next to Newman. To this person Newman transferred his attention, and immediately perceived that ...
— The American • Henry James
... Already, while still in knickerbockers, he was beginning to show how entirely he was the son of his father. For the older Devereau had grown up from a handsome, dark-skinned, reticent boy into a moody and cynical skeptic who, at the age of thirty, had put the muzzle of his own revolver against his temple and pulled the trigger, because as he phrased it, "he was tired of the game." The skepticism was already there in Garry Devereau's slow smile. And Caleb often felt that ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... an apparatus with straps and a sort of little pocket, in which the muzzle of the gun went, so that it hung from the saddle down in front of their leg; the stock of the gun being secured by a strap against the pommel of the saddle, at the other side of which was their revolver-holster. This was an inconvenient ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... have any force as a precedent or as an estoppel (Johnson, "The Southern Presbyterians," pp. 335, 359). But it is natural, no doubt, that exscinding acts should look different when examined from the muzzle instead of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... appearance he seemed startled, too, and he advanced the muzzle of the gun and took a stride ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... service. We conceive the perfection of precision and range in rifle-practice to have been attained in the American target-ride, carrying a slug or cone of one ounce weight,—the gun itself weighing not less than thirty pounds,—and provided with a telescope-sight, and Clark's patent muzzle. At three-quarters of a mile this weapon may be said to be entirely trustworthy for an object of the size of a man, and to have force enough at that distance to disable three men. But it is obvious that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... found that he was peering into the muzzle of a double-barrelled gun, probably loaded with buck-shot. The ranchman was pointing it directly at his head, with both triggers cocked. Brown saw he was in earnest, and asked if that was the charter. The ranchman replied that ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... equipment also littered the landscape. Within our own area there were likewise grim reminders of the fight. Here and there a limb protruded through the wall of a newly cut trench, whilst in other places a piece of biscuit box, or a rifle stuck into the earth muzzle down, both bearing a name written in indelible pencil, indicated the last resting place of some ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... under his canvas shell and started to clean it out. It was what was called a bulldog pistol, because it had a blunt, short muzzle. Abe's forefinger was long enough to use as a ramrod for it. But before he began operations he snapped the trigger and, to his astonishment, ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... a big circle of seething flame and rolling smoke here, too,—a malodorous neighborhood, around which fatigue-parties are working with averted heads; and among them some surly and unwilling Indians, driven to labor at the muzzle of threatening revolver or carbine, aid in dragging to the flames carcass after carcass of horse and mule, and in gathering together and throwing on the pyre an array of miscellaneous soldier garments, blouses, shirts, and trousers, all more or less hacked and blood-stained,—all of no ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... don't you fret yourself on that score. I ain't made Pip a gentleman, and Pip ain't a going to make you a gentleman, not fur me not to know what's due to ye both. Dear boy, and Pip's comrade, you two may count upon me always having a gen-teel muzzle on. Muzzled I have been since that half a minute when I was betrayed into lowness, muzzled I am at the present time, muzzled ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... had something approaching the human form, though he had the neck, ears, and muzzle of a dog, set himself to bark furiously at Rogero, to make him turn off to the right, and reenter upon the road to the gay city; but the brave chevalier exclaimed, "That will I not, so long as I can use this ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning—perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... back, and with eyes fixed steadily on the little patch amidst the fern, trusted to them and the balance as he flung the long barrel up. Few men can use the rifle as the Canadian bush rancher can, and there was a flash from the muzzle as the heelplate touched his shoulder. Alton had not glanced along the barrel, but the curious thud which he heard in place of the explosion told him that the heavy bullet was smashing through bone and muscle. Then thin smoke drifted into his eyes, and ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... parts of iron pots. An officer of the W.A.F.F.'s, in a fight in the bush in South Nigeria, had one of these things fired at him from a distance of fifteen feet. He told me all that saved him was that when the native pulled the trigger the recoil of the gun "kicked" the muzzle two feet in the air and the native ten feet into the bush. I bought a Tower rifle at the trade price, a pound, and brought it home. But although my friends have offered to back either end of the gun as being the more destructive, we have found no one ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... into the sky was a huge, illuminated figure clad in a spacesuit. The transparent helmet glowed red, then blue, green, yellow, and finally red again. In one colossal hand was a supermodern pistol. Colored flame spurted from the muzzle. ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... enough to know that the safest way to carry a loaded gun is with the muzzle pointed to the ground, the butt resting against the back of the right shoulder, with the arm akimbo, thus forming a rest for ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... customers. When he saw Starlight's revolver, his face changed quick enough, but he made a rush to his drawer where he kept his revolver, and tried to make a fight of it, only we were too quick for him. Starlight put the muzzle of his pistol to his forehead and swore he'd blow out his brains there and then if he didn't stop quiet. We had to use the same words over and over again. Jim used to grin sometimes. They generally did the business, though, so of course he was quite helpless. We ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... silence), and she trembled too as if she were in a fever. At this he could not contain his own tears, but sat down on the ground and sobbed for a great while, but between his sobs kissing her quite as if she had been a woman, and not caring in his grief that he was kissing a fox on the muzzle. ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... "but she loveth the younger best. So she shall go with a lifter's dower, my turquoise-studded rein, My broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups twain." The Colonel's son a pistol drew and held it muzzle-end, "Ye have taken the one from a foe," said he; "will ye take the mate from a friend?" "A gift for a gift," said Kamal straight; "a limb for the risk of a limb. Thy father has sent his son to me, I'll send my son to him!" With that he whistled his only ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... a cautious scratching and another piece dropped and broke on the floor. Now he knew a living agency was at work. Job growled. Ambrose clutched his muzzle. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the height of pleasure to a Blackfoot was to ride a good horse and run buffalo. When bows and arrows, and, later, muzzle-loading "fukes" were the only weapons, no more buffalo were killed than could actually be utilized. But after the Winchester repeater came in use, it seemed as if the different tribes vied with each other in wanton slaughter. Provided with one of these weapons ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... like carpet-bags, they swallow any thing. The lizard has its jaws fixed; so has the blindworm. Snakes have a long tongue, split for some distance, and made double-forked; the blindworm's tongue has nothing but a little notch upon the tip. It has a smooth round muzzle, with which it can easily wind its way under dry soil to hybernate; or else it takes a winter nap in any large heap of dead leaves. It comes out early in the spring; for it can bear more cold than reptiles generally like, and it is found all over Europe, from Sweden to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... just as she had left it, save that Camp stood on the tiger-skin before the fire, his fore-paws and his great, grinning muzzle resting on the arm of Richard's chair. Camp whined a little. Mechanically the young man raised his hand and pulled the dog's long, drooping ears. His face was still dead white, and there were lines under his eyes and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... as to their amazement, Harvey turned the muzzle of the pistol toward his face. It wabbled aimlessly. Even at such short range he had the feeling that he would miss altogether and looked over his shoulder to see if there was a picture or anything else on the wall that might be damaged by the ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... fellow did was to wait till the Boche next door was well asleep, then slowly remove his rifle, then fasten on his throat with a grip which Hirondelle understood, and finally to overpower the Boche till he was ready enough to crawl out at the muzzle of Hirondelle's rifle." ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... It was communicated to Sir George Prevost that the English fleet would attack the Americans that day. Commodore Downie called all his officers on board, and communicated to each the order of battle, and his last words were, "Lieutenant M'Ghee will lead into action; let it be close quarters, MUZZLE to MUZZLE." He doubled a point of the American coast with a fair wind, and came in full view of the enemy lying at anchor; the signal was then given to bear up, and commence the action. Mr. M'Ghee carried ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Blake raises his right arm, and they see the muzzle of a revolver; and now a louder and more angry cry comes from ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... beating down the snow under his feet, until it was hard enough to sustain him, and, after about two miles of such difficult traveling, came upon fairly level ground. Here, hunting about, he surprised several rabbits in their deep nests, and killed them with blows of his rifle muzzle. ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... not that they have any of the grotesque terribleness of German invention; they might have been made infinitely uglier with small pains, but it is their veritableness which makes them awful. They have triangular heads with sharp beaks or muzzle; and short, rather thick bodies, with bony processes down the back like those of sturgeons; and small wings spotted with orange and black; and round glaring eyes, not very large, but very ghastly, with an intense delight in biting ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... stake and chain, and a lion exactly similar, except that he was as red as a rose. But he had not a rose's sweetness, for he snarled and leaped with fury at the end of his chain, and his flashing teeth under his red muzzle looked like the ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... lawn and the dark, full-leaved trees that lay beyond the road. A flock of sparrows were rowing in sharp tones among the leaves. The house-dog picked himself up lazily and walked over to Thornton, placing a wet muzzle on his trousers. The place was so peaceful, such a nest of an old Puritan! And here were the demons that the divine had warred against holding his home as their arsenal. When he permitted himself to turn his face to the girl at ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... reasoning of the officer and soldier, "If these men wait for me to close with them, it means death. I will kill, but I will undoubtedly be killed. At the muzzle of the gun-barrel the bullet can not fail to find its mark. But if I can frighten them, they will run away. I can shoot them and bayonet in the back. Let us make a try at it." The trial is made, and one of the two forces, at some stage of the advance, perhaps only ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... see no other way of inducing him to stop Christophe's polemics. Their perception was justified. Waldhaus at once declared that Christophe was beginning to weary him: and he withdrew his support. All the staff of the Review then tried hard to silence Christophe! But it were as easy to muzzle a dog who is about to devour his prey! Everything they said to him only excited him more. He called them poltroons and declared that he would say everything—everything that he ought to say. If they wished ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... one bear can get on another is with his jaws across the other's muzzle, when he can crush the whole face in. Once he very nearly got me so, and this scar on the side of my nose is the mark of his tooth; but he just failed to close his jaws in time. And, as it proved then, it is a dangerous game to play, for it ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... black muzzle of the gun against Theodore's body. The fellow cringed. The sweat stood out on his forehead. He dropped to his knees and, trembling with fear, fumbled with ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... himself to another slice of beef, "you are in the wrong box—planted in Queer Street, as we say in London; for if you care a d—n about my daughter's respectability, you will never muzzle her father on suspicion of theft—and so there's tit for tat, my ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an' the beasts be cared for, thine own muzzle may take its chance of a swill. Willy, see to the horses. Now for business. Master has been waiting for you these three hours: make what excuse you may. Heigh-ho! my old skull will leak out my brains ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... least, not until I have seen how the beast is likely to take it. Just put your head down close to his muzzle, chevalier. Go slow, please, and keep your head ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... is no use your looking at those ducks. I am not going to roast them if no one comes; I have got half a one left from dinner." After sitting quiet for half an hour the dog suddenly raised himself into a sitting position, with ears erect and muzzle pointed towards the door; then he gave a low whine, and his tail began ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... could on the instant command, the credulous Dudley placed the thin piece of silver between his teeth, and, with a pressure that denoted the prodigious force of his jaws, caused it to assume a beaten and rounded shape. He then slily dropped the battered coin into the muzzle of his gun, taking care to secure its presence, until he himself should send it on its disenchanting message, by a wad torn from the lining of part of his vestments. Supported by this redoubtable auxiliary, the superstitious but still courageous borderer followed his companion, whistling ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... suddenly promoted him to a post where he would be powerless. One day he was brought to Peking as Grand Councillor and President of the Board of Foreign Affairs, and ordered to hand over all army matters to his noted rival, the Manchu Tieh Liang. The time had arrived to muzzle him. His last phase ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... the bank-note that moment, he must shoot him; holding his pistol at the same time very near to his breast. Jones instantly caught hold of the fellow's hand, which trembled so that he could scarce hold the pistol in it, and turned the muzzle from him. A struggle then ensued, in which the former wrested the pistol from the hand of his antagonist, and both came from their horses on the ground together, the highwayman upon his back, and ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... interrupted. "The horse with the muzzle. I remember, dear, what I said, but I hope Morris ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... a yard. Again the wind moaned up through the forest. No other sound whatever broke the night's stillness. Once more a disc of light shone straight into my eyes, though now from a distance of a few inches only. I saw the muzzle of a pistol glitter above the light—I knew now that the electric torch ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... been to me; how she's tried to spare me. And she knew, of course, what a state of horror I'd be in. She knew I'd rush off to her at once and try to stop it. So she never gave me a hint of anything, and she even managed to muzzle Susy Suffern—you know Susy is the one of the family who keeps me informed about things at home. I don't yet see how she prevented Susy's telling me; but she did. And her first letter, the one I got up at Bangkok, ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... God and man, and every living creature of all flesh: or my memory fails me with age. In Exodus God commanded that the cattle should share the sweet blessing of the one day's rest. Moreover He 'forbade to muzzle the ox that trod out the corn. 'Nay, let the poor overwrought soul snatch a mouthful as he goes his toilsome round: the bulk of the grain shall still be for man.' Ye will object perchance that St. Paul, commenting ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... of the brake and await his orders, he quickly made his way across the space and ascended the steps. Passing along the gallery he knocked at the front door. There was no response. He repeated his knock. Then the window beside it opened suddenly, and he was confronted with the double-muzzle of a long ducking-gun. Glancing instinctively along the barrels, he saw at their other extremity the bright eyes, brilliant color, and small set mouth of a remarkably handsome girl. It was the fact, and to the credit of his training, that he paid more attention to the eyes than ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Chattahoochee, where a ravine entered the river at a very acute angle, forming a narrow ridge between river and ravine, so that by cutting down into the ground and throwing the dirt out toward the ravine, we made level places for our guns with a solid wall of earth as high as the muzzle of our guns, overlooking the slope toward the river, the hills opposite, and the Federal entrenchments along the upper edge of the fields with an embrasured battery in view. Our entrenchment, as described, ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... greatcoat, whipped forth and cocked the pistols and with these murderous things levelled in his hands, crept upon the sleepers. The jug slipped from my nerveless hold and, roused by the crash of its fall, the man Tom lifted his head only to stare dazedly into the nearest pistol muzzle and the awful scowling face behind it; while the highwayman, reaching out his second pistol, awoke Mr. Vokes with a smart rap on the crown, whereupon, cursing drowsily, he sat up, clasping his hurt and immediately sank cowering in his chair, which action roused the landlord who stared, gasped ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... we formed a plan To set fire to one hundred and twenty guns, We selected them with skill, and into them did drill, We secured all our shipping, and laughed at the fun. About ten o'clock at night, it was a broiling fight, Which caused us to muzzle our bull dogs for a while, The L'Orient blew up, and round went the cup, To the glorious memorandum at the mouth of ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... and Smoke followed demurely at his heels, making a transparent pretence of not being interested, yet missing nothing. And, at length, they returned, the old collie first, and came to rest on the mat before the fire. Flame rested his muzzle on his master's knee, smiling beatifically while he patted the yellow head and spoke his name; and Smoke, coming a little later, pretending he came by chance, looked from the empty saucer to his face, lapped ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... foremost, he came down the tree; grasping it with his claws, and moving one foot at a time, very leisurely. At this juncture, and just before he could set his hind feet upon the ground, Friday stepped close to him, clapped the muzzle of his piece into his ear, and shot him as ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... types:— Human, rare (as on vases). Quadrupeds, mainly horses. Cylindrical muzzle and narrow cylindrical belly (III, Fig. 23). Birds. Long neck and legs, flat bill and body. Stands to above, flat, square or round, with open-work ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... also, and he fired full into all these things. The lantern and the blunderbuss went spinning into the gulf, the great feet beat him to the ground, and rose and jabbed down at him with all the vicious might that lay behind them—the savage white muzzle shrilling its blood-curdling screams of triumph all the while—and all this in the space of a second. "Good God!" cried the Doctor, craning over the eastern bank of the cutting, but fearful of firing into the turmoil lest he should hit Gard, so dropped himself bodily ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... middling fair horseman, but, for this horse's sake, I may be allowed to mention that my friends will all have me look at any horse they think of buying. He was over sixteen hands, with well rounded barrel, clean limbs, small head, and broad muzzle; hollows above his eyes of hazy blue, and delicacy of feature, revealed him quite an old horse. His ears pointed forward and downward, as if they wanted on their own account to get a hold of the ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... at my wits' end to know. The man refused to talk, refused to ride abreast of me, would have no dismounting, no halting, no communication at all. He would have nothing but this silent, lonely procession of two, with the muzzle of his gun at my back. And meanwhile we were fast climbing the pass. We had left the others an hour—nearly two. The sun was declining; the time, I ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... and green on his big hairy chest. A fine bear. A bear whom no twitchings at his muzzle nor any starvation nor yet any beating could ever teach to dance ... but then, I am partial to bears. Of course none of this bear's letters ever got posted—Le Directeur was not that sort of person; nor did this bear ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... toward him at the slamming of that door, turned slowly, coolly, and gazed into the black muzzle of his pistol looked, indeed, every inch of him a king. The muscles of his face betrayed no surprise, no fear. His splendid nerve was unshaken, his eyes unfaltering as they rose above the pistol to the face behind it. For fifteen seconds there was a strange terrible silence as the eyes of the ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... and sucked, Mumbling those milkless teats which rendered nought, While she, their gaunt dam, licked full motherly The clamorous twins, yielding her flank to them With moaning throat, and love stronger than want, Softening the first of that wild cry wherewith She laid her famished muzzle to the sand And roared a savage thunder-peal of woe. Seeing which bitter strait, and heeding nought Save the immense compassion of a Buddh, Our Lord bethought, "There is no other way To help this murdress of the woods but one. By sunset these will die, having no meat: There is no living heart ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... on, the colt watching them as though mesmerised. When within reach of the dilated nostrils, they paused and waited, and slowly the sensitive head came forward snuffing, more in bewilderment than fear at this new wonder, and as the dark twitching muzzle brushed the hands, the head drew sharply back, only to return again in ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... along Zamia Creek, with casuarina, and a species of Leptospermum. On my return to the camp, I found that a party had been out wallabi shooting, and had brought in three; they were about two feet long; body reddish grey, neck mouse grey, a white stripe on each shoulder, black muzzle, and black at the back of the ear; the tail with rather long hair. The flying squirrel (Petaurus sciureus) which was not different from that of the Hunter; and a Centropus phasianellus, (the swamp pheasant of Moreton Bay), ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... deserved his name—paused a moment in the glade and, dropping the stock of his rifle to the ground, leaned upon the muzzle. He listened, although he expected to hear nothing save the song of the leaves, and that alone he heard. A faint smile passed over the face of Shif'less Sol. He was satisfied. All was happening as he had planned. Then he swung the rifle back to his shoulder, and walked to the crest ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... even in size and quality. M. did not now concern himself about the roach. He was no longer a Waltonian; his mind had taken the tone of the keeper's. Yesterday his soul was of the fish, fishy; to-day it was full of muzzle-loaders, nets, and ferrets. But he, too, had his reward, and S. noticed that as they plodded athwart a fallow he looked out keenly and knowingly for feathered or four-footed game as if he were Colonel Hawker in person, and not the patient paternosterer with downcast eye. After S. ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... held by Desmond's sword and revolver, laid ready on a small table. She regarded them with a kind of fearful fascination. They were no longer mere ornaments of his uniform, but actual death-dealers, going forth to do murderous work. The short blue muzzle of the revolver had a sinister look, and a point of light at the tip winked ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... wisely decided to do away with useless weight. By Jove, Hester, I have laughed more than once at the shrewdness of our traders who sell cheap flint-lock muskets to the redskins for as many otter or beaver skins as can be piled between stock and muzzle, and have these trade guns built with an increased length each year. Rather clever, is ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... the muzzle of the pistol so close to the janizary's ear, that the touch of the cold iron made him start, "don't ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and the stile had reproduced most effectively the glitter of the embroidery in the half-light and the mysterious quality of the symbols. A tall white hound, Famulus, brother to the one which lays its head on the knee of the Countess of Arundel in Rubens' picture, stretched his muzzle towards the lady, guarding her slumbers, and was designed with much felicitous boldness of foreshortening. The background of the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... pug seated on an ottoman. He looks like a peculiarly truculent bull-dog that has been brought up on a lowering diet of gin-and-water, and you gain an exaggerated idea of his savagery as he uplifts his sooty muzzle. He barks with indignation, as if he thought you had come for his mistress's will, and intended to cut him off with a Spratt's biscuit. Of course he comes to smell round your ankles, and equally of course you put on a sickly smile, and take ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... cynical, consternated men and women. Most of them spoke in low tones; but one—a blond Jew of middle age—was raving in uncontrolled anger, careless of what he said or of who heard him. He was short of stature with protruding bloodshot eyes, an undulating nose, slightly prognathous muzzle and full lips, and a harsh red moustache which enhanced the prognathism. His silk hat tilted back showed a great bald forehead, in which angry, bluish veins stood out like swollen earth worms. "Those Suffragettes!" he was shouting or rather shrieking in a nasal ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... with horns proportionally large. The horns of these animals are strikingly like those of the Rocky Mountain sheep of America, except they are much larger. They spring up from the forehead, tilt backward, then boldly curve below the muzzle, before finally again pointing upward and tapering into a sharp and delicate point. They are hollow, though exceedingly stout and elastic, and strengthened on the outside by a number of ridges or horny rings set very close together. They are found in large ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... I spring, and my muzzle I bring To his flank, to his girth, to his shoulder; Through the shouting and yelling I hear my name swelling, The hearts of my backers ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... this affair took place, a sipahee of the 35th Native Infantry, standing sentry at one end of the house, fell asleep while he was leaning with his right wrist on the muzzle of his musket. The musket went off; the ball passed through his wrist, grazed a large beam above him, struck against a stone in the roof of the portico, and fell down flattened by the side of the sentry, as he lay insensible and bleeding on the ground below. The wrist ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... door. As Max filled the first glass Espalin became suddenly aware of something round and hard and cold pressed against his right temple. Mr. Espalin felt some curiosity, but he sat perfectly still. The object shifted a few inches; Mr. Espalin perceived from the tail of his eye the large, unfeeling muzzle of a sixshooter; beyond it, a glimpse of the ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... open country toward Arden. His right arm hung limberly down in a graceful perpendicular, unaffected by the galloping motion of his horse, and his fingers were clasped about the lock of a repeating rifle, pointed muzzle to the ground. On his face was stamped a look of stern absorption that relaxed only as he neared occasional fences, but when these had been hurdled and his mount had again caught its stride, the preoccupation returned. Although his eyes were lowered, he did not see the ground, nor the mild surprise ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... the position with which General Gordon had to deal. He had to encourage the weakened and disheartened Egyptian garrison, to muzzle Michael without exposing the Khedive to the charge of deserting his ally, and to conclude a peace with Abyssinia without surrendering either Bogos or Michael. At this stage we are only called upon to describe the first brief phase of this delicate question, which at ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the crew went ashore to cut sandal-wood, while the captain, with one or two men, remained on board, in order to be ready, if need be, with the brass gun, which was unhoused and conspicuously elevated, with its capacious muzzle directed point blank at the chief's house. The men were fully armed as usual; and the captain ordered me to go with them, to assist in the work. I was much pleased with this order, for it freed me from the captain's company, which I could not now endure, and ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... went astern of the tug, and Christy came out from his place on the floor to the windows. Captain Pecklar was loading the gun, as he had done before, by swinging it around so that the muzzle was under ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... English then called a dagger, but which, from the time of William the Third, has been known among us by the French name of bayonet. The bayonet seems not to have been then so formidable an instrument of destruction as it has since become; for it was inserted in the muzzle of the gun; and in action much time was lost while the soldier unfixed his bayonet in order to fire, and fixed it again in order to charge. The dragoon, when ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... forward and grappled with the man, who knocked Nancy roughly to one side the better to tackle the Union officer. Reeling backward and forward, the two men fought locked in a close embrace. The guerilla grasped an old pistol in his right hand, and tried desperately to use it; but Goddard kept its muzzle turned skyward, and gradually forced the man's arm, folded, against the other's chest. Suddenly the guerilla tripped and stumbled backward, carrying Goddard down on top of him as he fell. A flash, a deafening report; the red-hot flame ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... the animals that serve them, and the danger of losing them does not move them to the contrary. Thus following the very opposite of St. Paul's command: Non alligavis vos bobi trituranti [i.e., "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn,"—I Tim. v, 18, a quotation from Deut. xxv, 4], they tie the poor cow or carabao to a post after it has worked all day; and, if it is a horse, they feed it without removing bit or bridle. And if they have to look after their carabao it must ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... left. Pickets kept up firing from 2.40 A.M. until 5.25, when the engagement became general. Shortly after 6.00 A.M. our artillery opened on the Spanish works, who promptly returned the compliment. During the firing the Dons exploded a shell in the muzzle of one of our pieces. Adjutant Barnum fell at 6.30 A.M.; his wound was promptly dressed, when I started to the Division Hospital with him. Though seriously hurt, I have never seen a better natured man. While en route, we laid him down to eat a can ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... taken the top off the camera; it was like a box without the lid, and on the one side there was nothing between the lens and the grooved carrier for the slide, but on the other there was an automatic pistol, fixed down with wires, as a wild beast might be lashed, and its muzzle pointing through the orifice intended for the second lens of ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... which one shot through the dizzy darkness to end in a delicious "wump" at the bottom. The after-capstan was a roundabout, with its squealing passengers suspended from capstan-bars. Each grim twelve-inch gun had a saddle strapped round the muzzle, on which one sat, thrilled and ecstatic, while the great guns rose slowly to extreme elevation and descended ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... him. Of course it was a little tough to be mutilated by an inquest, but that's no reason why he should come back there and occupy a room that I was paying for so that I could be alone. He showed me how he blew out the gas, and told me how a man could successfully blow down the muzzle of a shot-gun or a gas jet, but both of these weapons had ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... place seemed desolate, it likewise seemed secure. Nevertheless, death lurked in the trail ahead. Barger was there. He was lying in the rocks, concealed where the chasm was narrow. He had ridden four hours—on the mare Beth had lost—to arrive ahead of Van Buren. The muzzle of a long black revolver that he held in hand rested upon a shattered boulder. His narrow eyes lay level with a rift in the group of rocks that hid him completely from view. Van was in sight, and the convict's breath came quickly ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... wood in the fire-place burned in two and fell with a soft thud on the ashes; a lean hound crept stealthily to the boy's side and thrust a cold muzzle against his ragged jacket; in the cupboard a mouse rustled over the rude dishes and among the scanty ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... Newfoundland wolves were on the way to becoming domesticated "dogs". Later on it was realized that the island did produce a special breed—the celebrated Newfoundland dog—the original type of which was much smaller than the modern type, nearly or entirely black in colour, with a sharper muzzle and less pendulous ears. But its feet were as strongly webbed and its habits as aquatic as those of the "Newfoundland" of the modern breed. Some people have noticed the resemblance between the farmers' dogs in Norway and the Newfoundland type, and have thought that ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... what to do when the time came. I guess thet thet nigger knew thet ef he didn't play straight he was a dead coon. Tia sat down jest behind him, and every now and then touched his backbone with the muzzle ev her pistol—jest ter show him she was keepin' awake. At the same time he wasn't unwillin', for he hed told us thet he and his dead mate were not Baian's men—they were slaves he had captured from a town he had raided somewhere near North Cape, and they were liable to be ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... and he walked in that direction. Two figures lay on the ground; four others were in a sitting position, close to each other, against the end wall. Some bows and arrows and spears lay near them. All were dressed in a garment of rough cloth. Harry walked up to one and touched it on the head with the muzzle of his gun. As he did so it crumbled away; the bones rattled on the stone floor as they fell. Donna Maria gave ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... put into his grave this silver mask of an ox head with golden horns. It was a symbol of the cattle sacrificed for the dead. There is a gold rosette between the eyes. The mouth, muzzle, eyes and ears are gilded. In Homer's Iliad, which is the story of the Trojan war, Diomede says, "To thee will I sacrifice a yearling heifer, broad at brow, unbroken, that never yet hath man led beneath the yoke. Her will I sacrifice to ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... "They attempt to muzzle the mouths of negro teachers, and he who proclaims too loudly the doctrine of equality as taught by Thomas Jefferson, will soon be in ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... the vines, a tank's machine guns snarled at him, clipping the place where he had been standing, then shifting to rage against the sheltering rock. With a sudden motor-roar, the muzzle of a long tank-gun pushed out through the vines, and then the low body of a tank with a red star on the turret came rumbling out of the camouflaged bay. The machine guns kept him pinned behind the rock; the tank swerved ever so slightly so that its wide left tread was aimed ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... sweetmeats of every color, toys, branches of flowers, nosegays, and masks. There are masks everywhere, boxes full of them, carts full of them; the most popular being the one that represents the livid and cunning muzzle, contracted as by a deathlike grimace, the long straight ears, sharp-pointed teeth of the white fox, sacred to the God of Rice. There are also others symbolic of gods or monsters, livid, grimacing, convulsed, with wigs and beards of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... see the day when the Church will invoke or receive any government aid to build our churches, or to pay the salary of our clergy, for the government may then begin to dictate to us what doctrines we ought to preach. If it is a great wrong to muzzle the press, it is a greater wrong to muzzle the pulpit. No amount of State subsidy would compensate for the evils resulting from the Government censorship of the Gospel, and the suppression of Apostolic freedom in proclaiming it. St. Paul exults in ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... ordered his men to lay hold upon it and retain the boat. Once more the Indians began to draw their bows. Once more Lewis turned upon them the muzzle of his cannon. His men shook the priming into their pieces, and made ready to fire. An instant, and much blood might have ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... of mechanism, nothing can well be more beautiful in mutual adaptation of parts to the fulfillment of given and rather recondite movements, and in point of execution, than this muzzle-pivoting arrangement of Herr Gruson's; but having said this we are compelled to add, as impartial engineering critics, that it is ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... condition, unless your complaining will benefit it. Perseverance is a principle that should be commendable in those who have judgment to govern it. I should never had been so successful in my hunting excursions had I waited till the deer, by some magic dream, had been drawn to the muzzle of the gun before I made an attempt to fire at the game that dared my boldness in the wild forest. The great mystery in hunting seems to be—a good marksman, a resolute mind, a fixed determination, and my world for it, you will never return home without sounding ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... in this desolate place. The fearless Huron scarcely halted. While picking his way through the swamp he had carried his rifle lightly balanced in his left hand, and he now simply changed it to his right, grasping it by the muzzle, so that the stock was before him. He saw the cavernous mouth of the snake opened to an amazing width; the thin tongue, that resembled a tiny stream of blood; the small, glittering eyes; the horn-like fangs, at the roots of which he well knew were the sacks filled almost to bursting with the most ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... he was all ready to pull the trigger, looking down into this here frowning muzzle before a mirror; and then something about his whiskers in the mirror must of caught his eye. Anyway, another work of self-destruction was off. So he come in and helped with lunch. Then he told me he'd like to take some time off, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... sweeping them back by showers of arrows and musket balls, thrusting them down with pikes, hurling grenades from the tops; while the swivels on both sides poured their grape, and bar, and chain, and the great main-deck guns, thundering muzzle to muzzle, made both ships quiver and recoil, as they smashed the round shot ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... when he saw these two forests and these two caverns for the first time. When Javert laughed,—and his laugh was rare and terrible,—his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth, but his gums, and around his nose there formed a flattened and savage fold, as on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert, serious, was a watchdog; when he laughed, he was a tiger. As for the rest, he had very little skull and a great deal of jaw; his hair concealed his forehead and fell over his eyebrows; between ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... not distinguish him, as merely the head was above water, and this was concealed by the deep shadow thrown by the high grass. Thinking that he would die, I went to bed; but before this I took the precaution to arrange a white paper sight upon the muzzle of my rifle, without which, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... has found her right place, old fellow. She's hanging about the gin-shops in town. She's a swell too; one eye knocked out, and the other black, and her muzzle twisted to one side. And ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... if this was Donnybrook Fare it was tougher than all the stories ever told of it. Poor old Donnybrook! He had recked not of the coming woe that blissful hour by the side of the rippling Yellowstone. His head was deep in my lap, his muzzle buried in oats; he took no thought for the morrow,—he would eat, drink, and be merry, and ask no questions as to what was to happen; and so absorbed were we in our occupation—he in his happiness, I in the contemplation thereof—that neither of us noticed the rapid approach ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... and cunning of mortal fear. Even as my fingers clutched at her for the strangling hold she twisted herself free and put the breadth of the table between us; then I found myself looking into the muzzle ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... Ralph, "and one of which I admit the weight," and he drew to one side of the path as though to let Piet pass, which he began to do holding the muzzle of the gun in a line with the other's head. Ralph sat upon his horse staring moodily at the ground, as though he was trying to make up his mind to say something or other, but all the time he was watching out of the corner of his quick eye. Just as Swart Piet drew past him, and was shaking ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... preside well be counted worthy of double honor, especially they who labor in the word and teaching. (18)For the Scripture says: Thou shalt not muzzle an ox while treading out the grain; and, The laborer is worthy of ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... my life to defend either my money or my horse,' he answered, looking up straight at the muzzle with a steady eye, 'but I will lay it down gladly, if by so doing I can ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... his numbed feet would allow him, he stumbled toward the house. The muzzle of the rifle again projected from the loophole and with its crack the doctor staggered for a moment and then fell. Walter's rifle spoke again and the rifle disappeared through the loophole with a spasmodic jerk. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... pistol among the dusty bric-a-brac on the mantel which he had kept loaded to fire at a cat in the area. He took it and sat looking into the muzzle, wishing it might go off by accident and kill him. It slipped through his hand and struck the floor, and there was a report; he sprang into the air, feeling that he had been shot. But he found himself still alive, with only a burning line along his cheek, such as one of Christine's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... him. How young the old horse looks, Corporal! Are you ready? Walk, march." And away she walked fondling Billy Pitt as she led him, and with good reason, for, old though he was, his legs were as clean as a four-year-old's, his muzzle fine and taper, and his eye full and bright, while he walked with the swinging easy stride that surely tells of good blood. Indeed, but that his tail was docked rather short, as was once the rule in ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... the right sort of muzzle for that. I must say that I have long been wanting such a puppy. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... at his throat, and tore him to the ground, and as he felt the horrible muzzle closer to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... were poisonous: they are of the bigness of a kid, and in length an ell and a half: their feet are long and thick, and armed with big claws: they have a hard skin, and are of various colors: they have the muzzle and face of a serpent: and from their snouts there rises a crest like a saw which extends along the middle of the back as far as the tip of the tail: in fine we deemed them to be serpents and venomous, and (nevertheless, those people) ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... at the muzzle of his sixshooter from which a slim curl of gray smoke spiralled lazily upward. Then his eyes veered to the man he had shot and to the man's sixshooter lying on the edge of the sidewalk. It, too, like his own gun, was thinly smoking at the muzzle. The burly youth put a hand ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... various kinds of iron machines; she had one particularly on her head, which locked her mouth so fast that she could scarcely speak; and could not eat nor drink. I was much astonished and shocked at this contrivance, which I afterwards learned was called the iron muzzle. Soon after I had a fan put into my hand, to fan the gentleman while he slept; and so I did indeed with great fear. While he was fast asleep I indulged myself a great deal in looking about the room, which to me appeared very ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... in things as well as people can, and I buried my muzzle in the hearth-rug, so that she would not see how I was curling up my lip ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... of this wild breed is invariably white, the muzzle being black; the whole of the inside of the ear, and about one-third of the outside, from the tips downward, red; horns white, with black tips, very fine, and bent upward; some of the bulls have a thin, upright mane, ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... by what had just occurred, he was almost lifted off his feet by what followed before he finished the expression of the thought that was in his mind. Through the narrow window at which he was gazing the muzzle of a gun was thrust and the weapon discharged, the ball passing so close that he felt it nip ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... that the guard should be provided with an independent instrument which would produce a sound sufficiently loud to catch the ear of the engineman. Suppose, for instance, that the mouth-piece of a clarionet, or the windpipe of a duck, or a metallic imitation, were affixed to the muzzle of an air-gun, and the condensed air discharged through the confined aperture; a shrill sound would be emitted. Surely, then, a small instrument might be contrived upon this principle, powerful enough to arrest the attention of the engineer, if not ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... you,' said Sir George. He was sorely tempted to put the muzzle of a pistol to the other's head and risk all. But he fancied that he knew his man, and that in this way only could he be effectually cowed; ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... object pressed upon him while in Port Mahon, and he succeeded, by his personal enthusiasm, in arousing Erskine's interest in the matter; but the latter was loaded to the muzzle with objections. "Sir James," said Nelson to Troubridge, with the amusing professional prejudice they both entertained, "enters upon the difficulty of the undertaking in a true soldier way." "I am just come from Sir James," he wrote to Hamilton ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... days before shot with it a green-headed parrot at a distance of two yards. The distance was not great, to be sure, but it was enough for his purpose—intending, as he did, to meet his foe, when the moment of action should come, in close conflict, and thrust the muzzle of his weapon down the said foe's throat before condescending to draw ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... the doctor called the second squad to wheel towards it. The dominie, on the left of the first, saw what was going on below. Revolvers were emptied and clubs brought into requisition. He could not load his old muzzle-loading piece to save his life, but he knew single stick. Two men were tackling the brave old colonel, while a third lay wounded at his horse's feet. The dominie sped down to the road like a chamois, and threw himself upon the man on the colonel's right, the dissipated farmer. He heard a shot, felt ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... of the clearing the blue rangers were running, stooping, slinking forward, and increasing in numbers every second. In a few minutes not a stump near the edge of the bush but had a muzzle pointing out from beside it. Soon not one but four great, solid masses of redcoats were showing through the trees, less than a quarter of a mile away. Presently they all formed up correctly, and stood quite still ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... that he was peering into the muzzle of a double-barrelled gun, probably loaded with buck-shot. The ranchman was pointing it directly at his head, with both triggers cocked. Brown saw he was in earnest, and asked if that was the charter. The ranchman ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... crisp and new. Even fingers that were clumsy and trembling found little difficulty in making a spill of it and inserting it (this with less ease) into the muzzle of the rifle. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... the barrel of the gun Little mischief could be done; But on that sad morn a whim Suddenly seized hold of him; 'Twas the lunatic desire To observe how shot-guns fire; So he boldly took his stand Where the barrel ended, and, All agog to solve the puzzle, Poked his napper up the muzzle. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... his head back in agony, heaved toward them, ridden by a naked yellow infant in a nest-like saddle of green fodder. Scenting with fright the disgusting presence of white aliens, the sleep-walking monster shied, opened his eyes, and lowered his blue muzzle as if to charge. There was a ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... commanded Solomon, as he screwed the muzzle of the weapon up against the lad's head. "Uf you do, you ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... old boy," said Ned, patting the glossy muzzle of his faithful comrade. "This is no time for feasting and banqueting. We are hunting Mexicans, you and I, and after that business is over we may consider ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... scratching and another piece dropped and broke on the floor. Now he knew a living agency was at work. Job growled. Ambrose clutched his muzzle. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Harry and his men then, with much labor, lowered a four-pounder carronade down the forehatch, and wheeled it to within a few feet of the bulkhead which divided that portion where the prisoners had been confined from the after part. The gun was loaded to the muzzle with grape, and discharged, tearing a hole through the bulkhead and killing and wounding many within. Then the officer in ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... you fret yourself on that score. I ain't made Pip a gentleman, and Pip ain't a going to make you a gentleman, not fur me not to know what's due to ye both. Dear boy, and Pip's comrade, you two may count upon me always having a gen-teel muzzle on. Muzzled I have been since that half a minute when I was betrayed into lowness, muzzled I am at the present time, muzzled I ever ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... distinguish him, as merely the head was above water, and this was concealed by the deep shadow thrown by the high grass. Thinking that he would die, I went to bed; but before this I took the precaution to arrange a white paper sight upon the muzzle of my rifle, without which, night shooting ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... larger stream. Again the boy whistled, and a black pony came trotting out of the brush, the bridle hanging from the saddle horn. "Tramp and I can make it all right, can't we old fellow?" said the boy, patting the glossy neck, as the little horse rubbed a soft muzzle ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... the direction of the stables, but his malady was not so distressing that he failed to hear a groan and a snarling curse from Henson. Enid fled back along the track, where she found Bell standing patiently with a dog's muzzle close to either knee. His face was white and shining, otherwise he showed no signs of fear. Enid laid a hand on the head of either dog, and they rolled like great cats at her ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... had disappeared round the base of El Palomar, he continued to gaze. Eventually he was brought out of his reverie when a cur dog belonging to one of the teamsters on the grading gang thrust a cold muzzle into his hand. ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... meets, simply because its rapid motion is the vehicle by which the energy of the gunpowder is transferred from the gun to where the blow is to be struck. Had the cannon been directed vertically upwards, then the projectile, leaving the muzzle with the same initial velocity as before, would soar up and up, with gradually abating speed, until at last it reached a turning-point, the elevation of which would depend upon the initial velocity. Poised for a moment at the summit, the cannon-ball may then be likened to the clock-weight, for ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... from the mouth of Captain Asher; he was choking to death. In the same second that she heard it Olive thrust the muzzle of the pistol against the side of the man's head and ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... Francis, and, I must confess it, my dear dog Flora, who had never left me. Francis told me, that she had tried to defend me, and flew at the savages; but one of them took my apron, tore it, and tied it over her mouth like a muzzle, bound her legs, and then threw her into the canoe, where the poor creature lay at my feet, moaning piteously. She arrived with us in this island, but I have not seen her since; I have often inquired of Parabery, but he could not tell me what had ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... our lines above the cannons' roar: 'Advance, and take those colors'[C]—Adown the slope Like Bengal tigers springing at the hounds, We sprang and met them at the border wall: Muzzle to muzzle—steel to steel—we met, And fought like Romans and like Romans fell. Even as a cyclone, growling thunder, roars Down through a dusky forest, and its path Is strown with broken and uprooted pines Promiscuous piled in broad and ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... increased your quota of sedation, and when that didn't help you looked for a real escape. It was always available to you if you searched long enough; waiting at the tip of a knife, in the coil of a rope, the muzzle of a gun. You could find it at the very bottom of a bottle of pills or at the very bottom of the courtyard outside your window. Harry recalled looking for it there ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... not rush out immediately; instead, they waited to be sure that their victim did not rise. Then they came rapidly from their concealment, and bent over him. It was soon apparent that he was not dead. One of the men put the muzzle of his gun to the back of Tarzan's head to finish him, but another waved him aside. "If we bring him alive the reward is to be greater," explained the latter. So they bound his hands and feet, and, picking him up, placed him on the shoulders of four of their number. Then the march was resumed toward ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... alone over the fire in the twilight, in a somewhat forlorn mood, when the door was pushed ajar, and the muzzle of a gun entered, causing her to start up in alarm, scarcely diminished by the sight of an exultant visage, though the words were, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... began to waver; it stopped, then began a retreat on the run, followed by the bullets of the machine gunners. Mattia was yelling and whooping as he pumped away with his weapon, elevating its muzzle a little from time to time that he might be sure to reach the ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... went away, and several hours later I found a letter he had shoved under the table-cloth. I read it, and rushed out and hitched up a horse and drove like mad to my brother-in-law's, but I got there too late, the poor boy had taken a shot-gun to his room, and put the muzzle into his mouth, and set off the trigger with his foot. In the letter he told me what was the matter—he had got into trouble with a woman of the town, and had caught syphilis. He had gone away and tried to get cured, but had fallen into the ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... fortress belonging to the United States. Its ball carried with it the hatreds, the rages of thirty years, shaped and cooled in the mould of malignant deliberation. Its wad was the charter of our national existence. Its muzzle was pointed at the stone which bore the symbol of our national sovereignty. As the echoes of its thunder died away, the telegraph clicked one word through every office of the land. That word ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... tamer of wild beasts, and these wild beasts are his passions. To draw their teeth and claws, to muzzle and tame them, to turn them into servants and domestic animals, fuming, perhaps, but submissive—in this ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... narrow couch with Jenny on his lap. I took off for him, not wasting a good chance when he was handicapped. But I hadn't counted on Jenny. She was up, and her head banged into my stomach before I knew she was coming. I felt the wind knocked out, but I got her out of my way—to look up into the muzzle of ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... to lose countenance, when up jumped Sneezer to my relief out of the boat, with an old cocked hat lashed on his head, a marine's jacket buttoned round his body, and his coalblack muzzle bedaubed with pipe—clay, regularly monkeyfied, the momentary handiwork of some wicked little reefers, while a small pipe sung out quietly, as if not intended to reach the quarterdeck, although it did ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... prompt work. At the same time he lifted the carbine from the ground, he cocked the weapon. At that moment the open jaws of the aroused jaguar were thrust into his face, and the hot breath of the wild creature fanned his cheek. The next instant he ran the muzzle of the firearm into the maddened brute's throat ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... and charge backward and forward among the bushes, but, not finding any of the party, he at length returned to the plain, where the dead were lying. He first approached the cow, and then the calf, and then repeatedly passed from one to the other, placing his broad muzzle to their bodies, and uttering his grunting roar, apparently in a more plaintive strain ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... Indians loved him. They'd never touch him; but when the Rebellion broke out, 'twas Wandering Spirit went dancing mad for revenge from one end o' the Reserve t' th' other! When the massacre came, the officer had tripped the little Indian fellow to his face an' was pointin' the old muzzle loader at the back o' his head to blow out his brains, when along comes the MacDonald man an' kicks the gun from the bully's hand! Little Wandering Spirit up an' he pours that muzzle loader into the officer's ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... when Tartarin came home from hunting on Sunday evenings, with his cap on the muzzle of his gun, and his fustian shooting-jacket belted in tightly, the sturdy river-lightermen would respectfully bob, and blinking towards the huge biceps swelling out his arms, would mutter among one another ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... to see Del Pinzo himself bearing down on him astride of a powerful black horse. The Greaser was yelling and waving his gun, from the muzzle of ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... It was a lion with his four limbs fastened to a cross like a criminal. His huge muzzle fell upon his breast, and his two fore-paws, half-hidden beneath the abundance of his mane, were spread out wide like the wings of a bird. His ribs stood severally out beneath his distended skin; his hind legs, which were nailed against each other, were raised somewhat, ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... during the process, it rolled about in a way which sorely tried the bear's patience. At length it came to rest against the trunk of a tree, with which solid backing Mokwa was enabled to thrust in his muzzle far enough to lap up the ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... the gun. They were mounted on ten-inch howitzer carriages, which answered the purpose admirably. The shells used were generally strapped to wooden bottoms; but they were more than once employed without any precaution, except that of putting them in the gun with the fusees towards the muzzle. The hot shot were heated in the engine fires, and were brought on deck by two men in a machine resembling a double coal-box, which was easily tilted up at the muzzle of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... was carefully circulated by my friends the insurance companies by way of offsetting the effects of my revelations of their jugglery of the people's funds. Later I showed up the fellow so vigorously that John D. Rockefeller ordered Mr. Rogers to muzzle him in his own paper, whereupon arrangements were made with a New York weekly to act as the sewer-conduit for the lies and abuse this thug was warranted to ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... their arrogance, their venality, and their shameful disregard of the Constitution. In short, he seemed bent on imposing a tyrannical yoke, hard to be endured, and to punish unlawfully those who resisted it, or even murmured against it. He would shackle the press, and muzzle the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... American mechanical genius; invented a method of converting muzzle-loading rifles into breech-loading; died unrewarded ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... keeps on growing—that is a curious circumstance, for bears get their growth earlier than this. Bears are dangerous—since our catastrophe—and I shall not be satisfied to have this one prowling about the place much longer without a muzzle on. I have offered to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go, but it did no good—she is determined to run us into all sorts of foolish risks, I think. She was not like this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... house were over-crowded, ill-smelling and unsanitary. In these ramshackle affairs the loggers were packed like sardines. The bunks were arranged tier over tier and nearly always without mattresses. They were uniformly vermin-infested and sometimes of the "muzzle-loading" variety. No blankets were furnished, each logger being compelled to supply his own. There were no facilities for bathing or the washing and drying of sweaty clothing. Lighting and ventilation ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... thus had everything gone to wreck, had I not given instant orders to Gog and Magog to sally forth. They plunged into the water, and swimming on each side, got at length right before the animal, and then seized the reins. Thus they continued swimming on each side, like tritons, holding the muzzle of Sphinx, while I, sallying forth astride upon the creature's back, steered forward on our voyage to the Cape of ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... shoulders. Then he turned to the trail in front, and her face, as it had been when he first saw her and as it was now, came back to his memory. Once, toward midnight, he drew up till they reached him, her horse's muzzle nosing soft against his pony's flank. He could see the gleam of her eyes, fastened on him, wide ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... friend P. [Protopopoff] are to continue his destructive activities. He must muzzle the Press more closely, hold up all food, and continue provocative work in all quarters. It is only by producing extreme suffering that you can bring about an uprising for peace. Code now ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... article on "Rifled Guns" in the "Atlantic Monthly" for October, 1859, has the following passage: "No breech-loading gun is so trustworthy in its execution as a muzzle-loader; for, in spite of all precautions, the bullets will go out irregularly. We have cut out too many balls of Sharpe's rifle from the target, which had entered sidewise, not to be certain on this point; and we know of no other breech-loader so little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... waters he had discovered. He did not give his preceptor time to answer the difficult question, but laid his hand upon his arm and whispered that he was to look between two rocks, for a jackal was there, slinking away—turning his pointed muzzle to us now and then. To see he isn't followed, Azariah added: and the observation endeared him so to Joseph that the boy walked for a moment pensively in the path they were following. It turned into the forest, and they had not gone ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... the front, our lad so leal, and the works were almost won, A moment more and our flags had swung o'er the muzzle of murderous gun; But a raking fire swept the van, and he fell 'mid the wounded and slain, With his wee wan face turned up to Him who feeleth His ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... party to the German gun. Number One had been killed by a shot from Angus's revolver. Number Two had adopted Hindenburg tactics, and was no more to be seen. Angus himself was lying, stone dead, a yard from the muzzle of the gun which he, single-handed, had put out ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... candle or bamboo, who would do precious little while another is about to shoot at them. There is a world of difference between looking in a bull's-eye, and looking in the eye of man. A pistol, too, looks far less innocent, regarded through the medium of a yawning muzzle, than the rounded and neatly-polished butt. The huge mouth seems to dilate as you look upon it. You already begin to fancy you behold the leaden mass—the three-ounce bullet—issuing from its stronghold, like a relentless baron of the middle ages, going forth under his grim archway, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... run to aid him. It was comparatively simple, therefore, to spring high in the air, and he struck fairly and squarely behind the saddle of the man in the linen coat. When he landed his revolver was in his hand and the muzzle jabbed into the back ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... in moments of stress and trial, even in times of tragedy, the most commonplace thoughts will intrude themselves and the mind separate itself from the immediate events. As Merode put the cold muzzle of the revolver to Ailsa's temple and she ought, one would have supposed, to have been deaf and blind to all things but the horror of her position, one of these strange mental lapses occurred, and her ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... of his hand, measuring the quantity with his eye—for it was an evidence of a hunter's skill to be able to get the proper quantity for the ball. Then he put the charge into the barrel. Placing a little greased linsey rag, about half an inch square, over the muzzle, he laid a small lead bullet on it, and with the ramrod began to push the ball into ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... and he glanced up at the light. But the muzzle of the gun was level with the light! A wrong move and he knew the thing would be over even ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... course some nation may, in secret, be making a bigger gun than any I have ever heard of. As far as I know, however, the largest one ever made for the United States was a sixteen-inch rifled cannon—that is, it was sixteen inches across at the muzzle, and I forget just how long. It weighed many tons, however, and it now lies, or did a few years ago, in a ditch at the Sandy Hook proving grounds. It was ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... than to climbing. Their diet includes practically everything eatable they can capture or kill. The typical representative of the genus is the yellow baboon (P. cynocephalus, or babuin), distinguished by its small size and grooved muzzle, and ranging from Abyssinia to the Zambezi. The above-mentioned anubis baboon, P. anubis (with the subspecies neumanni, pruinosus, heuglini and doguera), ranging from Egypt all through tropical Africa, together with P. sphinx, P. olivaceus, the Abyssinian P. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... just as it had done in America. Such articles are no doubt far more effective than open, undisguised assaults could possibly be, for the cleverness of the evasion gives additional zest to the attack. The Press is a hard dog to muzzle, and, like dogs in general, only vicious when muzzled. The Japanese will soon find it safer to "let Truth and Error grapple" in the full face of day, for they ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... leaned forward. The muzzle of his revolver was very bright, and he held it in fingers which were firm ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... look-out. It was early in the evening—the poor slave came along, when the ambush rushed upon him, and ordered him to surrender. He refused, and kept them off with his club. They still pressed upon him with their guns presented to his breast. Without seeming to be daunted, he caught hold of the muzzle of one of the guns, and came near getting possession of it. At length, retreating to a fence on one side of the road, he sprang over into a corn-field, and started to run in one of the rows. One of the young men stepped ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the wild spectre-looking stranger, whom I had lost sight of during the last few minutes. A ball had struck him, and he fell heavily to the ground, his rifle, which had just been discharged, and was still smoking from muzzle and touchhole, clutched convulsively in both hands; his features distorted, his eyes rolling frightfully. There was something in the expression of his face at that moment which brought back to me, in vivid colouring, one of the earliest and most striking incidents ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... you'd never catch me" and she patted the chestnut mare, who turned her blowing muzzle with contemptuous humour towards Shelton's steed, while her flanks heaved ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... new, the best that we know Was that performed by JOSEPH AGOSTINO, The gunsmith who, by burglars often vext, A week or two since plotted for the next By planting cunningly a wide-bored fusil, With buck-shot loaded half-way to the muzzle, Right opposite the window to which came The nightly thief, to ply his little game; And to the trigger hitching so a string, That when the burglar bold was entering The charge went off, and, crashing through the shutter, Relieved the rascal of his bread and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... cried the Colonel, rather suddenly. "This is what we are come to now. Here's a brat of six begins taking notes against his own father; and he improves on the Scotch poet—he doesn't print 'em. No, he accumulates them cannily until he is twenty, but never says a word. He loads his gun up to the muzzle, and waits, as the years roll on, with his linstock in his hand, and one fine day at breakfast he fires his treble charge of ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... statue, the committee wrote out to her at Rome as one who would naturally feel an interest in getting something fit and economical for them. She accepted the trust with zeal and pleasure; but she overruled their simple notion of an American volunteer at rest, with his hands folded on the muzzle of his gun, as intolerably hackneyed and commonplace. Her conscience, she said, would not let her add another recruit to the regiment of stone soldiers standing about in that posture on the tops of pedestals all over the country; and so, instead of going to an Italian statuary with ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... growing weak he made no haste. He came to dense clumps of bushes, and plowing his way through them, he saw a dark opening under some trees thrown down by an old hurricane. Having some vague idea that it might be the lair of a wild animal, he thrust the muzzle of his rifle into the darkness. It touched a soft substance. There was a growl, and a black form shot out almost into his face. Henry sprang aside, and in an instant all his powers and faculties returned. He had stirred up a black bear, and before the ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... great solemn eyes, and a soft, warm nose. The very sight gave the boy courage, and at his next whistle the old horse carefully picked his way down the bank, and reaching down his long neck, felt Jacky's shoulder with his velvety muzzle. ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... the sand proved that only one sampan had been beached. Thence he found nothing of special interest until he came upon the chief's gun, lying close to the trees on the north side. It was a very ornamental weapon, a muzzle-loader. The stock was inlaid with gold and ivory, and the piece had evidently been looted from some mandarin's junk surprised and sacked in a ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... session-house. A neighbour (Andrew Goldie, the pensioner) lent me his piece, and loaded it to me. He took tent that it was only half-cock, and I wrapped a napkin round the dog-head, for it was raining. Not being well acquaint with guns, I kept the muzzle aye away from me; as it is every man's duty not to throw his ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... king, and which happened to be the same M. de Rosny had given me. I took it, marvelling impatiently at the careful manner in which he handled it; but in a moment I understood for I found it loaded to the muzzle with gold-pieces, of which two or three fell and rolled upon the floor. Much moved by this substantial mark of the king's gratitude, I was nevertheless for pocketing them in haste; but the Marquis, to satisfy a ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... over to where one of Bellairs' guns was being run forward into place again and Colonel Carter followed him. There was blood dripping from the muzzle of it. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... it would be at the muzzle end of the rocket tube, and the fuel would burn forward at so many inches per second. The refractory lining would resist the rocket blast for a certain time and then crumble away. Crumbling, the refractory ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... was set on fire and was soon burnt to the ground. The whole detachment now moved up the hill, and the Americans, secure behind their entrenchments reserved their fire till the British troops were almost close to the muzzle of their guns. They then opened a terrible discharge of cannon and musketry, and their volleys were so rapid and skilfully directed that the British troops recoiled, and many fled to the boats which had conveyed them, over the river. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... they were all held tight in Belding's arms. Then he ran to Blanco Diablo. For once the great horse was gentle, quiet, glad. He remembered this kindest of masters and reached for him with warm, wet muzzle. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... full to the muzzle. Shouldn't wonder if she'd bust." Each soldier took his position. A tremendous volley of cannon shots suddenly rained on the fort. It seemed as if the British had fired every gun at the same instant. A profound silence ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... queer-gamm'd smutty Muns Was once my fav'rite man, Though rugged-muzzle tink'ring Tom For me left maw-mouth'd Nan: Though padding Jack and diving Ned, [1] With blink-ey'd buzzing Sam, [2] Have made me drunk with hot, and stood [3] The racket for a dram; Though Scamp the ballad-singing kid, Call'd me his darling frow, [4] I've tip'd them all ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... many types of bayonets. The first was what they called a 'Plug,' because it was made to fit into the muzzle of a flint, or match-lock. Then there was the socket bayonet, the ring bayonet and an improved weapon invented by an English officer named Chillingworth which met with much favor in the armies of Europe. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... a South and East African carnivorous mammal (Proteles cristatus), in general appearance like a small striped hyena, but with a more pointed muzzle, sharpe ears, and a long erectile mane down the middle line of the neck and back. It is of nocturnal and burrowing habits, and feeds on decomposed animal ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he held out the jug to the donor of the birds, who only nodded, and said, as if he had gone off again, "Drink;" and propping the gun up against the crippled cart, he took off his rough jacket and hung it over the muzzle. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... a shout and made for Bullard, only to be brought up short by a shining muzzle almost ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... on towards me. I had barely time to grasp a revolver when he was close up to me. Already I felt his hot breath in my face; his huge claws had hold of my limbs; he was trying to clasp me round the body: his muzzle, with its sharp teeth, touched on my shoulder. Poor Obed, who was standing behind me, unable to render me assistance, literally shrieked with fear, not for himself, but for me. In another moment I felt that I must ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... have owned all the clouds that passed over it. If a rabbit ran from Smith's land to Brown's land, it belonged to Brown, as if it were his pet dog. The logical answer to this would be simple: Any one stung on Brown's land ought to be able to prosecute Brown for keeping a dangerous wasp without a muzzle. ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... thinking that they were poisonous: they are of the bigness of a kid, and in length an ell and a half: their feet are long and thick, and armed with big claws: they have a hard skin, and are of various colors: they have the muzzle and face of a serpent: and from their snouts there rises a crest like a saw which extends along the middle of the back as far as the tip of the tail: in fine we deemed them to be serpents and venomous, and (nevertheless, those ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... stood for almost a minute perfectly motionless, like a statue cast in bronze, his head turned from me, listening for any suspicious sound. Then, with a swift and easy movement, he laid his arms and shield noiselessly upon the rocks, and, dropping on all fours beside a pool, he dipped his muzzle down and drank just like an animal. I could hear the thirsty sucking of his lips from where I lay. He drank and drank as though he never meant to stop, and when at last his frame could hold no more, ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... persons, this allowance is increased. In 1888 the coal thus given by the company amounted to 598,550 quintals, representing a money value of 359,150 francs. This is not only a practical application of the Scriptural injunction 'not to muzzle the ox which treadeth out the grain;' it is a practical contribution to the solution of the great 'question' which M. Doumer in his Report tells us the 'true Republic' has been for ten years making believe to ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... he still tugged at the mouth of his refractory mount, Frank saw the smoke shoot out from the muzzle of the gun as the ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... who went to Alaska and laid the foundations of his fortune before the gold hunters arrived. Bringing his fortunes to the States he is cheated out of it by a crowd of money kings, and recovers it only at the muzzle of his gun. He then starts out as a merciless exploiter on his own account. Finally he takes to drinking and becomes a picture of degeneration. About this time he falls in love with his stenographer and wins her heart but not her hand ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... or Canis australiensis. I never saw one nearer than from twenty to thirty yards, and was unable to procure a specimen. Its colour is the same as that of the Australian dog, in parts however having a blackish tinge. The muzzle is narrow, long, thin, and tapers much, resembling that of a greyhound, whilst in general form it approaches the English lurcher. Some of the party who went to Timor stated it to resemble precisely the Malay dog common to that island, and considered it ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... female coyote lowered her head, drew a test sniff of a new scent. She recognized that as part of the proper way of life. She yapped once at her mate, but he was absorbed in his night song, his muzzle pointed moonward as ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... go by the wayside; go up in smoke, end in smoke &c. (fail) 732. render powerless &c. adj.; deprive of power; disable, disenable[obs3]; disarm, incapacitate, disqualify, unfit, invalidate, deaden, cramp, tie the hands; double up, prostrate, paralyze, muzzle, cripple, becripple[obs3], maim, lame, hamstring, draw the teeth of; throttle, strangle, garrotte, garrote; ratten[obs3], silence, sprain, clip the wings of, put hors de combat[Fr], spike the guns; take ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... fat and lazy! She's been in the fields ever since you left. Not a bridle on her. Many times have I seen her poke her black muzzle over the fence and look down the lane. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... beating them off in any way we can," replied the middy, as his friends all called him from that time. "I have the gun pointing to a certain object on the river, which Captain Carboneer's steamer must pass. He can't help putting his craft where the muzzle of this piece will cover it; and if we pull the lock-string at that instant, the shot will knock his steamer all to pieces, and spill ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... its wild instincts. A weakness in that thong, a slip of the collar, and Wolf would have bounded joyously into the forests to seek for ever the packs of his fathers. Now the babeesh rope was taut, Wolf's muzzle was turned half to the sky, his ears were alert, half-sounding ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... found himself abruptly face to back with what appeared at first glance to be an enormously broad and bow-legged dwarf, with a bald head and a black tail coat, which, in an attitude of savage curiosity, was gazing through a gigantic instrument, whose muzzle projected from an open window into a spacious area. So great was the Prophet's surprise, so supreme the shock to his whole nervous system occasioned by this unexpected encounter, that he did not utter a cry. His amazement carried him into that terrible region which lies beyond ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... all the while. When the ground is uneven, the course is a series of graceful curves, conforming to the shape of the surface. He runs as though there were not a bone in his back. Occasionally dropping his muzzle to the ground for a rod or two, and then tossing his head aloft, when satisfied of his course. When he comes to a declivity, he will put his forefeet together, and slide swiftly down it, shoving the snow before ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... unanimous, unstable mob-mind for the one of them who would make the first action that would precipitate all of them into a common action. Sheldon looked for this one, for such was the one to fear. Directly beneath him he caught sight of the muzzle of a rifle, barely projecting between two black bodies, that was slowly elevating toward him. It was held at the hip by a man in ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... The muzzle of the detector began to swing back and forth slowly and precisely, covering the valley inch by inch. He heard their whispered consultations drifting up from below, though he couldn't make out ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... Lord was upon him. If, instead of fearing, you will trust in the Lord to put his Spirit upon you when there is need of it, you may overcome Satan as easily as Samson did the lion. Daniel was thrown into the lions' den, but they did not eat him. God put a muzzle on them, not a literal muzzle, but something still more effectual, and they could ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... dust, His holy master had implored, in true Assurance he was heard, he downward thrust A heap of stones. O what things may he do That in the Saviour wholly puts his trust! The stones beyond the use of nature grew; Which rolling to the sandy plain below, Next, neck and muzzle, legs and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... traces till they saw Shorty begin to undo the sled-lashings and Smoke attack the dead spruce with an ax; whereupon the animals dropped in the snow and curled into balls, the bush of each tail curved to cover four padded feet and an ice-rimmed muzzle. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... fingers in a row; replying to the observation that the animals were very greedy, by stretching his arms to heaven, showing the empty troughs, lifting ends of wood, tearing up tufts of grass which he carried to his lips, grunting as if he had his muzzle full. ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... suddenly, for von Schalckenberg's hand was on his collar, and von Schalckenberg's pistol-barrel was making its presence uncomfortably felt as the muzzle pressed coldly against his scalp just behind the ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... proper only, the little 'Chrysothrix' (Fig. 16) differs very widely from the Gorilla, and, in the same way, as Man does; while the Baboons ('Cynocephalus', Fig. 16) exaggerate the gross proportions of the muzzle of the great Anthropoid, so that its visage looks mild and human by comparison with theirs. The difference between the Gorilla and the Baboon is even greater than it appears at first sight; for the great facial mass of the former is largely due to a downward development of ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... country, and the source of all our domesticated breeds as well as of the few wild ones that remain, such as the Chillingham breed, which is small, white, with the inside of the ear red, and a brownish muzzle. Some, however, assert they are merely the descendants of a domesticated breed run wild, which have reverted somewhat to the ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... couple of days with a single net. Our dogs were fed on this fish, which appeared to be much larger than the European species. In the spring-time the Kolyma settler can revel in game, for swans, geese, duck and snipe abound, although weapons here are very primitive and the muzzle-loader prevails. Elk and Polar bear are occasionally shot in the winter, but the former have become scarce, and the latter only ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... appearance was so unusual that a group of townsfolk had already assembled round him, staring with open mouth at his horse and himself. A battered gun with an extremely long barrel was fastened by the stock to his stirrup, while the muzzle stuck up into the air behind him. At each holster was a large dangling black bag, and a gaily coloured red-slashed blanket was rolled up at the back of his saddle. His horse, a strong-limbed dapple-gray, all shiny with sweat above, and all caked with mud beneath, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ball into it, and then a third and a fourth, and now shouting to let the men know the brute was wounded and dying, I ran on deck, and putting the muzzle of the gun to the creature's glazing eye, fired, and this did its business, for just one spasm ran through it, and then the terrible, muscular ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... low and involuntarily, he managed to roll over so that he fell on his back. He saw the form, a patch of irregular blackness in the darkness around him and knew it for a body. He got to his feet glancing around, not knowing what this meant. He bent over the form, keeping the furnace beam's muzzle only a few inches from it, but too far back to be grabbed suddenly. He couldn't see the man's clothing very plainly but he could tell it was a patrolman's uniform. Nelson reached down to feel for a heartbeat and drew his hand away sticky with what he knew must be blood. ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... Netherlands were to be, in reality, a republic, of which Anjou was to be a kind of Italian or Frisian podesta. "The Duke is not to act according to his pleasure," said one of the negotiators, in a private letter to Count John; "we shall take care to provide a good muzzle for him." How conscientiously the "muzzle" was prepared, will appear from the articles by which the states soon afterwards accepted the new sovereign. How basely he contrived to slip the muzzle—in what cruel and cowardly fashion he bathed his fangs in the blood of the flock committed to him, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... leaning heavily upon a hand that rested flat on the table, in the other he likewise held a revolver, which he had apparently drawn in self-defense, at the crisis of Mulready's frenzy. Its muzzle was deflected. He looked Kirkwood over with a cool gray eye, the color gradually returning to his fat, clean-shaven cheeks, replacing the pardonable pallor ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... solved the problem by adopting the "gaining twist," in which the grooves start from the breech nearly parallel to the axis of the barrel, and gradually increase the spiral, until, at the muzzle, it has the pitch of one revolution in three to four; the pitch being greater as the bore is less. This gives, as a result, safety from stripping, and a rapid revolution at the exit, with comparatively little friction and shallow groove-marks on the ball,—accomplishing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... alarm he quietly summoned his men, with their rifles, into one corner of the enclosure. Then in his usual soft voice he directed each man to take deliberate aim at some one of the prominent chiefs. He himself presented the muzzle of his rifle within a few yards of the head of the leader of the now astonished and affrighted party. This was all the work of a moment. Then calmly he said to the leader, "leave this fort instantly or you are dead men." A moment of hesitation on their part, a word of parleying ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... whipped out a revolver and leveled it at the running man with the child in his arms. Mead had been looking at the ground, choosing his course, and then had glanced at Paul's face for a moment. When he raised his eyes again he saw the shining muzzle of a revolver pointed at his breast and above it the savage, revengeful, triumphant face ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... jutted into the slanting sunshine, and the pulseless air of declining day was suddenly set to stir and throb by the crackle of encircling musketry. And then was seen the wisdom of the veteran's defence. Few of the hostiles, as yet, had other than old-fashioned muzzle-loading rifles, and few that they owned were effective over six hundred yards. By stationing his better shots in rifle pits well forward from the buildings on every side, Archer easily held the foe at a distance so long as they dare not "rush" his outposts. ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... down at the muzzle of his sixshooter from which a slim curl of gray smoke spiralled lazily upward. Then his eyes veered to the man he had shot and to the man's sixshooter lying on the edge of the sidewalk. It, too, like his own gun, was thinly smoking at the muzzle. The burly youth put a hand to ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... the scent of the piece of loaf to the mule's nostrils, and the temptation was too great to resist. At any rate it stretched out its neck and extended its muzzle, so that head and neck were nearly in a straight line, and uttered a shrill, squealing whinny, which was answered at once by the donkey with a sonorous trumpeting bray, as the lesser animal came cantering up with tail and ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... knows fear," he said, as he leaned his hands upon the muzzle of the rifle he still carried, and stood there, proud and defiant, like a bronze statue, he was so motionless ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... right in the face of my chief antagonist, who fell with a cry of terror. Looking in the direction from which this dangerous assailant had come, I perceived another in the air, and saw that not a moment was to be lost. Dropping my gun with the muzzle between my feet, and holding it so far as I could with my numbed left hand—releasing also my guide, but throwing him to the ground as I released him—I drew my sword; and but just in time, with the same motion with which I drew it, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... our ranks, especially in Missouri division. Surgeon recommends 385 eighty-pounders be loaded to the muzzle, first with blank cartridges,—to wit, Frank Pierce and Stephen A. Douglas, Free-Soil sermons, Fern Leaves, Hot Corn, together with all the fancy literature of the day,—and cause the same to be fired upon the disputed territory; this would ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... that would be considered difficult going even in Canada. At the end of twenty minutes my every garment was not wringing but dripping wet, so that when I carried my rifle over my arm water ran down the barrel and off the muzzle in a steady stream. After a bit of this my knees began to weaken; and it became a question of saving energy, of getting along somehow, and of leaving the actual hunting to Memba Sasa and the guide. If they had shown me a sable, I very ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... hand could descend upon him. The other was slower and Ellhorn had him by the arm before he could thrust his hand into his pocket for his revolver. Herrera's knife slid into position against his wrist and Tuttle's revolver clicked. The Mexican looked dauntlessly into its black muzzle, but saw that his companion was submitting, and that both were covered by the guns of ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... him!" a new voice commanded harshly, and Casey obeyed. His captor shifted the gun muzzle to the back of Casey's neck and poked the gasping, bearded old ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... was he willing to allow. He waxed eloquent in its behalf. His enthusiasm took to itself wings and made a great display of ecclesiastical zeal beautiful to behold. "The Sabbath," quoth the teacher who endeavored to muzzle the students of Lane Seminary on the subject of slavery, whose ultimate extinction his prophetic soul quiescently committed to the operation of two centuries; "the Sabbath," quoth he, "is the great sun of the moral world." Out upon you, said Garrison, the LORD GOD is the great ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... no lobster come into dis yeer kitchen," said Phillis, attempting to close the door. But she saw the muzzle of a gun thrust into the opening. Her hands grasped it. One vigorous pull and it was hers, and ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... bringing a knife from his pocket blazed the stem of a young tree that rose not very far from his victim. Then he disappeared and peace reigned above the fallen. So still he lay that another fox, scared from its siesta, poked a black muzzle round a rock and sniffed the air; but it trusted not appearances and having contemplated the recumbent object lifted its head, uttered a dubious bark and trotted away. From on high an eagle also marked the fallen man, but swiftly soared upward to the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... the top of the hillock, Jasper placed the butt of his long gun on the ground, and, crossing his hands over the muzzle, stood there for some time so motionless, that he might have been mistaken for a statue. A magnificent country was spread out before him. Just in front lay a clear lake of about a mile in extent, and the ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... Wednesday morning another spray of patrols was flung out towards the north and north-west, and the Estcourt armoured train was ordered to reconnoitre towards Chieveley. The train was composed as follows: an ordinary truck, in which was a 7-pounder muzzle-loading gun, served by four sailors from the 'Tartar;' an armoured car fitted with loopholes and held by three sections of a company of the Dublin Fusiliers; the engine and tender, two more armoured ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Still your passions, muzzle your inclinations, clap a bridle on your will, and, as some tumultuous crowd would be hushed into silence that they might listen to the king speaking to them, make a great silence in your hearts, and you will 'hear Him' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... over it. If a rabbit ran from Smith's land to Brown's land, it belonged to Brown, as if it were his pet dog. The logical answer to this would be simple: Any one stung on Brown's land ought to be able to prosecute Brown for keeping a dangerous wasp without a muzzle. ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... poor creature was cruelly loaded with various kinds of iron machines; she had one particularly on her head, which locked her mouth so fast that she could scarcely speak; and could not eat nor drink. I was much astonished and shocked at this contrivance, which I afterwards learned was called the iron muzzle. Soon after I had a fan put into my hand, to fan the gentleman while he slept; and so I did indeed with great fear. While he was fast asleep I indulged myself a great deal in looking about the room, which to me appeared very fine and curious. The first object ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... to muzzle the mouths of negro teachers, and he who proclaims too loudly the doctrine of equality as taught by Thomas Jefferson, will soon be in search ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... five-miles-an-hour swings around the graceful curves we were met by a duck flying close over our heads with noisy quacks. A little farther we came upon the cause of the bird's lively flight in an Indian boy, not above nine years old, paddling a large birch canoe, over the gunwale of which peeped the muzzle of a sanguinary-looking old shot-gun. The diminutive sportsman was for a moment dashed by our sudden and novel appearance, but, from the way he urged his canoe and from the determined set of his dirty face, we had small room to doubt the ultimate fate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... angry oaths now leaped from the robbers' lips, as they realised the helplessness of their position. They did not dare to move, as they were too close to the frowning muzzle of the over-shadowing rifle. ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... they came to a river about forty yards broad, a swollen rushing torrent. There was no village as he had expected. The corporal halted. Birnier slid down the bank and thrust his muzzle into the flood. There was torture in the restraint not to drink too much. He clambered up the slope to find the corporal grinning at him. He turned his back and lay down. There was no shade; only ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... impetus of his run to aid him. It was comparatively simple, therefore, to spring high in the air, and he struck fairly and squarely behind the saddle of the man in the linen coat. When he landed his revolver was in his hand and the muzzle jabbed into the back ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... do. Harry and his men then, with much labor, lowered a four-pounder carronade down the forehatch, and wheeled it to within a few feet of the bulkhead which divided that portion where the prisoners had been confined from the after part. The gun was loaded to the muzzle with grape, and discharged, tearing a hole through the bulkhead and killing and wounding many within. Then the officer in command ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... NAVY.—After the close of the Civil War our navy was suffered to fall into neglect and decay. The thirty-seven cruisers, all but four of which were of wood; the fourteen single-turreted monitors built during the war; the muzzle-loading guns, belonged to a past age. By 1881 this was fully realized and the foundation of a new and splendid navy was begun by the construction of three unarmored cruisers—the Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago. Once ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... desolate place. The fearless Huron scarcely halted. While picking his way through the swamp he had carried his rifle lightly balanced in his left hand, and he now simply changed it to his right, grasping it by the muzzle, so that the stock was before him. He saw the cavernous mouth of the snake opened to an amazing width; the thin tongue, that resembled a tiny stream of blood; the small, glittering eyes; the horn-like fangs, at the roots of which he well knew ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... I have found, that Mortar is eaten by an infinite number of small Creatures, of the bigness of Chees-Mites. These have but two Eyes, and are blackish. They have four feet on each side pretty long. The point of their Muzzle is very sharp, as that of a Spider. I send you but one of them, though I had abundance, but they are dead and lost. It may be, you'l find some at Paris, seeing that in the old Mortar betwixt Stones, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... measuring the quantity with his eye—for it was an evidence of a hunter's skill to be able to get the proper quantity for the ball. Then he put the charge into the barrel. Placing a little greased linsey rag, about half an inch square, over the muzzle, he laid a small lead bullet on it, and with the ramrod began to push the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... on the ground kicking feebly. She put down her wicked-looking head, and, with a fierce growl of contentment, buried her long white teeth in the throat of the dying animal. When she lifted her muzzle again it was all stained with blood. She stood facing us obliquely, licking her bloody chops and making a sort of ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... these hardy little animals, mostly about fifteen hands high, and very lightly framed, are picketed close to the spot where the rider deposits his rifle and blankets. If they allow them to graze on the hillsides during the day, they run a rope through the halter near the horse's muzzle, and tie it close above the knee-joint of the near fore-leg. By this means the horse can graze in comfort, but cannot move away at any pace beyond a slow walk, and so are easily caught and saddled if required in a hurry. The oxen and sheep to be used for slaughtering purposes ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... sprung down from the gallery and presented a loaded and cocked pistol at Mackenzie's head, to whom it would undoubtedly have proved fatal had not one of the gentlemen present, with great presence of mind, thrown his plaid over the muzzle, and thus arrested and diverted its contents. In another moment swords and dirks were drawn on both sides, but the Lord President and Macleod laid hold of Mackenzie and hurried him from the Court. Yet he no sooner gained the outside than one ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... went down, And called his name, soft, clear, and fearlessly; Stooped low, and stroked his muzzle overgrown; Refreshed his drought with dew; wiped pure and free His eyes: and lo! laughed loud for joy to see In those grey deeps the ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... and none answer, they broke it open; and after doing the same by that of Sylvia, they found the poor Sebastian stretched on the floor, and shot in the head, the toilet pulled almost down, and the lock of the pistol hanging in the point of the toilet entangled, and the muzzle of it just against the wound. At first, when they saw him, they fancied Sylvia might kill him, for either offering to come to bed to her in the night, or some other malicious end. But when they saw how the pistol lay, they fancied it accident in ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... led, The same wise blunderhead, But two or three days later, Had chosen for her rest Another weasel's nest, This last, of birds a special hater. New peril brought this step absurd: Without a moment's thought or puzzle, Dame weasel opened her peaked muzzle To eat th' intruder as a bird. "Hold! do not wrong me," cried the bat; "I'm truly no such thing as that. Your eyesight strange conclusions gathers. What makes a bird, I pray? Its feathers. I'm cousin of the mice and rats. Great Jupiter ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... fuel was fired, it would be at the muzzle end of the rocket tube, and the fuel would burn forward at so many inches per second. The refractory lining would resist the rocket blast for a certain time and then crumble away. Crumbling, the refractory particles would be hurled ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground—a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Mid-way of the slope between bridge and fort were the spectators—a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... Mark, quickly. "We shall be starved to death at this rate. Yonder is a line of bushes that runs close out to the brute. I'll stalk it. When close I will make a dash at it, get as near as I can, clap the muzzle against its ribs if possible, and—well, we shall see! You two had better stop ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... the spot where he lay. Wounded in the shoulder, in his fright and agony he had bounded into the wood; but when we came up to him, he had sunk to the earth in a green hollow, thrusting his black muzzle into a pool of his own blood, and tossing it ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... was handicapped. But I hadn't counted on Jenny. She was up, and her head banged into my stomach before I knew she was coming. I felt the wind knocked out, but I got her out of my way—to look up into the muzzle of a gun ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... clashing. He does not comprehend it, and he repudiates it. "I have little liking,"[1294] he says, "for that vague, leveling word propriety (convenances), which you people fling out every chance you get. It is an invention of fools who want to pass for clever men; a kind of social muzzle which annoys the strong and is useful only to the mediocre... Ah, good taste! Another classic expression which I do not accept." "It is your personal enemy"; says Talleyrand to him, one day, "if ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... front of S. Antonio all' Esquilino, and which the modern generation has concealed in a recess on the east side of S. Maria Maggiore. It is in the form of a culverin—a long slender cannon of the period—standing upright. From the muzzle rises a marble cross supporting the figure of Christ on one side, and that of the Virgin on the other. It was erected by Charles d'Anisson, prior of the French Antonians, to commemorate the absolution given by Clement VIII. to Henry IV. of France ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... said Ned, patting the glossy muzzle of his faithful comrade. "This is no time for feasting and banqueting. We are hunting Mexicans, you and I, and after that business is over we may consider ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to coincide with the picture on the screen. The spacer that had matched their orbit over Dis had recently been a freighter. A quick conversion had tacked the hulking shape of a primary weapons turret on top of her hull. The black disc of the immense muzzle pointed squarely at them. Ihjel switched ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... and we found it so at first, for though three of our men fired at her, yet she did not mind them; but my friend the gunner, a venturous fellow, of a bold heart, and great presence of mind, went up so near as to thrust the muzzle of his piece into her mouth, and fired, but let his piece fall, and ran for it the very moment he had fired it. The creature raged a great while, and spent its fury upon the gun, making marks upon the very iron with its teeth, but after some ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... trigger-guard and the trigger itself that it shall be ready to turn about the finger as upon a pivot, and shall be ready for instant discharge, the thumb cocking the weapon as it turns; yet so that it shall none the less be discharged only when the muzzle of the weapon is pointed away from the operator's person ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... narrow, is a puffy pug-dog, with a personal animosity towards us, who triumphs over Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating way he had of snapping at our undefended legs, the ghastly grinning of his moist black muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence of his crisp tail curled like a pastoral crook, all live and flourish. From an otherwise unaccountable association of him with a fiddle, we conclude that he was of French extraction, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Thet's the best prectice,' sez a shepherd gray; 'Ez for their oaths they wun't be wuth a button, Long 'z you don't cure 'em o' their taste for mutton; Th' ain't but one solid way, howe'er you puzzle: Tell they're convarted, let 'em wear a muzzle.' [Cries of 'Bully ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... few rods, the branch trailing from his mouth. Then, with the ponderous but sudden shift of bull psychology, indignation rose in his bosom. He stopped himself so short that his fore-hoofs plowed two long furrows in the soft earth; whirled, lifted his muzzle, and bellowed. One fore-hoof tore up the dirt and showered it over his back. He dropped to his knees and rubbed the ground with his neck in sheer abandonment to the joy of his own abandoned wickedness. He rose up in the hollow which he had dug, lowered his horns, and glowered ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... My pardner threw the muzzle of his gun up. "D—n it!" says he, "I can't do it—he's game from the heart out! But the Lord have mercy on his sinful soul if he and I run foul of each other on ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... very freely, and gave the younger members of the Court circle a good deal of lively atheism. The Empress was much amused, but some of her councillors suggested that it might be desirable to check these expositions of doctrine. The Empress did not like to put a direct muzzle on her guest's tongue, so the following plot was contrived. Diderot was informed that a learned mathematician was in possession of an algebraical demonstration of the existence of God, and would give it ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... a whole gang of banditti would, in the twinkling of an eye, transform itself into a crowd of harmless labourers. Every man took his gun to pieces, hid the lock in his clothes, stuck a cork in the muzzle, stopped the touch hole with a quill, and threw the weapon into the next pond. Nothing was to be seen but a train of poor rustics who had not so much as a cudgel among them, and whose humble look and crouching walk seemed to show that their spirit was thoroughly broken to slavery. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from the house, near which they had started to harness the dog. Then Freddie took his place in front of his sister, holding to two reins that were fastened to the dog's head. Freddie had made no bit, such as is used for horses and goats, but he thought by making straps fast to a sort of muzzle by which he could guide Snap, by pulling his head to one side or ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... orders, however; taking the more picturesque ones, so far as may be possible. I went over the [State] librarian's letter with a nephew with the most modern of military training: and as I was at a military school in 1860—just two centuries after our period—we had fun together. Even with an old muzzle loader—Scott's Tactics—it was "Load and fire in ten motions," now antiquated with the breech-loaders of to-day. The same operation, in 1662, required 28 motions, as we counted. By the bye, did I tell you that I found the flint-lock invented (in Spain) in 1625—and ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... to himself, taking it up carefully. It was a setter with a front paw raised as though it sighted game. Alfred stroked its back and felt its muzzle. Then he pushed it along the polished table, and thought of all the things he could make it do, if only he had it for a bit. He put it down, patted its head again with his cold hand, and took up the plan. But somehow the dog suddenly looked at him with a friendly smile, and seemed to move ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... possessed in full measure that charm of a constitutional freshness of aspect which may defy for a long time extravagant or erring habits of life; a physiognomy, [195] healthy-looking, cleanly, and firm, which seemed unassociable with any form of self-torment, and made one think of the muzzle of some young hound or roe, such as human beings invariably like to stroke—a physiognomy, in effect, with all the goodliness of animalism of the finer sort, though still wholly animal. The charm was that of the blond head, the unshrinking gaze, the warm ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... He trailed the muzzle of the revolver round from my temple to the back of my head as he spoke, pressing it into my hair in its course in a fashion that was anything but reassuring. I have often thought since of how I expected the thing to go off at any second, and how ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... his remark on the authority of a {123} passage published by Professor Owen. Again, he refers[118] to "the greater frequency of a monster proboscis in the pig than in any other animal." But with the exception of the peculiar muzzle of the Saiga (or European antelope), the only known proboscidian Ungulates are the elephants and tapirs, and to neither of these has the pig any close affinity. It is rather in the horse than in the pig that we might look for the appearance of a reversionary ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... went ashore to cut sandal-wood, while the captain, with one or two men, remained on board, in order to be ready, if need be, with the brass gun, which was unhoused and conspicuously elevated, with its capacious muzzle directed point-blank at the chief's house. The men were fully armed, as usual; and the captain ordered me to go with them, to assist in the work. I was much pleased with this order, for it freed me from the captain's company, which I could not now endure, and it gave me an opportunity ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... equal priesthood they were loth to try, Lest zeal and care should with ambition die; To them it seem'd that, take the tenth away, Yet priests must eat, and you must feed or pay: Would they indeed, who hold such pay in scorn, Put on the muzzle when they tread the corn? Would they all, gratis, watch and tend the fold, Nor take one fleece to keep them from the cold? Men are not equal, and 'tis meet and right That robes and titles our respect ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... advance, seemed questionable; for it is not customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all social. Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though indeed their back water must have retarded him, because the white-bone or swell at his broad muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell formed when two hostile currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and laborious; coming forth with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in torn shreds, followed by strange subterranean commotions ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... out to the riverside to feed and drink at night. Earlier in the season the hunters do not use a horn to call them out, but steal upon them as they are feeding along the sides of the stream, and often the first notice they have of one is the sound of the water dropping from its muzzle. An Indian whom I heard imitate the voice of the moose, and also that of the caribou and the deer, using a much longer horn than Joe's, told me that the first could be heard eight or ten miles, sometimes; it was a loud sort of bellowing sound, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the authority of South Carolina at the wall of a fortress belonging to the United States. Its ball carried with it the hatreds, the rages of thirty years, shaped and cooled in the mould of malignant deliberation. Its wad was the charter of our national existence. Its muzzle was pointed at the stone which bore the symbol of our national sovereignty. As the echoes of its thunder died away, the telegraph clicked one word through every office of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... well as to their amazement, Harvey turned the muzzle of the pistol toward his face. It wabbled aimlessly. Even at such short range he had the feeling that he would miss altogether and looked over his shoulder to see if there was a picture or anything else on the wall that might be damaged ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... blood. As he nears the opposing rifle, this feeling gets stronger. So often a man with nerve enough to hold his fire, can break a fierce charge merely by waiting until it is within fifty yards or so, and then suddenly raising the muzzle of his gun. If he had gone to shooting at once, the affair would have become a combat, and the Indians would have ridden him down. As it is, each has had time to think. By the time the white man is ready to shoot, the suspense has done its work. Each savage knows that but one ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... meantime, Al Bushnell was working his Winchester in a manner that was simply amazing, for a steady stream of fire seemed to pour from the muzzle of the weapon, and the cracking of the weapon echoed through the streets of Huejugilla el Alto like the rattling fire from a ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... untravelled oriental understand how parliamentary institutions can continue for a day, how socialists and republicans can take part in the government of a monarchical country, and why the majority do not muzzle the opposition. Yet Englishmen prefer to let this curious illogical muddle continue rather than tolerate some symmetrical and authoritative system which would check free speech and individuality. It is the same in Indian religion. In all ages the Hindu has been passionately devoted to speculation. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... you! What doesn't it hold? Rammed full to the muzzle with memories untold; Why, it scares me to fire, lest the pieces should fly Like the cannons that burst ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fearful muzzle full of dreadful threat, In thy weak hand thou took'st withouten dread; The gentle beast with milk-outstretched teat, As nurses' custom, proffered thee to feed. As one that wondereth on some marvel great, I stood this while amazed at the deed. When thee she ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... was so close to Ted that he could hear his feverish breathing, the man suddenly thrust forward a pistol until the muzzle was within ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... plank before sunset every man of you. Now, go forward, and double-shot your muskets and pistols, and stick as many of the latter into your belts as they will hold. Mr. Thompson, let the gunner double-shot the four big guns, and load the little carronade with musket-balls to the muzzle. If they do try to board us, they'll get a ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... din of thunder, and shrieks, and dazzling flashes of lightning; the wind blowing all the while like a tornado. When I reached the port of my own gun, I put a foot in, thinking to step on the muzzle of the piece; but it had gone to leeward with all the rest, and I fell through the port, until I brought up with my arms. I struggled up again, and continued working my way aft. As I got abreast of the main-mast, I saw some one had let run the halyards. I soon reached the beckets of the sweeps, ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... peculiar angle in the Arkansas incident. There was no apparent attempt to muzzle the two pilots, as in earlier airline cases. Instead, a United Press interview was quickly arranged, for nation-wide publication. In this wire story Captain Jack Adams and First Officer G. W. Anderson ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... Vast bands and layers of muscle overlap each other. Strong ligaments, which you can scarcely cut through, and which soon blunt the sharpest knife, unite the solid, freely-playing, loosely-jointed bones. The muzzle is broad, and short, and obtuse. The claws are completely retractile. The jaws are short. There are two false molars, two grinders above, and the same number below. The upper carnivorous tooth has three lobes, and an obtuse heel; the lower has two lobes, pointed and sharp, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... prickly ball was quite close to him, it moved round, and then, to his surprise, Jock saw a peculiar head with small ears, tiny eyes—very like a pig's—and a thick, heavy nose or muzzle. ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... often urged before the Lord in your comings-together; and forget not your brethren in bonds. Love him much for the work's sake, who labours over you in the word and doctrine. Let no man despise his youth.[147] Muzzle not the mouth of the ox that treads out the corn to you. Search the Scriptures; let some of them be read to you about this thing. If your teacher at any time be laid aside, you ought to meet together as a church, and build up one another. If the members at such a time will ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... pointed the weapon at the animal's head, but it was too dark to see the sight of the rifle, the brain of the creature was small, and Dick, remembering that a bear with a sore head is likely to be cross, dropped the muzzle of his weapon to the fore shoulder of the beast, and fired. The bear scarcely moved, but its eyes closed and Dick was prudently waiting before touching it, when he heard the distant report of a gun and knew that Ned was worried about him. He fired ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... canter, as if he were in nowise impeded by the snow, but were husbanding his strength all the while. When the ground is uneven, the course is a series of graceful curves, conforming to the shape of the surface. He runs as though there were not a bone in his back. Occasionally dropping his muzzle to the ground for a rod or two, and then tossing his head aloft, when satisfied of his course. When he comes to a declivity, he will put his forefeet together, and slide swiftly down it, shoving the snow before him. ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... dog's appointed day But tallied with his master's span, Nor one swift decade turned to gray The busy muzzle's black and tan, To reprobate in idle men Their threescore empty years ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... inflexible General, supposing that the regulars would be obedient to military discipline, and that it would be for their interest to retain in the camp those whose departure would endanger all their lives placed them upon the bridge, with cannon loaded to the muzzle with grape-shot. They were ordered mercilessly to shoot down any who should attempt to cross without his permission. In Crockett's ludicrous account of this ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... and despoiling my countrymen they are fulfilling a divine vengeance. Their land of Ireland had been for centuries ground down with an iron tyranny by our ancestors, who closed their lips with a muzzle, and led them about with a bridle, as their poets say. But now the hateful Saxons (for thus both they and the Welsh designate us) are broken, and delivered over to them for ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... knew you'd never catch me" and she patted the chestnut mare, who turned her blowing muzzle with contemptuous humour towards Shelton's steed, while her flanks heaved rapturously, gradually ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... bayonets and sailors' knives, were placed conveniently for use. A bevy of men were kept busy cleaning the round shot of rust, and there was not a man on the ship who did not look with pride at the guns, in their paint of grey-blue steel, with a scarlet band round the muzzle. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that cargo had taken to get on board, it was wonderful how soon they whipped it out of her. When they had stripped her of all they thought worth taking, they ran one of the cannon to the open hatch, loaded it and crammed it full of balls to the muzzle; then they pointed it down the hold and fired it, and were soon on board ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... big circle of seething flame and rolling smoke here, too,—a malodorous neighborhood, around which fatigue-parties are working with averted heads; and among them some surly and unwilling Indians, driven to labor at the muzzle of threatening revolver or carbine, aid in dragging to the flames carcass after carcass of horse and mule, and in gathering together and throwing on the pyre an array of miscellaneous soldier garments, blouses, shirts, and trousers, all more ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... side of a ditch, and sat down in the grass. Sam immediately rushed up, lay down at my feet, and lifted up my hand with his muzzle ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and fighting, he went his triumphant way into the land of the enemy, without sabres, without artillery, without even the "Bull Pups," sometimes—fighting infantry, cavalry, artillery with only muzzle-loading rifles, pistols, and shotguns; scattering Home Guards like turkeys; destroying railroads and bridges; taking towns and burning Government stores, and encompassed, usually, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... hurrying never stopping, they did on, the colt watching them as though mesmerised. When within reach of the dilated nostrils, they paused and waited, and slowly the sensitive head came forward snuffing, more in bewilderment than fear at this new wonder, and as the dark twitching muzzle brushed the hands, the head drew sharply back, only to return again in a moment ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... eyes, and a soft, warm nose. The very sight gave the boy courage, and at his next whistle the old horse carefully picked his way down the bank, and reaching down his long neck, felt Jacky's shoulder with his velvety muzzle. ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... that every reader of your columns, possessing average information and intelligence, knows as well as I do that'—say that the draught from the touch-hole of a cannon of such a calibre bears such a proportion in the nicest fractions to the draught from the muzzle; or some equally familiar little fact. But whatever it is, be certain that it always tends to the exaltation of Mr. Barlow, and the depression of his enforced ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... laughing; "and, if the truth must be told, my companion and myself need some amends. Those children (the little rascals!) have bespattered us finely with their mud-balls; and one of the curs has torn my cloak, which was ragged enough already. But I took him across the muzzle with my staff; and I think you may have heard him ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... raised his head, stirred, blinked, pounded his tail on the floor, and rose, a gentlemanly, affable chap, to lay his muzzle on Bone's knee while the ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... on the platform near Crosby's swinging feet, and the picture that it looked upon was one suggestive of the cheap, sensational, and bloodcurdling border drama. A mud-covered man stood before the trapped fugitives, a huge revolver in his hand, the muzzle of which, even though it wobbled painfully, was uncomfortably close to ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... ascertained with what velocity the ball leaves the gun and pierces the air. The following is the practical result ascertained by the experiments of Mr. Robins, Count Rumford, and Dr. Hutton: "A musket ball, discharged with a common charge of powder, issues from the muzzle of the piece with a velocity between sixteen and seventeen hundred ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... done? Must there be only current and no tide? How can we be workers with God at his work, and he never say 'Thank you, my child'? Will he take joy in his success and give none? Is he the husbandman to take all the profit, and muzzle the mouth of his ox? When a man does work for another, he has his wages for it, and society exists by the dependence of man upon man through work and wages. The devil is not the inventor of this society; he has invented ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... violent howlings of the dog. His uneasiness, in the first instance, had been evidently but the result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with several buttons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... round and hard and cold pressed against his right temple. Mr. Espalin felt some curiosity, but he sat perfectly still. The object shifted a few inches; Mr. Espalin perceived from the tail of his eye the large, unfeeling muzzle of a sixshooter; beyond it, a glimpse of the forgotten ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... the rifle to a comfortable, firing position, the muzzle pointing straight at Lone's chest. With his left hand he turned back his coat and disclosed a badge pinned ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... answered with a snort of satisfaction as he lifted his moist muzzle from the edge of the water ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... him have her daughter until he should catch the great bear of Manala, and bring him to her. So he went off to the maid again, and told her what old Louhi had demanded of him. The lovely maiden instructed him how to prepare a muzzle for the bear, forging it of steel on a rock beneath the water, at a spot where three currents met together, and the straps were to be of steel and copper mixed. And Ilmarinen made a muzzle as she had directed, ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... man gazed at her, perplexed, irresolute; then he took her right hand and guided it until the revolver muzzle touched ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... Murder? and commit The oldest sinnes, the newest kinde of wayes? Be happy, he will trouble you no more: England, shall double gill'd, his trebble guilt. England, shall giue him Office, Honor, Might: For the Fift Harry, from curb'd License pluckes The muzzle of Restraint; and the wilde Dogge Shall flesh his tooth in euery Innocent. O my poore Kingdome (sicke, with ciuill blowes) When that my Care could not with-hold thy Ryots, What wilt thou do, when Ryot is thy Care? O, thou wilt be ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the Sergeant over my shoulder, "if a scandal was to burst up in the house to-night. Don't be alarmed! I have put the muzzle on worse family difficulties than this, in ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... hard there," reported Vernon. "It's only a little way under the skin. We'll have it out. Hold his head, old man. Don't let him yelp; keep your hand over his muzzle. I'm afraid I must hurt the poor ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... beginning to lose countenance, when up jumped Sneezer to my relief out of the boat, with an old cocked hat lashed on his head, a marine's jacket buttoned round his body, and his coalblack muzzle bedaubed with pipe—clay, regularly monkeyfied, the momentary handiwork of some wicked little reefers, while a small pipe sung out quietly, as if not intended to reach the quarterdeck, although it ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... did not notice me, but sparkled with glee on beholding Sancho, my beautiful black and white setter, that was coursing about the field with its muzzle to the ground. The little creature raised its face and called aloud to the dog. The good-natured animal paused, looked up, and wagged his tail, but made no further advances. The child (a little boy, apparently about five years old) scrambled up to the top of the wall, and called ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... tied up for days and nights, pining for his home, is at length brought into the theatre. As his crouching and feeble form is strapped upon the table, HE LICKS THE VERY HAND THAT TIES HIM! He struggles, but in vain, and uselessly expresses his fear and suffering until a muzzle is buckled on his jaws to stifle every sound. The scalpel penetrates his quivering flesh. One effort only is now natural until his powers are exhausted—a vain, instinctive resistance to the cruel form that stands over him, the impersonation of ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... said Bob. "You tell him I think he ought to muzzle Sutton. What did he send him down ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as must have been evident to the dullest, like the care-burthened honey-fly, possessed with the fixed desire to hide his murmurs in the rose. When for months I have been, in fact, like a dog with his nose on your footprints, asking nothing but to lie down at your feet with his muzzle on your shoe." ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... The nearer side of the Follow Me was in shadow, but a quivering beam of sunlight, reflected from the surface of the water, glinted on the muzzle of a revolver held just ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the work was done it was midnight, and the Warreners' turn for guard. They had received rifles, and were posted with six others in the battery. There were three guns here, all of which were loaded to the muzzle with grape; three artillerymen, wrapped in their cloaks, lay asleep beside them, for the number of artillerymen was so small that the men were continually on duty, snatching what sleep they could by their guns during the intervals of fighting. The orders were to listen attentively for ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... of the largest of the dead pines was a large black bear, reared back on his haunches and striking with both paws viciously at some unseen foe. The hair of muzzle, head and paws was matted and plastered with some thick liquid, giving him a curious frowsy appearance. He was evidently in a towering rage but it was also apparent that he was suffering great pain, his ferocious growls being interspersed ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the man, of that first look he had received—and of what had followed. His eyes were upon the girl, but it was of this he was thinking. Another minute passed. A big shaggy-haired collie, guardian of the dooryard, paused in his aimless wandering about the place to thrust a friendly muzzle into the stranger's hand; but even then he did not respond. For almost the first time in his irresolute life a definite purpose was taking form in the mind of Clayton Craig, and little things passed him by. ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... could see she had just been combed down. They brought Gerasim the soup. He crumbled some bread into it, cut the meat up small, and put the plate on the ground. Mumu began eating in her usual refined way, her little muzzle daintily held so as scarcely to touch her food. Gerasim gazed a long while at her; two big tears suddenly rolled from his eyes; one fell on the dog's brow, the other into the soup. He shaded his face with ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... the woods. The harsh squall of a mountain lion, somewhere down the creek, set him shivering. He did not believe it was a mountain lion, but the call of those who watched his cabin. So daylight found him mumbling beside the stove, his old rifle across his knees with the muzzle pointing toward ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... side ran a gaunt old wolf, grizzled and marked with the scars of many battles. He ran always on her right side. The fact that he had but one eye, and that the left eye, might account for this. He, also, was addicted to crowding her, to veering toward her till his scarred muzzle touched her body, or shoulder, or neck. As with the running mate on the left, she repelled these attentions with her teeth; but when both bestowed their attentions at the same time she was roughly jostled, being compelled, with quick snaps to either side, to drive both lovers away and at ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... day he was brought to Peking as Grand Councillor and President of the Board of Foreign Affairs, and ordered to hand over all army matters to his noted rival, the Manchu Tieh Liang. The time had arrived to muzzle him. His last phase ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... said Blount, his calm becoming still more menacing, as with a sudden whip of his hand he reached behind him. Like a flash he pulled a long revolver from its holster. Eddring gazed into the round aperture of the muzzle and certain surrounding apertures of the cylinder. "Write me a check," said Blount, slowly, "and write it for fifty. I'll tear it up when I get it if I feel like it, but no man shall ever tell me that I took fifteen dollars for a Himyah ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... suddenly the retriever makes a friendly snap at the other. And the greyhound simply isn't there. You haven't observed it quicken its speed or strain a limb; but there it is, just two yards in front of the retriever's outstretched muzzle. So it was with Florence and ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... piece of silver between his teeth, and, with a pressure that denoted the prodigious force of his jaws, caused it to assume a beaten and rounded shape. He then slily dropped the battered coin into the muzzle of his gun, taking care to secure its presence, until he himself should send it on its disenchanting message, by a wad torn from the lining of part of his vestments. Supported by this redoubtable auxiliary, the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... have to release him when he does not himself succeed in snapping the wire by his hard pulling. When he tries to leave the room, if the two leaves of the door are just ajar, he contents himself with pushing his muzzle, like a wedge, into the too narrow aperture. He moves forward, pushing in the direction which he wishes to take. His simple, dog-like method has one unfailing result: the two leaves of the door, when pushed, merely shut ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... grind off the Stumps of the Bristles, and finish the whole with your Knife, and then clean the Head very well; when this is done, you must take out all the Bones, opening the Head in the under Part, and beginning with the under Jaw-Bones and the Muzzle; then cleave the Head, leaving only the Skin over the Skull to hold it together: take out the Tongue and the Brains. When thus you have taken away all the Bones, stab the Flesh with the Point of your Knife ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... means of small maxillae, is very essential, as it is the specific characteristic of the human face as distinguished from the muzzle of the brutes. A receding, as it were, a cut-away chin is particularly repellent, because mentum prominulum is a characteristic belonging exclusively to ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... goring one another at the entrance of a narrow alley. And his shots seemed to be a signal for a general salvo of random musketry. I saw a woman cross the roadway with a rifleman close behind her; he swung up his rifle, holding it by the muzzle, and clubbed her between the ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tremendous power of their antagonists, worked with furious energy. Every minute a fresh gun came into position until, before twilight, every copse, every row of suburban villas on the hilly slopes about Kingston and Richmond, masked an expectant black muzzle. And through the charred and desolated area—perhaps twenty square miles altogether—that encircled the Martian encampment on Horsell Common, through charred and ruined villages among the green trees, through the blackened ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... during my residence in this country by the number of accidents which continually happened to the natives from gunpowder, and not even the saddest experience could render them more careful. We were doubtful of the strength of a French fowling-piece we had, so we loaded it to the muzzle and discharged it, in order to prove it. Some young chiefs, who saw us do this (approving of this method), as soon as they returned home loaded a musket in the same manner, and then discharged it; but not managing the affair as we did—by means of a string fastened to the trigger—the ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... our memory, but writes in visible characters, in proportion to its magnitude, upon our characters and lives. All human acts have perpetual consequences. The kick of the rifle against the shoulder of the man that fires it is as certain as the flight of the bullet from its muzzle. The chalk cliffs that rise above the Channel entomb and perpetuate the relics of myriads of evanescent lives; and our fleeting deeds are similarly preserved in our present selves. Everything that a man wills, whether it passes into external act or ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... but to his indignant annoyance, age had crept upon the big dog; gradually blurring his long clean lines; silvering his muzzle and eyebrows; flecking his burnished mahogany coat with stipples of silver; spreading to greater size the absurdly small white forepaws which were his one gross vanity; dulling a little the preternaturally keen hearing and narrowing ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... his arm to strike, the thick wrist was seized from behind and he was spun violently about to glare into the smiling eyes of the cowpuncher—eyes in which a steely glint flickered behind the smile, a glint more ominous even than the feel of the muzzle of the blue-black six-gun that pressed deeply into his flabby paunch just above the waistband of ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... history of the chase—I captured six hares with a single bitch. We were then hunting on the meadow of Kupisko; Prince Radziwill could not keep his seat upon his horse, but, dismounting, embraced my famous hound Kania,49 and thrice kissed her on the head. And then, thrice patting her on the muzzle, he said, 'I dub thee hence-forward Princess of Kupisko.' Thus does Napoleon give principalities to his generals, from the places at which they have ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... shoot you like a dog," said Stingaree. He drew the revolver whose muzzle had pressed into his own neck so short a time before. Yet now it was broad daylight, and the sun coming up in the bound youth's eyes for the ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... a new voice commanded harshly, and Casey obeyed. His captor shifted the gun muzzle to the back of Casey's neck and poked the gasping, bearded ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... The food, untouched, was corrupting in the sun. The third day, and Monarch still lay on his breast, his huge muzzle under his huger paw. His eyes were hidden; only a slight heaving of his ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the proprietor if there wasn't a good deal of sewer gas in the store, and he told me to go out and shake myself. I think the girl was mad at me because I got a nursing bottle out of the show case with a rubber muzzle, and asked her if that was what she wanted. Well, she told me a sachet was something for the stummick, and I thought a nursing bottle was the ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... captive, but stood unmoved as he looked into the pistol's muzzle and the blazing eyes ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... it were, passively, in a great access of horror, which rendered me incapable of sense or thought or speech or motion. I saw the table, the box, the apparatus by its side, the murdered man on the floor, the pistol lying pointed with its muzzle towards his body, the pool of blood that soaked deep into the Turkey carpet beneath, the ledge of the window, the young man's rounded back as he paused and hesitated. And I also saw, like an instantaneous flash, one hand pushed behind him, waving me off, I almost thought, ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... gigantic Russian who stood towering above his fellows with clubbed rifle, furiously knocking down all who came within his reach, like Horatius or one of the other heroes of ancient Rome. At him Corporal Thorogood sprang, grasping his rifle by the muzzle as he ran, and whirling it on high. The Russian saw him coming. The two rifles met with a crash, and flew into splinters. Bob dropped his weapon, grasped his adversary by the throat, thrust him back, and bore him headlong to the ground. ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... blind, and old, Talked with him, in that prison, of the sky. We creep to power by inches. Europe trusts Her 'giant forty' still. Even to-night Our own old sixty has its work to do; And now our hundred-inch . . . I hardly dare To think what this new muzzle of ours may find. Come up, and spend that night among the stars Here, on our mountain-top. If all goes well, Then, at the least, my friend, you'll see a moon Stranger, but nearer, many a thousand mile Than earth has ever seen her, even in dreams. As for the stars, if seeing ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... cattle ranch. The bunk house were over-crowded, ill-smelling and unsanitary. In these ramshackle affairs the loggers were packed like sardines. The bunks were arranged tier over tier and nearly always without mattresses. They were uniformly vermin-infested and sometimes of the "muzzle-loading" variety. No blankets were furnished, each logger being compelled to supply his own. There were no facilities for bathing or the washing and drying of sweaty clothing. Lighting and ventilation ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... travelling by coach is by no means the least of our sublunary pleasures. Man is a wheelable animal as well as walking one. Winter is the time for a nice inside jaunt. What divine evaporations from the coachman's muzzle! What a joyous creak in the down-flying steps!—and, oh! that comfortable alertness with which we deposit ourselves in the padded corner, and fold our coatflaps over our knees, glance at the frosty steam of the window; and then, quite la Tityre, repose our recumbent bodies at our ease! Such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... having only two days before shot with it a green-headed parrot at a distance of two yards. The distance was not great, to be sure, but it was enough for his purpose—intending, as he did, to meet his foe, when the moment of action should come, in close conflict, and thrust the muzzle of his weapon down the said foe's throat before condescending to ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... "Twice the muzzle touched my forehead. Heavy barrel, flurried wrist, Either spoils a steady lifting. Thrice: then, 'Laugh at Hell who list, I can't! God's no fable either. Did this boy's eye wink once? No! There's no standing him and Hell and God all three against ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... along toward afternoon most of the passengers began to feel pretty sleepy, and dozed off. I was among the number. Suddenly I was awakened by a shout of 'hands up!' and found myself looking full into the muzzle of a blue barreled Colt, held in the hand ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... twenty feet of the skiff, the dugong stopped, sharply sniffing the air with its huge nostrils, pierced not at the tip of its muzzle but on its topside. Then it gathered ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... as connected with the historic event, so we did but glance about us, and returned into the street. It is here narrow, and as Bothwellhaugh stood in a projecting gallery, the Regent must have been within a few yards of the muzzle of his carbine. The street looks as old as any that I have seen, except, perhaps, a vista here and there in Chester,—the houses all of stone, many of them tall, with notched gables, and with stone staircases going up outside, the steps much ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... given the task of leveling and distributing the earth rolled into the road by the grader—a labor which in the interests of fitting a muzzle on his big mongrel dog he deserted whenever the machine moved away from him. No dog would have seemed less deserving of a muzzle, for he was a friendly animal, always wagging his tail, pressing his nose into ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... to me. Keep your investigating muzzle out of my affairs; forget what you've ferreted out; steer clear of me and mine. I want no scandal, but if you raise a breath of it you'll have enough concerning yourself to ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... with his peculiar temperament, his genius which adapts itself thereto, his beliefs which dominate them both, his passions which throw out of gear his temperament, his genius and his beliefs, his tastes which give colour to his passions, his habits which regulate his tastes and muzzle his passions, and with the innumerable procession of men of every sort whom these various elements keep in constant commotion about him; the other, with its manners, its laws, its fashions, its wit, its attainments, its superstitions, its events, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... in time to see Del Pinzo himself bearing down on him astride of a powerful black horse. The Greaser was yelling and waving his gun, from the muzzle of which ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... "Obey your rulers, and submit; for they watch for your souls as those that must give an account," Heb. xiii. 17. "The elders that rule well count worthy of double honor; especially them that labor in the word and doctrine; for the Scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn, and the laborer is worthy of his hire," 1 Tim. v. 17, 18; compared With 1 Cor. ix. 6-15. "Let him that is catechized, communicate to him that catechizeth him in all good ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... to an arc of a circle whose center was occupied by the pivot of the gun, and consequently at right angles with the latter. The piece employed was a 6 in. gun, 35 calibers in length. The distance of its muzzle from the plates attacked ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... the screens is known, and also the time of flight, the midpoint velocity is found by applying Bashforth's formula. When the velocity of shot from a shot-gun has to be found, a thin wire stretched across the muzzle takes the place of the first screen, and a thin sheet of metal or cardboard carrying an electric contact, or a Branly coherer, the conductivity of which is restored by means of an induced current, takes the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Vincennes proved easy enough. The surrender, none the less, was made in good military style. There were two iron three-pounders in the wretched little fort, and one of these was loaded to the muzzle and placed in the open gate. As Hamilton and his men advanced, so runs a not very well authenticated story, Lieutenant Helm stood by the gun with a lighted taper and called sternly upon the invaders to ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... upon his right foot, though the rest of the animal, whatever it was, was hidden in a thicket of bushes which were violently agitated. He could see the protruding eyes; and, springing across the opening, he placed the muzzle of the rifle close against ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... whom he was playing, of cheating at cards, and was challenged by him in consequence. Clive fired, as it seems, prematurely, and missed his aim. The officer, at whose mercy he had thus placed himself, advanced to within arm's length, held the muzzle of his pistol to the youth's forehead, and summoned him to repeat his accusation. Clive did repeat it, and with such defiant courage that his adversary was unnerved. He threw down the weapon, confessed ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... it's not a cold—" returned the Captain, and broke off to arrange his air-cushion over the depressed muzzle of Thundering Meg. Hereupon he took his seat, adjusted the lapels of his great-coat over his knees, and gave way to ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as she spoke, and saw too the angry glint in the fellow's eye as he thrust the muzzle menacingly forward. As we stood thus, glaring at each other, a sudden remembrance made me pause. "Sau-ga-nash"?—surely it was neither more nor less than a Wyandot expression signifying "Englishman." That broad ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... handed me the largest of all the pieces in the canoe. No Christian could have done more. Before pushing off from the sloop the cunning savage asked for matches, and made as if to reach with the end of his spear the box I was about to give him; but I held it toward him on the muzzle of my rifle, the one that "kept on shooting." The chap picked the box off the gun gingerly enough, to be sure, but he jumped when I said, "Quedao [Look out]," at which the squaws laughed and seemed not at all displeased. Perhaps the wretch had ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... said Deede Dawson slowly, and his face was paler, his eyes more deadly, the muzzle of his pistol yet more inflexibly ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... caught and held by Desmond's sword and revolver, laid ready on a small table. She regarded them with a kind of fearful fascination. They were no longer mere ornaments of his uniform, but actual death-dealers, going forth to do murderous work. The short blue muzzle of the revolver had a sinister look, and a point of light at the tip winked ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... the master of a ship was compelled to sail with guns loaded to the muzzle, and with sharpened sabres, he was deemed a personage of great importance. No weak or ordinary man could discharge the responsibilities of such a post. Captain Holmes, influenced by the love of his wife, wrote to Benjamin informing him of the grief his departure ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... crowded with men engaged in a furious and sanguinary conflict. At one of the windows of the palace, a tall man in a flowing white robe, with a naked sabre in one hand and a musquetoon in the other, which, from the smoke still issuing from its muzzle, had apparently just been discharged, stood defending himself desperately against a band of fierce and bearded ruffians, who swarmed up a rope ladder fixed below the window. The person making so gallant a defence was the Senator Malipiero; the assailants ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... Topsail and Bobby Lot were returning in Bobby's punt from Birds' Nest Islands, whither they had gone to hunt a group of seals, reported to have taken up a temporary residence there. They had a mighty, muzzle-loading, flintlock gun; and they were so delighted with the noise it made that they had exhausted their scanty provision of powder and lead long before the seals were ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... an hour and a half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog. His uneasiness, in the first instance, had been evidently but the result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... ravine, but of course he ran the risk of coming upon it in the ferns. But the coolest thing I ever knew him to do was when a manager of mine wanted to fire at a tiger as it was approaching him. It was in the days of the muzzle-loaders, and as Rama Gouda knew that to speak would be fatal, he quietly but firmly put both his fingers on the caps when my manager presented the gun at the tiger, and kept them there till the tiger had reached the proper ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... bayonet-fashion. If the desired degree of curvature is not produced in this way, the wooden pipe, still in the rough state as regards its outer surface, is suspended horizontally on loops, and weights are hung upon the muzzle end until, on sighting through the bore, only a half circle of daylight is visible — this being the degree of curvature of the bore desired. The wood is then heated with torches, and on cooling retains the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... 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 without having ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... deep in the tangle of impenetrable jungle, Numa, the lion, raised his massive head. Numa had dined well until almost daybreak and it had required much noise to awaken him. Now he lifted his muzzle and sniffed the air, caught the acrid scent spoor of the reed buck and the heavy scent of man. But Numa was well filled. With a low, disgusted grunt ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and as he uttered these words he thrust the muzzle of his carbine through the loophole in front of him. The chorus of ejaculations and remonstrances which arose from the inside of the dug-out showed that the rest of the deserters were not yet ready to resort to the use of their firearms; but Bristow was ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... instrument which would produce a sound sufficiently loud to catch the ear of the engineman. Suppose, for instance, that the mouth-piece of a clarionet, or the windpipe of a duck, or a metallic imitation, were affixed to the muzzle of an air-gun, and the condensed air discharged through the confined aperture; a shrill sound would be emitted. Surely, then, a small instrument might be contrived upon this principle, powerful enough to arrest the attention of the engineer, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... from the Dingo or Canis australiensis. I never saw one nearer than from twenty to thirty yards, and was unable to procure a specimen. Its colour is the same as that of the Australian dog, in parts however having a blackish tinge. The muzzle is narrow, long, thin, and tapers much, resembling that of a greyhound, whilst in general form it approaches the English lurcher. Some of the party who went to Timor stated it to resemble precisely the Malay dog common to that island, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... there is a big gun, said to have been brought by Nadir Shah from Delhi, and known as the Pearl Cannon. It is said to be so called from having had a string of pearls hung on it near the muzzle when it was on show in Imperial Delhi. This was probably the case, for we know that heavy guns in India were regarded with a degree of respect and reverence almost approaching worship. The gunners of the Maharajah Runjeet Singh, the Lion of the Punjab, used to 'salaam' to their guns, and to ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... enter a swamp meadow which was behind the shanty, and had been rendered hard and porous by the weather. Here he directed them to spread their blankets, and lie down with the locks of their muskets between their knees, and the muzzle protected by a wooden stopper kept for the purpose. Nick enforced this command with an explanation of its advantages: the snow being dry, and not subject to drift, would soon cover them, keeping them quite warm, and would also conceal them ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... On one occasion, indeed, it lifted my camera and tripod in the air, driving it crashing into my chest. I had unknowingly placed myself in the danger zone which forms a semi-circle on either side of the muzzle when fired, the force being at times so great as to tear trees up by the roots and send ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... the sled-lashings and Smoke attack the dead spruce with an ax; whereupon the animals dropped in the snow and curled into balls, the bush of each tail curved to cover four padded feet and an ice-rimmed muzzle. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... occasion very nearly lost her life through this man? They were in Germany together, she and the Pole, and he had locked her up in her room without food for many hours, and coming in suddenly he had pressed the muzzle of a pistol against her temple and pulled the trigger. Fortunately, it did not go off. 'It was a very near thing,' she said; 'the cartridge was indented, and I made up my mind that if things went any further, I ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... jumped at his throat, and tore him to the ground, and as he felt the horrible muzzle closer to his face, he ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... fortifications, which defended the entrance to the bridge itself: here they were commanded by Moreau in person. There, for two more hours, a hand-to-hand struggle took place, whilst the terrible artillery belched forth death almost muzzle to muzzle. At last the Austrians, rallying for a last time, advanced at the point of the bayonet, and; lacking either ladders or fascines, piled the bodies of their dead comrades against the fortifications, and succeeded in scaling the breastworks. There was not a moment to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... came along, when the ambush rushed upon him, and ordered him to surrender. He refused, and kept them off with his club. They still pressed upon him with their guns presented to his breast. Without seeming to be daunted, he caught hold of the muzzle of one of the guns, and came near getting possession of it. At length, retreating to a fence on one side of the road, he sprang over into a corn-field, and started to run in one of the rows. One of the young ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... was pretended, could not make guns of another sort.—But where lay the difficulty?—One of the witnesses had unravelled it. He had seen the Negros maimed by the bursting of these guns. They killed more from the butt than from the muzzle. Another had stated, that on the sea-coast the natives were ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... after dragging him to the rear, lashed him fast to a tree so that he could not move a limb, and a young savage amused himself by throwing a hatchet at his head, striking it into the wood as close as possible to the mark without hitting it. A French petty officer then thrust the muzzle of his gun violently against the prisoner's body, pretended to fire it at him, and at last struck him in the face with the butt; after which dastardly proceeding he left him. The French and Indians being forced after a time to fall back, Putnam found himself between the combatants ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... to carry my rifle over my shoulder, or rested across the pommel of my saddle: in either case, always in hand. It was but the work of a moment to get the piece ready. The pressure of the muzzle against my horse's ear, was a signal well understood; and at once rendered him as immobile as if made of bronze. Many years of practice— during which I had often aimed at higher game—had steeled my nerves and straightened my ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... without delay I found myself at the gate. I called the gardener by the way, but he managed to hold himself at safe distance behind the fence. I put the Savoyards instantly in a secure position, asked the bullies what they were at, forced them to muzzle the bears again, under threat of sending for the police, and ended the whole affair in so short a time that I was not missed from the house. Unfortunately, while I was covered with dust and blood, for the bears had already attacked one of the men when I arrived, I heard ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... lose countenance, when up jumped Sneezer to my relief out of the boat, with an old cocked hat lashed on his head, a marine's jacket buttoned round his body, and his coalblack muzzle bedaubed with pipe—clay, regularly monkeyfied, the momentary handiwork of some wicked little reefers, while a small pipe sung out quietly, as if not intended to reach the quarterdeck, although it did do so, "And here comes the last joint of Mr Cringle's Tail." The dog began floundering ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... in a three-decker of 1815. But he would have been helpless as a child in the fire-driven iron monsters that fought at Hampton Roads. The shift from sail to steam, from oak to iron, from shot to shell, and from muzzle-loading smoothbore to breech-loading rifle began about 1850; and progress thereafter was so swift that an up-to-date ship of each succeeding decade was capable of defeating a whole squadron of ten years before. Success came to depend ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... they don't cut loose with that thing," Loudons said, looking apprehensively at the brass-rimmed black muzzle that was covering them from the belfry. "I wonder if we ought to—Oh-oh, ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... declining day was suddenly set to stir and throb by the crackle of encircling musketry. And then was seen the wisdom of the veteran's defence. Few of the hostiles, as yet, had other than old-fashioned muzzle-loading rifles, and few that they owned were effective over six hundred yards. By stationing his better shots in rifle pits well forward from the buildings on every side, Archer easily held the foe at a distance so ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... who says next?" cried the drunken ruffian. But before the words were out of his mouth there was a growl, a plunge, a snarl, and he was full length on the street with the bloodhound's muzzle ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... down into the creek bed and turned him aside to a small pool on the upper side of the crossing, under the cut-bank, where the horse thrust his muzzle into the water and drank greedily. The rider swung himself out of the saddle, knelt a pace beyond, where the rivulet trickled into the ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... Dujardin and La Croix raised the muzzle to the mark,—hoo! hoo! hoo! ping! ping! ping' came the bullets about ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the right and left on the sides of the road. The artillerymen had turned the gun and loaded it with a solid shot. Instantly a wide lane opened through our ranks; the man with the lanyard drew the fatal cord, fire burst from the primer and the muzzle, the long gun sprang up and recoiled, and there seemed to be a demoniac yell in its ear-splitting crash, as the heavy ball left the mouth, and tore its bloody way through the bodies of the struggling ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... hired. For lesser damages to the beast the hirer had to pay compensation on a fixed scale. Thus, if the ox had its eye knocked out during the period of its hire, the man who hired it had to pay to the owner half its value; while for a broken horn, the loss of the tail, or a torn muzzle, he paid a quarter of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... report of the little piece sounded, and a faint puff of smoke left her muzzle, Runkle's head bobbed up to watch the result of ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... not responsible, as he rests his remark on the authority of a {123} passage published by Professor Owen. Again, he refers[118] to "the greater frequency of a monster proboscis in the pig than in any other animal." But with the exception of the peculiar muzzle of the Saiga (or European antelope), the only known proboscidian Ungulates are the elephants and tapirs, and to neither of these has the pig any close affinity. It is rather in the horse than in the pig that we might look for the appearance ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... with the repulsion twice that of the ordinary traction. But I think this would be too slow. It will be best to treble or quadruple the apergetic charge, which can easily be done, in which case your speed will exceed the muzzle-velocity of a projectile from a long-range gun, in a few seconds. As the earth's repulsion decreases, the attraction of mars and Jupiter will increase, and, there being no resistance, your gait will become more and more rapid till it is necessary to reverse the charge to avoid ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... to circle rapidly to the left in a constantly contracting spiral. They did a great deal of yelling. Occasionally they would shoot. To the latter feature the plainsmen lent an attentive ear, for to their trained senses each class of arm spoke with a different voice—the old muzzle-loader, the Remington, the long, heavy Sharp's 50, each proclaimed itself plainly. The mere bullets did not interest them in the least. Two men seated on the ground presented but a small mark to the Indians shooting uncleaned weapons ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... large handkerchief. The more I yielded, the more unreasonable their demands became, and at every fresh demand a shout was raised by the armed party, and a rush made around us with brandishing of arms. One young man made a charge at my head from behind, but I quickly brought round the muzzle of my gun to his mouth, and he retreated. I pointed him out to the chief, and he ordered him to retire a little. I felt anxious to avoid the effusion of blood; and though sure of being able, with my Makololo, who had been drilled by Sebituane, to ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... out "Fire! fire for your lives." I intended to give the spy a taste of my rifle first, but in consequence of his being in such close quarters to me, and my holding my rifle with one hand, while I endeavoured to free myself with the other, I could not point the muzzle at my assailant, and my only way of clearing myself from his hold was by battering his head with the butt end of the weapon with my right hand, while he still clung round my left side. At last I disengaged ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... would not talk about fun. When you reach the drawing-room, there is a pug seated on an ottoman. He looks like a peculiarly truculent bull-dog that has been brought up on a lowering diet of gin-and-water, and you gain an exaggerated idea of his savagery as he uplifts his sooty muzzle. He barks with indignation, as if he thought you had come for his mistress's will, and intended to cut him off with a Spratt's biscuit. Of course he comes to smell round your ankles, and equally of course you put on a sickly smile, and take up an attitude as though you had sat down on the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... evening, with time and life heavy on his hands, when he remembered that the Doctor had sent him word to come to the pond that night. Taking his rifle by the muzzle, and throwing it across his shoulder, he plunged into the woods in a right line for the west shore of the pond, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... turned around, like the turret of an iron-clad, until the muzzle of a big seven-shooter ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... again the sound of voices—women's voices. The stranger left the front portal to investigate the rear end of the long cabin. Loopholes in the log walls permitted air and light to enter the rooms. Through one of these openings, an aperture which might very likely conceal the muzzle of an aimed rifle, Arlington heard—not the report of a gun, but what surprised him more—his own name shrieked by Evaleen Hale. The hurried, excited appeal of the captives made clear the prompt and only course for the man to take. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... with hundreds of little lamps; and as there are a great many of these slender spires, it can be readily imagined that this sea of light must have a beautiful effect. The Turkish ships in the harbour presented a similar appearance. At every loop-hole a large lamp occupied the place of the muzzle of the cannon. At nine o'clock in the evening, salvoes were fired from the ships; and at the moment that the cannons were fired, the lamps vanished, flashes of light and gunpowder-smoke filled the air; a few seconds afterwards, as if by magic, the lamps had ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... his horse on the muzzle with his whip, and galloped off at a breakneck pace. Tihon Ivanitch bowed to me twice, once for himself and once for his companion, and again set off at a ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... to his horror saw the muzzle of a rifle pointed straight at his head. At the other end of it, and standing in the door, was a short, stocky figure, a head of bushy hair, and a pair of small, crafty eyes. The fierceness and suddenness of the voice, in the great silence about him, and its terrible ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... most trivial cause, as we shall see in the next chapter. Williams tells us (106) of a chief on Thithia who was addressed disrespectfully by a younger brother and who, rather than live to have the insult made the topic of common talk, loaded his musket, placed the muzzle at his breast, and pushing the trigger with his toe, shot himself through the heart. He knew a ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... attempt to point the gun towards it, and just as he supposes he has attained the object, and puts forth his hand to give vent to the winged weapon of death, he finds the gun has changed its position—the muzzle is pointed towards his own breast. Thus opposed, thwarted, baffled, by every thing around him, despised by all things, whether gifted with life or not, he passes an existence, the horrors of which may ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... remedied. In this case it is that I think a clergyman is laid open to the pen of any one that knows how to manage it; and that every person who has either wit, learning, or sobriety, is licensed, if debauched, to curb him; if erroneous, to catechise him; and if foul-mouthed and biting, to muzzle him. Such an one would never have come into the church, but to take sanctuary; rather wheresoever men shall find the footing of so wanton a satyr out of his own bounds, the neighbourhood ought, notwithstanding all his pretended capering divinity, to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... skeered," said John, as he led the bear back; "but he wouldn't hurt nobody! It would be a good thing, though, to put his muzzle on; that's it hangin' over there by the shed; it's like a halter, and straps up his jaws. The Dago said there ain't no need for it, but he puts it on when he's travellin' along the road to ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... on the scene that followed. The seven were found next day lying dead, a bullet through the brain of each, the murderer, by the side of the wife, still holding the weapon of death in his hand, its muzzle ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... its size to be about that of the Cometara, but it was much more nearly globular. Upon its top, seeming to project from the terraced dome, was an up-pointing funnel, like the smokestack of an old-fashioned surface steam vessel; or like a great black muzzle of an old-fashioned gun. And in a row along the bulging middle of the hull there was ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... Smoke's rifle, ejecting and counting the cartridges, and examining the barrel at muzzle ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... remarkably high-spirited and beautiful dog, with long black ears, cheeks, back, and sides. The tip of his tail was white. His muzzle, neck, throat, breast, belly and legs, were ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... declivity was a little clump of vegetation, and in the midst of it welled up a thin stream of water. The mustang scrambled eagerly towards it, and, before Freeman had had time to throw himself out of the saddle, he had plunged his muzzle into the rivulet. He sucked it down with such satisfaction that it was evident the water was not salt. Freeman laid himself prone upon the brink, and followed his steed's example. The draught was ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... its name—consisted, at this time, of only some ten thousand men; all Mobiles or franc tireurs, with the exception of a battalion of line, and a battalion of Zouaves. The Mobiles were almost undisciplined, having only been out a month; and were, for the most part, armed only with the old muzzle loader. Many were clothed only in the gray trousers, with a red stripe, which forms part of the mobile's uniform; and in a blue blouse. Great numbers of them were almost shoeless; having been taken straight from the plow, or workshop, and having received no shoes since they ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... that will swear, drink, dance, Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit The oldest sins the newest kind of ways? Be happy, he will trouble you no more; England shall double gild his treble guilt, England shall give him office, honour, might; For the fifth Harry from curb'd license plucks The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent. O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows! When that my care could not withhold thy riots, What wilt thou do when riot is thy care? O, thou wilt be a wilderness ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... That piece looks as much like a real cannon as one of our cathechisms is like another. The muzzle is more than a foot deep, and has ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... But Lufra—whom from Douglas' side Nor bribe nor threat could e'er divide, The fleetest hound in all the North— 700 Brave Lufra saw and darted forth. She left the royal hounds mid-way, And dashing on the antlered prey, Sunk her sharp muzzle in his flank, And deep the flowing life-blood drank. 705 The King's stout huntsman saw the sport By strange intruder broken short, Came up, and with his leash unbound, In anger struck the noble hound. The Douglas had endured, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... its blaster swivelled slowly down. Frantically, Alan hugged the bank as a shaft of pure electricity arced over him, sliced into the water, and exploded in a cloud of steam. The robot shook for a second, its blaster muzzle lifted erratically and for an instant it seemed almost out of control, then it quieted and ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... dark eye upon her, and nosed her forgivingly with a warm velvet muzzle, but it was plain that, for the time, he was done for. They both moved haltingly to the broken gate, and Betty fastened him to a thorn tree near it, where he stood on three feet, his fine ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and new. Even fingers that were clumsy and trembling found little difficulty in making a spill of it and inserting it (this with less ease) into the muzzle of the rifle. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... lazily, fore and aft, in collie-fashion. Then he trotted up to his two deities and thrust his muzzle playfully into the Mistress's palm, as he fell into step ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... fancy. Lodovico supplied Annibale Caracci with the fleshy back of a naked Venus. Guido Reni painted his Madonna's heads from any beardless pupil who came handy, and turned his deformed color-grinder—a man 'with a muzzle like a renegado'—into the penitent Magdalen.[221] It was inevitable that forms and faces thus evolved should bear the stamp of mediocrity, monotony, and dullness on them. Few, very few, painters—perhaps only Michelangelo—have been able ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... kissed each of them in his turn. Finding they had received no damage, he came up to the coach, with a pale visage and staring eyes, and said it was God's mercy he had not killed his beasts. I answered, that it was a greater mercy he had not killed his passengers; for the muzzle of the piece might have been directed our way as well as any other, and in that case Joseph might have been hanged for murder. "I had as good be hanged (said he) for murder, as be ruined by the loss of my cattle." This adventure ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... over our heads with noisy quacks. A little farther we came upon the cause of the bird's lively flight in an Indian boy, not above nine years old, paddling a large birch canoe, over the gunwale of which peeped the muzzle of a sanguinary-looking old shot-gun. The diminutive sportsman was for a moment dashed by our sudden and novel appearance, but, from the way he urged his canoe and from the determined set of his dirty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... sleeve and pushing his boots in the most painful manner I could devise, a good-looking peasant woman made her tardy appearance at the side door of the adjoining izba, and seemed to enjoy the situation in an impartial, impersonal way. The horse thrust his muzzle gently into his master's face and roused him for me, and, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... be, and we don't know him, and he hasn't got any muzzle on, and the police will kill him if Jud don't," answered the sanguinary youth who had first started the chase after the poor animal, which had come limping into town, so evidently a lost dog that no one felt any hesitation ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... hills. Men either going to the market or coming from it leaned on their loads to rest under enormous banyans and to watch me as I passed. Horses browsed on the hill-sides. One of my soldiers had laid in provisions for the day, and ran along with his gun (muzzle forward) over one shoulder and four lengths of sugar-cane over the other. Ploughmen with their buffaloes halted in the muddy fields to gaze admiringly upon me; women ran scared from the path when my pony let out at a casual passer-by ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... was as minute as it was apparently absorbing; he omitted nothing from the square muzzle to the lozenge-like scut. And every now and then he threw a quick glance at the man at the window, who was watching the careful scrutiny a ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... certain men in every community who take delight in poisoning the minds of the younger generation. We muzzle dogs, or shoot them when they go mad. The foul-mouthed man is far more vicious than the dog, and should ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... other heretic Scots are racking your brains to devise how to thresh corn by machines, these pious people, in simple obedience to the injunction, 'Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out the corn,' are treading out their corn with unmuzzled oxen. What think ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... threshold without stepping over it. If he had passed over it I could always send him back by casting toward him a few drops of water from the bottom of the glass after drinking. Sitting, as was his habit, on the sill of the door, with the tip of his muzzle never extending beyond the plane of the panels, he would follow my motions with the closest attention, reminding me, if I failed to give him a sign of attention, by a discreet, plaintive cry, that he was there. But if I touched my glass, he would spring up at once; if I filled it, he would ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... below the cross sprang up to greet their Admiral. A sudden puff of evening wind lifted Drake's red cap, and bearing it across to a small battery where a gunner and his mates examined a line of Spanish ordnance, placed it neatly over the muzzle of the smallest gun. Frank laughter arose; the gunner, with the red cap pressed against his hairy breast, and grinning with pleasure at his service, came at a run to restore to the great Sir Francis his property. Drake, whom the mere soldier and mariner idolized, found for ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... a second warrior (a Miami that time), drew himself upward close to the place from which the Shawanoe had dropped. He rose until his tufted head, his sloping forehead and his gleaming eyes appeared just above the horizon of the enclosure. Staring downward, he looked straight into the muzzle of a rifle, held by a young Kentuckian, who had just become ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... and one paw lifted, sniffing suspiciously. Even then he did not see me, though only the open shore lay between us. He did not use his eyes at all, but laid his great head back on his shoulders and sniffed in every direction, rocking his brown muzzle up and down the while, so as to take in every atom from the ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... be—thought I—to whom my tremendous hero turns tail! The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his neck, and I eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter, alone were worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and condescended ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the door, but Harry put his foot over the sill and the muzzle of his pistol within six inches ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of seething flame and rolling smoke here, too,—a malodorous neighborhood, around which fatigue-parties are working with averted heads; and among them some surly and unwilling Indians, driven to labor at the muzzle of threatening revolver or carbine, aid in dragging to the flames carcass after carcass of horse and mule, and in gathering together and throwing on the pyre an array of miscellaneous soldier garments, blouses, shirts, and trousers, all more or less hacked and blood-stained,—all of no more ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... done more. Before pushing off from the sloop the cunning savage asked for matches, and made as if to reach with the end of his spear the box I was about to give him; but I held it toward him on the muzzle of my rifle, the one that "kept on shooting." The chap picked the box off the gun gingerly enough, to be sure, but he jumped when I said, "Quedao [Look out]," at which the squaws laughed and seemed not at all displeased. Perhaps the wretch ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... through an open door, and strode quietly in his rubber-soled shoes along a dark passage. At the end was a room in partial darkness, and a man who watched a spot of light which darted hither and back, and between whiles wrote upon paper. To him White went up, and clapped a cold revolver muzzle against ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... spark. Fasten a piece of wood, A, to the cannon, by means of machine screws or, if there are no trunnions on the cannon, the wood may be made in the shape of a ring and slipped on over the muzzle. The fuse hole of the cannon is counterbored as shown and a small hole is drilled at one side to receive a small piece of copper wire, E. The wood screw, C, nearly touches E and is connected to one binding post of the induction coil. The other binding post ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... for me. I sought an occasion when my father was away, to get from my mother the needed information, how to load and discharge a gun. One day when all were away I stole my fathers gun. It was a double barreled muzzle loader, one barrel shot and the other rifle. I had quite an experience—I saw a partridge just as I entered the woods budding in the top of an old birch tree. I leveled the gun up against an old ash tree and fired I had ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... row of beehives. A tame doe lay on the little green sward, not far from a large rough deer-hound, both close friends who could be trusted at large. There was a mournful dispirited look about the hound, evidently an aged animal, for the once black muzzle was touched with grey, and there was a film over one of the keen beautiful eyes, which opened eagerly as he pricked his ears and lifted his head at the rattle of the door latch. Then, as two boys came out, he rose, and with a slowly waving tail, and a wistful ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... expense? Who plants a vineyard and eats not the fruit of it? or who feeds a flock and eats not of the milk of the flock? [9:8] Do I say these things in the manner of men? or does not the law also say the same? [9:9]For it is written in the law of Moses, You shall not muzzle the ox that threshes. Does God care for oxen? [9:10]or does he speak entirely for our sakes? For our sakes, doubtless, it was written, that he who plows should plow in hope, and that he who threshes ...
— The New Testament • Various
... them as though mesmerised. When within reach of the dilated nostrils, they paused and waited, and slowly the sensitive head came forward snuffing, more in bewilderment than fear at this new wonder, and as the dark twitching muzzle brushed the hands, the head drew sharply back, only to return again in ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... know not then the way to carry firearms? An it were the old Spanish match-lock in the lieu of this good flint-engine, which may be borne ten miles or more and never once go off, scarcely couldst thou seem more scared. I might point at thee muzzle on—just so as I do now—even for an hour or more, and like enough it would never shoot thee, unless I pulled the trigger hard, with a crock upon my finger; so you see; just so, Master Pooke, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of the river had become solid with floating vegetation under which the water flowed. We tied up for the night, and shortly after were boarded by two men who said that their camp was near by and that they shot alligators and plume-birds for a living. One of the men carried his rifle, a muzzle-loader, and from its barrel projected the ramrod, which had become fast immediately above the ball while loading. He intended to draw it out after they ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... my word. I always do, my fine fellow," he added with a savage chuckle; "and never neglect to pay my debts of honor. Yours especially," he continued, drawing a pistol from his pocket, "shall be prompt payment, and with interest too, scelerat!" He held the muzzle of the pistol to within a yard of my forehead, and placed his finger on the trigger. I instinctively closed my eyes, and tasted in that fearful moment the full bitterness of death; but my hour was not yet come. Instead of the flash and report which I expected would herald me into eternity, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... volatile perfume that has been put into a vial and locked away in a drawer and forgotten; there will be nothing left but an empty bottle, and a rotten cork. Speak your faith if you would have your faith strengthened. Muzzle it, and you go a long way to kill it. You are witnesses, and you cannot blink the obligation nor shirk the duties without damaging that in yourselves to which you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... to discern the speaker, but the muzzle of a pistol was placed menacingly against his chest, and he was again ordered ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... dozen pikemen ready below; and then on a sudden came the crash; and I looked up and there was the Spaniards' decks above us, and the poop like a tower, with a grinning don or two looking down; and there was I looking up the muzzle of a culverin. I skipped towards the poop, shouting to the men; and the dons fired their broadside as I went.—God save us from that din! But I knew the old Seahorse was done this time—the old ship lurched and shook as the balls tore through her and broke her back; and there ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... a snort of satisfaction as he lifted his moist muzzle from the edge of the water and ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... a personal animosity towards us, who triumphs over Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating way he had of snapping at our undefended legs, the ghastly grinning of his moist black muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence of his crisp tail curled like a pastoral crook, all live and flourish. From an otherwise unaccountable association of him with a fiddle, we conclude that he was of French extraction, and his name Fidele. He belonged to some ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... old-fashioned style of muzzle is, I think, the best, that is, made with string. I don't approve of wire muzzles, as they are liable to catch against tree roots and bits of sharp stones, and from experience I find the ferret works much better ...
— Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher - After 25 Years' Experience • Ike Matthews
... thus completing the little man's discomfiture. By that time the two policemen were nearly upon him, but he was lithe and fierce as a cobra, and had seized the rifle again before they could close with him. Jabbing the nearer adversary with the muzzle, he smashed a lamp and sent its owner sprawling backward. Then, swinging the weapon, he aimed a murderous blow at the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... business. Now here they come—a flock of seven geese, plump down among the stool, but get up again with equal haste. Two of them are knocked down with the breech-loader, one dead, the other only wounded—a third stopped by the muzzle-loader. Theodoric was dreamily watching his decoys as they danced about, when a bunch of sprig-tail swooped dawn, hovering above the stool. He picked his bird, and dropped two with the first barrel, and another responded ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... lightning-like motion unlimbered his .45 and began to shoot. Like most Western gun-handlers, his revolver commenced to spit as soon as its mouth was out of the holster, and the bullets spurted up the sand twice in front of Bud before the muzzle had reached a dangerous angle, ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... very thin vapour is produced, which is dissipated rapidly. This smokelessness can be understood from the fact that the products of combustion are nearly all non-condensible gases, and contain no solid products of combustion which would cause smoke. For the same muzzle velocity a smaller charge of cordite than gunpowder is required owing to the greater amount of gas produced. Cordite is very slow in burning compared to gunpowder. For firing blank cartridges cordite chips containing no vaseline is used. The rate at which cordite explodes ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... Elder gravely, "I guess you know your orders. But you mustn't pull down my fence," and as he spoke he drew his shot-gun in front of him, and rested his hands upon the muzzle, "nor destroy this crop." And the long upper lip came down over the lower, giving an expression of obstinate resolve to the ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... Hindustani butler named Imam, and a Seedi called Farhan. This latter man was a perfect Hercules in stature, with huge arms and limbs, knit together with largely developed ropy-looking muscles. He had a large head, with small eyes, flabby squat nose, and prominent muzzle filled with sharp-pointed teeth, as if in imitation of a crocodile. Farhan told me that when very young he was kidnapped on the Zanzibar coast by the captain of a small Arab vessel. This captain one day seeing him engaged with many other little ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... seen the wild herd by the jungle galloping close? With a thunder of hooves they trample what heads may oppose: Terribly, crushingly, tempest-like, onward they sweep: But a spring from the reeds, and the panther is sprawling in air, And with muzzle to dust and black beards foam-lash'd, here and there, Scatter'd they fly, crimson-eyed, track'd with blood to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... man ordered. And Martinez kept the spot as if congealed, for in the saloon-keeper's hand was a revolver with an exceedingly large muzzle. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... to be a kind of Italian or Frisian podesta. "The Duke is not to act according to his pleasure," said one of the negotiators, in a private letter to Count John; "we shall take care to provide a good muzzle for him." How conscientiously the "muzzle" was prepared, will appear from the articles by which the states soon afterwards accepted the new sovereign. How basely he contrived to slip the muzzle—in what cruel and cowardly fashion he bathed his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in his hand, the muzzle came in line with Captain Malu's stomach. Captain Malu's blue eyes looked at ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... greeted them cheerfully, turning back into the study and tossing the revolver, shreds of smoke still curling up from its muzzle, upon a divan. "O'Hagan," he called, on second thought, "jump down-stairs and see that all New York doesn't get ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... so that if struck by a bullet they would not be injured. This was greatly improved upon by the Germans in the Fokker type, the fire of the machine-guns being automatically regulated so that it is never discharged when a blade of the propeller is directly in front of the muzzle. Since then various forms of this device have been adapted by all the belligerents. Another novel development of aerial warfare is the miniature wireless-sending apparatus with which most of the observation and artillery regulation machines are now equipped, thus enabling the observers ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... kunvenigi. Musty malfresxa. Mutation sxangxado. Mute muta. Mute mutulo. Mutilate vundegi. Mutinous ribela. Mutiny ribelo. Mutter murmuri. Mutton sxafajxo. Mutton, leg of sxaffemuro. Mutual reciproka. Mutually reciproke. Muzzle (for a dog) busxumo. Muzzle busxumi. My mia, mian. Myoptic miopa, miopema. Myopy miopeco. Myosotis miozoto. Myriad miriado. Myriametre miriametro. Myrrh mirho. Myrtle mirto. Mysterious mistera. Mystery mistero. Mystify mistifiki. Mystification mistifiko. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... them for a few seconds, wondering what I should do, and then my rage got possession of me, and I reached for a pistol, intending to hold Meeker under the muzzle of it and make him confess his true character and admit that Petrak was his ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... in my veins as I recognised two formidable sharks which threatened us. It was a couple of tintoreas, terrible creatures, with enormous tails and a dull glassy stare, the phosphorescent matter ejected from holes pierced around the muzzle. Monstrous brutes! which would crush a whole man in their iron jaws. I did not know whether Conseil stopped to classify them; for my part, I noticed their silver bellies, and their huge mouths bristling with teeth, from a very unscientific point of ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... indefinable hangers-on—such was the palace of the Rajah of Lalpuri. Here and there, by carved doors or iron-studded gates half off their hinges, lounged purposeless sentries, barefooted, clad in old and dirty red coatees, white cross-belts and ragged blue trousers. They leant on rusty, muzzle-loading muskets purchased from "John Company" in pre-Mutiny years, and their uniforms were modelled on those worn by the Company's native troops ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... much as hinted at. That the Bible was Greek and Hebrew in origin was never whispered. It began and ended with the English Authorised Version. The British Bible was the Bible that counted. It was the Bible upon which the sun never sets, the Bible that had blown Indian mutineers from its muzzle in the 'fifties and was prepared to-day to have a shot at any other mutineers, Teuton or Turk, who dared to dispute its claim that the meek shall inherit the earth. The unctuous rectitude that converts ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... rippling and quivering over the white line of his jagged teeth. A groom entered with a coarse joint upon a tray, and thrust it through the bars to him. He pounced lightly upon it, carried it off to the corner, and there, holding it between his paws, tore and wrenched at it, raising his bloody muzzle every now and then to look at us. It was a ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Grey Bob to a sapling and took up his position behind a massive oak. He was extracting the field-glasses from the case at his side when his pulses contracted as he felt a cold rim of metal pressed suddenly against the back of his neck. In a flash he realised that it was the muzzle of a rifle. There was a grim, tense silence for ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... long. Silver Phil comes out on the roof of a stoop in front. He's got a Winchester by now, an' promptly throws the muzzle tharof on a leadin' citizen. Silver Phil allows he'll plug this dignitary if they don't send up a sport with a file to cut loose the laig-locks. Tharupon the pop'lace, full of a warm interest by this ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... men then, with much labor, lowered a four-pounder carronade down the forehatch, and wheeled it to within a few feet of the bulkhead which divided that portion where the prisoners had been confined from the after part. The gun was loaded to the muzzle with grape, and discharged, tearing a hole through the bulkhead and killing and wounding many within. Then the officer ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... maybe," calculated Leary, and looked wistfully toward where his vessel should have been laying to anchor. "If I weren't such a hand for skylarkin' she'd be lay-in' there now with Tim Lacy standin' by the old six-pounder, and she loaded to the muzzle with nails and one thing and another, ready to sweep the beach of 'em." And somewhat sadly he waited for the mob; and, waiting, wondered how Bess was making out, for the squalls were chasing each other off the hills, and out beyond the ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... creeping on all fours. When he was able to speak, however, he explained the mystery. While running through a rough part of the wood after a wounded bird, he stumbled and fell on all fours. The gun, which he was carrying over his shoulder, holding it, as the Indians usually do, by the muzzle, flew forward, and turned right round as he fell, so that the mouth of it was presented towards him. Striking against the stem of a tree, it exploded and shot him through the arm and leg as described ere he had time to rise. A comrade carried him to his lodge, and his wife brought ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... into the stream. Its mouth was open and Frank, as if by instinct, fired the contents of both barrels into its throat. The animal rolled over on to its back in the water and then turned as if to struggle to regain the bank. The Houssa, however, had run up, and, placing the muzzle of his gun within a foot of its eye, fired, and the creature rolled over dead, and was swept ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... "Present!" The two raised their weapons, and Skelton Jones began to count "One—two—three! Fire!" Rand fired. Cary swayed slightly, recovered himself, and stood firm. Fairfax Cary took the count. "One—two—three! Fire!" The elder Cary slowly turned the muzzle of his pistol from his waiting antagonist, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... prevent dust caused by discharge betraying gun positions, mats are to be spread under the muzzle of ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... training of their guns, or rather in placing them so as to have been unable to take any other range than point blank! Here is a fort mounting upwards of fifty guns of large calibre, which would have commanded the bay, but the embrasures are so small as barely to admit the muzzle of the gun, the breech of which was imbedded in the earth. These were soon silenced, as may well be supposed, by the attacking squadron taking a position beyond their range, and training their own batteries to bear upon the Chinese gunners ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... of march. An officer sent to warn the Senhores of the mischief they did, received, before he could fulfil his mission, a French and a Portuguese bullet, and the Eighth continued their reckless discharge. But no cross-fire could daunt the men of Connaught. "Push home to the muzzle!" was the word of their gallant lieutenant-colonel, Wallace; and push home they did, totally routing their opponents, and nearly destroying the French Thirty-sixth, a pet battalion of the Emperor's. Stimulus was not wanting; Wellington stood by, and, with his staff and several ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... cannon, were muzzle-loading. The secondary armament, mounted in tops, cageworks, bulkheads, etc., were breech-loading; but these smaller pieces fell out of favor as time went on owing to reliance on long-range fire and ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... into cooper's timber. The camp, like those commonly set up for negroes, was entirely open on one side; on that side a fire is lighted at night, and a person sleeping puts his feet towards it. One night I was awoke by some animal smelling my face, and snuffing strongly; I felt its cold muzzle. I suddenly thrust out my arms, and shouted with all my might; it was frightened, and made off. I do not know whether it was a bear or a panther; but it seemed as tall as a large calf. I slept, of course, no ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy
... talkin'. But I knew well I was far from home. There is a queer smell upon our cantonments—a smell av dried earth and brick-kilns wid whiffs av cavalry stable- litter. This place smelt marigold flowers an' bad water, an' wanst somethin' alive came an' blew heavy with his muzzle at the chink av the shutter. "It's in a village I am," thinks I to mysilf, "an' the parochial buffalo is investigatin' the palanquin." But anyways I had no desire to move. Only lie still whin you're in foreign parts an' the ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... so near that a cannon-shot struck the head of a Canara who steered his boat, dashing the blood and brains on his beard. Enraged at this incident, he offered a high reward to any one who should destroy that cannon; on which one of his gunners aimed a shot so exactly that it struck the muzzle of the cannon which flew in pieces, and killed the Moorish cannoneer. By this fortunate circumstance, the Portuguese were able to get farther up the river and to get close to the fort. At this time Zufolari, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... immense letter V, projecting in perfect stillness from the grass a hundred yards off. You advance, and the same proceeding is repeated. Jack is obviously deep in guns, and knows the difference in power between a muzzle- and a breech-loader, if he has not ascertained, indeed, what number shot you have in your cartridge. He varies his distance according to these contingencies. Only, he has not as yet learned to gauge the greyhound: that dog is frequently kept ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... a man named Irwin, throwing up the muzzle of the pistol, "none o' this work, you drunken brute. Don't be alarmed, M'Loughlin, you shan't ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... wide, and barred in several places by the dams of the beaver, and then went straight forward to the pass, sending one man along the river to his left, and another on the right, with orders to search for the road, and if they found it to let him know by raising a hat on the muzzle of their guns. In this order they went along for about five miles, when captain Lewis perceived with the greatest delight a man on horseback at the distance of two miles coming down the plain towards them. On examining him with the glass, captain Lewis saw that he was of a different ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... back from his ecstasy by an impatient movement of Ngurn. He had quite forgotten the old devil-devil one. A quick flash of fancy brought a husky chuckle into Bassett's throat. His shot-gun lay beside him in the litter. All he had to do, muzzle to head, was to press the trigger and ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... steam-gauge, called an ampere-meter, to indicate the amount of current going out. I was up at 65 Fifth Avenue one afternoon. A sudden black cloud came up, and I telephoned to Chinnock and asked him about the load. He said: 'We are up to the muzzle, and everything is running all right.' By-and-by it became so thick we could not see across the street. I telephoned again, and felt something would happen, but fortunately it did not. I said to Chinnock: 'How is it now?' He replied: 'Everything is red-hot, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the old horse with dripping muzzle away from the water-trough. The expression on his face seemed to suggest that the other was ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... the vocalist, glancing at the boy with a jovially tipsy combination of leer and wink. "Hyar is the persuader!" He rapped sharply on the muzzle of his pistol. "This'll ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... peaceful hopes. Luckless mortal! scarce had my nose extracted the cold from its contact with the pillow-case, when a sound came rushing forth with a violence which shook not only me and my bed, but the whole cabin. The tale is soon told. I had built my nest at the muzzle of the whistle of the engine, and, as they made a point of screeching forth the moment anything appeared in sight, you may guess that I had a pleasant night of it, and have scrupulously avoided repeating the experiment in any subsequent steam excursions. Having ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... a Roman centurion—bold, cruel as a hawk's beak, strong-nostriled as a wolf's muzzle. His firm white teeth, as they crunched on the cracker suggested, even stronger, the semblance to a carnivorous animal of prey. A benevolent-looking pair of gold-rimmed glasses sat astride that nose, but Burke ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... passed over his head. He killed them with his whip, never missing a bird. He beheld in the distance the gleam of a lake which appeared to be of lead, and in the middle of it was an animal he had never seen before, a beaver with a black muzzle. Notwithstanding the distance that separated them, an arrow ended its life and Julian only regretted that he was not able to carry the ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... with Jenny on his lap. I took off for him, not wasting a good chance when he was handicapped. But I hadn't counted on Jenny. She was up, and her head banged into my stomach before I knew she was coming. I felt the wind knocked out, but I got her out of my way—to look up into the muzzle of a gun in ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... grace; and it better fits my blood to be disdain'd of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with a muzzle, and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage: If I had my mouth I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not to ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... heart, and would have me let him go on shore; "Well, go," said I; so the boy jumped into the water, and taking a little gun in one hand, swam to shore with the other hand, and coming close to the creature, put the muzzle of the piece to his ear, and shot him in the head again, which ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... recognized him as soon as the light fell on his sides, and Jack instead of raising the gun to his shoulder instantly let its muzzle drop to earth. For it was only gaunt old Moses, the beast of burden, broken loose, and hunting the fountain head of what he ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... evening meal, and Haney and his two cronies had just taken their second round of drinks when the side door was burst violently open, and a man, white and wild, with a double-barrelled shotgun in his hand, abruptly entered. Darting across the floor, he thrust the muzzle of his weapon almost against Haney's breast and fired, uttering a wild curse ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... beast made a sluggish movement, then, as if he would have more of the enchantment, stirred her slightly with his muzzle. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
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