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Bull's-eye   Listen
noun
Bull's-eye  n.  
1.
(Naut.) A small circular or oval wooden block without sheaves, having a groove around it and a hole through it, used for connecting rigging.
2.
A small round cloud, with a ruddy center, supposed by sailors to portend a storm.
3.
A small thick disk of glass inserted in a deck, roof, floor, ship's side, etc., to let in light.
4.
A circular or oval opening for air or light.
5.
A lantern, with a thick glass lens on one side for concentrating the light on any object; also, the lens itself.
6.
(Astron.) Aldebaran, a bright star in the eye of Taurus or the Bull.
7.
(Archery & Gun.) The center of a target.
8.
A thick knob or protuberance left on glass by the end of the pipe through which it was blown.
9.
A small and thick old-fashioned watch. (Colloq.)
10.
Something that exactly succeeds in achieving its goal; as, to score a bull's eye.
Synonyms: bell ringer, mark.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bull's-eye" Quotes from Famous Books



... could manage to insinuate four people into it, all at one time; and entreating each other to observe how very airy it was (in dock), and how there was a beautiful port-hole which could be kept open all day (weather permitting), and how there was quite a large bull's-eye just over the looking-glass which would render shaving a perfectly easy and delightful process (when the ship didn't roll too much); we arrived, at last, at the unanimous conclusion that it was rather ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... sorr, that when a man has put the comether on wan woman, he's sure bound to put it on another? 'Tis the same thing at musketry. Wan day ivry shot goes wide or into the bank, an' the next, lay high lay low, sight or snap, ye can't get off the bull's-eye for ten shots runnin'.' ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... returned with a big armful of wood, which he tossed upon the fire, then sat just outside the blaze and popped away with his revolver at the little balls of pale-green light, the wolves' eyes, which he saw floating among the tall grass, and he always knew when he had made a bull's-eye by the howl, and the thrashing ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... but still breathed, although insensible. Perry, who doubted not that Hubel would be found near the body of his faithful follower, let slip the chain from Vasa's collar, and he at once darted off into the darkness, while Perry, drawing the slide of his bull's-eye, and pistol in hand, carefully examined ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... and, second, I could still perceive, with a sharpness that excluded any theory of hallucination, the smell of hot metal and of burning oil. The conclusion was obvious. I had been wakened by some one flashing a bull's-eye lantern in my face. It had been but a flash, and away. He had seen my face, and then gone. I asked myself the object of so strange a proceeding, and the answer came pat. The man, whoever he was, had thought to recognise me, and he had not. There was yet another question ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... acknowledging that though she was awkward in a drawing-room, she was a buxom young woman dressed in green with a feather in her hat and a bow in her hand; and then she could always shoot her arrows straight into the bull's-eye. But he was well aware that the new hat had been bought specially for him, and that the sharpest arrow from her quiver was intended to be lodged in his heart. He was quite determined that any such shooting as ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... any Set of Misfit Features and rearrange them into a Work of Art. He put Harry in front of the Bull's-Eye and scrooged him around so as to blanket the White Wings as much as possible and then he told him to think of ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... scatter a number of more or less obvious prophecies through his other books. From first to last he has been writing for twenty years, so that it is possible to check a certain proportion of these anticipations by the things that have happened, Some of these shots have hit remarkably close to the bull's-eye of reality; there are a number of inners and outers, and some clean misses. Much that he wrote about in anticipation is now established commonplace. In 1894 there were still plenty of sceptics of the possibility either of automobiles or aeroplanes; ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... the farther side of the cavern, and visible in the light of another glowing heap in the center, were as many as thirty of those huge hairy creatures, standing shoulder to shoulder, their great eyes glaring like bull's-eye lanterns. But the thing that filled us with terror ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... streets so packed with men that the cars could not get through, and with the greatest difficulty we reached the stand which had been erected for the speaker. It was a gorgeous affair. There were flaring torches all around it, and a "bull's-eye," taken from the head of a locomotive, made an especially brilliant patch of light. The stand had been erected at a point where the city's four principal streets meet, and as far as I could see there were solid masses of citizens extending into these ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... excitement I had gone through, or from having remained on deck all day, I cannot say; but I fell asleep immediately my head touched the pillow, and slept as soundly as a top. When I awoke, I saw by the dim light coming through the bull's-eye that the day had broken, and I hurried on deck, anxious to know if our pursuer was still in sight Dubois and La Touche were there. I saluted them as usual. They did not appear quite as cheerful as they did on the previous day. The ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... had never in their lives before been on an ocean-going ship. Some had never even seen a big ship until they came to the seacoast for their trip. They had great eyesight, some of these young fellows—men who had lain on the bull's-eye at a thousand yards regularly were bound to have that—and they made good lookouts once they got the idea, but climbing the last twenty feet of that ladder to the crow's nest, leaning back under part of the time with life-belt ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly

... satisfaction of beholding the result of his bull's-eye bullet. Rarely—so difficult it is to follow the turnings and twistings of the dropping plane—does he see his fallen foe strike the ground. Lufbery's last direct hit was an exception, for he followed all that took place from a balcony seat. I ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell

... Here comes the champion — one can see that by the determined way in which he raises the dart and sends it flying; his will, no doubt, be the top score. That is Stubberud; of the five darts he throws, two are in the bull's-eye and three close to it. The next is Johansen; he is not bad, either, but does not equal the other's score. Then comes Bjaaland; I wonder whether he is as smart at this game as he is on ski? He places himself at the end of the table, like the others, but ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... 2. Pistol and cautions "Position and Aiming Drill." The men take the position prescribed in paragraph 3. At the command, 1. Squad, 2. Fire, slowly extend the arm till it is nearly horizontal, the pistol directed at a point; about six inches below the bull's-eye. At the same time put the forefinger inside the trigger guard and gradually feel the trigger. Inhale enough air to comfortably fill the lungs and gradually raise the piece until the line of sight is directed at the point ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... statement. But they spent that afternoon, with revolvers and light rifles, on what Rhoda called "the rifle range," down behind the bunk houses. Hesitation Kane, the horse wrangler, as silent almost as the sphinx, drifted out to the spot and showed them by gestures, if not by many words, how to hit the bull's-eye. Nan, as well as her chum, became much interested in this sport. The adventure with the big puma really had made Nan feel as though she should know how ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr

... wouldn't be long before he got next t' the fact that I was down an' out, an' I was right. I've hearn people say thet animals don't reason, but they're a long ways from hittin' the bull's-eye. It warn't long afore thet painter had everythin' settled in his own mind, an' had decided thet I was helpless fer some reason an' would be easy pickin's fer him. He got up on all fours, and began to growl a little an' switch his tail. I knew then that it wouldn't be long before he came ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... so-called electric torches before I left London. These give illumination for twenty or thirty hours steadily, and much longer if the flash is used only now and then. The torch is a thick tube, perhaps a foot and a half long, with a bull's-eye of glass at one end. By pressing a spring the electric rays project like the illumination of an engine's headlight. A release of the spring causes instant darkness. I have found this invention useful in that it concentrates the light on any particular spot desired, leaving all the surroundings ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... the ends and sides of tiny feelers, which they wave about; and the eyes in lobsters, crawfish, and snails, are on the ends of stalks, which they thrust about in all directions as a burglar handles a bull's-eye lantern. Snakes "hear," or catch the sound-waves, with their flickering, forked tongues; and grasshoppers and locusts have "ear-drums" on ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... she and Percival did not practise for an hour or two, until at last Emma could fire with great precision. Practice and a knowledge of the perfect use of your weapon gives confidence, and this Emma did at last acquire. She challenged Alfred and Henry to fire at the bull's-eye with her, and whether by their gallantry or her superior dexterity, she was declared victor. Mr and Mrs Campbell smiled when Emma came in and narrated her success, and felt glad that she had found something which ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... to go on to London. But I posted the letter all the same, at Basingstoke station, as they was carrying me off; an' I took down the address, so as to return the arf-sovering." Hilda was right, as always. She had chosen instinctively the trustworthy person,—chosen her at first sight, and hit the bull's-eye. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... remarked as he worked. "If you ever have any idea, Walter, of going into the burglary business, it would be well to ascertain if the safes have any of these little selenium cells as suggested by my friend, Mr. Hammer, the inventor. For by them an alarm can be given miles away the moment an intruder's bull's-eye falls on a ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... room was a perfect blaze, being illuminated by more than 1,000 electric lights, let into the walls and screened by round, opaque glasses, so that the effect was something like that of so many bull's-eye lanterns. ...
— Through Siberia and Manchuria By Rail • Oliver George Ready

... splendour of undoubted truth those philosophical clouds in which the world had been involved for so many centuries : who did not allow the trophies of substantial praise to be wholly carried abroad toother nations. For he (while the arrow, which was to hit the bull's-eye, was yet in the quiver) defined by an admirable method the limits of all that science ; and showed it to me, amongst others of his friends, explained in an expeditious and simple manner ; and by proposing various problems to us, enabled us to exercise our ingenuity in the ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens

... artisan blows his vitreous bubbles, large or small, to be used afterwards as may be wanted. So Nature shapes her hyaline vesicles and modifies them to serve the needs of the part where they are found. The artisan whirls his rod, and his glass bubble becomes a flattened disk, with its bull's-eye for a nucleus. These lips of ours are all glazed with microscopic tiles formed of flattened cells, each one of them with its nucleus still as plain and relatively as prominent, to the eye of the microscopist, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... successor. And if he had anything like the same inspiring weather, the same nights of uproar, men in armour rolling and resounding down the stairs of heaven, the rain hissing on the village streets, the wild bull's-eye of the storm flashing all night long into the bare inn-chamber—the same sweet return of day, the same unfathomable blue of noon, the same high-coloured, halcyon eves—and above all, if he had anything like as good a comrade, anything like as keen a relish for what he saw, and what he ate, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the dishes. If anyone hits a space marked, for example, ham, he may go and help himself to ham; but if someone else, shooting after him, hits the same place, he must then give up his seat. In the bull's-eye of the target there is the figure of an ape, and if anyone hits that he can eat of any dish he pleases. You may suppose what an amusing supper-party this is, when all the guests are shooting and eating by turns, and no one knows whether he may not have to rise ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond

... was unlocked, and a warder with a bull's-eye lantern came in quickly. "The Public Prosecutor is coming up," he said breathlessly. "When he comes in, you stand at attention and recite your name and the crime of ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... must have been a painful wound, and I shall never cease to wonder what strange impulse brought him back after he had been so badly stung. The second ball had been centered in the neck as though in the bull's-eye of ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... this way, scholar, and sight your bull's-eye. Keep your eye on that, allowin' for a little play in the carryin', and ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... hour we stole here and there like conspirators. Where showed the circles of a fish's rise, thither crept we to drop a fly on their centre as in the bull's-eye of a target. The trout seemed to linger near their latest capture, so often we would catch one exactly where we had seen him break water some little time before. In this was the charm of the still hunt. Shoal water, deep water, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... intersection of the two central spider lines the telescope is properly sighted. We use the word sighted designedly, because we wish to suggest a comparison between the sighting of a rifle at the target and the sighting of a telescope at a star. Instead of the ordinary large bull's-eye, suppose that the target only consisted of a watch-dial, which, of course, the rifleman could not see at the distance of any ordinary range. But with the telescope of the meridian circle the watch-dial ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... me that I was hungry and thirsty; so I descended the companion ladder and made my way to the small pantry, in search of something to eat and drink. It was a small place, scarcely larger than a cupboard, and very imperfectly lighted by a single bull's-eye let into the deck; but it had one merit, it was well provided with good wide shelves, upon which everything that could possibly spoil was stowed; and here I was lucky enough to find an abundance of food—such as it was—and ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... o'clock that night when the four conspirators met to carry out their nefarious project. Dick was carrying a bag—in which was the joey—a bull's-eye lantern, various coloured feathers, and other small necessaries, and the party hastened in the direction of Mr. Ham's humble residence. Ham was 'a hatter'—he lived alone in a secluded place on the ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... to be quite distinct from each other; each is divided by a large number of partitions into vaulted compartments. In the larger ones pillars of earth support the ceiling. The rooms communicate with one another by means of bull's-eye passages formed in the separating walls. The whole is small, proportioned to the size of the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... do much shooting at 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 ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... practised daily at a small target, hung at the fore topmast studding-sail boom. The target was a frame of laths, three feet square, crossed with rope-yarns so close that a twelve-pound shot could not go through without cutting one, and with a piece of wood, the size and shape of a bottle, for a bull's-eye. After a few days' practice, the target was never missed, and on an average ten or twelve bottles were hit every day. Thus kept in constant preparation for the battle, and daily gaining new confidence in themselves, the ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... boys, we've got the ground cinched, so get action on yourselves. Here's where we make our first real stab at fortune. Here's where we even up on the hard jabs she's handed us in the past; here's where we score a bull's-eye, or I miss my guess. The gold's there, boys, you can bank on that; and the harder we work the more we're going to get of it. Now, we're going to work hard. We're going to make ordinary hard work look like a ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... like one who has hit a bull's-eye and waited for me to ask questions, but I thought that I knew my man, and laughed at ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... a little electric lamp fitted with a bull's-eye, and, pressing the button, threw a beam of light in through the grille. The letter was lying on the bottom of the box face upwards, so that the address could easily ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... sez, lookin' at him; an' the red paint stud lone on the white av her face like a bull's-eye on ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... cemeteries. But I will rather tell of the old grave-digger of Monkton, to whose unsuffering bedside the minister was summoned. He dwelt in a cottage built into the wall of the church-yard; and through a bull's-eye pane above his bed he could see, as he lay dying, the rank grasses and the upright and recumbent stones. Dr. Laurie was, I think, a Moderate: 'tis certain, at least, that he took a very Roman view of deathbed dispositions; for he told the old ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... old double-barrelled carbine which must have served several generations of chamois hunters, and—pan!.. pan!.. T is done. Both balls are in the bull's-eye. Hurrahs of admiration burst forth on all sides. Sonia triumphed. ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... type of features, and its breadth, or amount of blur, will measure the tendency of the components to deviate from the common type. This is so for the very same reason that the shot-marks on a target are more thickly disposed near the bull's-eye than away from it, and in a greater degree as the marksmen are more skilful. All that has been said of the outlines is equally true as regards the shadows; the result being that the composite represents an averaged figure, whose lineaments ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... floor, in a nook in which they formerly kept a dog. This nook had for window a bull's-eye looking on ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... shot, and if we hadn't been pretty old friends it would have been an impertinence. The Major put his arm in mine and took me aside, so that the subaltern should not hear. "You've hit the bull's-eye, old chap," he said, in a low voice. "But don't give me away. Come into ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... and when I hinted that my remarks must have hit the bull's-eye . . . he laughed again. He is a baffling study ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... were grinning at me. At that I lost what nerve I had left, and let out a cry, and turned to run back into the room where we had talked. But as I turned there were sounds at the foot of the stair, and the flash of a bull's-eye lamp, and I heard Chisholm's voice ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... course," said the doctor; and preparations having been rapidly made by the rector, who mustered three lanterns, one being an old bull's-eye, they all started. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... that obscure corner, and for a long while she rested there undisturbed. Suddenly a vivid glare of light dazzled her eyes; she started to her feet half asleep, but still instinctively retaining the infant in her close embrace. A dark form, buttoned to the throat and holding a brilliant bull's-eye lantern, stood before her. ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... suitable range I sent away my third attack. This time I sent a second torpedo after the first to make the strike doubly certain. My crew were aiming like sharpshooters and both torpedoes went to their bull's-eye. My luck was with me again, for the enemy was made useless and at once began sinking by the head. Then it careened far over, but all the while its men stayed at the guns looking for ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... back of the house. Did little Will use to look out at this window with the bull's-eye panes? Did he use to drink from this old pump, or the well in which it stands? Did his shoulders rub against this angle of the old house, built with rounded bricks? It a strange picture, and sets ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... whole enormous battlefield as something like a target, with the Germans circling round the bull's-eye, Beatty round the inner, and Jellicoe just coming into the outer. From Beatty's reports and his own observation Jellicoe could not know even that before six. So he sent out his own battle cruiser squadron under Admiral Hood to lengthen Beatty's line and overlap the Germans. Hood ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... his supper and was on the verandah rinsing out his mouth. The place was somewhat dark. Amulya had a revolver in each pocket, one loaded with blank cartridges, the other with ball. He had a mask over his face. He flashed a bull's-eye lantern in the manager's face and fired a blank shot. The man swooned away. Some of the guards, who were off duty, came running up, but when Amulya fired another blank shot at them they lost no time in taking cover. ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... that something out of the ordinary was going on, had opened the slides of the bull's-eye windows, and those in the submarine saw part of the fight between the ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... They patronized a shooting-gallery, where they fired down long tubes with little rifles, which made the marksman's hands very black, and seemed to carry round the corner. Jack, however, succeeded in hitting the bull's-eye, and ringing the bell, and was rewarded ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... about since four o'clock in the mornin'. Up an' down they went with their bull's-eye lantern. I don't believe they went ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... said the Idiot. "That's why I said it. I aim to please, and for once seem to have hit the bull's-eye. Mary, kindly break ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs

... easy to tickle him while he continued in this mood, I began making any number of feeble jokes—feeble, but quite as good as the one which had provoked such outrageous merriment—for it amused me to see him acting in this unusual way. But they all failed of their effect—there was no hitting the bull's-eye a second time; he would only stare vacantly at me, then grunt like a peccary—not appreciatively—and walk on. Still, at intervals he would go back to what I had said about hitting a very big bird, and roar again, as if this wonderful joke was not ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... equipped for every climate from the tropic to the pole, and armed against every malady from Ague to Zoster. He carried also the paternal watch, a solid silver bull's-eye, and a large pocketbook, tied round with a long tape, and, by way of precaution, pinned into his breast-pocket. He talked about having a pistol, in case he were attacked by any of the ruffians who are so numerous in the city, but Mr. Gridley told him, No! he would certainly shoot himself, and ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... from the river policeman, who held up his bull's-eye lantern so that it threw a yellow glare on ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... blistered panels above and below. Arched over the doorstep was an architect's idea of a gigantic shell, supported by two stout boys, whom a lively imagination might have thought to be suffering from the doctor's prescriptions, as they glared wildly at the red bull's-eye in the centre of ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... practice—of pacing the distances—however, has also trained a man's eye for country. He is able to supplement the front-sight method by the usual estimate by eye. Most men do not take this trouble. They practise at target range until they can hit the bull's-eye with fair regularity, miss with nearly equal regularity in the hunting field, and thenceforth talk vaguely of "missed him at five hundred yards." It must have been five hundred. The beast looked very small, there was an awful lot of country between him and it, and "I wasn't ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... the end of the bed, flashing the conventional bull's-eye lantern, stood at last a ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... Petrie, unhitching a bull's-eye from his belt and putting it into Narkom's hand. "Better go with Sir Horace at once, sir. Leave the door of the gallery open and the light on. Fish and me will stand guard over the stuff till you come back, so in case the man is in one of them flues and tries to bolt out at this end, we can ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... any other utterance and it is, so far, the best contribution we have made to the war. The best evidence that I can get shows also that it has had more effect in Germany than anything else that has been said by anybody. That hit the bull's-eye with perfect accuracy; and it has been accepted here as the war aim and the war condition. So far as I can make out it is working in Germany toward peace with more effect than any other deliverance made by anybody. And it steadied the already ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... of local activities and the representation of long epochs of time. The true justification for the unities of time and place is to be found in the conception of drama as the history of a spiritual crisis—the vision, thrown up, as it were, by a bull's-eye lantern, of the final catastrophic phases of a long series of events. Very different were the views of the Elizabethan tragedians, who aimed at representing not only the catastrophe, but the whole development of circumstances of which it was the effect; they traced, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... hit de bull's-eye de fus' fire, ma'm," assented Julius. "Ef Sis' Becky had had a rabbit foot, she nebber would 'a' went th'oo ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... they all became aware of a solid black mass looming in front of the bull's-eye window. An instant later the submarine came to a jarring stop, as if she had struck some soft, yielding substance. There was a confused shouting throughout the craft, the noise of machinery, a trembling and ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... struck sharp across the priest's trained observation. The big, shambling, red-headed man looked like a guilty child. There was a moment's silence, while Father Delancey speculated, and then his experienced instinct sped him to the bull's-eye. "Timothy Moran, you're not putting your foolish notions in the head of that innocent child o' God, Moira ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... in clustered heads, of which the central ones are winged, while the outer are heavy, squat, and wingless. Thus does the plant make the best of all chances that may happen to open before it: if one lot goes far and fares but ill, the other is pretty sure to score a bull's-eye. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... He'd made one mistake; few could accuse him of repeating in stupidity. He took accurate stock of the symptoms; set his sights upon what he surmised must be the bull's-eye of Blue Jeans' discontent; waited a nicely balanced ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... on board the Spanish gunboat. All was confusion on her decks. The "both" referred to by the captain as being out of commission, were the port and starboard guns, with which she had been potting at the Mariella. Captain Dynamite's shots had each scored a bull's-eye. ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich

... Braden's purse, showed him that he would have to raise one of those small squares—possibly two or three of them. And so he had furnished himself with a short crowbar of tempered steel, specially purchased at the iron-monger's, and with a small bull's-eye lantern. Had he been arrested and searched as he made his way towards the cathedral precincts he might reasonably have been suspected of a design to break into the treasury and appropriate the various ornaments ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher

... my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it; there's no comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we never were in the bull's-eye, however thick you may lay on the ink! I was asked for my cricket. I haven't forgotten it yet. But this fellow's one of themselves, with the right of entre into the houses which we could only 'enter' in a professional sense. That's obvious unless all ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... Desmond one day amused themselves by making a target of a piece of canvas. It was painted in circles of different colours, with a yellow bull's-eye in the usual fashion. This was suspended by a line at the end of a spar, rigged from the fore yardarm, on about a level with the bulwarks, and well answered the purpose intended. With half-a-dozen ship's pistols they began blazing away, sometimes hitting the mark, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... watchers, and passed: they each ran a few steps towards the sight that pleased them most. And then they stood so long that Mr. Russell's Hound had time to make himself acquainted with every smell within twenty yards. He turned over a snail that sat—round and striped like a peppermint bull's-eye—on the short grass, he patted a little beetle that pushed its way across a world of disproportionate size, and then, by peevishly pulling the end of his whip which hung from Mr. Russell's pensive hand, he suggested that the pursuit should continue. So they ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... the bull's-eye overhead, through the cracks round which she could sniff the cool air. Close beneath it she accordingly took up her abode; and thence she used to crawl down when dinner was on the table, getting into her master's lap, and looking up longingly ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... omnipotentis gloriam, ad animarumque salutem, referri omnem concionandi vim ac rationem." Moreover, "Praedicatorem esse ministrum Dei, per quem verbum Dei a spiritus fonte ducitur ad fidelium animas irrigandas." As a marksman aims at the target and its bull's-eye, and at nothing else, so the preacher must have a definite point before him, which he has to hit. So much is contained for his direction in this simple maxim, that duly to enter into it and use it is half the battle; and if he mastered nothing else, still if he really mastered ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... mortals. Arrived at Euston Station, we will say, by the last train from the north—some sleepy, some hungry, and all tired—the passengers are anxious to wend their several ways as quickly as possible; instead of this, the train is brought to a stand-still, the man with his bull's-eye lantern pokes his head into one doorway after another, and all are kept waiting until all the tickets are collected. One passenger may have dropped his ticket, and then comes a search among the hat-boxes and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various

... Nixon came we were a horrid set of little ruffians. Do you remember, Lance, how Roper offered you a bull's-eye in the Cathedral, and thrashed you afterwards because you wouldn't ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... existence, and its full gratification stimulated his new friendship to a rapid growth. Lord Lytton left for India on March 1, 1876. Before he left, Fitzjames had already written for him an elaborate exposition of the Indian administrative system, which Lytton compared to a 'policeman's bull's-eye.' It lighted up the mysteries of Indian administration. Fitzjames writes to him on the day of his departure: 'You have no conception of the pleasure which a man like me feels in meeting with one who really appreciates and is willing to make use of the knowledge which he has gained with great ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... for the more immediate neighbourhood of Wyllys-Roof; in which, it is hoped, the reader will feel more particularly interested. There stands the little cottage of the Hubbards, looking just as it did three years since; it is possible that one or two of the bull's-eye panes of glass may have been broken, and changed, and the grey shingles are a little more moss-grown; but its general aspect is precisely what it was when we were last there. The snow-ball and the sweet-briar are in their old places, each side of the humble porch; the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... is altogether delightful. When you get the text, you will see that you have hit the very centre of the bull's-eye. ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... BULL'S-EYE. A sort of block without a sheave, for a rope to reeve through; it is grooved for stropping. Also, the central mark of a target. Also, a hemispherical piece of ground glass of great thickness, inserted into small openings in the decks, port-lids, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... with bull's-eye lanterns, was crowded with people, every one of the chairs taken and every inch of standing room occupied. There was no platform, but the space upon which Pearl was to dance was screened ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... logs, crumbling low, Sent out a dull and duller glow, The bull's-eye watch, that hung in view, Ticking its weary circuit through, Pointed with mutely-warning sign Its black hand to the hour of nine. That sign the pleasant circle broke: My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, And laid it tenderly away, Then roused ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... masterfully wrought as this figurine to be held in the palm of the hand. The tears started in my eyes to look at it, and I crossed myself in reverence. I bethought me how I had trampled on my crucifix; the stranger all unwittingly had struck a bull's-eye. I had committed grave offence against God, but perhaps if, putting gewgaws aside, I should give my all for this cross, he would call the account even. I knew nothing of the value of a carving such as ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... too nice to sleep!" Fenn shouted again. He fired at the target, and made a bull's-eye, much to his surprise and delight. "I say, Frank!" he shouted. "Come on, I can beat you ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman

... will constantly swerve in that direction. The spiral groove in the rifle, of one turn in forty-five feet, turns the disturbing weight or raggedness from side to side—makes one error correct another, and so the ball flies straight to the bull's-eye. So the place of Jupiter and Saturn, though further complicated by four moons in the case of Jupiter, and eight in the case of Saturn, and also by perturbations caused by other planets, can be calculated ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... struck on deck. Eleven! He drank a glass of water, and sat down for ten minutes or so to calm himself. Then he got out of his chest a small bull's-eye lantern of his own and ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... a courtyard, and drew up at the foot of a broad and dark stairway, flanked with columns. Benedetto went up with the delegato as far as the second landing, on to which two doors opened. The one on the left was closed, the one on the right looked down on the stairs through a shining bull's-eye window. The delegato pushed it open, and he and Benedetto entered a stuffy den, evidently a sort of anteroom. An usher, who was dozing there, rose wearily. The delegato left Benedetto, and went into the next room. Then the ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... really very simple. All you had to do was to cling to one end of a No. 38 horse-pistol, point it at the bull's-eye of a target, hold it in that position until you had put five bullets into said bull's-eye, repeat that twice at growing distances, mortally wound ten times the image of a Martinique negro running back and forth across the field, and ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... September, when school-time was drawing near and the nights were already black, we would begin to sally from our respective villas, each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern. The thing was so well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce of Great Britain; and the grocers, about the due time, began to garnish their windows with our particular brand of luminary. We wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them, such was the rigour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... I thought you wanted to see a little gun-play. Out here it isn't how straight you can shoot at a bull's-eye, but how quick you can plant your bullets, and usually in a mark that isn't obliging enough to be dead in line. So I ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... in astonishment. "He held the bow so awkwardly, it seemed impossible!" he muttered. But there was no room for doubt: there was the arrow, right in the centre of the bull's-eye! ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll

... stone as we traversed the antechamber, a quaint round place, lined with bull's-eye windows and presided over by the statues of four armed men. Another door gave us entrance to the quarter of the squires. We started across it, but in the center of the floor I stopped. In all the other rooms of the castle dust had lain thick, but there ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... the town of Barkingham, I provided myself with a short bit of rope, a little bull's-eye lantern, a small screwdriver, and a nice bit of beef chemically adapted for the soothing of troublesome dogs. I then dressed, disposed of these things neatly in my coat pockets, and went to the doctor's to dinner. In one respect, Fortune ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins

... relieved me I went aft. And there in a row were our three pale-haired storm-waifs with the topaz eyes. In the light of a bull's-eye, held on them by Louis, their eyes never seemed more like the eyes of great cats. And, heavens, they purred! At least, the inarticulate noises they made sounded more like purring than anything else. That these sounds meant friendliness was very evident. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... feeling that strange, unaccountable knowledge of some one there, a man stepped out from behind your desk, walked right up to me and held out those letters in one hand, while with the other he threw the light from a small bull's-eye or ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon

... hit it that time in the bull's-eye, suh," admitted the Southern lad; "and I confess that I thought it half an hour later. I'm still some shy, it seems, on telling time by the ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... shadow, that is sure. But Des Hermies hit the bull's-eye when he remarked, 'It is less important to know whether the modern pharmaceutic sacrileges are potent, than to study the motives of the Satanists and fallen priests ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... ever realise how easy it is to direct a people's sentiment ontil he take a whirl at the game. In two minutes by the teacher's bull's-eye copper watch, every soul knows it's pore Riley; an' in three, the teacher's done drug Riley out doors by the ha'r of his head an' chased him home. Gents, I look back on that yoothful feat as a triumph of diplomacy; it shore saves my standin' as the ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... seaside places are largest, and where he is sure of getting all the stores he wants. Next, what is our business? Not to risk losing a link in the chain of evidence by missing any place where he has put his foot on shore. Not to overshoot the mark when we want to hit it in the bull's-eye. Not to waste money and time by taking a long trip to Sweden till we know that we must absolutely go there. Where is our journey of discovery to take us to first, then? Clearly to the north of Scotland. What do you say to that, Mr. William? Is my catechism ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... people's eyes—too good 'copy.' They'd start in to find out—and the result is inevitable. Our safety so far has lain in the fact that there has been no suspicion aroused; but snooping around a bank vault at midnight with a mask on and a bull's-eye lantern fades to a whisper as a suspicion-arouser compared with anybody willingly coughing up a bunch of money once they've got their claws on it—and a yellow journal, let alone an army corps of them, ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... hurt in a way he could not understand. Something pained him—a new sensation, of not being up to the requirements of another's view. His forced acute intelligence made a bull's-eye shot. ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips

... am," exclaimed Billy, concealing the effect of the bull's-eye shot Bucky had made. "I'm not particularly happy in the thought of reporting myself stripped in this sort of way. The breed will hang to thick cover, and it won't be ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... some weeks to come, and the mouths of the singers were hushed. The next thing we knew a city seemed to spring suddenly out of the plains—a mirage of brick and mortar—an oasis in the wilderness,—and we realized, with a gasp, that we had struck the bull's-eye of the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... "Another bull's-eye!" called Jack, proceeding to reload his piece. "I hope, doctor, you are keeping a correct score; I must have credit ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... have a shot at something, Bonny," said I, dismounting, and sitting down on an anthill. Having been a fair average shot in a rifle corps in Scotland I took careful aim at a small bush, bent on doing credit to the British Volunteers. The result was a "bull's-eye." ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... to him—as she swung round her stern and his quick eye caught the glint of her gilded name with the muzzle of her six-inch gun on the platform above, foreshortened in the middle of its white screen like a bull's-eye in a target—it seemed to him that this holiday throng took little heed of the three hundred odd men so silently going forth to do England's work and fight her battles. On her deck yesterday afternoon he had shaken hands and parted with a friend, a stoker on board, and had seen some ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... perennial island cloud, the embowered city studded with rare lamps, the masts in the harbour, the smooth mirror of the lagoon, and the mole of the barrier reef on which the breakers whitened. The moon shone too, with bull's-eye sweeps, on his companions; on the stalwart frame of the American who called himself Brown, and was known to be a master-mariner in some disgrace; and on the dwarfish person, the pale eyes and toothless smile of a vulgar and bad-hearted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the deck, the two sailors, Ole, and myself got the heavy plate on deck and aft, where we reared it as a shield between the wheel and the fishermen. The bullets whanged and banged against it till it rang like a bull's-eye, but Charley grinned in its shelter, and coolly ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... numerous fleets on the sea-board, and in the West great numbers of iron-clad floating batteries threaten to force a passage down the Mississippi, while monster armies are concentrating for the invasion of Tennessee and the Cotton States. Will Virginia escape the scourge? Not she; here is the bull's-eye of ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... hospital-ward, and presently he saw her reach the door, which, with the arrival of the later comers, had remained open. She stood there an instant, turning over the whole assembly a glance like the flash of a watchman's bull's-eye, and then quickly passed out. Ransom could see that she was impatient of the general question and bored with being reminded, even for the sake of her rights, that she was a woman—a detail that she was in the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... tall iron gate, which he locked behind us. We followed him down this tunnel, guided more by his footsteps on the stone flagging than by anything we could very distinctly see. At the end of it we came to another iron gate, and our conductor stopped there and lit a bull's-eye lantern. Then he unlocked the gate; and I wished he had oiled it first, it grated so dismally. The gate swung open and we stood on the threshold of what seemed a limitless domed and pillared cavern, carved out of the solid ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small? We all know a hundred whose coats are very well made, and a score who have excellent manners, and one or two happy beings who are what they call in the inner circles, and have shot into the very centre and bull's-eye of the fashion; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper and each make ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... an unreasoning state of semi-panic, arrested by a silly impulse to turn and fly; as if the bobby, whom he descried approaching him with measured stride, pausing new and again to try a door or flash his bull's-eye down an area, were to be expected to identify the man responsible for that damnable racket raised ere ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... action with regard to raisins, tarts, cream, candy-peel, jam, plum-puddings and cakes, making life one vast hamper, and in the other case, boundless opportunity in the matter of leaping on and off moving trains, carrying lighted bull's-eye lanterns, and waving flags. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... "Lend me your bull's-eye, sergeant," said my companion. "Now tie this bit of card round my neck, so as to hang it in front of me. Thank you. Now I must kick off my boots and stockings.—Just you carry them down with you, Watson. I ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... bull's-eye lantern, and let its light shine right in front of him, so that no one meeting him could have told who or what was stealing up behind. In the same quiet way he led the little party down a ladder to the deck below, and then beneath hammocks filled with sleeping sailors, and along ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables

... big bull's-eye of light flashed on, making a shimmering white target in the middle of the screen. The music started up, and a moving-picture soloist with a moving-picture soloist's voice, appeared in the edge ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... successive nights worms kept in pots, which were protected from currents of air by means of glass plates. The pots were approached very gently, in order that no vibration of the floor should be caused. When under these circumstances worms were illuminated by a bull's-eye lantern having slides of dark red and blue glass, which intercepted so much light that they could be seen only with some difficulty, they were not at all affected by this amount of light, however long they were exposed ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... a little winding through some muddy alleys brings then to the bright lamp of a police-station, where they find the night-inspector. He takes a bull's-eye, and Mortimer and Eugene follow him to a cool grot at the end of the yard. They ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... Bull's-eye, n. a fish of New South Wales, Priacanthus macracanthus, Cuv.and Val. Priacanthus, says Guenther, is a percoid fish with short snout, lower jaw and chin prominent, and small rough scales all over them and the body generally. The eye large, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris



Words linked to "Bull's-eye" :   lantern, dark lantern



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