"Big gun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that strip of veldt. There was not much incident in the day's fighting; there seldom is in an artillery duel, carried on by men who know the game, in hilly country. Once during the afternoon the big gun belonging to the Boers became so troublesome that half a dozen of ours were trained upon it, and for best part of an hour it sounded as if a section of Sheol had visited the earth, so deadly was the fire, so fierce the bursting missiles, that not a rock wallaby, ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... of the schooner were not idle. The red streak and flag, and griffin's head, were removed; the big gun was covered with the long boat, and the vessel which entered the one end of the channel as the warlike Avenger, issued from the other side as the peaceful Foam; and, rowing to her former anchorage, ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... oeuvre and was used as a storehouse for hospital supplies and as headquarters for Alexina when business brought her to this part of the Marne valley. She had been here several times during the siege of Verdun in nineteen-sixteen when her bed had quivered all night, and once a big gun had been trained on the city and a shell had fallen near the headquarters of the staff. Last night she had lain awake wondering if she did not miss the sound of the distant guns, as she had in Passy where there was no noisy traffic to take their place. There is a certain amount of morbidity ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... squeezed into a twenty-inch-waist, blue muslin rag you wore at parting? No wonder Al didn't succeed at bank clerking, but had to make his hit at diplomacy and the high arts. Some hit at that to be legationed at Saint James! He's such a big gun that it is a pity he had to return to his native heath and find even such a slight disappointment as a one-yard ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Winchester, sir," he said. "Old Tom can't. He's no good at long range 'cept with a big gun, sir. Don't give him the Winchester. Give it ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... of sea and land warfare appealed the more vividly to one fresh from the front in France. What infinite labour for an army to get one big gun into position! How heralded the snail-like travels of the big German howitzer! Here was ship after ship, whose guns seemed innumerable. One found it hard to realize the resisting power of their armour, painted to look as liquid ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... jumped out of the way Mrs. Griffis ran close up to the combatants. The bear was being kept too busy to spare her any attention whatever. Coolly setting the muzzle of the big gun (which was loaded with buckshot) close to the beast's side, just behind the fore-shoulder, she pulled the trigger. There was a roar that filled the hollow like the firing of a cannon, and the bear collapsed sprawling, with a great ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... have to report that the sortie you have planned to take place on the morning of the 26th, for the capture of the enemy's big gun, is known to General Brounckers, and that the menaced position will be strengthened ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... became overcast, and a big gun was fired. Beth's father had something to do with the firing of big guns, and she connected this with the gathering gloom, stories of God striking wicked people down with thunder and lightning for their sins, and her own naughtiness, and felt considerably ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... ahead, feeling our way carefully, and come back or wait if things got too hot for us. We were stopped several times by troops crossing the road to get into trenches that were already prepared, and once had to wait while a big gun was put in place. It was a ticklish business to come around a turn in the road and light on a hundred men sneaking along behind a hedge with their rifles ready for instant action. Just beyond Eppeghem we met a troop of cavalry convoying a high cart filled with peasants, who had evidently been ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... Budget last night. Few left to-day to wind up the business. HUGHES, gallant Colonel who represents Woolwich, here a few minutes ago. But he's gone too. "Sometimes," he said, with a far-away smile, "they call me 'the Woolwich Infant.' If I am such a very big gun, perhaps the best thing I can do is to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... are safe, for none can reach us except by storm, and yonder is the big gun which turns upon itself. Let us twist the gun round first, so that, if need be, we can fire ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... in the day for fighting," said Pennington, "without borrowing of the night. Hear that big gun over there on our right! Why do they want to be firing cannon balls ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... on board de ship set sail. Tree hours after dat we hear a great running about on deck, and a shouting by the white men. Den we hear big gun fire ober head, almost make us jump out of skin wid de noise. Den more guns. Den dere was a crash, and before we knew what was de matter dere was a big hole in de side, and six niggers was killed dead. Ebery one yelled berry loud. We tink for sure that de last day come. For a ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... the world, which is almost finished. The overseer of the works received us, and escorted us courteously throughout the establishment; which is very extensive, giving employment to a thousand men, what with night-work and day-work. The big gun is still on the axle, or turning-machine, by means of which it has been bored. It is made entirely of wrought and welded iron, fifty tons of which were originally used; and the gun, in its present state, bored out and smoothed away, weighs nearly twenty-three tons. It has, as yet, no trunnions, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was too much for the dam," he answered regretfully. "It went off with a noise like a big gun, a while back. I expect the lake is flooding the whole place and messing up everything from our cellar to the chickenhouse. Daylight is due pretty soon, now, and the storm is dying down. We'll be able to add up the damage, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... but it has been a pleasant task and a labour of love. Now we disputed about it. I said it was finished. She said it wasn't. I said I ought to know. She replied not necessarily, since I was such a great goose. Then I loaded my big gun and thought to blow her clean ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... havoc made by the big gun of the Chateaugay could be seen and estimated. The bow of the steamer had been nearly all shot away. Her bowsprit and her mainmast had gone by the board. Her bulwarks were stove in, and most of her boats appeared to have been knocked to pieces. In spite of the efforts ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... the Boers brought a big gun to bear on the position, and blazed away at a distance of seven miles from the town. Out of sixteen shells only one struck. This set fire to a store. The huge weapon evidently proved a white elephant, for before long ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... his men were of no great use to him, "But, then," he would say, "there is little to do on a gunboat trim I can hand, and reef, and steer, and fire my big gun too— And it IS such a treat to sail with a gentle ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... atter de yuther hoss, en 'mos' 'fo' you know it, I had dem creeturs hitch up: en I went en got my young marster en de Yankee man w'at wuz wid 'im, en I kyard um back ter de camps. I got um des in time, too, kase I ain't mo'n fairly start 'fo' I year big gun, be-bang! en den I know'd de Yankees mus' be a-comin' back. Den de bung-shells 'gun ter bus'; en I ax myse'f w'at dey shootin' at me fer, en I ain't never fin' out w'at ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... Nature in her noblest mood. Such rolling hills behind hills! If those rolls could be called hills! After an hour the coach had gradually ascended to the summit of the "divide" between Purple River on the one side and Big Gun River on the other, and the rows of willows and cotton-woods that hung over the water's edge—the only trees under the whole sky—marked distinctly the meandering lines of the two streams. Albert Charlton shouted and laughed; he stood up beside ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... Government so resolutely refused to make any territorial concessions to Bulgaria, when it was obvious that the entry of Bulgaria into the conflict meant the ruin of Serbia? Why had they permitted the Austrians to build their big gun emplacements on the Danube without interruption? Why had they not withdrawn to the hills and then built proper defences with barbed wire entanglements and labyrinths? for properly entrenched they might have defied the Austro-German ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon |
