|
|
|
More "Trigger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... risked the count's. There was one moment when my hand was on my trigger, and my soul very near the sin of justifiable homicide. But my tale is done. The count is now on the river, and will soon be on the salt seas, though not bound to Norway, as I had first intended. I could ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... comprehensive glide from sleep to waking of the savage. In the night-light he made out a dark object in the midst of the grass and brought his gun to bear upon it. A second croak began to rise, and he pulled the trigger. The crickets ceased from their sing-song chant, the wildfowl from their squabbling, and the raven croak broke midmost and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... what seemed to be hours, the catapult crew cranked their awkward weapon to the trigger-point again and sent another rain of spikes ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... alteration of the military flint-lock to the percussion musket was easily accomplished by replacing the powder pan by a perforated nipple, and by replacing the cock or hammer which held the flint by a smaller hammer with a hollow to fit on the nipple when released by the trigger. On the nipple was placed the copper cap containing the detonating composition, now made of three parts of chlorate of potash, two of fulminate of mercury and one of powdered glass. The detonating cap thus invented and adopted, brought about the invention of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... few yards away raised his rifle and blew his head off. Young Brown broke down at this—they had just done in his wounded pal: "Oh, look! Look what they've done to Davie," and fell to weeping. And with that another put the muzzle of his rifle against the boy's head and pulled the trigger. ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... Billy. It's to save you torture, old fellow, just to save you useless suffering, Billy." He drew his pistol from his belt, took careful aim just behind the pony's ear, and, turning his head away, pulled the trigger. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... He pulled the trigger of his automatic again and again as he rushed forward. By some strange trick of fate the figure reeled for a second and one of its arms dropped swinging to its side. The bullet had entered a joint. Had it in some way deranged the mechanism, causing the Automaton to turn in its tracks and confront ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... observed, that as we advanced to charge Johnson's poltroons, one of the party, a resolute fellow, presented his gun to my breast and drew the trigger. Happily, in the very instant of its firing, lieutenant Jossilin knocked it up with his sword; and the ball grazing my shoulder, bursted through the side of ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... those complex ideas which are not visible in the action itself; the intention of the mind, or the relation of holy things, which make a part of murder or sacrilege, have no necessary connexion with the outward and visible action of him that commits either: and the pulling the trigger of the gun with which the murder is committed, and is all the action that perhaps is visible, has no natural connexion with those other ideas that make up the complex one named murder. They have their union and combination only from ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... against his chest, Dartie had pulled the trigger several times. It was not loaded. Dropping it with an imprecation, he had muttered: "For shake o' the children," and sank into a chair. Winifred, having picked up the revolver, gave him some soda water. The liquor had a magical effect. Life had illused him; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... these several places may, perhaps, set several parts of these little Animals at work, even as in the contrivance of killing a Fox or Wolf with a Gun, the moving of a string, is the death of the Animal; for the Beast, by moving the flesh that is laid to entrap him, pulls the string which moves the trigger, and that lets go the Cock which on the steel strikes certain sparks of fire which kindle the powder in the pann, and that presently flies into the barrel, where the powder catching fire rarifies and drives out the bullet which kills the Animal; in all ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... back! Or hear me!—for five years I've worked among you, and mended and patched the holes you've drilled through each other's carcasses—Keep back, I say!—or the next man that pulls trigger, or steps forward, will get a hole from me that no surgeon can stop. I'm sick of your bungling ball practice! Keep back!—or, by the living Jingo, I'll show you where a ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... advise yuh to go ridin'," Jim said thoughtfully. "This here gun's kinda techy, anyway, unless you're used to a quick trigger. Yuh might be ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... hyar Injun," continued Seth, without noticing Mr Rawlings' explanatory interruption, "rushed on to me like a mad bull in fly time, and seein' as how he meant bizness; I drawed the trigger again, but missed him, and he flung his tommyhawk, which cotched my fut, and brought me to the ground as slick as greased ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... had crossed were musketeers, the remainder pikemen. The latter formed the front line behind the rampart, their spears forming a close hedge around it, while the musketeers prepared to fire between them. By the order of Count Brahe not a trigger was pulled until the cavalry were within fifty yards, then a flash of flame swept round the rampart, and horses and men in the front line of the cavalry tumbled to the ground. But half the musketeers had fired, and a few seconds later ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... his teeth in his fury, and, snatching a rifle from one of his Indians who were near him, aimed it at Claude, and pulled the trigger. ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... haven't the nerve. There's nothing to you. You're just a cheap crook, and that's all. You wouldn't find the nerve to pull that trigger in a ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... adjusting his helmet and giving him his injection. He never felt the rocket tilt into firing position, and while he slept, the Kharands language, with all its vocabulary and grammar, became part of his subconscious knowledge, needing only the mental pronunciation of a trigger-symbol to bring it into consciousness. The pilot was already unfastening and raising his helmet when he opened his eyes. Dalla, beside him, was sipping a cup ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... "Anyway, we shant begin it. If it comes to a fight, though," he said, with a look at the men under the scooping rim of his helmet, "we can drive the whole six thousand of 'em into the East River without pullin' a trigger." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and turned. Dick levelled his pistol instantly at Austin, with murderous hate in his eyes, and drew the trigger. The pistol clicked harmlessly. Austin, self-conscious, did not raise his pistol. But Dick, broadening his chest, glared at ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... | | | |She extradited herself Tuesday night with a revolver| |shot in the temple. In the yard back of her | |foster-parents' home at 5319 West Twenty-fifth | |Street, Cicero, with one arm around the loyal Fritz,| |she put the revolver to her head and pressed the | |trigger....[48] | ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... discover hidden stores, and, digging them up out of the snow, carefully smooth the surface over again; that it will avoid every trap set for itself, and, going round to the back of spring guns, gnaw through the string connected with the trigger before it drags away the bait. It follows up the lines laid down by the trappers, taking the martens out, and devouring them, or hiding what it cannot eat, and by wearying out the patience of the hunters, compel them to strike a ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... slain nobody whom they had not been positively directed by their commanding officer to slay. That subordination without which an army is the worst of all rabbles would be at an end, if every soldier were to be held answerable for the justice of every order in obedience to which he pulls his trigger. The case of Glencoe was, doubtless, an extreme case; but it cannot easily be distinguished in principle from cases which, in war, are of ordinary occurrence. Very terrible military executions are sometimes indispensable. Humanity itself ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... snipping of wire-cutters is heard, each time being followed perhaps by a slight "ping" as the strained wire separates. The ensuing silence is almost heart-breaking, for in contrast something else may at any instant be increasing its tension, a sentry's trigger-finger. One stormy night, when in hospital, I had reason to believe that an officer would make an attempt in that part of the camp at a given hour, so had an excellent chance of watching operations, which was not wasted. I went to the window and settled ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... nest was resting on; we fired again, and the bullet passed through the nest without touching the bird. I then asked the king to allow me to try his Whitworth, to which a little bit of stick, as a charm to secure a correct aim, had been tied below the trigger-guard. This time I broke the bird's leg, and knocked him half out of the nest; so, running up to the king, I pointed to the charm, saying, That has done it—hoping to laugh him out of the folly; but he took my joke in earnest, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... lest some eye might be spying her action even through the thick blinds, she took the weapon in her hand and held it up so that she might feel, if possible, how it would be with her when she should attempt the deed. She looked very narrowly at the lock, of which the trigger was already back at its place, so that no exertion of arrangement might be necessary for her at the fatal moment. Never as yet had she fired a pistol;—never before had she held such a weapon in her hand;—but ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... around, leveled the automatic's muzzle at the hole in the idol's eye, sighted carefully, and squeezed the trigger. And as the explosion boomed through the vast chamber outside, he veered the gun in a different aim ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the West, Western—of the old, bad West of informal vendetta, when a man's increase of years might lie squarely on his quickness in the "draw"; when he went abundantly armed by day and slept lightly at night—trigger fingers instinctively crooked. Of course such days have very definitely passed; wherefore the engaging puzzle of certain survivals in Jimmie Time—for I found him still a two-gun man. He wore them rather consciously sagging from his lean hips—almost pompously, it seemed. Nor ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... back upon him as he swung the pistol into line with one of the jelly-masses. He barely pressed the trigger before the charging brutes knocked him ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... merry chap As ever made a trigger snap, And ne'er a bird its wing could flap— And get away; Whenever Barber smashed a ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... my cabin. It was located aft, on the stern deck-space, near the stern watch-tower. A small metal room, with a desk, a chair and bunk. I made sure no one was in it. I sealed the lattice grill and the door, set the alarm trigger against any opening of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... their bullets crashed through the crowded Southern ranks. The Winchesters were on the flank of the defenders, where they could get a better view, and although they also were firing as fast as they could reload and pull the trigger, they saw the great column pause ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... upon him that the distance between him and the bear loomed up before him now as almost hopelessly long. If he only had a rifle, instead of his shotgun! But it was the last hope, and whispering a prayer to God to send the bullet straight, with nerves as tense as steel, he pulled the trigger. ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... cannot defend that right, I can retire cheerfully with my little family into the boundless woods of America, which are sure to afford freedom and subsistence to any man who can bait a hook or pull a trigger." ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... that I was not frightened, but that I considered that it was an awful moment. The second to my adversary then came up and asked me whether I would make an apology, which I refused to do as before: they handed a pistol to each of us, and my second showed me how I was to pull the trigger. It was arranged that at the word given, we were to fire at the same time. I made sure that I should be wounded, if not killed, and I shut my eyes as I fired my pistol in the air. I felt my head swim, and thought I was hurt, but fortunately I was not. The pistols were loaded again, and we ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... doctor agreed, "a hair-trigger! And his father understands him about as well as—as Danny there understands Hebrew! I think it's a case of Samuel and his father over again. Dr. Lavendar, do you suppose anybody will ever know what those ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... 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 the boy's black eyes were looking through and beyond, rather than at him. The bond of mutual understanding ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... each other, penitently. "Yes," interposed the Judge with delicate tact, "ye see the Right and Left Bower almost quarreled to see which should be the first to fire for ye. I disremember which did"—"I never touched the trigger," said the Left Bower, hastily. With a hurried backward kick, the Judge resumed, "It ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... a steady line, and the men between the elephants grew every moment more excited. For the action of the animals proved that it was no false alarm, and in the momentary glances I had from right to left, I saw that the rajah and Brace were waiting, with finger on trigger, for a shot at the striped monster creeping on ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... quietly loaded his gun, and then rose up to reconnoiter. Holdfast sprung forward, and Edward, looking in the direction, perceived Corbould partly hidden behind a tree, with his gun leveled at him. He heard the trigger pulled, and snap of the lock, but the gun did not go off; and then Corbould made his appearance, striking at Holdfast with the butt-end of his gun. Edward advanced to him and desired him to desist, or it would be the worse ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... in one of Gerald Griffin's novels, there is a scene in which a young Irish student, fresh from his scholastic ethics, amazes the company at his father's table, who are all devout believers in the virtues of the hair-trigger, by an eloquent declamation against the folly and the sin of duelling. At last one of the set gets sufficient breath to call him a coward. The hot Irish blood is up in an instant, a tumbler is thrown at the head of the doubter of his courage, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... fire. Singling out one of Stuart's men, he covered that cavalier with his revolver, and probably, in another instant, would have ended his career; but, just as his finger gave the final pressure upon the trigger, his horse, riddled with bullets, fell dead under him, the shot flew wide of its mark, and he ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... doom was close. Twice, when the rustler chief had sauntered nearer to the cabin door, as if to enter, Hare had covered him with the rifle, waiting, waiting for the step upon the threshold. But Holderness always checked himself in time, and Hare's finger eased its pressure upon the trigger. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... wrote them down, and the time they occupied. I soon got into the way of doing all this in a very methodical and automatic manner, keeping the mind perfectly calm and neutral, but intent and, as it were, at full cock and on hair trigger, before displaying the word. There was no disturbance occasioned by thinking of the forthcoming revulsion of the mind the moment before the chronograph was stopped. My feeling before stopping it was simply that ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... however, was at his belt, and his hand reached for it. But the range was already too far for any hope of accurate pistol fire. His hard eyes gazed along the short, black barrel. His steady finger pressed back against the trigger. ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... Cause! but mark the men— Mark the planted statues, then Draw trigger on them if ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... knew it, he felt it. However, he was brave, since he did wish to fight! He was brave, since.... The thought that budded never took form, even in his own mind; for, opening his mouth wide he brusquely thrust the barrel of his pistol into his throat, and pulled the trigger.... ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... a pistol from his sash, and, taking aim full at the skipper's breast, he pulled the trigger. Fortunately, the weapon snapped and did not explode. The ruffian held it a moment in his hand, and then letting it rest upon the table, he said, with a ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood! They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years, Till, now, on the stroke of midnight, Cold, on the stroke of midnight, The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... sat in the old familiar woods and dreamed of the happy long ago, until a gang of blackbirds, spluttering in a neighboring treetop woke me. And when I rose from the log and threw myself into the shape of an interrogation point, and touched the trigger, at the crack of my rifle old bullfrogg shot into the pond; the hoot-owl "scooted" into his castle in the trunk of an old hollow tree; the blackbirds cut the "asymptote of a hyperbolical curve" in the air; the squirrel fell to the ground at my feet, with a bullet through his brain, and ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... Julien pressed the trigger, as if in obedience to that order, incorrect, but too natural to be even noticed. The weapon was discharged, and the three spectators at the window of the bedroom uttered three simultaneous exclamations on seeing Gorka's arm fall and his hand drop ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... mistaken, I thought I heard the click of a trigger," he said to Grevin, after getting behind the trunk of a large tree, where the notary, uneasy at his friend's sudden movement, ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... under this window, which he realized must be almost over Shorty's head. It was but the work of an instant to grasp Pat's gun and stick its nose well through the little half moon of an opening in the shutter, pointed straight over Shorty's head into the woods, and pull the trigger. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... stood upon the window- seat, looking out of the window. Another boy came along, and, taking up the gun, not knowing that it was loaded and primed, took deliberate aim at the face of the girl, and pulled the trigger. But God, in mercy, caused the gun to miss fire. Had it gone off, the girl's face would have been blown all to pieces, I never can think of the danger she was in, even now, without trembling. The girl did ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... sportsmen pulled trigger almost simultaneously. The baronet and the colonel had each selected the same spot, the eye, as the object of their aim, and both had been equally successful, the shell in each case passing upward through the eyeball into the brain, exploding there and causing instant death. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... indeed!" cried Morrison emphatically, breaking in. "With modern industrial conditions hung on a hair trigger as they are, it's as though a boy had exploded a fire-cracker in the works of a watch. That means his whole fortune gone. Old Peter put everything into coal. Austin will not have a cent—nothing but those Vermont scrub forests of his. What a mad thing to do! But it's been ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... stillness, watching the light tracery of shadow and sun on that smooth sward, only now and then roused by the fleet rush of a deer through the wood, or the brisk chatter of a plume-tailed squirrel, till one hears a distant, sharp, clucking chuckle, and in an instant more pulls the trigger, and upsets a grand old cock, every bronzed feather glittering in the sunshine, and now splashed with scarlet blood, the delicate underwing ground into down as he rolls and flutters; for the first shot rarely kills at once with an amateur; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... the telephone place fling down his book and grab a pistol from I don't know where. He stepped out into the street and fired three shots into the air as fast as he could pull the trigger. And as he done so they was a light flashed out in a building way down the railroad track, and shots come answering from there. Men's voices began to yell out; they was the noise of people running along plank sidewalks, and windows opening in the dark. Then with a rush ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... the gravest sources of restlessness in the world. Touchiness, when it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the inward disposition. It is self-love inflamed to the acute point; conceit, WITH A HAIR-TRIGGER. The cure is to shift the yoke to some other place; to let men and things touch us through some new and perhaps as yet unused part of our nature; to become meek and lowly in heart while the old sensitiveness is becoming ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... it is loaded, cocked and pointed at your head, with a half drunken galoot's finger on the trigger, is a ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... scruple—in a word, to be the foes of all mankind, strangers in their family, men whom any person may slay if he can; in the village they are dangerous neighbours, and in meeting them you must keep your hand on the trigger; but in war one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... alone. If he did it, that involved—Pah! what was in a word? Men died every day. He had quite resolved: Judith and he had talked the matter over all night. But if Frazier were a younger man, and could fight for it! Perhaps he was armed: Soule's face flashed: he stooped and broke the trigger of his gun, and then went on with a much less heavy step. They would be more even now. He wanted to reach the bridge by dawn, and meet his brother. If he refused to help him, he would send him away, and wait for Frazier alone. About nine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... in an instant he saw that they had strangely bridged the distance between his wife and himself. He felt her close on him, like a panting foe; and her answer was a flash that showed the hand on the trigger. ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... load the rifles, and hand them to me, and let me fire them." But they can load all the four rifles, and he can not fire half as fast as they can load; and I say to the mother, "Can you shoot?" She says, "Let me try;" and she takes a gun, and points it at the wolves, and pulls the trigger, and I see one of them throw his feet up in the air. "Ah!" I say, "I see you can shoot! You keep the rifle, and fire it yourself." And I say to the oldest daughter, "Can you shoot?" "I guess I can," ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... five months of thrashing to and fro in the wintry North Atlantic a torpedo sped across her bows and she knew her chance had come. Instantly her alarm signals, quietly given, brought all hands to action stations, some in deck-houses, others in hen-coops, but each with his finger on the trigger or his hand on a ready spare shell. Presently the submarine broke surface and fired a shot across the Q ship's bow. On this the well-trained crew ran about in panic, while the captain screeched at them and waved his arms about like mad. Then the submarine came up ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... as he usually did, the spaniel circled away to where it narrowed, and leaped across it in his run. Then St. Remi, drawing a pistol from his holsters, fired at and shot his faithful companion, averting his eyes as he touched the fatal trigger, and galloping rapidly away from the death-cry that smote upon his ear; and, as he dashed the spurs into his reeking horse, he invoked maledictions on the money which was the cause of this unfortunate journey. The money! but where was it? Suddenly he pulled up his harassed steed, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... attendants, left the Indian trail, and struck out for the Forks by compass, with Gist as his companion. A misguided red man, hoping for glory from the white chief's scalp, prepared an ambush, and as Washington passed within a few paces, pulled the trigger on him. He did not know that the destiny of half the world hung upon his aim; but indeed the bullet was never molded that could draw blood from Washington. The red man missed; and the next moment Gist had him helpless, with a knife at his throat. But no: the man who could pour ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... I expected,' he remarked, speaking more to himself than to me. 'There is a slight dent on the top of the window-frame. It is of such a nature as to be made only by the trigger of a pistol falling from the nerveless hand of a suicide. He intended to throw the weapon far out of the window, but had not the strength. It might have fallen into the carriage. As a matter of fact, it bounced ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... only piece of foolishness you have n't committed already!" replied Louisa, with a biting satire that would have made any man let go of the trigger in case he had gone so far as ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fumbled at the open window. Finger on trigger, Banneker held up his flashlight in his left hand and irradiated the spot. He saw the hand, groping, and on one of its fingers something which returned a more brilliant gleam than the electric ray. In his crass amazement, the agent straightened up, a full mark for murder, staring ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... through the tangle. About half-way up I jumped to the top of a high, conical rock, and thence by good luck caught sight of the lion's great yellow head advancing steadily about eighty yards away. I took as good a sight as I could and pulled trigger. The recoil knocked me clear off the boulder, but as I fell I saw his tail go up and knew that I had hit. At once Clifford Hill and I jumped up on the rock again, but the lion had moved out of sight. By this time, however, the sound of the shots and the smell of blood had caused the dogs ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... Soeur Laurent, referring to Madame Guix. "Wonderful—afraid of nothing. Once at the beginning of the invasion she was put against the wall and a brute of a German aimed and pulled the trigger of a gun he had found in a corner. She had accidentally covered it with a wounded man's great coat! He accused her of hiding arms! Then in the thick of the battle, she went out into the German lines and sought a doctor for our men—feeling herself incompetent. The whole German medical staff ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... decided, Frank raised his gun a trifle further, so that it bore on the tops of the cabbage palms beyond. Then his finger pressed the trigger, and with the sudden report ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... stationary steam-engine accompanying it, the great iron weight which was dropped upon the piles to drive them into the river bed was elevated by means of a windlass and mule power. The weight, once lifted, was released by means of a trigger connected by a cord with a post, where a man driving the mule around could pull it. The arrangement was primitive ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... completion of his eighth year," he says, "in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log cabin; and Abraham, with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since pulled the trigger on ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... his side coat-pocket a cocked revolver and laid it on the table. So that was the kind of persuasion that it had been necessary to apply to secure Mr. Grenelli's attendance. One is apt to yield the point when he feels a pistol-barrel prodding him in the ribs, and it is no great trick to set a trigger-catch with the weapon ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... advancing assailants. There were shouts and screams of pain in answer, and the line hesitated. I gave them the remaining cartridge, and, seizing the smaller weapon from Luella, fired as rapidly as I could pull the trigger. ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... pace towards the left hand, and then stepped towards O'Connell. His object was to induce him to fire, more or less, at random. He lifted his pistol, as if about to fire. O'Connell instantly presented, pulled the trigger, and the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... by its trigger guard and stood towering above the little German, who at once began to read the letter, translating the simple words into English. The gang of rovers stood in ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... sneering Madge Scarlet realized that she was. It was a most humiliating position. Once the woman thought of making a quick spring, but a pressure of the trigger was all that was necessary to send a bullet on ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... sunset, when, just as I emerged from a tangled thicket, I perceived an Indian on his knees at a clear, sparkling spring, from which he was slaking his thirst. Instinctively I placed my rifle to my shoulder, drew a bead upon the savage and pulled the trigger. Imagine, if you can, my feelings as the flint came down and was shivered to pieces ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk
... doctor clutched his revolver, with his finger on the trigger. In spite of his pledged word, he did not hesitate. If the adversary touched the end of the bed, the shot would be fired ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... occasionally met local sports carrying guns together with slow-matches of smouldering brown paper. They are remarkable weapons, with single iron barrels some four feet and a half long, about twenty bore and without stocks, but having pistol handles. There are no locks or springs, the hammer and trigger being in one piece, working through the handle on a rivet. The hammers have slits in them as if to hold flints, but which really are intended for the slow-match. Sometimes these men had good bags of snipe, but only ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... ran to the place where the pistol was lying, snatched it up, took aim, fired.... But before he touched the trigger, his arm twitched upwards; the ball whistled over Masha's head. She looked at him over her shoulder without stopping, and went on, swinging as she walked, as ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... terminated in flat steel butts which would have cracked the pate of any highwayman if the shot missed fire. As Colwyn anticipated, the pistols were muzzle-loaders. The cock, which laid over considerably, was in the curious form of a twisted snake. When the trigger was pulled the head of the snake fell on ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... you've been goin' around ever since January loaded up to the muzzle with spite and sure-thing vengeance, same as an old-fashioned horse pistol used to be loaded with powder and ball, it must be kind of hard, just as you're set to pull trigger, to have to quit and swaller the whole charge. Liable to give you dyspepsy, if nothin' ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his steady rifle barrel, was saying again, "Pray, pray for me, girl." As the words left his lips, his finger pressed the trigger, and the quiet of the hills was broken by the sharp ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... He sez they 'd ough' to stan' right up an' let us pop 'em fairly (Guess wen he ketches 'em at thet he 'll hev to git up airly), Thet our nation 's bigger 'n theirn an' so its rights air bigger, An' thet it 's all to make 'em free thet we air pullin' trigger, Thet Anglo Saxondom's idee 's abreakin' 'em to pieces, An' thet idee 's thet every man doos jest wut he damn pleases; Ef I don't make his meanin' clear, perhaps in some respex I can, I know thet "every man" don't mean a nigger or a Mexican; An' there 's another thing ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the landing on Mercury with squadron guns pointed at their heads. Of course, they found that a sun-side landing wouldn't have hurt the ship. The whole affair was pretty well hushed up, but it produced bad feeling between the Special Order Squadrons and the spacemen. "Trigger happy space bums," the spacemen called them, ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... groaned Roger; but the girl threw back her head and laughed with relief and gratitude for the chance of merriment until the virgin morning seemed filled with song. Higgins' hair-trigger laughter rumbled deep accompaniment; and, as always, the engineer's merriment forced itself upon Roger, and he joined in, while the silver of the girl's tones pealed above both, tinkling in the sun-kissed palms above, rolling out over the purple water, out to the ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... pistol!" shrieked Will, who was fingering his camera nervously from a point somewhat in the rear; and they immediately heard the little suggestive click that announced the pressure of a finger on the trigger. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... cutting to and fro with his terrible campilan, and before any one could prevent, he had felled two troopers. With a howl, Lewis plunged into their midst, pistol leveled, but before he could pull the trigger, the Moro buried the sword in his own ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... where Dick directed his gaze, and, in an instant, the cowboy had his weapon out and leveled. His finger was even pressing the trigger when he laughed silently and thrust the .45 back in its leather case. "Why didn't you ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... period at which I require some strength of mind to confess my weakness. I had a gun, the worn-out trigger of which often went off unexpectedly. I loaded this gun with three balls, and went to a spot at a considerable distance from the great Mall. I cocked the gun, put the end of the barrel into my mouth, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the captain, furiously, as he deliberately pointed the pistol at the cabin boy, and prepared to pull the trigger. ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... triumphant. "You purty liar! jest you wait till I've had my dram!" An old lustre mug stood upon the shelf. He filled this almost to the brim, then lifted it from the board. There was a sound from by the door, familiar enough to Steve—namely, the cocking of a trigger. "You put that mug down," said the voice of his hostess, "or I'll put a bullet through you! Shut that cupboard door. Go and sit ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the door, brought over one of the makeshift chairs and placed it in front of Molly, seating himself. His alcohol-laden breath reached her nauseatingly and she turned her head aside. As if a trigger had been released Plimsoll's face became inflamed with a passionate fury. The veins on face and neck swelled and writhed like little blue ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... He knew that the only rock of safety left to him was the code. There is no doubt that, had he been alone, the matter would have been settled quickly with Sam Durkee in the usual way; but he had something at his side that kept still the trigger-finger of both. It seemed likely ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... of the men, Ben Jones, was instantly levelled at the chief, and he was just about to pull the trigger, when Mr. Stuart exclaimed, “Not for your life! not for your life, you will bring destruction upon ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... a slim man of near forty who had rarely fired a shot in sport, never in anger, and a stoutly built irascible Irishman, for whom a good shot meant lynching or lasting opprobrium. Visions of Bob Acres and Sir Lucius O'Trigger flit before us. We picture Tierney quoting "fighting Bob Acres" as to the advantage of a sideways posture; and we wonder whether the seconds, if only in regard for their own safety, did not omit to insert bullets. The ludicrous side of the affair soon dawned on contemporaries, witness ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... was now in his favor, he swung his legs over the seat—a T-bar at the bottom of the rod which swung down from the drive mechanism—grasped the rod, and pulled the starting trigger. ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... hand down to the lock of the gun, and drew back the trigger. Cautiously as it was done, he could not prevent a slight clicking sound, which, perhaps, struck the ear of the Solitary, for he turned his head and moved in the chair. The Indian slunk to the edge of the window, so as to conceal his person from any one within ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... skipping up and down like a roo, and his brother used to sit in the chimney nook with his book and sic-like trash—But the lad was like a loaded hackbut, which will stand in the corner as quiet as an old crutch until ye draw the trigger, and then there is nothing but flash and smoke.—But here comes my prisoner; and, setting other matters aside, I must pray a word with you, Sir Sub-Prior, respecting him. I came on before to treat about him, but I ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... by his head. In an overpowering rage he whirled about, throwing his rifle to his shoulder. A man detached from the group was lowering his arm; and, holding the sights hard on the other's metal-buttoned, twill jacket, Howat pulled the trigger. There was only an answering ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and a vicious snap in the air, it rolled upon its back, four feet pawing furiously, and then fell limp upon its side. I stooped, panting, and pressed my pistol to the dreadful, shimmering head, but it was useless to press the trigger. ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... scarcely pulled a trigger, Says I, 'Boys,' says I, I 'aint got a mite of vigor,'— So I skulked and tried to fly, But was booted by a nigger, And back ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... grow very anxious lest the others should take alarm, the bull likewise appeared on the edge of the glade, and stood with outstretched head, scratching his throat against a young tree, which shook violently. I aimed low, behind his shoulder, and pulled trigger. At the crack of the rifle all the bison, without the momentary halt of terror-struck surprise so common among game, turned and raced off at headlong speed. The fringe of young pines beyond and below ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... could gather, 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 ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger at ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... approach now as the creature passed over the grass. Suddenly, like a dark, drifting shadow, the huge bulk loomed up once more before me, making for the entrance of the cave. Again came that paralysis of volition which held my crooked forefinger impotent upon the trigger. But with a desperate effort I shook it off. Even as the brushwood rustled, and the monstrous beast blended with the shadow of the Gap, I fired at the retreating form. In the blaze of the gun I caught ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ease and comfort of an unopposed return was to repay him for everything. Alas! how all this was changed; how his spirits sank within him, when he received that high-toned letter from his confidential agent, Mr. Trigger, in which he was invited to suggest the name of a colleague! "I'm sure you'll be rejoiced to hear, for the sake of the old borough," said Mr. Trigger, "that we feel confident of carrying the two seats." ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... democracy is not a quick-trigger war-engine and can't be made into one. When the quick-trigger engines get to work, they forget that a democracy does not consider fighting the first duty of man. You can bend your energies to peaceful pursuits or you can bend them to war. It's hard to do ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... going straight to one of the windows to throw back the shutters, when a sharp click brought him round on his heels as if he had been shot. In a far corner of the room, in a dark doorway, stood a shadow. The click was that of a trigger. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... to myself, for no one was yet stirring, and I walked on, with a slouching, dogged gait. The gray shooting-jacket was on my back, and from the end of my brother's rifle hung a small bundle of my clothes. My fingers worked moodily at the stock and trigger, and I thought that this indeed was the way to begin life, with a gun ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... As he raised it Rainey grappled with him. Carlsen pulled trigger, and the bullet smashed through the skylight above them, while Rainey forced up his arm, twisting it fiercely with both hands until the gun ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... was no response. The girl had fallen back in a swoon, and a twitching of her fingers showed that even now her half-conscious mind was busy trying to find the trigger of the ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... hadn't thought you'd keep yours open. You slept all night, sir, you and Mr. Dawes, while I rode alongside with finger on trigger every minute." ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... less vague; but I followed the dog about until at last I made him out standing on a pile of boards a little way off. It was my chance. I raised the gun quickly and took aim. I had both barrels cocked and my finger on the trigger, when something told me quite distinctly not to shoot; to put down the gun and go closer. I did so, and found, not the dog as I thought, but my enemy whom I had threatened but an hour or two before, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... caught up the rifle, planning to shoot up at the cliff in a venture to frighten them away. She aimed, pulled the trigger, and the rifle-shot rang out making the echoes roar and roll through the chasm as ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... respeck," sez she, "your intellectle part, But you wun't noways du for me athout a change o' heart: Nothun religion works wal North, but it's ez soft ez spruce, Compared to ourn, for keepin' sound," sez she, "upon the goose; A day's experunce'd prove to ye, ez easy 'z pull a trigger, It takes the Southun pint o' view to raise ten bales a nigger; You'll fin' thet human natur, South, ain't wholesome more 'n skin-deep, An' once't a darkie's took with it, he wun't be wuth his keep." "How shell ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... to effect such a change in a pinch of dust that it becomes a free avenue instead of a barricade. Through that avenue a powerful blow from a local store of energy makes itself heard and felt. No device of the trigger class is comparable with this in delicacy. An instant after a signal has taken its way through the coherer a small hammer strikes the tiny tube, jarring its particles asunder, so that they resume their normal state of high resistance. We may well be astonished at the sensitiveness of the metallic ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... combatants swayed, straining every muscle to bring their pistols into play for the fatal shot. By an almost superhuman effort, Fitzgerald at last wrested his right arm free. His pistol was pointed at the Colonel's head. But before he could press the trigger, a shot rang out, and he fell back dead, shot through the heart. Lord Kingsborough had killed his daughter's betrayer ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... connection I'll confess that I must hurry home and help mother with some sewing. Did you want anything especial of me?" Her smile had vanished, and in her tone there was a clink of the metallic that was as subtly suggestive of "On guard" as the click of a trigger. ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... told me to set up and await execution order. I preset two forward radiators for forty kilometers at low condensation, with a three kilometer radius at surface. I then put the controls on automatic trigger, notified the captain, and went on with my normal duties. At 0221, we came out of trans-light, and I adjusted my equipment ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... of terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell into the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... safe out of the corner where he had me trapped, with all the deck to dodge about. Just forward of the mainmast I stopped, drew a pistol from my pocket, took a cool aim, though he had already turned and was once more coming directly after me, and drew the trigger. The hammer fell, but there followed neither flash nor sound; the priming was useless with sea water. I cursed myself for my neglect. Why had not I, long before, reprimed and reloaded my only ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dish, I have no doubt the cougar looked upon me as the subject of a future supper. Rays of light darted from his large eyes, he showed his teeth like a negro in hysterics, and he was crouching on his haunches ready for a spring; all of which convinced me that unless I was pretty quick upon the trigger, posterity would know little of the termination of my eventful career, and it would be far less glorious and useful than I intend to ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... compartment and was forbidden to get up or to touch his luggage. A soldier stood in the corridor of the carriage before the door of each of our compartments which were kept open, revolver in hand and finger on the trigger. The Russian Charge d'Affaires, the women and children and everyone were subjected to ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... in which he handled it George was alarmed. It was an automatic, and if the Chief once pulled the trigger there would be trouble for some one. George held up a warning hand, and the Chief ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... send bullets into the gray masses which fell back only to come on again. Nothing but modern weapons, machine guns from which missiles fairly flowed in an unending stream, and rifles which a man fired as fast as he could pull the trigger could check them. "Why don't they stop! Why don't they stop!" John was shouting to himself through burned lips, and again he shuddered with sick horror, when he saw a whole line of men blown away, as if they had been ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... he was downstairs, undoing the bolts and bars of the door. On the other side stood M'Adam, his blunderbuss at his shoulder, his finger trembling on the trigger, waiting. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... like the monster's many legs. I took it into my head to try to shoot from there into the water of Glen Canyon beneath us, and borrowed Bishop's 44-calibre Remington revolver for the purpose. When I pulled the trigger I was positively startled by the violence of the report, a deafening shock like a thousand thunder-claps in one; then dead silence. Next, from far away there was a rattle as of musketry, and peal after peal of the echoing shot came back to us. The interval of silence ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... he had seemed to me to be but pot metal and putty, and here, poised, alert, ready—a wire-drawn, hard-hammered Damascus blade of a man—all changed and transformed and glorified, he was coming down on Dave Dancy, finger on trigger, thumb on hammer, eye on target, dominating the ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... pay for it," says Low, wherewith he up with a musket, squinted along the barrel, and pulled the trigger. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... now faced. He too heard the steps of the three warriors coming in their direction, cautiously feeling a way through the great bank of mist. It was true that they could pass near without seeing, but chance might bring them straight to the little group. He shifted his fingers to the lock and trigger of his rifle, and looked at the sleeping three whose figures were almost hidden, although they were not a yard away. He felt that they should be awake and ready but in waking, Grosvenor, at least, might make enough noise to draw the warriors ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... passing thought. But I need not enlarge. Here they both stand. The man has just seen the deer. As quick as thought his eye passes over the ground, sees the prey is within proper distance, takes aim, pulls the trigger, that loosens a spring, which forces the flint against the steel; this produces a spark, which ignites the charcoal, and the sulphur and nitre combined, explode and force the wad, which forces the ball from the gun, and is borne thro the air till it reaches the deer, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... affording the farmer an opportunity of loading his grain direct into cars through flat warehouses, if he chose, and shipping where he liked. But because many farmers did not know with just what the new weapon was loaded or how to pull the trigger, the railways and elevators merely stepped up and smilingly brushed the whole thing aside as something which were better hanging on a high peg ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... passion, such as we read of in Pope. Who would not have expected them to be insipid likenesses of each other? No such thing. Harpagon is not more unlike to Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more unlike to Sir Lucius O'Trigger, than every one of Miss Austen's young divines to all his reverend brethren. And almost all this is done by touches so delicate, that they elude analysis, that they defy the powers of description, and that we know them to exist only by the general ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... trifling for me to doubt the fatal effects of the discharge; for I was determined to take deadly aim, in hopes that the fall of one man might save the lives of many. But at the very moment, when my hand was on the trigger, and my eye was along the barrel, my purpose was checked by M'Leay, who called to me that another party of blacks had made their appearance upon the left bank of the river. Turning round, I observed four men at the top of their ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... quickly round, grasping at something which lay upon a shelf near him, and Phineas saw that he was armed with a pistol. Phineas, who had hitherto been seated, leaped to his legs; but the pistol in a moment was at his head, and the madman pulled at the trigger. But the mechanism of the instrument required that some bolt should be loosed before the hammer would fall upon the nipple, and the unhandy wretch for an instant fumbled over the work so that Phineas, still facing his enemy, had time to leap backwards ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... fire for some moments. D'Esterre first changed his position, moving a pace towards the left hand, and then stepped towards O'Connell. His object was to induce him to fire, more or less, at random. He lifted his pistol, as if about to fire. O'Connell instantly presented, pulled the trigger, and ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... English writers call those large muskets calivers; the harquebuss was a lighter piece, that could be fired without a rest. The matchlock was fired by a match fixed by a kind of tongs in the serpentine or cock, which, by pulling the trigger, was brought down with great quickness upon the priming in the pan, over which there was a sliding cover, which was drawn back by the hand just at the time of firing. There was a great deal of nicety and care required to fit the match properly to the cock, so as ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... a great though suppressed passion, "pray, Mr. Bobus, how often have I to tell you that it is not by Mr. Linden that my days are to terminate: you are sure that Carabine saw to that trigger?" ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Jack held the flashlight "gun." It was one of those patent affairs, arranged to fire a charge of magnesium powder by the explosion of a cap when the trigger was pressed. ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... in rapid succession came quickly up into the alley from the basement stair. Sharply Brennan ordered John to follow Murphy and Smith into the automobile while he remained with Benton, who stood poised with his finger on the trigger of the flash gun. ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... African explorers, big-game hunters, ex-revenue-officers, and Indian-fighters, besides any number of others who have led the wildest kinds of life, all chock-full of stories, and ready to fire 'em off at a touch of the trigger. Teddy hasn't come yet, and so I haven't been able to do anything for you; but you must trot right out, all the same, and join our mess. Besides, I want you to pick out a horse for me, something nice and quiet, 'cause I'm not a dead ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... Central Tura, together with the Arab servants who preferred Hamed's imbecile haste to Thani's cautious advance. Our first night in Unyamwezi was very exciting indeed. The Musungu's camp was visited by two crawling thieves, but they were soon made aware by the portentous click of a trigger that the white man's camp was ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... generations the faithful description of one who delighted their fathers, and who can never be replaced, will surely prove welcome. He made his first appearance in Boston at the Howard Athenaeum, Oct. 5, 1846, as Sir Lucius O'Trigger in the "Rivals" (the same character that W. J. Florence is now personating with the Jefferson combination). Mr. Warren remained at the Athenaeum but one season, and during that time commanded the admiration of his audiences. Mr. Charles W. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... him from afar. More than once on the trail Wentworth unconsciously stood with the sights of Alex Thumb's rifle trained upon his head, or his heart. But such was his hatred that Thumb always stayed the finger that crooked upon the trigger—and bided ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... took a quicker aim and pulled trigger. A puff of dust right at the feet of the buck showed where Roy's lead had struck this time. With a single bound, wonderful to see, the big deer was out of sight behind trees and brush. The ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... in loops upon a belt, and when this belt is introduced to the gun, and some five or six cartridges have been drawn in by as many reciprocations of a handle, the gun is ready to commence firing. After the first shot, which must be fired by the pulling of a trigger in the ordinary way, the gun will automatically continue to send out shot after shot, until the whole of the cartridges on the belt are exhausted; and if care is taken before this happens to link on to the tail of the first belt ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... uncontrolled action to the children. Just to learn to wait, even after the thought is formed into words, until it shall be my turn or my opportunity to speak is a fine discipline of control. To do that every day, year after year, tends to break up the hair-trigger ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... sounds of battle—for the report of Mukoki's revolver, or the whoops of the victors. If there had been an ambush it was all over now. Each moment added to his conviction, and as he thrust the muzzle of his gun ahead of him, his finger hovering near the trigger and his snow-blinded eyes staring ahead into the storm, something like ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... had a good chance to get me. But he must have flinched when he pulled the trigger. As I dodged down I saw him run through the trees. He had a rifle. I've been expectin' that kind of gun play. I reckon now I'll have to keep a little closer hid myself. These fellers all seem to get chilly or shaky when they draw a ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... family of the ifs, a peace-maker. My Lady Delacour, I was going to observe that my principal has met with an unfortunate accident, in the shape of a whitlow on the fore-finger of her right hand, which incapacitates her from drawing a trigger; but I am at your service, ladies, either of you, that can't put up with a disappointment with good humour.' I never, during the whole course of my existence, was more disposed to bear a disappointment with good humour, to prove that I ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... here?" he asked, suddenly stopping and looking at the company before him. "Why there's Lieutenant Canfield as sure as I am alive, and if that ain't my dear little daughter yonder, I hope I may never lift my sword for Mad Anthony again. And there's Oonomoo, the best red-man that ever pulled the trigger of a rifle, with a little pocket edition of himself, and grinning Cato too! Why don't you come to the arms of your father, sis, and let him ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... but my bullet struck the bough the nest was resting on; we fired again, and the bullet passed through the nest without touching the bird. I then asked the king to allow me to try his Whitworth, to which a little bit of stick, as a charm to secure a correct aim, had been tied below the trigger-guard. This time I broke the bird's leg, and knocked him half out of the nest; so, running up to the king, I pointed to the charm, saying, That has done it—hoping to laugh him out of the folly; but he took my joke in earnest, and he turned to his men, commenting on the potency of the charm. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... is a means of insuring success on the morrow. Max remains sceptical until Caspar hands him his rifle and bids him shoot at an eagle flying overhead. The bird is plainly out of rifle range, a mere black dot against the twilight sky; but Max, scarcely aiming, touches the trigger and an eagle of gigantic size comes hurtling through the air and falls at his feet. Max is convinced that there is a sure way to win his bride on the morrow. He asks Caspar if he has more bullets like ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... sorely tempted to level and pull trigger; but, still fearing that even at that close distance the snipe-shot would scatter and do no ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... Dave said a moment later, and the lad, whose rifle was resting on the rock in front of him, pulled his trigger, and almost immediately Dave fired again. Another moment and the mouth of the Canyon was clear. Another Indian lay by the side of the first who ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... off of himself, but this was merely a feint. By skillful maneuvering unknown to Ensal he got hold of his pistol and sought to so aim it that he could shoot Ensal through the heart. Concluding that he now had the pistol at the right angle, he pulled the trigger. The trembling condition of his hand could not insure a steady aim and the pistol falling down sent the bullet crashing into his own side. Ensal leaped up, but Earl ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... saw several dark forms dash out on the ice behind him. He broke into a run, but the pack rapidly overtook him. Raising his gun to fire, he was thunderstruck to find that in some way he had jammed the trigger and that it would ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... an hour's walking, Dick and Joe plunged into a forest of gum-trees, their eyes alert on all sides, and their fingers on the trigger. There was no foreseeing what they might encounter. Without being a rifleman, Joe could handle ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... veturilfaristo. Coachman veturigisto. Coal karbo. Coalesce kunigxi. Coalition kunigxo. Coarse (manner) vulgara. Coast marbordo. Coat vesto. Coat of arms blazono. Coat (walls, etc.) sxmiri. Coax logi. Cobalt kobalto. Cobweb araneajxo. Cock (trigger) cxano. Cock (tap) krano. Cock (rooster) koko. Cockerel kokido. Cock's comb kresto. Cocoa kakao. Cocoa-nut kokoso. Cod gado. Code legxaro. Codicil kodicilo. Coddle dorloti. Coerce devigi. Coercion devigo. Coffee kafo. Coffee-house ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... suffers nothing but itself to impose its limits. In that sense the North would soon have his old crony on the pavement again, with one yellow finger in his button-hole, and another nervously playing at a trigger behind the back. For the North was paying roundly in men and dollars to renew that pleasurable intercourse, to get the dear old soul out again as little dilapidated as possible, with as much of the old immunities and elasticities preserved as an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... away to some other country where it was safe, 'nen I was goin' to try'n keep straight like you would want. I would a'got trough all right, but I seen her,—the pretty lady,—your girl,—standing in the aisle right ahin' the c'ndct'r, jes' es I wuz pullin' the trigger knowed her right off, 'ith her eyes shinin' like two stars; an' I couldn't run no resks. I ain't never bin no bungler at my trade, but I hed to bungle this time 'cause I couldn't shoot your girl! So I turned it jes' in time an' took it mese'f. She seen ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... outer rail. Grayling, the favourite, had drawn the inner rail. Jake, obeying orders, swung his weight on Alibi's bit and dragged the rearing, plunging creature into the middle of the line. At that instant the starter jerked the trigger and yelled: ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... did not realize. Then, slowly, I comprehended. The Thing was stooping again. It was horrible. I started to load my rifle. When I looked again, the monster was tugging at the stone—moving it to one side. I leant the rifle on the coping, and pulled the trigger. The brute collapsed, on ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... pull, and instantly a most surprising event came to pass. That jerk at the rope must have set a hair-trigger going, for there followed a sudden rattling noise, the loop was instantly tightened around his ankle, and in a trice Johnny was hanging head down, as helpless as ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... of the fuel and I can build one easily enough," replied Loring. He turned to Mason. "Go below and suit up to go into the reaction chamber," he ordered. "Get an extra lead suit out. I'll go in and help you. And find something we can use for a trigger and a fuse." He smiled at Roger. "It might be a little crude, but it'll be fancy enough for what we want. I'm going to blast the Polaris from here back to ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... cover if they can help it," said Emson; and his words proved true, for as they rode slowly round with finger on trigger, scanning the openings, the cunning brutes glided in and out among the great boulders, and crawled through the bushes, so that not a glimpse of ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... quite still. I could not exactly see what was best to be done, for the man's hand was steady, and I scarcely saw how I could escape if indeed he pressed the trigger. ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... good marksman, a resolute mind, a fixed determination, and my world for it, you will never return home without sounding your horn with the breath of a new victory. And so with every other undertaking. Be confident that your ammunition is of the right kind—always pull your trigger with a steady hand, and so soon as you perceive a calm, touch her off, and the ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... and then the prophet, in Jehovah's name, bursts into a wonderful song of triumph over the defeated invader. 'I have heard.' That is enough. Hezekiah's prayer has, as it were, fired the fuse or pulled the trigger, and the explosion follows, and the shot is sped. 'Whereas thou hast prayed, ... I have heard,' is ever true, and God's hearing is God's acting in answer. The methods of His response vary, the fact that He responds to the cry of despair driven to faith by extremity ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... suddenly emerged from the forest. The lordly animal paused for a few seconds and looked around. Dane was fully alert now. With his gun resting across a fallen log, he trained his eye along the smooth dark barrel. Then as the moose stepped forward and its right side was presented to view, he pulled the trigger. The loud report resounded through the silent forest reaches, and sent the ducks scurrying wildly out of the water. With a snort of pain and surprise the moose threw back its great head, lifted its fore feet from the ground, reeled for an instant, and crashed over ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... less than five seconds. I only had to veer my gun two inches. My hand was on the trigger, and with a perfect "bead" on his left shoulder—right where the old guide had said the night before was the ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... thickening towards the butt, at which was a square chamber firmly welded to a socket for receiving the pole, formed the gun itself. Within the chamber aforesaid a nipple protruded from the base of the tube, and in line with it. The trigger was simply a flat bit of steel, like a piece of clock spring, which was held down by the hooked end of a steel rod long enough to stick out beyond the muzzle of the gun three or four inches, and held in position by two flanges ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... expanded during descent. The car is fastened to the centre cord, and the whole attached to the balloon in such a manner that it may be readily and quickly detached, either by cutting a string, or pulling a trigger. Consequently, in the East, where the Umbrella has been from the earliest ages in familiar use, it appears to have been occasionally employed by vaulters, to enable them to jump safely from great heights. Father ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... Garland was another matter. Instinctively the spy knew his danger. This was not a man to hesitate about pulling a trigger, and his life, in the hollow of Stair Garland's hand, would weigh no heavier than a puff of dandelion smoke which a gust of wind carries along with it. So from his first acquaintance with him the spy had given Stair ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... the movement; for at once, even with his head down in the grasses, he hesitated and came to a full stop. Suddenly, as my fingers felt for the trigger-guard, my heart began ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... were by the high grass and the trunks of the trees, they did not at first perceive us, and earnestly I hoped that they might pass by without doing so. Pullingo crouched down, eagerly watching them, but without uttering a word. Mudge's hand moved towards his pistols; and I kept my finger on the trigger of my gun, ready to fire should they appear to have any intention of attacking us. They were more savage-looking fellows than any we had before seen—their countenances distorted with rage, and every action exhibiting the fury ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... is seven twelfths of a hole in length and one quarter in thickness. So also its socket-piece. The trigger or handle is three holes in length and three quarters of a hole in breadth and thickness. The trough in the pipe is sixteen holes in length, one quarter of a hole in thickness, and three quarters in height. The base of the standard ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... refrain a grin when I thought of the wasted possibilities of that deadly revolver in the hands of an untutored warrior of the stone age. Had he but reversed it and pulled the trigger he might still be alive; maybe he is for all I know, since I did not kill him then. When he was about twenty feet from me I flung my javelin with a quick movement that I had learned from Ghak. He ducked to avoid it, ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his shoulder, aims at the wayfarers whom he has stopped on the road. Generally they kneel down, tender their purses, and the shot is not fired. But the gun is cocked, nevertheless, and, to be certain of this, we have only to look at the shriveled hand grasping the trigger. We are reminded of those swarms of banditti which infested the country under the ancient regime;[3229] the double-girdle of smugglers and receivers embraced within twelve hundred leagues of internal excise-duties, the poachers abounding on the four hundred leagues of guarded captaincies, the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of weapons the first which my hand reached. It was a musket. Instinctively, for there was no time to reason, I cocked, presented in a sort of charge-bayonet attitude, the only one possible, and pulled trigger. The old weapon went off with a deafening report, sending out a blinding sheet of flame in the darkness. One thief fell headlong at my very feet; the other, turning, fled blindly towards the staircase. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Levell'd so right, it thump'd upon 520 His manly paunch with such a force, As almost beat him off his horse. He lost his whinyard, and the rein; But, laying fast hold of the mane, Preserv'd his seat; and as a goose 525 In death contracts his talons close, So did the Knight, and with one claw The trigger of his pistol draw. The gun went off: and as it was Still fatal to stout HUDIBRAS, 530 In all his feats of arms, when least He dreamt of it, to prosper best, So now he far'd: the shot, let fly At random 'mong the enemy, Pierc'd TALGOL's gaberdine, and grazing 535 Upon his ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... exclamation Tim O'Rooney sighted his rifle at the aborigine, and taking a tedious, uncomfortable aim, pulled the trigger, and then lowered his piece and stared at his target to watch the result. The Indian stood as motionless as a statue, and finally the Irishman drew a ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... remarked his comrade, "and the minute you cross that spot you come within his range. He'll put a bullet through you before you can level a rifle or press a trigger." ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... aim and bore against the trigger. There was no explosion. A depressing sense of unreality rolled ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... quiver in your own! Confess no more that when his blood was shed, And you so sympathetically bled, The bow that spanned the mutual cascade Was but the promise of a roaring trade In offices. Your fingering now the trigger Shows that you knew your Negro was a nigger! Ad hominem this argumentum runs: Peace!—let us fire another ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... he was the commander of the enemy. Ned sprang to his feet, made a long stride forward, snatched from the breast of his overcoat the revolver he had been hiding there, cocked it and leveled it at the Rebel's breast. Before he could pull the trigger Orderly Sergeant Charles Bentley, of his Company, who was watching him, leaped forward, caught his wrist and threw the revolver up. Others joined in, took the weapon away, and handed it over to the officer, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Paulvitch immune. A sneer curled his bearded lip as his forefinger closed upon the trigger of his revolver. There was a loud report. A little hole appeared above the heart of the sleeping boy, a little hole about which lay a ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a revolver. He picked it up. It was loaded. Idly he tried the trigger. It worked. He looked at Zaidos. How he hated him! They seemed all alone on that field of dead and dying. The tide had swept away and left ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... or a mountain wolf," mutters Maxime Valois. He resumes his tramp along the rocky ramparts of the Californian Coast Range. His eyes are strained to pierce the night. He waits, his finger on the trigger ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... justice had to be done, ruat clum: and so it came about that one day the nephew issued forth to correct him with a matchlock. The innocent old man was cultivating his paternal acres; so the nephew was able, unperceived, to get a steady sight on him. His finger was on the trigger, when suddenly there slipped into his mind the divine precept: "Allah is merciful!'' He lowered his piece, and remained for a little plunged in thought; meanwhile the unconscious uncle hoed his paddy. Then with a happy smile ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... the upper edge of the barrel a V-shaped channel was cut. The channel was not very deep, only enough to receive a tenpenny nail with the head projecting half-way above the sides. A notch was cut across the barrel, through this channel, at the trigger end, and a trigger made of heavy iron wire, bent to the shape shown in Fig. 51, was hinged to the gun by a bolt which passed clear through the stock and through both eyes of the trigger. By using two nuts on the bolt, and tightening one against the other, they were prevented ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... creeping toward the bow, as if desirous of seeing all that went on; when Jack, feeling that he was certainly privileged to defend his property against pirates, pulled the trigger which his trembling finger had been pressing; and a sudden roar awoke the echoes ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... 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 hands of a quack, who ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... doctor led the way in front of and between the two sections. The cavalry moved slowly, keeping pace with the climbers. Soon the crest was reached, and the main body began to descend gradually, when the dominie slipped and his piece went off, the trigger having caught in his red window cord, startling the echoes. Then came the diffusive boom and crackle of the blunderbuss, and the doctor, inwardly anathematizing Wilkinson, hurried his men on. They heard axes at work, as if trees were being felled; it was the Captain and the Richards at the ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the butt of the bowsprit, Ridgeway, washing her yellow face under the moon. I didn't make any bones about it this time. I put the bad end of that gun against the scar on her head and squeezed the trigger. It snicked on an empty shell. I tell you a fact; I was almost deafened by the report that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with him down the Nevski Prospekt he would be questioned, of course, but as soon as they learned who he was and that he had nothing to do with you, they would let him go. But if he were with us, say here, when we were pounced upon, and you had no time to pull the trigger of the pistol pointing into that keg of powder in the cupboard, he would be hurried away with us to one of the fortresses, and the chances are that not a soul would ever know what had become of him. Still it cannot be helped now; he may be useful, and as ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... birds would wait and watch, all the while glancing from side to side, and dip, dip, dipping their bills in the water with infinite wary quickness of movement, and yet with an air of audacious unconcern; but the pull at the trigger seemed to touch some nerve in them, and by the same act you fired your shot at them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... catch a flashing vision of a tall Mexican creeping toward him, a long, slim knife glittering in his upraised hand. The fellow was so close that another step would bring him within striking distance, and without hesitation Buck's finger pressed the trigger. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... of the day he led us in silence down the trace, his eye alert to penetrate every corner of the forest, his hand near the trigger of his long Deckard. I followed in boylike imitation, searching every thicket for alien form and color, and yearning for stature and responsibility. As for poor Weldon, he would stride for hours at a time with eyes fixed ahead, a wild figure,—ragged and fringed. And we knew that the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "If ye obsarve the top o' the trap, ye'll see the rope that suspended it from the limb o' that oak. Inside there was a bit o' beef, so fixed up, that when Mister Caleb laid hold of it, he pulled a sort o' trigger, an' down came the trap, shuttin' him in slick, as ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... to Robert interminable, though it was not more than half an hour, passed, and then he saw dimly a gigantic figure, made yet greater by the dusk. He knew that it was Tandakora and his hand slid to the trigger and hammer of his rifle. But he knew also that he would not fire. It was no part of their plan to give an alarm so early. The Ojibway vanished and then he thought he caught the gleam of a uniform. So, a Frenchman, probably an ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... brother how the survivor might do, provided one of the guns should fail; (for they were determined upon going together;) but forgetting, perhaps, in the perturbation of the moment that the gun was cocked, when he touched trigger with the rod the gun fired, and he fell, and died in a few minutes—and was with George in the eternal world, where the slave is free from his master. But poor Isham was so terrified with this unexpected occurrence ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... matter, Lady Hickle," said the lad blithely. "All you'll have to do'll be to bob up and down in the tiger-grass in the approved style; keep your trigger away from the bush, and so as to feel thoroughly creepy, your eye out for pugs; which, in case some of you don't know, means tiger-tracks, not the dog with the beastly curly tail—and—oh, jolly!—here come ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... not own either. His father had brought from Holland an old musket, used before the country was erected into a kingdom for Louis Bonaparte, more than eighty years ago; but when Nick rammed a charge down its dusty throat one day, forgetful that one had been resting there for months, and pulled trigger, it hung fire a long time; but, when it did go off, it did so in an overwhelming fashion, bursting into a dozen pieces and narrowly missing killing the astounded lad ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... world and its wife is too. She warn't there this year, and it sarves folks right. If I was an angelyferous queen, like her, I wouldn't go nowhere till I had a tory minister, and then a feller that had a "trigger-eye" would stand a chance to get a white hemp-neckcloth. I don't wonder Hume don't like young England; for when that boy grows up, he'll teach some folks that they had better let some folks alone, or some folks had better ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... a mere truism to state that many a chain of grave and far-reaching events is set in motion by some insignificant trifle. The touching of a trigger by a child explodes a gun which extinguishes a valuable life, and perhaps throws a whole neighbourhood into difficulties. The lighting of a match may cause a conflagration which shall "bring down" an extensive firm, ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... By shooting down some of our best neighbors. I say a bullet ought to let daylight through his onery carcass, and I'll be the one to fire it." With this remark he raised his gun to his shoulder and pulled the trigger; but before the weapon went off Jasper knocked the barrel up in the air, and the lead went flying ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... failed, at least without honor, filled himself full of brandy, cocked a forty-five-calibre revolver, put the muzzle in his mouth, pulled the trigger, blew off the back of his head, and was "accidentally shot while cleaning ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... Williams cut up rough with Johnson, and drawed a knife on him, which Johnson gripped with his left while he pulled trigger.— Williams, I heerd, was in the wrong; I hain't perhaps got the right end of it; anyhow, you might hev noticed the Sheriff hes lost the little finger off his left hand.—Johnson, they say, got right up and lit out from Pleasant Hill. Perhaps the folk in Mizzoori ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... shoot; be only felt a vague desire to hear a shot and to kill something; but nothing came before his gun. The birds had already migrated. Only a squirrel was climbing about the branches of a pine-tree, staring at him with brilliant eyes. He raised the gun and pulled the trigger; but the nimble little beast was already on the other side of the trunk when the shot hit the tree. But the ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... trigger. A tongue of flame leapt forth and burst upon the night with a terrific explosion; and as Caleb fell backwards with the shock, the clumsy engine slipped from his fingers and fell with a clatter ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... there was a cayman of the small species, measuring about five feet in length; I saw it in the same place for months, but could never get a shot at it, for, the moment I thought I was sure of it, it dived under the water before I could pull the trigger. At last I got an Indian with his bow and arrow: he stood up in the canoe with his bow ready bent, and as we drifted past the place he sent his arrow into the cayman's eye, and killed it dead. The skin of this little species is much harder ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... allow. That much, however, he would do, and like him whose resources are reduced, and yet who desires to spend the little that he has to best advantage, he levelled the weapon boldly at the advancing Marquis, and pulled the trigger. But Bellecour was an old campaigner, and by an old campaigner's trick he saved himself at the last moment. At sight of that levelled barrel he pulled his horse suddenly on to its haunches, and received the charge in the animal's belly. With a shriek of pain the horse ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... deliberately. At his second shot the man he had fired at ran forward three or four steps, and then pitched flat on his face. For a flash Aldous thought that it was Mortimer FitzHugh. Then, along his gun barrel, he saw FitzHugh—and pulled the trigger. It ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... or tourney without hearing a chronicle of her virtues go round the lists, shouted by wheezy heralds and taken up by roaring swashbucklers! Perdition overpower such ostentatious wooers! Marry! shall I shoot the amorous feline who nightly iterates his love songs on my roof, and yet withhold my trigger finger from yonder pranksome gallant? Go to! Here is an orange left of last week's repast. Decay hath overtaken it,—it possesseth neither savor nor cleanliness. Ha! cleverly thrown! A hit—a palpable hit! Peradventure I have still a boot that hath done me service, ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... and that cast on purpose, will ever lay it," continued a third. But Spike disregarded all. This time he was resolved that his aim should be better, and he was inveterately deliberate in getting it. Just as he pulled the trigger, however, Don Juan Montefalderon touched his elbow, the piece was fired, and there stood the immovable figure as before, fixed against the tower. Spike was turning angrily to chide his Mexican friend for deranging his aim, when the report of an answering musket ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... wonder through his simple reply of "Why, Christmas Day!" The boy who is "as big," he says himself, as the prize turkey, and who gets off at last quicker than a shot propelled by the steadiest hand at a trigger! Scattered up and down the Boz fictions, there are abundant specimens of a genus that, in one instance, is actually termed by the Humorist, "a town-made little boy"—this is in the memorable street scene where ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... told Mr. Gorman a few things, when all of a sudden Zimick drew his 45 colt revolver remarking as he did so, "Here is the last of Jack Zimick." He placed the gun to his head and before we could reach him he pulled the trigger, and his brains were scattered all over ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... any door fitted with a spring lock is shown in the accompanying sketches. A fairly stiff spring, A, is connected by a flexible wire cord to the knob B. The cord is also fastened to a lever, C, which is pivoted at D and is released by a magnetic trigger, E, made from the armature and magnet ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... of Henriette and Maurice's sentence, they were giving it a preliminary trial. "The trigger's been slipping—not working well," the head fellow explained to the master of ceremonies. Back and forth the terrible guillotine knife hissed and whistled until they pronounced ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... late. The barrel of the revolver gleamed blue in the lurid glare of a big H.E. which burst behind them, and Dennis had already pressed the trigger! ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... now left, to force his way through the congestion at the door, like a harried rabbit at a wattled fence. A touch on the shoulder simultaneously with the click of a trigger at his ear brought his face round over his shoulder. He made the instinctive pioneer motion to his hip, looked into the bore of the Colonel's pistol, and under Keith's grip dropped his "gun-hand" ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... cocked at safety on my lap, I turned the muzzle of it toward the Tarjum, and purposely let my hand slide down to the trigger. He became uncomfortable. His ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... Johnny depressed a control. Paresi nodded slightly as he saw the pilot's hand move, for he knew that the autopilot had done it, and that Johnny's movement was one of trained reflex. The youngster was intense and alert, hair-trigger schooled, taught to pretend in such detail that the pretense was reality to him; a precise pretense that would become reality for all of them if ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... it was conscience. They were a pair of villains. I know that Gourlay had a secreted card, whereby he was to blackleg Graeme, and that it was disappointment, shame, and conscience, working all together, that made him draw the trigger to end a villanous life. But the game is up," he continued, as he rose and got hold of his hat; then standing erect and fearless, he held out his finger, pointing to me—"Rymer!" he said impressively, but with devilish calmness, "let your ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... long with that expensive toy which he keeps locked up somewhere among his cocked-hats and white gloves. I can assure you he has not even allowed me to see the trigger since I have been on board. But 250-ton swivellers do cost money, and the John Bright must steam away, and play its part in other quarters of the globe. What do you intend to do when he shall ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... but—you will pardon me, Burke?—she was hasty; she was hasty. It is easier to set forces of love or hate moving than to check them in motion. Sometimes I think, Burke, that people were in certain ways less reckless in the good old days when they had perpetually before their eyes the vision of a hair-trigger God, always cocked and ready to shoot if they crossed the line of duty. But Nelly is coming bravely through a severe test of character. May I offer you ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... pause a few paces beyond the doorstep, his forefinger ready upon the trigger of the automatic pistol, was alone ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Lopes in summing up described as an "absolute surmise" the theory of the accidental discharge of the pistol. He asked the jury to take Peace's revolver in their hands and try the trigger, so as to see for themselves whether it was likely to go off accidentally or not. He pointed out that the pistol produced might not have been the pistol used at Banner Cross; at the same time the bullet fired in November, 1876, bore marks such as ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... grim crime beneath the surgeon's knife, The honorable gentlemen deplored the loss of life; Bear witness of those chanting choirs that burk and shirk and snigger, No man laid hand upon the knife or finger to the trigger! ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... as ill-equipped for highwaymanship as I was for farming with my Georgics. "Stand and deliver," quoth I to myself, "or I'll double your weight with swan-shot." Were the unknown horseman a resolute man armed with a hair-trigger, I was as ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... but there was no motion, no life,—he was dead! The awful truth forced itself upon me. Mad and blind with rage, I had turned the weapon upon him and it had discharged,—whether by some sudden movement of his hand, or by the accidental pressure of my own fingers upon the trigger, God alone knows, I do not! One fact I could not then, nor ever can, forget; it was my hand that gave the weapon its deadly aim, however blindly or unwittingly, and the blood of my brother whom I had wronged and defrauded now lay at ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... more concerned over other people's troubles than his own. He goes serenely unsuspicious of the brick under the silk hat, even when the silk hat is on the head of a Mayor or City Councilman. He will pull every trigger he meets, regardless that the whole world is loaded and aimed at him. He will keep on running for the 5:42 train, even though the timetable was changed the day before yesterday. He goes through the revolving doors ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... felon hand, between the goal and him, Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest,— And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... first caught sight of the prisoner gliding through the trees—I saw him as plainly as I see you now—I covered him with my musket—I wouldn't have given a copper pfennig for his life, when paff! at the very moment I pulled the trigger, out steps a fellow from behind my shoulder, knocks up my musket, and disappears like a flash of lightning—Heaven only knows where, for I never laid eyes on ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... pressed trigger, a light sighing eased itself from the slim barrel. Something flicked through the leaves; and, almost on the instant, the phenomenon of the little phosphorescent spot repeated itself, though in a different place from ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... raised his rifle. He had covered the calf, and was about to pull the trigger, when, with a sagacity far beyond his experience as hunter, he ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... into his mind. In his hand he still held the revolver. He pressed it upwards against the thing that was smothering him, and pulled the trigger. Again he pulled it, and again, for it was a self-cocking weapon, and even there deep down in the water he heard the thud of the explosion of the damp-proof copper cartridges. His lungs were bursting, his senses reeled, only enough of them remained to ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... "if you knew where there was a gun, would that make you want to put it up agin your head and pull the trigger?" ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... sight Il Duca glanced at Patsy. She was holding the revolver rigidly extended, and her blue eyes blazed with the excitement of the moment. It was a wonder she did not pull the trigger inadvertently, and the thought that she might do so caused the brigand ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... the Rutherford girl had stepped into the conspiracy, it became one of finesse and not bloodshed. Was this the reason that her father had sent her—to stay the hands of his associates already reaching toward the prisoner? There was no question that Meldrum's finger had been itching on the trigger of his revolver for a week. One of the young Rutherfords had been beside him day and ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... objects which were wasting away. Their disintegration is identical with our own. They have their decay, their ruptures, their tumors, their madnesses. A piece of furniture gnawed by worms, a gun with a broken trigger, a warped drawer, or the soul of a violin suddenly out of tune, such are the ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... disappeared Maitland stepped to the door, raised his revolver, and pulled the trigger twice. The shots detonated loudly in that confined space, and rang coincident with the clash and clatter of shivered glass. A thin cloud of vapor obscured the doorway, swaying on the hot, still air, then parted and dissolved, dissipated ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... and experience had taught him the value of instantaneous action. And so, even with the stinging pain in his left shoulder, his hand swept his gun lightly upward, and before it had reached a level he had begun to pull the trigger. But to his astonishment only the metallic click, click of the hammer striking the steel of the cylinder rewarded his efforts. Once, twice, thrice; so rapidly that the metallic ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... observed Macallan, "that I saw an animal hitherto undescribed—I fired at it, but an antelope bounded by as I pulled my trigger, and received the ball—I never regretted anything so much in my life. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... him home, bag and baggage, sir. He is not entitled to the dignity or consideration of the usual formalities. Moreover, he is the trigger of the United States so long as he remains at liberty in it. I estimate that there is a new Jacobin club formed daily. At any moment he may do something which will drive these fools, under their red caps ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... exclamation, "Ah, mon Dieu! je suis mort!" Lord Cochrane and several officers rushed to the Prince's cabin, there to find him lying in a pool of blood, and writhing in agony. His servant had been cleaning his pistols, and he had just loaded one of them to hang it on a nail, when, the trigger being accidentally struck, the weapon discharged and a ball entered his body and settled in the groin. Dr. Howe, an American surgeon, famous for his services to Greece and for later philanthropic labours, being at hand, came to his relief until Dr. Gosse could be sent ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... and the point must be tied by a leather thong around the thigh to keep it in correct position; and of course it was hung on the right side and low down on the hip, so as to be easily got at. Only when riding fast was a small loop and silver button passed through the trigger guard to prevent the gun from jolting out and being lost. The chambers were always kept full and the weapons themselves in perfect working order. Very "bad" men tied back or removed the trigger altogether, cocking and releasing the hammer with ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... band had perfect confidence in his courage and his skill. Silently, sternly, sublimely, in a mass as compact as possible, they moved slowly on. Every eye was on the alert; every man had his finger to the trigger. Their guns were heavily loaded, that the balls might be thrown to a great distance. Not an Indian could expose his body but that he fell before the unerring aim ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... himself firing at inanimate targets thrown into the air and had perfected himself in the use of firearms without realizing that he had done so. Now indeed would he hunt big game. A slow smile touched his lips as his finger closed gradually upon the trigger. The rifle spoke and a German machine gunner collapsed behind his weapon. In three minutes Tarzan picked off the crew of that gun. Then he spotted a German officer emerging from a dugout and the three men in the bay with him. Tarzan was careful to ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The truth is, he must have been as tired as I was. As the Kaffirs approached to lay hands on me he had growled menacingly, but when I spoke again he had stopped. Henriques' voice had convinced him of a more urgent danger, and so soon as the trigger hand of the Portugoose rose, the dog sprang. The bullet went wide, and the next moment dog and man were ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... quietly. "That's why I must insist that you raise your hands. Instantly!" His voice hardened and his finger tightened on the trigger. "Shoot without ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... The foe is wickedly spurring and yanking the bridle and cursing his horse. Every thrust of the spur into Nat's gaunt flanks pricks Rodney as well. He aims to kill and his finger is on the trigger, when, like a flash of light, he recalls Zeb's words: "Killin' even an enemy is serious, an' not pleasant to ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... matches, and, taking one of these, he broke the end off and rubbed in on the fore-sight very gently, careful not to let it explode, and succeeded in making the little projection so luminous that he could align it with the back-sight and the Arab's body. Then he pulled the trigger, and saw the dark figure leap forward and fall prone. Saw it, indeed, but only in a fraction of a second, for he stole back to the sand ridge, slipping in ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... been far ahead of their powers of performance. Thus, in one of Gerald Griffin's novels, there is a scene in which a young Irish student, fresh from his scholastic ethics, amazes the company at his father's table, who are all devout believers in the virtues of the hair-trigger, by an eloquent declamation against the folly and the sin of duelling. At last one of the set gets sufficient breath to call him a coward. The hot Irish blood is up in an instant, a tumbler is thrown at the head of the doubter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... a scream, and a female figure sprang out from the shadows and rushed before Jack just as Thornton pulled the trigger. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... of a pre-existing energy which it finds at its disposal. Now, it finds only one way of succeeding in this, namely, to secure such an accumulation of potential energy from matter, that it can get, at any moment, the amount of work it needs for its action, simply by pulling a trigger. The effort itself possesses only that power of releasing. But the work of releasing, although always the same and always smaller than any given quantity, will be the more effective the heavier the weight it makes fall and the greater the height—or, in other words, the greater the sum of ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... joined them. He was a two-year-old, young, tender, with the velvet just off his antlers. Thorpe aimed at his shoulder, six inches above the belly-line, and pressed the trigger. As though by enchantment the three woods creatures disappeared. But the hunter had noticed that, whereas the doe and fawn flourished bravely the broad white flags of their tails, the buck had seemed but a streak of brown. By this he knew ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... but in an instant he saw that they had strangely bridged the distance between his wife and himself. He felt her close on him, like a panting foe; and her answer was a flash that showed the hand on the trigger. ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... simple," he said. He shot the outer barrel back along the inner one. "That loads it and cocks it, you see. And then all I have to do is pull the trigger, eight times, as fast as I can quiver my finger. See that safety clutch. That's what I like about it. It is safe. It is positively fool-proof." He slipped out the magazine. "You see how ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... grasp the handle firmly; cover it with your whole palm, but don't squeeze it to death; just grip it evenly—tuck it away. And keep your elbow down; and crook your wrist, in a drop, until your trigger knuckle is pointing very low—at a man's feet if you're ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... when the thread has become fine enough to need another cocoon. The stop, T, and the lever serve as two parts of an electric contact, so that when they touch each other a circuit is completed, which trips a trigger and sets in motion the feed apparatus by which a new cocoon is added. In practice the two drums or pulleys are mounted on the same shaft, D (Fig. 1), difference of winding speed being obtained by making ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... rose up and brought a rifle to his shoulder. At that I let out a yell, and he turned to me like a flash, and pulled his trigger. But he was in too much of a hurry, an' the ball ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... in the rear with the rifle. As he passed this spot, a spear came out from behind one of the boulders. He was not expecting an ambush, and the spear struck his shoulder, entering the top of the lungs and breaking off. He dropped the rifle. As it left his hand he must have pulled the trigger, for there was a report. Sax was running just in front of Mick. He heard the report, looked round, and saw the stockman stagger. He dashed back. His act saved Mick's life, for, as the white boy stooped to pick up the rifle, he saw Coiloo standing behind the rock with ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... residence of Lander in the country, a good mode of astonishing a tiger was practised with success. A loaded musket was firmly fixed in a horizontal position, about the height of his head, to a couple of stakes driven into the ground, and the piece being cocked, a string from the trigger, first leading a little towards the butt, and then turning through a small ring forwards, was attached to a shoulder of mutton, stuck on the muzzle of the musket, the act of dragging off which, drew the trigger, and the piece loaded with two balls, discharged ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... was in readiness Robinson bade Friday follow him. They went slowly out into the forest along the stream. Soon Robinson espied a rabbit sitting under a clump of grass. Robinson raised his gun, took careful aim, pressed the trigger. There was a flash and loud report and there lay the rabbit dead. But Friday, too, was lying on the ground. He had fainted from astonishment and fright. Robinson dropped his gun and raised the poor fellow up to a sitting position. He quickly recovered. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... life, and that, was an owl, of which he took the advantage of daylight and his stocking feet to knock off a tree in the deanery grounds, very early after his arrival. In his trials with John, he sometimes pulled trigger at the same moment with his companion; and as the bird generally fell, he thought he had an equal claim to the honor. He was fond of warring with crows and birds of the larger sort, and invariably went provided with small balls fitted to the bore ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... apparently done much for him. His colour was good, his step elastic as of old, and his head was thrown back as if he were buckled up for the fray and wanted all to know it. Yet there was something in the eye, in the setness of the jaw, in the hair-trigger calm, yet fiercely savage grip in which he closed his strong hands on the arms of his chair, that told me more plainly than words that this was not the optimistic, soft-hearted Bob Brownley I had known and loved. I could not help feeling that if I had been a leader of the ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... hardly hold his gun; seeing which the farm hand made bold to snatch it out of his hands, and aiming directly at the place where the fugitives were just then in the act of mounting the fence in their panicky flight, he pulled the trigger. ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... sighted across the meadow. There was no sound of explosion when he fired, only the click of the mechanism as the bullet was sped, the empty cartridge ejected, a fresh cartridge flipped into the chamber, and the trigger re-cocked. A big, dun-colored squirrel leaped in the air, fell over, and disappeared in the grain. Dick waited, his eye along the rifle and directed toward several holes around which the dry earth showed widely as evidence of the grain which had been destroyed. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... grating sound of the yett turning on its rusty hinges was but too plainly heard. What was to be done? I thought of our both running away; and then of our locking ourselves in, and firing through the door; but who was to pull the trigger? ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... significance of the situation, Druse now brought the butt of his rifle against his cheek by cautiously pushing the barrel forward through the bushes, cocked the piece, and glancing through the sights covered a vital spot of the horseman's breast. A touch upon the trigger and all would have been well with Carter Druse. At that instant the horseman turned his head and looked in the direction of his concealed foeman—seemed to look into his very face, into his eyes, into his ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... that the rain had ceased, and the whole night hushed its thousand voices. He found his lower jaw set so stiffly that the muscles ached. Levelling his weapon at the eaves of the bunk-house, he pulled trigger rapidly—the bang, bang, bang, six times repeated, sounding dull and dead beneath the blanket of mist that overhung. A shout sounded behind him, and then the shriek of a Winchester ball close over his head. He turned in time to see another shot stream out of the darkness, ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... gamekeeper replied in the affirmative, and looked with some surprise from Mr. Winkle, who was holding his gun as if he wished his coat pocket to save him the trouble of pulling the trigger, to Mr. Tupman, who was holding his as if he was afraid of it—as there is no earthly reason to doubt ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the noble authour and his editor. 'Sir, he was a scoundrel, and a coward[787]: a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman, to draw the trigger after his death[788]!' Garrick, who I can attest from my own knowledge, had his mind seasoned with pious reverence, and sincerely disapproved of the infidel writings of several, whom, in the course of his almost universal ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... twitch, like a primitive warrior starting on an expedition from the mountain top to the valley. Before throwing his haik over his shoulders, he drew his revolver from his belt, scrupulously examining the cartridges, and the working of the trigger. Everything all right! The first man to make an attempt against him would get all six shots in the head. He felt like a savage, implacable, like one of those Febrers, lions of the sea, who landed on hostile shores, killing to ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... I don't blame him. I think he did a smart thing. He might have said you were my grandmother, if it would have served you, for that low fellow is as fractious as the devil, and dead sure on the trigger.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... well knew the improbability of hitting a vulnerable spot in a swimming alligator; his marksmanship was scarcely equal to the certainty of finding one of those wicked, armor-lidded eyes. It was with a hard gulp of fear in his throat that he pressed the trigger for a ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... and pulled the trigger. A scattering volley broke from the other canoes and from the young men concealed ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... to decide approximately the whereabouts of his prey by the momentary shaking of a twig. He raised his rifle and covered that twig steadily; his forefinger played tentatively on the trigger; but on second thoughts he refrained. He was keenly conscious of the fact that the beast was doing its work with skill superior to his own. In comparison to his, its movements were almost noiseless. Jack Meredith was too clever a ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... 'im, an' he's bad hurt, too. You know dat las' time we went at um? Well, suh, I wuz shootin' at a man right at me, an' he knock my han' down des ez I pull de trigger, an' de ball cotch him right 'twix de hip an' de knee. He call me by my name, an' den it come over me dat we done got mix' up in de shuffle an' dat I wuz shootin' at you. But 'twuz Marse Jack Bledsoe; I know'd 'im time I look at ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... good hap for thee, husband!" said the old woman when she heard this. "Whatever has gotten thy wits, ma'an, to win out and draa' trigger on a pet tyke of some visitor ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of constructing a gun-trap. Of course a gun is the principal part of the mechanism, and the trigger pulled by a string is the main point of the contrivance. In some countries the bait is tied to the string, and the animal on seizing the bait tightens the string, draws the trigger, and shoots itself. In this way, however, there is always some uncertainty as to the result. ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... done. You are quietly sitting in your chamber; it is summer, and your windows are open; you are chatting with your wife, and sipping a cup of tea; outside, the assassins are supplied with a short ladder; one ascends to a level with the window, sights you at his ease, presses the trigger, the bullet speeds—" ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... to his injustice towards me maddened him. He levelled his piece, and pulled the trigger. Luckily the percussion was damp,—or else I should not be talking with you now. His aim was straight at my head. I did not give him time for a second attempt. I was on him in an instant. I beat him down, I ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... expression of her eyes, which made me hesitate. Would she shoot? Would the sense of duty to her cause actually induce her to fire at me? A moment before, I should not have deemed it possible, but now, it seemed to me, she was desperate enough to do even this. And that was a hair-trigger she fingered so recklessly! Instead of leaping forward, I stood motionless, outwardly cool, yet with every nerve throbbing. She read all this in my face, no doubt, for her lips half ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... pull the trigger," said Sam indistinctly, his face convulsed as in sympathy with the great muscular efforts of other parts of his ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... the countenances of the National Guard. It did not last long, for the commandant in the wildest excitement rapidly gave the words of command: "Present arms—Fire!" And they were followed by the most abominable noise, every man having presented arms with his finger on the trigger of his musket. The crowd cheered tremendously, the horses plunged and reared, and there was a terrible disturbance, which seemed to afford the keenest joy to the officer in command. There was nothing very striking at Orange, nor at Avignon. Speeches by the authorities, visits ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... he thrust them into his coat and stored them, displaying, however, less triumph than I had thought he would. The truth was that he looked preoccupied, and I wondered why. For the first time in all the hair-trigger situations that I had seen him face I ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... miles I am from home, I darkness never mind, My friend is gone, and I am left, with pipe and pot behind; Up comes some saucy kiddy, a scampsman on the hot, But ere he pulls the trigger I am off just like a shot. ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... I was in a trench with some infantrymen, one of whom never raised his head. Whenever he was ordered to fire he would shove his rifle-barrel over the edge of the trench, shut his eyes, and pull the trigger. He took no chances. His comrades laughed at him and swore at him, but he would only grin sheepishly and burrow deeper. After several hours a friend in another trench held up a bag of tobacco and some cigarette-papers and ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... weapons the first which my hand reached. It was a musket. Instinctively, for there was no time to reason, I cocked, presented in a sort of charge-bayonet attitude, the only one possible, and pulled trigger. The old weapon went off with a deafening report, sending out a blinding sheet of flame in the darkness. One thief fell headlong at my very feet; the other, turning, fled blindly towards the staircase. I ought to have caught him; but, in the unreflecting anger of the moment, coming up with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... up and brought a rifle to his shoulder. At that I let out a yell, and he turned to me like a flash, and pulled his trigger. But he was in too much of a hurry, an' the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... conditions, outside the useful work of the American destroyers provided by the German submarines, gave little scope for naval operations, and it was assumed that the main American fleet, like the British, was lying quiescent, with its finger on the trigger, awaiting its opportunity. The Navy Department meantime busied itself arming scores of American merchant vessels to brave the submarines, and in carrying out an extensive building program, which included the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... short of a long term in the penitentiary, and still more probable death by lynching at the hands of a cowardly mob. He very bravely determined to protect his life as long as he had breath in his body and strength to draw a hair trigger on his would-be murderers. How well he was justified in that belief is well shown by the newspaper accounts which were given of this transaction. Without a single line of evidence to justify the assertion, the New Orleans daily papers at once declared that both ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... hand, the doctor clutched his revolver, with his finger on the trigger. In spite of his pledged word, he did not hesitate. If the adversary touched the end of the bed, the shot would be fired at ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... sounded above the arroyo and the next instant several horsemen appeared. Without knowing just what he was doing Jimsy, who had a rifle in his hands, pulled the trigger. He was amazed to see the giant form of Red Bill totter and reel in the saddle, and fall with a crash to the ground. The next instant horror at the idea that he had killed the man seized on him. His hands shook so that ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... sergeant, he was outwardly, at least, his old self. He was silent and watchful, showing neither concern nor elation. He moved from one position to another, and never pulled the trigger of his Winchester without making sure of something. With the help of Douglas he had pulled on his fur coat again, as the fire was going out, and he was beginning to feel the cold ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... right, was a splendid fellow lording it alone on the very crest of the hill within range. I did not stop to consider, but raised my gun to my shoulder and fired instantly. But just as I pulled the trigger, someone sprang up from the heather between me and the stag—sprang up, uttered a cry, and reeled and fell"—the last words were spoken with a gasp, and the Tenor stopped for an instant, and then continued in a hoarse broken whisper to which his companion had to listen intently, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... fatuity of human conduct; illustrating his reflections by his own actions when stirred by emotion. "The loaded gun may be as wise as Solomon was reputed to be," he remarked beneath his hands, "but all the same when some one pulls the trigger the damn thing goes off," and sat up to confront the muzzle of the corporal's rifle, who was ordering him to get up. Birnier rose. But to the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... toward the bow, as if desirous of seeing all that went on; when Jack, feeling that he was certainly privileged to defend his property against pirates, pulled the trigger which his trembling finger had been pressing; and a sudden roar awoke the ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... his head slowly. "Crime doesn't out until it's committed," he said. "You'll remember how fast we got here after you pulled the trigger. But you're clean, Hammond. Just come to the inquest ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... great advance was made by the invention of the arquebus or bow-gun. A spring let loose by a trigger threw the match, which was fastened to it, forward, into the pan which contained the priming. It was from this spring that the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... with her sword and plume. Lord Squib was the old woman of Brentford, and very funny. Sir Lucius Grafton, Harlequin; and Darrell, Grimaldi. The prince and the count, without knowing it, figured as watchmen. Squib whispered Annesley that Sir Lucius O'Trigger might appear in character, but was prudent ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... brain (which centres, we cannot say) might be set into actual operation by some such process; or at least that the impulse or energy supplied in this manner might be sufficient to release the nervous energy stored in the cell, much as the trigger of a rifle would, when pressed, release the energy contained within the cartridge. Such "hair trigger" action has been postulated by both William James and Bergson, and is certainly in line with modern speculations in this direction. There ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... his six-shooter by its trigger guard and stood towering above the little German, who at once began to read the letter, translating the simple words into English. The gang of rovers stood in absolute silence, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... march Section 2. Marching Section 3. Making camp Section 4. Camp services and duties CHAPTER VIII. TARGET PRACTICE Section 1. Preliminary training in marksmanship Section 2. Sight adjustment Section 3. Table of sight corrections Section 4. Aiming Section 5. Battle sight Section 6. Trigger squeeze Section 7. Firing positions Section 8. Calling the shot Section 9. Coordination Section 10. Advice to riflemen Section 11. The course in small-arms firing Section 12. Targets Section 13. Pistol and ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... before I met with pigeons, and some of them alighted in the bushes very near me. I cocked my pistol, and raised it to my face, bringing the breech almost in contact with my nose. Having brought the sight to bear upon the pigeon, I pulled trigger, and was in the next instant sensible of a humming noise, like that of a stone sent swiftly through the air. I found the pistol at the distance of some paces behind me, and the pigeon under the tree on which he had been sitting. My face was much bruised, and covered with blood. I ran home, carrying ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... that we had spread consternation in the ranks of the Indian warriors, and that they were gathering up their wounded preparatory to retreating. I had my eye on one old man, who had just leapt from his horse. My finger was on the trigger, when I saw him coolly advance, and, taking one of his wounded companions, who had been shot though the leg, in his arms, place him on a horse, then mounting his own, and catching hold of the other animal's bridle, ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... you to imagine that I have a loaded shotgun in my hand and that I am going to pull the trigger when the ball is snapped, and that you must get out of range before I fill you full ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... live on in adversity, and who were found in the gun-room with a hole in their heads, and whose family asked their polite friends to believe that a man used to firearms from his school-days had tried to load a hair- trigger revolver with the muzzle pointed at his forehead. He had expressed a fine contempt for those men then, but now he had forgotten all that, and thought only of the relief it would bring, and not how others might suffer by it. If he did consider this, it was only to conclude that they ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... want over much to kill him," he was again saying. "As I laid there behind a log, watchin' him foolin' around, I almost wanted to creep away. An' when he turned his back to go in the cabin, my finger'd hardly pull the trigger—it reminded me so much of that time I laid my sights on the back ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... had revolvers; you all three arranged that they should be uncharged. Cartridges were put into yours without your knowledge. You held up your revolver and pressed the trigger, believing it to be empty. The others knew better. You shot the bank manager and in the stupefaction that followed you became an easy ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a spasmodic motion toward the pocket of his coat. But if his intention had been to draw a weapon, Tom was too quick for him. The Marquis found himself staring into the barrel of a pistol and heard the unpleasant click of the trigger ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... the heavy rifle. I got the sights dead on to a certain spot at the back of that red cave. I pressed the trigger; the charge boomed—and nothing happened! I heard no bullet strike and Jana did not even take the trouble to close ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... seen, Tom raised his gun with a very slow and steady aim, and covered the spot just where he thought the heart ought to be. One second he stood thus, but it was long enough for Tom, who pressed the trigger. ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... writers call those large muskets calivers; the harquebuss was a lighter piece, that could be fired without a rest. The matchlock was fired by a match fixed by a kind of tongs in the serpentine or cock, which, by pulling the trigger, was brought down with great quickness upon the priming in the pan, over which there was a sliding cover, which was drawn back by the hand just at the time of firing. There was a great deal of nicety ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... himself, he became aware that the warriors were invisible. They may have believed they were acting as oscillating targets for some hidden enemy, who was likely to press the trigger at any moment; and, unable even to approximate as they were his biding-place, they withdrew ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... his pistol in his left hand, meaning to kill the Dark Master without pity in that first moment. Out of the hearth came a great swirl of ashes and red embers, flying toward the door and closing around O'Donnell; as Brian pressed the trigger the ashes smote him in a blinding swirl, and a harsh laugh answered the roar ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... shoot if you dare," smilingly said the Cherokee to the young lieutenant, a cocked pistol leveled at the latter's heart, "and she goes double. There isn't a man under you can pull a trigger quicker than I can." The hay was not burned, and the stabling and dug-outs housed our men and horses for ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... "three" and his fingers were tightening on the trigger when Carson jumped forward with an oath. He pulled a lever on the wall and the door swung open. Carnes shouted and through the opened door came a half dozen marines ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... another fell, and another. From the woods on every hand came the whistling shot, and the rushing slugs of the rebels. Every tree had behind it a rebel, with deadly aim. But the murderous bullets seemed to come out of the inanimate wilderness, for not no much as the hand that pulled the deadly trigger could be seen. The police had a mountain gun, which Major Crozier now ordered them to bring to bear on the rebels, but the policeman who loaded it was so confused that he put the lead in before the powder. In forty minutes the bloody fray ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... my skull, I heard a voice calling on them to hold, and the lady in scarlet forced her horse between us. As the brute's shoulder pressed me back into the angle of my embrasure she held out her pistol at arm's length, her finger on the trigger, and pointed it at close ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Well, he should not die alone. His hand gripped the cold steel of his automatic. He tilted it ever so slightly. Fired from where it lay, it would send a bullet crashing through the crouching interpreter's chest. He was about to pull the trigger when something arrested ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... did holler. 'Pears like I nebber hear a cannon sound so big. De Ku Kluckers 'peared ter hear it too, fer dey comed squar outen h'yer inter de big road. Den I opened up an' let her bark at 'em ez long ez I could see a shadder ter pull trigger on. Wonder ef I hurt enny on 'em. D'yer know, 'Gena, wuz ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the leader of the Boxers, about fifty rifles were fired point-blank at the wall. Fred raised his rifle, pressed the trigger, and the Boxer leader threw up his arms and fell on his face. Fred's shot was taken by the other defenders as the signal to fire, and they ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... groaned the cracker. "I ain't tryin' ter. But I cyan't let you roast in this yere d—— barbecue! Look a yere!" He lowered the revolver through the window. "Thar's a pistil, an' w'en th' fire cotches onter you an' yo' gwine suah 's shootin', then put it ter yo' head an' pull the trigger, an' yo'll be ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... diwersion by making himself free," said Carl, instructing him in the use of the weapon, "you shall shust cock it so,—present it at his head or stomach, vichever is conwenient—so,—then pull the trigger as you please, till he is vunce more quiet. That is all. Now I shall say goot pie to him ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... in summing up described as an "absolute surmise" the theory of the accidental discharge of the pistol. He asked the jury to take Peace's revolver in their hands and try the trigger, so as to see for themselves whether it was likely to go off accidentally or not. He pointed out that the pistol produced might not have been the pistol used at Banner Cross; at the same time the bullet fired in November, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... aimed high. Otherwise the attacker must have been struck as he flung himself up before the opening. The catlike movement brought him head and shoulders above the sill. He twisted forward to writhe into the doorway. Lennon's finger started to crook against the trigger of his rifle. But he ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... aimed his revolver at the place where he felt his heart beating, pulled the trigger and rolled ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... German officer, too furious, perhaps, to think of what he was doing, raised his pistol and fired point-blank at the French boy! He fired—but there came from his pistol not a sharp report, but only the dull click as the hammer fell. Twice more he pulled the trigger. But something was wrong. He had made a fatal error—his ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... log pen floored with rough-hewn slabs and fitted with a ponderous movable lid made of other slabs pinned on stout cross pieces. But, satisfied with his handiwork, the captain now arose, and, prying up one end of the lid with a lever, set the trigger and baited it with a huge piece of bacon. He then piled a great quantity of rock upon the already heavy lid to further guard against the escape of any bear so unfortunate as to enter, and shouldering his axe and ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... moment followed, when I heard the words "one," "two," "three," in tolerably rapid succession, and, at the utterance of the last, I pulled trigger. My antagonist had done so at the first. His eye was fixed upon mine with deliberate malignity—THAT I clearly saw—but it did not affect my shot. This, I purposely threw away. The skill of my enemy did not correspondend (sic) with his evident desires. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... other reason than it is in a piece of machinery, in which, though one wheel gives motion to another, yet all the wheels seem to move simultaneously; or in that mechanical contrivance which is adapted to firearms, where, the trigger being touched, down comes the flint, strikes against the steel, elicits a spark, which falling among the powder, ignites it, when the flame extends, enters the barrel, causes the explosion, propels the ball, and the mark is attained—all of which incidents, by reason ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... that was the kind of persuasion that it had been necessary to apply to secure Mr. Grenelli's attendance. One is apt to yield the point when he feels a pistol-barrel prodding him in the ribs, and it is no great trick to set a trigger-catch with the weapon in ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... When all was in readiness Robinson bade Friday follow him. They went slowly out into the forest along the stream. Soon Robinson espied a rabbit sitting under a clump of grass. Robinson raised his gun, took careful aim, pressed the trigger. There was a flash and loud report and there lay the rabbit dead. But Friday, too, was lying on the ground. He had fainted from astonishment and fright. Robinson dropped his gun and raised the poor fellow up to a sitting position. He quickly recovered. He ran to get the rabbit. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... mighty bad hole. If Moylan had n't got shot we might have held out till help arrived; I 've got about twenty cartridges left; but you and I alone never could do it. I 've got to think it out, I reckon; this has been a blind fight so far; nothing to it but blazing away as fast as I could pull trigger. Now, maybe, I can ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... to enter the forecastle; and here was the enemy crying and pleading like a frightened child. His obsequious "Here, sir," his horrid fluency of obtestation, made the murder tenfold more revolting. Twice Carthew raised the pistol, once he pressed the trigger (or thought he did) with all his might, but no explosion followed; and with that the lees of his courage ran quite out, and he turned and ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... efficient device for unlocking any door fitted with a spring lock is shown in the accompanying sketches. A fairly stiff spring, A, is connected by a flexible wire cord to the knob B. The cord is also fastened to a lever, C, which is pivoted at D and is released by a magnetic trigger, E, made from the armature and magnet of an old ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... with every gesture and appearance of insanity. "Go, then;" ... and he pointed the muzzle of the pistol to his mouth, and before any one could prevent him, he drew the trigger, and fell back a corpse. The spectators were motionless with surprise and horror; the captain was the first to recover himself in some degree. He bent over the body with the faint hope of detecting some sign of life. The old man turned pale and dizzy with a sense of terror, and he looked as if ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... Yens!" shouted the captain, a small, bristling Martian with graying, stiff hair. He snatched the neuro-pistol at his side, pointed it at Tolto, pressed the trigger. ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... examination of the matter, it was found that for some days he had been in despair, and desired several different Indians to shoot him; and an Indian boy saw him kill himself in the following manner; he put the muzzle of his gun under his chin, and with his great toe pushed the trigger."[1] ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... loping along. He had—Morton had—a .44-.40 Marlin, but only one shell. Thrust the muzzle of his rifle right into the bear's mouth. Scared for a minute. Almost fell off his snow-shoes. Hardest thing he ever did, to pull that trigger. Fired. Bear sort of jumped at him, then rolled over, clawing. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... here by watching a child playing with a popgun, made of bamboo, similar to that of quill, with which most English children are familiar, which propels pellets by means of a spring-trigger made of the upper part of the quill. It is easy to conclude such resemblances between the familiar toys of different countries to be accidental, but I question their being really so. On the plains of India, men may often be seen for hours together, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... for as the dry grass and scrubby growth in front moved he raised his piece, and drew first one trigger, then the other: there was no result—he had ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... satisfaction that their only arms were bows and arrows and long spears, and that there were not more than twenty men in the lot. And then Rayburn gave the order to fire. I confess that my hand so trembled as I pulled the trigger of my rifle that I was not at all surprised to find that the man whom I had fired at—a very tall, powerful young fellow, who seemed to be in command—was not hit; but a man just behind him dropped, and I had a queer feeling in my throat, and certain ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... a stronger card than I possess. I might urge that by pulling the trigger you would certainly alarm the house and the neighbourhood, and put a halter round your neck. But it strikes me as safer to assume you capable of using a pistol with effect at three paces. With what might happen subsequently I will not pretend ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... millions that belong to her of right, in consequence of her sister's death, it is necessary first for her to receive them; but the Duke, it is reported, as the good Duc de Crequi used to say, "Holds back as tight as the trigger of the Cognac cross-bow;" and in fact he has not only refused to give up to his sister what she should take under her sister's will, but he disputes her right to the bank-notes which she had given to the Duchess to take care of for her, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... if to enter, Hare had covered him with the rifle, waiting, waiting for the step upon the threshold. But Holderness always checked himself in time, and Hare's finger eased its pressure upon the trigger. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... strange terrible silence as the eyes of the two men met. In that quarter of a minute Nathaniel knew that he had not guessed rightly. Strang was not afraid. He would not tell him where Marion was. The insuperable courage of this man maddened Captain Plum and unconsciously his finger fell upon the trigger of his pistol. He almost shrieked the words that ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... before his eyes; he saw the avenues under the old trees where his aunt used to take him walking in old days; he saw himself a little child, happy and wondering; he remembered the castles he used to build with strips of plane-tree bark... The trigger was pulled. Jean beat the air with his arms and fell forward face to the ground. The men finished him with their bayonets; then the woman danced on the corpse with yells ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... Dick Caister said, "these fellows have a remarkable objection to putting their necks in the way of a noose; so that although they may lug out a pistol and shout 'Bail up!' they will very seldom draw a trigger, if you show fight. So long as they do not take life they know that, if they are caught, all they have to expect is to be kept at hard work during the rest of their sentence, and perhaps for a bit longer. They don't mind the risk of that. They have ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... sir—the days of Men—when a man's WORD was enough for anything, and his trigger-finger settled any doubt. When the Trust that he took from Man, Woman, or Child was never broken. When the tide, sir, that swept through the Golden Gate came up as far as ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... demonstrated the fact that a majority of Dry Bottom's citizens welcomed the law. Dry Bottom had had a law, to be sure—the law of the six-shooter, with the cleverest man "on the trigger" as its chief advocate. Few men cared to appear before such a court with an argument against its jurisdiction. The law, as the citizens of Dry Bottom had seen it, was an institution which frowned ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... warned Mr. Conroyal in a whisper. "Don't shoot, until I give the order; and then jump to your feet and pick your man and fire as quick as the Lord will let you; but, be sure you have got the bead on the man before you pull the trigger. We must down as many of them as possible at the first volley. Now, everybody get ready. They will be out in the open in a minute or two," and he turned to give his ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... pointed the pistol at 'im. Then 'e pulled the trigger and the pistol went off bang, and the same moment o' time Bob Pretty jumped up with a 'orrible scream, and holding his 'ands over 'is eyes danced about as though ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... his weight was against me. My only chance was to grip his wrist, or I should have a bullet in me. Luckily he was giddy, and one eye had begun to swell; so that I had his arm at the very moment he pulled the trigger, and the ball went somewhere into space. The tussle was a short one, for there came a quick patter of feet along the path, and two officers of ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... place the favorite rifle he had intended to use to-day. He could not refrain from testing its perfect mechanism, and at the first sharp crack of the hammer, liberated by a tentative pull on the trigger, little Archie sprang up from his play on the hearth-rug, where he was harnessing a toy horse to Mrs. Briscoe's work-basket by long shreds of her zephyr, and ran clamoring for permission to ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... but these and the game have been pretty well extirpated since, except in some of the lower parts of the Transvaal. In the earlier days ammunition was costly and hard to procure, and the use had to be husbanded accordingly. It became thus a practice never to pull a trigger unless with intense aim and the certainty of an effective shot. A man would go out stalking for an hour or so with perhaps but one or two charges, and would rarely fail in bringing home the kind of game wanted—either a springbock, blesbock, or wildebeest (gnu). In hunting lions, the lads would ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... corner of the fire-place, got up and without saying a word, strode away. Wash Sanders was soon gone, after halting at the door to say that he might not be able to eat enough to keep a setting hen alive, but that he reckoned he could pull a trigger with any man that ever came over the pike. And now the Major, old Gid and the Englishman sat ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... much bravery to pull a trigger behind a bush," muttered Decoud to himself. "Fortunately, the night is dark, or there would be but little chance of saving the silver of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... is apparently about to pull the trigger, but he does not. His eyes are drawn away from ASHER, toward the doorway, lower right, where DR. JONATHAN is seen standing, gazing at him. Gradually his arm drops to his side, and DR. JONATHAN goes up to him and takes the pistol from his hand. PRAG breaks down, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... gardener (Reilly). He now threw himself into a chair, and' putting his hands before his face, muttered out between his fingers—"D—n seize the villain! It is true, then. Well, never mind, I'll demand satisfaction for this insult; I am not too old to pull a trigger, or give a thrust yet; but then the cowardly hypocrite won't fight. When he has a set of military at his back, and a parcel of unarmed peasants before him, or an unfortunate priest or two, why, he's a dare devil—Hector was nothing to him; ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... movements is strictly limited in the best-endowed animal, even in the ape? The cerebral characteristic of man is there. The human brain is made, like every brain, to set up motor mechanisms and to enable us to choose among them, at any instant, the one we shall put in motion by the pull of a trigger. But it differs from other brains in this, that the number of mechanisms it can set up, and consequently the choice that it gives as to which among them shall be released, is unlimited. Now, from the limited to the unlimited ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... necessary to determine if it would work and what its effects would be. In addition, the scientists were concerned about the possible effects if the conventional explosives in a nuclear device, particularly the more complex implosion-type device, failed to trigger the nuclear reaction when detonated over enemy territory. Not only would the psychological impact of the weapon be lost, but the enemy might recover large ...
— Project Trinity 1945-1946 • Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer
... chemical change. You already know this in a practical way. You know that you have to rub the head of a match and get it hot before it will begin to burn; that gunpowder does not go off unless you heat it by the sudden blow of the gun hammer which you release when you pull the trigger; that you have to concentrate the sun's rays with a magnifying glass to make it set a piece of paper on fire; and that to change raw food into food that tastes pleasant you have to heat it. If heat did not start chemical change, you could ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... uttered a sharp exclamation, and rolled from his stool in a most unkingly manner, whilst the terrified Induna, springing backwards, contrived to touch the trigger of the rifle and discharge a bullet through the exact spot that a second before had been occupied by ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... thump'd upon 520 His manly paunch with such a force, As almost beat him off his horse. He lost his whinyard, and the rein; But, laying fast hold of the mane, Preserv'd his seat; and as a goose 525 In death contracts his talons close, So did the Knight, and with one claw The trigger of his pistol draw. The gun went off: and as it was Still fatal to stout HUDIBRAS, 530 In all his feats of arms, when least He dreamt of it, to prosper best, So now he far'd: the shot, let fly At random ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... will give the 'ips—all ready—now, ip, 'ip, 'ip, 'uzza, 'uzza, 'uzza—'ip, 'ip, 'ip, 'uzza, 'uzza, 'uzza—'ip, 'ip, 'ip, 'uzza, 'uzza, 'uzza.—one cheer more, 'UZZA!" After this followed "The Merry Harriers," then came "The Staggers," after that "The Trigger, and bad luck to Cheatum," all bumpers; when Jorrocks, having screwed his courage up to the sticking-place, called for another, which being complied with, he rose and delivered himself ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... and Hammett went down in the elevator of the hotel, and out of doors, and into an automobile. Hammett drove, and Peter sat in the rear seat with McGivney, who had the revolver in his coat pocket, his finger always on the trigger and the muzzle always pointed into Peter's middle. So Peter obeyed all orders promptly, and stopped asking questions because he found he could ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... what had passed out of sight between Bartley and Colonel Clifford, for what the young people heard now was quite enough to make what Sir Lucius O'Trigger calls a very pretty quarrel. Bartley, hitherto known to Mary as a very oily speaker, shouted at the top of his voice in arrogant defiance, "You're not a child, are you? You are old enough to read papers ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... a neck and neck race in Kars at all times. Now it was never better exampled. His arms flung out as he dropped. And, before a second pressure of the trigger could be accomplished, the man behind the gun was caught, and thrown, and sprawled on the ground with his ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... the weapon, glanced along the barrel, and pressed the trigger. A yell of pain was the response. Twenty yards away there was a crash in the bushes, ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... moment, he pressed the trigger of his rifle. The flame leaped forth. The artillery-man turned round twice, his arms extended in front of him, his head uplifted, as though for breath, then he fell with his side on the gun, and lay there motionless. They could see his back, from the centre ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... his pocket, and he tried to pull it loose. The moment he succeeded Gordon stood ready to fire. Twice the hammer of the sergeant's pistol went back almost to the turning-point, and then, as he pulled the trigger again, Macfarlan, first lieutenant, who once played lacrosse at Yale, rushed, parting the crowd right and left, and dropped his billy lightly three times—right, left and right—on Sturgeon's head. The blood ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... plate, opened and gave admittance to his hand. He made me remark, as if to break short the subject on which Bailie Jarvie had spoken, that a small steel pistol was concealed within the purse, the trigger of which was connected with the mounting, and made part of the machinery, so that the weapon would certainly be discharged, and in all probability its contents lodged in the person of any one, who, being unacquainted with the secret, should tamper with the lock which secured his treasure. "This," ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... as to my ability to do the duties required of me. While at East London I had worked every day at a copy-book, striving to improve my handwriting, but my fingers were more at home with the trigger and the pick than with the pen. Moreover, my spelling was phonetic and wonderful. Although I knew most of Shakespeare's sonnets by heart, I did not know a single rule of English grammar. This ignorance has remained with me to the present day, but I cannot say I feel it much of a handicap. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... Fritz will fall. Perhaps your rifle will be wrenched from your grasp. Do not waste time, if the bayonet is fouled in his equipment, by putting your foot on his stomach and tugging at the rifle to extricate the bayonet. Simply press the trigger and the bullet will free it." In my present situation this was fine logic, but for the life of me I could not remember how he had told me to get my bayonet into the German. To me, this was the paramount issue. I closed my eyes, and lunged forward. My rifle ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... stoppers, D and I, retracted from their respective orifices by a single trigger, H h', and provided with two springs, G J, to insure the effective closure of both said orifices, substantially ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... good-humouredly, and therefore is so fortunate as to get more than his share of them, accordingly he goes by the name of Target, as every one takes a shot at him. Duke is so bad a shot, he has twice nearly pinked the marksman, so he is called Trigger. He always lays the blame of his want of skill on that unfortunate appendage of the gun, as it is either too hard or too quick on the finger. Then there is young Bulger, and as everybody pronounces it as if it had two 'g's' in it, he corrects them and says, 'g' soft, my dear fellow, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... and saw no blacks there; as we proceeded we gathered nondas, and lived upon them and the meat; we stopped at a little creek and it came on raining, and Costigan shot himself; in putting his saddle under the tarpaulin, a string caught the trigger and the ball went in under the right arm and came out at his back under the shoulder; we went on this morning all of us, and stopped at another creek in the evening, and the next morning we killed a horse named Browney, ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... harmed him not, Kerchak began to examine it closely. He felt of it from end to end, peered down the black depths of the muzzle, fingered the sights, the breech, the stock, and finally the trigger. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... regulating the supply of cocoons. The counterweight being suitably adjusted, the lever falls when the thread has become fine enough to need another cocoon. The stop, T, and the lever serve as two parts of an electric contact, so that when they touch each other a circuit is completed, which trips a trigger and sets in motion the feed apparatus by which a new cocoon is added. In practice the two drums or pulleys are mounted on the same shaft, D (Fig. 1), difference of winding speed being obtained by making them ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... the trigger there was a slight sound beside him, his wrist and arm were caught in a vice-like grip and the weapon exploded harmlessly in the air as he staggered back, his arm almost broken with the jiu-jitsu hold against which even his great strength could ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... scrutinized its every portion; it was in order. Then I leaned over the edge of the car and pointed it downward. I aimed it between his great, earnest eyes, into the very middle of his thoughtful and observant countenance. I pulled the trigger; the explosion ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... that once before I gave ye your life when it was forfeit. Ye're not aware of the reason, to be sure; but it may comfort ye to know that it exists. At the same time I'll warn ye not to put too heavy a strain on my generosity, which resides at the moment in my trigger-finger. Ye mean to hang me, and since that's the worst that can happen to me anyway, you'll realize that I'll not boggle at increasing the account by spilling your nasty blood." He cast his cane from him, thus disengaging his left ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... in his present paroxysm appeared with the most provoking aggravation, flew into his closet, and snatching up one of his pistols already loaded, no sooner saw his valet enter the apartment, in consequence of having forced the lock, than he presented it full at his face, and drew the trigger. Happily the priming flashed in the pan, without communicating with the charge; so that his furious purpose did not take effect upon the countenance of honest Pipes, who, disregardful of the attempt, though he knew the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and tore through a fold of his loose riding breeches, then swung back before his eyes to vibrate into stillness. It was a bamboo dagger, sharpened to a keen edge and point, hardened by charring in a slow fire. Fastened to a young sapling, it had been bent down over the trail and secured by a trigger his foot had released in passing. Level with his thigh, it had been designed to pierce the abdomen of the Hillmen's natural foes. He bent to examine the glutinous material with which the dagger was poisoned, and ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... that Blenmont aggregation that stirs me up. Pinckney was at the bottom of this, too. Course, I can't register any kick; for when it comes to doing the hair-trigger friendship act, Pinckney's the real skookum preferred. But this was once when he slipped me ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... cry and tried to pull the trigger, but it was stiff, her fingers had gone to sleep and refused to obey her. The pistol ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... everything; nor could less than his personal endeavors have supported the spirits of the men through a contest so long, so desperate, and so unequal. At his last attack, Buonaparte brought up 15,000 of his Guard, who had never drawn trigger during the day. It was upon their failure that his ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... his piece down to an inclination of forty-five degrees, shut his eyes, pulled trigger, and sent a ball clean over the most distant Apaches. The recoil staggered him, but he recovered himself without going over, and ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... way are you thinking to do away with me? To shoot me with the trigger of a gun and to give me shortening ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... weakness lies, Captain Ireton," he said. "There goes as true a man and as keen a shot as ever pulled trigger. Let him fight in his own way, and he'll take cover and name his man for every bullet in his pouch. But as for yielding to decent authority, or standing against trained troops in open field—" He shrugged again and ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... made two screen calls, and then I wrote a report and sent it up to him. That was where I jerked my trigger; I ought to have taken a couple of weeks and made a real production ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... Joe. "Dash it, if you hadn't been so confoundedly quick on the trigger, I could have ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... old at de Surrender, but I took notice. Dem was scarey times an' when you is scared you takes trigger-notice. It was nex' to de las' year o' de War 'fore Sherman got to Mer-ree-dian—not Sherman hisse'f but his sojers. Dey burnt up dat big house on Eighth Street hill an' built camps for de sojers in de flower garden. De cap'ns went an' live at Marse Greer's house. Marse Greer had done ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... through. Each member of the party carried an automatic pistol and several hand grenades. These were small, hollow containers, of cast-iron, loaded with a powerful explosive, which was set off after a certain trigger or spring or firing pin (according to the type used) was released by the thrower. The explosive blew the grenade to bits, and it was scored, or crisscrossed, by deep indentations so that the iron would break up into small pieces like shrapnel. ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... satisfaction, and as soon as it was light enough to see, we went out to a little ravine near the meeting- place, and I set up a board for him to shoot at. He would step out, raise that big pistol, and when I would count three he would shut his eyes and pull the trigger. Of course he didn't hit anything; he did not come anywhere near hitting anything. Just then we heard somebody shooting over in the next ravine. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Honour O'Grady, 'is not, like most of the family of the ifs, a peace-maker. My Lady Delacour, I was going to observe that my principal has met with an unfortunate accident, in the shape of a whitlow on the fore-finger of her right hand, which incapacitates her from drawing a trigger; but I am at your service, ladies, either of you, that can't put up with a disappointment with good humour.' I never, during the whole course of my existence, was more disposed to bear a disappointment with good humour, to prove that I was incapable ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... let us candidly admit that there is one Scotchman who is cheerful,' iii. 387; 'Come, let me know what it is that makes a Scotchman happy,' v. 346; 'He left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death,' i. 268; 'Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young,' ii. 194; 'One Scotchman is as good as another,' iv. 101; 'The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England,' i. 425; v. ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... safety with heaviest charges." "Absolute immunity from all risk of blowing open." "The combination of a perfect trigger action with a perfect cocking action." Ted Haviland was standing outside the window of a gunsmith's shop in the King's Road, Chelsea, reading the enticing legends in which Mr. Webley sets forth the superiority of his wares above those of all other ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... as we advanced to charge Johnson's poltroons, one of the party, a resolute fellow, presented his gun to my breast and drew the trigger. Happily, in the very instant of its firing, lieutenant Jossilin knocked it up with his sword; and the ball grazing my shoulder, bursted through ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... the automatic's muzzle at the hole in the idol's eye, sighted carefully, and squeezed the trigger. And as the explosion boomed through the vast chamber outside, he veered the gun in a different aim and ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the same time. I looked but could not see any body; in a moment after I looked to the left and saw sixteen Indians, all upon their feet with their guns presented, about forty yards distant from me, just ready to draw trigger. I was riding between Vallis and the Indians in a slow trot, at the moment I saw them. I whipped my horse and leaned my breast on the horse's withers, and told Vallis to whip his horse, that they were Indians. That moment they all fired their guns in one platoon; you could scarcely distinguish ...
— Narrative of the Captivity of William Biggs among the Kickapoo Indians in Illinois in 1788 • William Biggs
... being fired, can form some conception of the force and furor with which this iron monster springs into the air and dashes out to sea in the teeth of the wildest storm. So tremendous is the gush of fire and smoke, that it has to be let off by means of a lock, the trigger of which is pulled by a man standing some yards distant with a cord attached to it in ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... of bolts. Schwartz Carl reached back into the darkness, fumbling in the gloom until his fingers met the weapon. Setting his foot in the iron stirrup at the end of the stock, he wound the stout bow-string into the notch of the trigger, and carefully fitted the heavy, murderous-looking bolt into ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... telling his hearers that he knew the fellow was a sesesh at once; that he leveled his musket at him and towld him to halt; that if he hadn't marched straight up to him he would have put a minnie ball through his heart; that he had his gun cocked and his finger on the trigger, and was a mind to shoot him anyway. Then he tells how he propounded this and that question, which confused the prisoner, and finally concludes by saying that De Lagniel might be d—d thankful indade that he ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... the amount of coal which is burned in the furnace of the engine. In like manner the velocity of the bullet which issues from the rifle depends upon the transformation of the energy of the powder; this in turn depends upon the explosion of the percussion cap; this again upon the fall of the trigger; and lastly this upon the finger of the man who fires the rifle."[54] Thus even the very strongest opponents of the idea of second causes never deny that the latter seem to surround us on every side, and that it would be possible to trace a continuous line of apparent ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... shape for a long shot. Jack has written that he seemed to be looking for hostile "Injuns" some distance away and to be waiting for another stir in the bushes. Suddenly he pulled his trigger. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... was likely to come that way. The roof was held in this position by a stout lever, which rested across the limb of a convenient tree. A rope led from the other end of the lever, down through a hole in the roof, to the trigger, to which the bait—an ear of corn—was attached. The bear was expected to crawl through the opening and seize the ear of corn; and in so doing, he would spring the trigger, release the lever and ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... news of my little accident, they'd have been here long ago; and the minute they come, I'll swear 'em not to prosecute, or harbour a thought of revenge again' him, who had no malice again' me, no more than a child. And at another's bidding, more than his own, he drew the trigger, and the pistol went off unknownst, in a passion: so there's the case for you, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... satisfaction of my conscience—began to shake from head to foot with a nervous chill. It was agonizing, but it was so much better than the spiritual chill of which it took the place! I felt as though I should never be warm again. Yet the attack slowly passed away, and with my finger once more close to the trigger, I lay trying to use my brain, when, without prayer or plan, I solved the riddle, what I should do, by doing the only thing I knew I ought not to do. ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
