"Matchlock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a matchlock was to be our signal that my men held the upper end of the pass, and were descending on our enemies. Meanwhile, my immediate followers prepared the rocks above the narrow neck of the defile and got them ready ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... only a kind of vanguard to the second, which was the real army, and a wonderful thing to see and hear. Never were brought together before or since so many different kinds of howl, so many threats of death, so many rags; so many odd weapons, from the matchlock of the time of the Michelade to the steel-tipped goad of the bullock drovers of La Camargue, so that when the Nimes mob; which in all conscience was howling and ragged enough, rushed out to offer a brotherly welcome to the strangers, its first feeling ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... doe antelope, tame, and trained to browse upon the fresh bushes, which are woven for the occasion into a kind of hand-hurdle, behind which a man creeps along over the fields towards the herd of wild ones, or sits still with his matchlock ready, and pointed out through the leaves. The herd seeing the male and female strangers so very busily and agreeably employed upon their apparently inviting repast, advance to accost them, and are shot when they get within ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Gedge to himself; and then, with a word or two at times from behind, he trudged on and on towards the mighty snowfields, but ever with his eyes on the lookout for the danger—keen knife, tulwar, matchlock, ball, or spear—invisible so far, but which at any ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... kettle-drum, they followed in double file the camel of a standard-bearer, whose green flag bore in huge white letters the formula of the Moslem creed. They were wild-looking mountaineers, dark and fierce, with hair twisted into thin dalik or plaits: each was armed with a long spear, a matchlock, or a dagger. They were seated upon coarse wooden saddles, without cushions or stirrups, a fine saddle-cloth alone denoting a chief. The women emulated the men; they either guided their own dromedaries, or sitting in pillion, they clung to their ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... asked me with what weapons the Zaptiehs—the mounted police who were relied on to keep order—and the irregulars who were committing unchecked atrocities everywhere, were respectively armed. I was compelled to tell him that the Zaptiehs carried an old-fashioned matchlock, whilst the Irregulars were in great part armed with the Winchester repeating rifle, which was then the latest invention of destructive science. The corpulent visitor had long since resigned the effort to keep within hearing. ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... gun[obs3], Lancaster gun, Paixhan gun, Whitworth gun, Parrott gun, Krupp gun, Gatling gun, Maxim gun, machine gun; pompom[obs3]; ten pounder. small arms; musket, musketry, firelock[obs3], fowling piece[Fr], rifle, fusil[obs3], caliver[obs3], carbine, blunderbuss, musketoon[obs3], Brown Bess, matchlock, harquebuss[obs3], arquebus, haguebut[obs3]; pistol, postolet[obs3]; petronel; small bore; breach-loader, muzzle-loader; revolver, repeater; Minis rifle, Enfield rifle, Flobert rifle, Westley Richards rifle, Snider rifle, Martini-Henry rifle, Lee-Metford ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... upon their muskets to some extent for wild fowl (as witness Winslow's long and successful shot at a duck, on his visit to Massasoit), as they undoubtedly did for deer, etc. They were apparently fairly well supplied with them, of either the "matchlock" or "snaphance" (flintlock) pattern, though the planters complained to the Merchant Adventurers (in their letter of August 3, from Southampton), that they were "wanting many muskets," etc. That they had some "fowling-pieces" is shown by the fact ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... equipment of the heavily armored soldier of the early Puritan regime whose corslets and head pieces, pikes, matchlocks, fourquettes and bandoleers, went out of use about the period of King Philip's War. The fifty-seven postures provided in the approved manual of arms for loading and firing the matchlock proved too great a handicap in the chase of the nimble savage. In this era the frontier fighter adapted himself to a more open order, and lighter equipment suggested by the Indian ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... feet, made their way to the door, and opened it noiselessly. The sentry was standing, leaning on his long matchlock, a few feet away. Suddenly a voice behind exclaimed, ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... endeavored in 1859 to explore the river as far as the mouth of the Nonni. Though his passport was correct, the Manjour guard ordered him to stop, and when he insisted upon proceeding the Celestial raised his matchlock. Maximowicz exhibited a rifle and revolver and ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... beast to a hair, impaled a letter on the tip of his spear and handed it down. It was from the Resident at Lucknow. In its unpromising bearer I beheld my guard. If the look of a thorough ruffian, much unwashed, with the spear just mentioned, a matchlock, and an assortment round his waist of what resembled carving-knives and skewers, was to be my sufficient defence in time of trouble, I was well provided for. However it was to be explained, no harm came to me anywhere ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... after a French officer and seignior in later times—the French boat could not be taken any {73} further. It was sent back to Quebec while Champlain and two others, armed with the arquebus, a short gun with a matchlock, followed the Indians through the woods to avoid this dangerous part of the river. The party soon reached the safe waters of the Richelieu and embarked once more in their canoes. For the first time Champlain had abundant opportunities to note the customs of the Indians on a war-path, ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... in use in our ships at sea were the matchlock musket, firing a heavy double bullet, and the harquabuse[21] or arquebus, which fired a single bullet. The musket was a heavy weapon, and needed a rest, a forked staff, to support the barrel while the soldier aimed. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield |
