Rifleman

“ THE RIFLE AND BAYONET.—The rifle is the principal infantry weapon, and the British "Short-magazine {165} Lee-Enfield" rifle is the best rifle in action. A trained rifleman can fire 15 aimed shots in a minute, reloading with the butt in the shoulder and eyes on the mark. With the bayonet affixed the rifle is the principal weapon of close combat for delivering or repelling an assault, and in Night Assaults infantry depend entirely upon the bayonet. ”

“ We are trained to the rifle; it is always with us, on parade, on march, on bivouac, and recently, when going through a dental examination, we carried our weapons of war into the medical officer's room. As befits units of a rifle regiment, we have got accustomed to our gun, and now, as fully trained men, we have established the necessary unity between hand and eye, and can load and unload our weapon with butt-plate stiff to shoulder and eye steady on target while the operation is in progress. In fact, our rifle comes to hand as easy as a walking-stick. ”

“ Some persons prefer the latter to rifles for elephant-shooting, but I cannot myself understand why a decidedly imperfect weapon should be used when the rifle offers such superior advantages. At twenty and even thirty paces a good smooth-bore will carry a ball with nearly the same precision as a rifle; but in a country full of various large game there is no certainty, when the ball is rammed down, at what object it is to be aimed. A buffalo or deer may cross the path at a hundred yards, and the smooth-bore is useless; on the other hand, the rifle is always ready for whatever may appear. ”

“ Rifle shooting and rifles, our main arm in this guerilla warfare, were of course the subjects of constant discussion; target shooting was incessantly going on while in camp, and a rifle never out of our hands on the march, so that every tyro became in a wonderfully short time a fair marksman, and, many, first-rate shots. The distribution of Minié rifles to the troops excited great emulation amongst the men also, which was increased by our giving shilling and half-crown prizes for inner circle and bull's-eye hits. ”

“ At first glance, a rifle is an extremely simple thing. You pull back the bolt, insert a cartridge, and close the bolt. Then you put the rifle to your shoulder and pull the trigger—and the trick is done. But first impressions are misleading, and the recruit has to be trained in the use of the rifle until he understands that he has been given charge of a very delicate and complex piece of mechanism, of which the parts are so finely adjusted that it will send its bullet accurately for a distance of 2800 yards—considerably over a mile and a half. ”

“ I heard the shots, and the whizzing of bullets, and the fierce shouts.
I heard the clatter of hoofs and the rasping of sabres as they leaped out of their iron sheaths; and among these I heard the crack of Lincoln’s rifle, and the wild yell of the hunter. Then a peal of thunder drowned all other sounds: the heavens one moment seemed on fire, then black—black. I felt the stifling smell of sulphur—a hot flash—a quick stroke from some invisible hand—and I sank senseless to the earth! ”

“ There are three things in military life which make a great appeal to me; the rifle's reply to the pull of the trigger-finger, the gossip of soldiers in the crowded canteen, and the onward movement of a thousand men in full marching order with arms at the trail. And at no time is this so impressive as at night when with rifles held in a horizontal position by the side, the arm hanging easily from the shoulder, we march at attention in complete silence. ”

“ The five rose up to sitting positions against the board wall, and everyone held across his knees a long, slender barreled rifle, with the muzzle pointing toward the forest. All accomplished marksmen, it would only be a matter of a moment for the stock to leap to the shoulder, the eye to glance down the barrel, the finger to pull the trigger, and the unerring bullet to leap forth. ”

“ Now, there was among the frontiersmen, in the day of the hair trigger, a school of wilderness hunters, to be found at every shooting match, who maintained that no man could hold steadily on an object. They asserted that the muzzle of the rifle should be allowed to move, either in a straight line up or down onto the target, or across it in the arc of a circle. The trigger to be pulled when the line of sight touched on the target. ”

“ From its warlike aspect it is pleasant to turn to the contributions of the rifle to peaceful amusement, if not peaceful industry. Contemptuously giving the go-by to its minutest phase in this field—the "parlor rifle," with a target against the chimney-piece or meandering, in feline form, along our neighbor's roof-tree—we go forth, with Snider and sunrise, to the forest fastness. ”

“ High against the chimney, on two dogwood forks, rested the long rifle with its fishtail sight and the brass plate on the stock for the bullets and the "patching." Below it hung the old powder-horn, its wooden plug dangling from a string,—tools of the long ago. Closing one's eyes one could see the tall grandsires fighting in the beech forest, a brown patch of hide sighted over the brass knife-blade bead, and death, and to load again with the flat neck of the bullet set in the palm of the hand and covered with powder. ”

“ A good gunman would not try to look through such small openings, nearly closed by the barrel of a rifle. But why a rifle, for a good gunman? "He'd need all of a hole to look through, an' a good gunman likes a hip shot. That's it: Eyes to th' upper, six-gun at th' lower, for a range too short to allow a miss." ”

“ Taken134 in the mass, the British soldier has every reason to congratulate himself on the way in which he uses his rifle, and the present Continental war has proved that he is every whit as good at using the rifle in the field as he is on the range, though, in shooting on active service, the range of the object has to be found, while in all shooting practice in time of peace it is known and the sights correctly adjusted before the man begins to fire. ”

“ No one who has not experienced the loss can imagine the disgust occasioned by an accident to a favourite rifle in a wild country. A spare nipple and mainspring for each barrel and lock should always be taken on a shooting trip. ”

“ The long, cumbrous rifle seemed the favourite weapon, and in the hands of the diminutive, sallow, but black-eyed and venturous dweller in the swamps of the lowlands, across whose knee we may here and there see it resting, it may confidently be held as fatal at a hundred yards. ”

“ The sharp ring of rifles meets your ear. You plunge under water. When you come up to take breath, a rifle ball lodges in your shoulder and you plunge again. Suddenly, thick clouds throw their friendly veil over the moon. ”

“ On their saddles are strapped blankets or mackintoshes and for arms each man carries a rifle of some sort—from the Government Snider, to the double-barrelled weapon in ordinary frontier use, rifled and smooth-barrel for varying distance or quarry. Not a few have revolvers also; and broad, heavy belts, holding at least two hundred rounds of cartridge, are buckled round them or slung over their shoulders. Many of which bullets will, I trow, find their mark in the dusky bodies of the savage enemy before the day is very far advanced. ”

“ He feels at once that he knows a good bit more about the use of a rifle than the man who is instructing him, and at the given word he aims and fires again. This time he is lucky if he scores an outer; more often than not the bullet either strikes the ground half-way up the range, or goes sailing over the back of the123 butts, and the recruit, with a nasty painful feeling about his shoulder, has an idea that rifle-shooting is a tricky business, after all. ”

“ By way of cutting the Gordian knot, he therefore knocks his sight out, and accordingly spoils the shooting of the rifle altogether.
Put a rifle in the hands of a man who knows how to handle it, and let him shoot against the mutilated weapon deprived of its sight, and laugh at the trial. Why, a man might as well take the rudder off a ship because he could not steer, and then abuse the vessel for not keeping her course! ”

“ The rifle-butt crashed on the shoulder muscles beside the conical head and as swift as the riposte of a skilled duellist a paw shot out, plucked the weapon from the professor's grasp, and holding by his prehensile feet, the great beast buckled the rifle in half as easily as a child would bend a reed. ”

“ A head bends low; a left eye closes; the right, brown as a hawk’s and as fierce, glares, from beneath corrugated brow, along a barrel that rests as though in a grip of steel. The keen report of a sporting rifle—not loud, but crisp and clear—rings through the silent wood, and there is a heavy fall and a groan. ”

“ Rifle-shots and execrations were discharged together against the notorious enemy of their pinfolds; who nothing daunted, and nothing loath, let fly his own "speechifier," as he denominated his rifle, in return, accompanying the salute with divers yells and maledictions, in which latter he showed himself, to say the truth, infinitely superior to his antagonists. ”

“ I ought to have galloped right past it, as I could, no doubt, very easily have done; but I foolishly pulled in to get a shot before it got in amongst the mimosa trees towards which it was heading. When I raised my rifle to fire, the red glare of the setting sun was full in my eyes, but I thought that as I pressed the trigger the foresight of my rifle was just on the black patch above the gemsbuck's tail. ”

“ This is with the double-barrel shot gun; with the rifle at short sporting ranges the only modification is that as there is but one pellet instead of two hundred, the sight must be used and the dot put on the mark, while with the shot gun in time you scarcely use the sight at all. With the rifle the sight must never be forgotten. The left hand puts the sight on the mark, and the quicker the trigger is pressed the better, exactly reversing tradition. ”

“ They were equipped with rifle barrels and hair triggers, and were inlaid richly with silver, and more than once had been used on the field of honor. Whenever my grandfather went out for a walk, or to play whist at the house of a neighbor, I would get down these pistols and fight duels with myself in front of the looking-glass. With my left hand I would hold the handkerchief above my head, and with the other clutch the pistol at my side, and then, at the word, and as the handkerchief fluttered to the floor, I would take careful aim and pull the trigger. ”

“ Fell out to work at 7, pioneers helping us. Ordnance train came up from town this morning and deposited their stores inside of the fort, filling our magazines with artillery ammunition; 90 boxes of three inch rifle; 40 12-pounder guns; 150 boxes of infantry ammunition, guns, sabres and other stores piled up inside the works covered with tarpaulins. A sergeant and seven men with them as guards, to guard our guns also, which lightens our duty greatly. ”

“ My little chaps gave them a rotten time.'
I could not help thinking of those little brown-skinned, half-naked natives, with their bags of cartridges and their rusty rifles, gliding from tree to tree, through the thick undergrowth, and never giving the regulars a moment's rest, day or night. At night-time too! I shuddered to think of it, and began to have a most wholesome respect for those tattered ragamuffins of his.
'How many have you?' I asked him.
'I don't know,' he said. 'We have something like five thousand rifles, but whenever there is a spare rifle there are hundreds to claim it. ”

“ Nothing gives such confidence to the gun-bearers as the fact of their rifles being good slayers, and they quickly learn to take a pride in their weapons, and to strive in the race to hand the spare rifles. Dust storms, such as I have constantly witnessed in Africa, would be terrible enemies to breech-loaders, as the hard sand, by grating in the joints, would wear away the metal, and destroy the exactness of the fittings.
A small handy double rifle, such as my little Fletcher 24, not exceeding eight pounds and a half, is very necessary, as it should seldom be out of the hand. ”

“ Sauntering up to the latest recruit, he said:
"See here, my man, this thing is a rifle, this is the barrel, this is the butt, and this is where you put the cartridge in."
The recruit seemed to be taking it all in, so the officer, continuing, said:
"You put the weapon to your shoulder; these little things on the barrel are called sights; then to fire you pull this little thing, which is called the trigger. Now, smarten yourself up, and remember what I have told you; and, by the way, what trade did you follow before you enlisted? A collier, I suppose!"
"No, sir," came the reply ”

“ Little Rifle, experienced in the dangers of a hunter’s life, was not caught with an unloaded gun. The thin puff of smoke had hardly begun to curl up from the clump of bushes when his rifle was at his shoulder, and he sent the return bullet crashing among the leaves and twigs. ”

“ A muddy rifle gets rusty, and brings its owner into trouble, and a severe penalty is considered meet for the man who comes on parade with a rusty rifle. Bringing the friend from the slope to the order was a difficult process for us recruits at the start [pg 56] the back-sight tore at the fingers, and bleeding hands often testified to the unnatural instinct of the rebellious weapon. But the unkindest kick of all was given when the slack novice fired the first shot, and the heel of the butt slipped upwards and struck the jaw. ”

“ Yet many, as they passed, fired at our men, but without much effect; for they were so effectually concealed in the brushwood, that the flash of their rifles was the only guide for the aim of the enemy. ”

“ All was breathless attention among the group of officers; and when the sharp ticking sound produced by the cocking of the rifle of their companion fell on their ears, they bent their gaze upon the point towards which the murderous weapon was levelled with the most aching and intense interest. ”

“ I had kicked another rifle, but hadn't the pluck to go back and fetch it.
I just held on, trembling all over, and waited and listened, and then started again, following the door round till I got to the wall, and there, the first thing I felt, was a box on the ledge, right in the corner between the door and the wall. I felt it all over; it had a square hole in the top, and my hand went in and—oh! it was such a jolly feeling—it was nearly full of paper packets of ammunition. ”