United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I'd take the money out, but I'm afraid o' tearin' it all to pieces, with the train plungin' so." He carefully half-cocked his piece, took off the cap, rubbed the nipple to remove any stray fragments of fulminate, and then let the hammer down on a piece of wadding taken from his cap.
"I do not believe me " faltered Mr. Sedgwick, greatly embarrassed and distressed. In spite of the young man's attempt to hide the contents of the table, he had seen the two objects lying there a piece of bread or roll, and a half-cocked revolver. Mr. Blake had seen them, too, and at once took the word out of his companion's mouth.
I've told you they won't go off half-cocked as long as Westfall is on the job. They're ready for anything, or they wouldn't be here but just the same I wish that they had that Titanian mirror and a couple of those bombs!" In a moment more the Jovian plane of force was launched, the powerful ray-screens flared into white-hot, sparkling defense, and the battle was on.
Every time an employer pulls the trigger on a successful business boy, and a good idea of business is fired, the recoil puts a new idea into the chamber, and you pull again, and so on until the magazine of the brainy boy is emptied, when you load him up again, and he is ready for business, and the employer wouldn't be without him, and would not go back to the old-fashioned one-idea boy, that goes off half-cocked when not pointed at anything in particular, and whose ideas get stuck in the barrel and have to be pulled out with a wormer, and primed with borrowed powder, and touched off by the neighbors, most of whom get powder in their eyes, unless they look the other way when the useless employee goes off, for anything in the world.
I could never have imagined myself going off half-cocked like that. I suppose the primitive brute in us is never really far from the surface. Especially in this country. There's something," he looked up at the surrounding depths of forest, down along the dusky channel of Lone Moose, curving away among the spruce, "there's something about this infernal solitude that brings out the savage.
Just a moment, please. I apologise for the oath but I mean it, just the same. I do not resent your attitude, nor do I resent your haste in conveying to me your views on the subject. It may be diplomacy to go straight to a question and get it over with, but it isn't always diplomatic to go off half-cocked.
At length, sight of joy! a moving object is seen, and it gives rise to the usual inquiries, Who is it? and what can be his errand? The old whitish-grey coat, the hobbling gait, the hat half-slouched, half-cocked, announced the forlorn maker of periwigs, and left for investigation only the second query. This was soon solved by a servant entering the parlour, "A letter from Monkbarns, Sir Arthur."
What he did not attempt to explain to Sophie, a matter he scarcely fathomed himself, was his precipitancy, this going off "half-cocked", as he put it. He wasn't given to quick bursts of temper. It was as if he had been holding himself in and the self-contained pressure had grown acute when the insolent chauffeur presented himself as a relief valve. He felt a little ashamed now.
And I sure am sorry for going off half-cocked." A wintry frost was in the jet bead eyes that looked up at the puncher. The sitting man did not recognize the extended hand. "You'll be a heap sorrier before I'm through with you," he growled. "I'm goin' to beat your head off and learn you to mind your own business." "Interesting if true," retorted Steve lightly. "And maybeso you're right.
I can't let you go. It wouldn't be fair to you or to Webb either. We're all in this together." "What'll you do to prevent my goin'?" "I'll tell the old man if I have to. Sho, kid! Let's not you an' me have trouble." Billie's gentle smile pleaded for their friendship. "We've been pals ever since we first met up. Don't go off on this crazy idea like a half-cocked hogleg."
Word Of The Day