The other weapon is a Stevens, or Smith & Wesson, single-shot .22 pistol.

Some people use this to give variety to the show; but I prefer a duelling pistol.

See that a narrow plank of wood--metal would, if struck, make a bullet glance--is put in front of the b.u.t.t with slits and clips in it for holding objects. As mentioned before, I do not like a.s.sistants holding them in the fingers, though, for this purpose, steel thimbles are generally worn over the thumb and forefinger, and are concealed by a glove.

Professionals sometimes shoot objects on the heads of a.s.sistants--generally a lady with her hair piled up very high, or wearing a steel skull-cap under a wig. Devilliers bullets make such shooting practically safe in case of the a.s.sistant being hit.

The following shots I recommend to amateurs as safe. Beginning with the easiest, we have:

Six stationary b.a.l.l.s in a row or else the French rubber balloons. (The b.a.l.l.s are cast from a mixture of resin and whiting; they are very brittle and break at a graze.) Take them as quickly as you can be sure of them.

With practice, you can "snap" the six off in about four seconds.

Next extract the used cartridges, and have them put in a row on the edge of the board, standing them on their bases. Hit them in quick succession.

This requires a little more care, as they are small; but their height prevents your being likely to miss vertically, and you have merely to pay attention to keeping your horizontal aim correct. Be sure not to shoot too low; for if you do, and hit the plank, you will jar all of them off it.

This can be varied, if you are a really good shot, by placing the spent cartridges on their sides with the cap end towards yourself; but it requires good shooting.

Shooting at an object with a wine gla.s.s on each side without breaking the gla.s.ses is a trick in which the difficulty varies according to how close the gla.s.ses are.

Put up a piece of paper with a black pencil line ruled vertically on it; hit this line. This requires care not to "pull off" to one side.

A similar line horizontal. This is more difficult, as the elevation must be absolutely correct if you want to hit the line.

Hit a swinging ball. Take the shot on a turn; do not follow, but aim at an imaginary spot just inside of where the ball is at one end of its swing, aiming at "IX o'clock," as the ball is momentarily stationary at its farthest swing to the right, or _vice versa_.

Put six b.a.l.l.s in a row; hit one with the revolver in the right hand, a second with the revolver in the left; a third and fourth with the revolver upside down, pulling the trigger with the little finger and using alternate hands. The remaining two shots to be made with the revolver held half canted to the right, and then half canted to the left. After a little practice, none of these positions are difficult.

The upside-down shot, as soon as you get used to aiming at the top edge of the ball instead of the bottom, is a very steady, easy position. For the two side ones, you aim at "IX" and at "III o'clock," respectively.

Hang your watch on a hook on the board, and place a ball resting on this hook. Break the ball. This is easy, as the ball is, comparatively, a big mark. Aim at the top edge of the ball, so as to break it by a grazing shot near the top; this is less risky for the watch.

Do the same with any watches lent by the audience. A man once kept lending me his watch for this trick; I found out afterwards that it would not go, and he had hoped that I would hit it and thus be compelled to give him another!

Borrow small objects from the audience, and hit them. Stamps on envelopes, visiting cards, bits of pencil, etc., are suitable; but do not shoot at anything which will make a bullet glance, or you may hit some of your audience. Thus a walnut is very dangerous, causing bullets to glance. An orange or an egg explodes beautifully when hit, but both are rather messy.

The coloured b.a.l.l.s for Christmas trees are nice to shoot at; but a bullet sometimes makes a hole without breaking them.

Put up the ace of hearts and hit it. It is usual to have a pack composed of only aces of hearts. Have several ace cards placed on top of each other, and when the bullet goes through the group, have the cards "dealt"

among the audience; or, if at a Charity Bazaar, sold singly.

Put up the six of hearts, and hit the six pips. This requires some doing to get all six shots neatly in the separate pips.

Put a card edgeways towards you and cut it in half. This is a pretty trick and brings down the house when well done. It requires the same skill as. .h.i.tting the vertical pencil lines. If you are not very sure of yourself, and you succeed on the first shot, do not risk a second try. _This rule applies to all the difficult shots._ My best score at this game was five cards out of six shots, the cards being placed edgewise at a range of fifteen feet.

Hit a string from which an object is hanging. Get string which is weak, and have the object pretty heavy, or else you may "nick" the string without its breaking. Berlin wool, with a weight so heavy that it strains the wool to nearly breaking-point, breaks with more certainty than string or twine. There is an ingenious, though scarcely legitimate, way of making this shot very easy. You merely double a piece of string and tie a knot, hanging it over two nails, the distance between which is a fraction under .44 inch. Two hooks on the ball are the same distance apart, so that the ball is thus hung by a double string. If you hit _between_ these, _both_ strings are necessarily cut by a .44 bullet, if your aim be true, while _one_ is cut even if you hit half an inch out.

Put a rubber balloon filled with red fluid on top of an empty claret gla.s.s; break the ball, and the gla.s.s will be filled with the fluid. Take care the ball fits very loosely, and rests only slightly in the gla.s.s, or the latter will break also.

Knock a cork off a bottle; an ordinary wine bottle or a wooden or metal one is dangerous if hit, as causing the bullet to glance; it is better to have a plaster of Paris bottle, painted black.

Put up a bunch of six grapes, and take them off one at a time.

Put up candles and snuff them.

Hit two b.a.l.l.s simultaneously, one swinging past a stationary one, or both swinging from opposite ways. You have to take them just as one is about to cover the other.

Have a ball swung round horizontally at great speed centrifugally from a small wheel spun by clockwork. This requires very good "timing," you aiming at a side and pulling when the ball is at the opposite side, or you will be too late. Stand two b.a.l.l.s with a steel knife-edge between them, vertically towards you and rather nearer to you than the b.a.l.l.s. Hit the knife-edge in such a manner as to split the bullet in two pieces, which fly off and break the b.a.l.l.s. The knife must be securely fastened, and the precise distance between the back of it and the b.a.l.l.s (which varies according to the distance they are apart) must be determined by experiment. Trick shooters use shot for this instead of a bullet.

Hitting an object with a paper on the muzzle hiding the mark. Cut a round hole, just big enough to slip over the muzzle, in a piece of thick paper the size of an ordinary envelope. Slip this over the muzzle, up against the front sight. When taking aim, it will be found that with the left eye closed the paper hides the object. By keeping both eyes open, however, shooting is easy, the right eye working the sights and the left seeing the object. The paper must not project much to the left, or it would hide your view with the left eye.

Fix a nail slightly in a block of soft wood and drive it home with a shot.

CHAPTER XVIII

TRICK SHOOTING

We now come to the conjurer's style of shooting, which I would not advise any one to practise, even for a Charity Bazaar; it will ruin his reputation as a shot. However, I will describe hereunder some of the devices in connexion with this trick shooting.

The chief apparatus--under different forms--is a lever some twelve inches long. This lever is pivoted in its centre; one end has a steel disk about a foot in diameter, or less, according to the shooter's skill--of a size he is sure of never missing,--the other end has a steel point at right angles. The lever is placed vertically at such a height that the steel spike is just opposite the middle of the ball which is placed on the a.s.sistant's head. The steel disk is some eight inches above the man's head; the whole of this apparatus is hidden from the audience behind the "back-cloth" of the scenery. The locality of the disk is indicated to the shooter by something in the scenery, as a pattern, or a trophy of flags, etc.

The a.s.sistant stands with his back against the back-cloth, and the ball is on his head so that the steel spike is just clear of the middle of the ball; the shooter then fires at the trophy of flags, or what not (which is eight or more inches above the man's head, and therefore a practically easy and safe shot); the bullet hitting the disk, drives it back; the other end of the lever with the spike comes forward; the spike goes through the scenery, breaks the ball, and at once returns out of sight.

The trick is varied by having the lever inside a dummy figure, the performer shooting into the figure to break small objects on its head or in its mouth. A bellows is sometimes behind the back-cloth with the nozzle at the flame of a candle which is blown out when the bellows is. .h.i.t; and the shooter is supposed to have snuffed the candle.

The shooting can be done at quite long range from the back of the gallery to the back of the stage (for instance) by lengthening the lever so as to minimize risk to the a.s.sistant.

Another way in which the candle trick is done, is to have each candle inside a large concave reflector; the splash from the bullet comes back from the reflector and puts out the candle.

Shooting at anything moving--swinging b.a.l.l.s, etc.--is done with shot; the shooting in this case must be done with a back-cloth over the b.u.t.t, as the splashes on a naked steel plate would betray the use of shot. This makes very easy what in legitimate shooting requires nice "timing." The cartridge is either simply filled with special shot even smaller than "dust" shot and a wad, or if the cartridges are likely to be seen they are loaded with hollow wooden black-leaded bullets, full of shot, which the rifling of the barrel breaks, and these are subst.i.tuted by "palming" for real bulleted cartridges shown to the audience. Shot is sometimes fired out of a smooth bore revolver.

Two b.a.l.l.s are broken with a revolver in each hand, shot simultaneously.

This is always considered very wonderful, the performer pretending to take a long time over his aim, etc. One revolver is loaded with shot, the other with blank ammunition. The one loaded with shot is aimed between the two b.a.l.l.s; the spread of shot breaks both b.a.l.l.s.

Knocking ashes off cigar whilst being smoked by a.s.sistant: A long hat-pin is put into the cigar, the point just reaching up to the ashes. On the shot--a blank cartridge--being fired, the a.s.sistant pushes the k.n.o.b of the pin with his tongue, and dislodges the ashes.

Objects held in the fingers or resting on the shoulders of a.s.sistants are shot with cork or Devilliers bullets, and the a.s.sistant wears hidden steel epaulets and finger-tips.

Blindfold shooting is done by seeing down the side of the nose on to a looking-gla.s.s fixed at an angle behind the hind sight.

What is called shooting through a wedding-ring and breaking a ball is done with the lever apparatus; the bullet does not go through the ring, but above it.

Shooting at the trigger of a loaded rifle fixed in a rest, the shot from the rifle breaking a ball on the shooter's head, is also another form of the lever apparatus.

I think that in stage performances there should be a committee of shooting men appointed by the audience to see that the shooting is genuine and not trick shooting.