As you gain confidence you will find that, with a rebounding lock (such as all duelling pistols of full-size calibre by the best makers have), it requires very little holding back at the hammer in letting it down to half-c.o.c.k and the hammer remains at half-c.o.c.k by itself, without any click.

With an ordinary hammer which remains down when it is fired (like many single-shot pistols of American make or the .2 bulleted caps of the "Flobert Pistol"), the hammer must be kept firmly held until it is below half-c.o.c.k, and then brought to half-c.o.c.k where it will click, as it also does at full-c.o.c.k.

The great advantage of an automatic pistol is that it does not have this click and so does not give warning to an adversary and is not apt to go off by accident when being put at safe.

If the trigger is held back whilst c.o.c.king it is as if you were to ask a man to sit down and pull the chair from under him. He falls just like the hammer.

Almost all modern pistols with visible hammers have rebounding locks so that after the hammer falls, on the trigger being pressed, and explodes the cartridge, then it jumps back to half-c.o.c.k of itself. This saves time as otherwise the hammer resting on the exploded cartridge would have to be raised by the thumb to half-c.o.c.k before the exploded cartridge could be extracted and a fresh one put in.

Now, practise till you are perfect, using an empty cartridge.

Open, insert cartridge, close, put to full-c.o.c.k, lower to half-c.o.c.k, extract cartridge, close pistol.

Do not be satisfied till you can do all this without a hitch or hesitation and without letting the hammer slip.

When you do this perfectly you can go on to the next lesson, but not before.

When you have the pistol at full-c.o.c.k, it can be fired by pressing the trigger, but we have not come to that yet. We are only learning how to safely handle a pistol.

CHAPTER VIII

TRIGGER-PULL

Very few people pay attention to the strength of the trigger-pull of their pistols.

They accept whatever trigger-pull it has when they buy it.

They do not know that trigger-pull can vary from a hair trigger up to many pounds weight.

First-cla.s.s gunmakers make the "weight," as it is called, of their trigger as light and smooth as possible subject to its being safe to handle.

The subject of safe trigger-pull is a variable quant.i.ty.

An expert shot can be trusted with a trigger-pull so light that in the hands of a less skilful or careful shot there would be great danger of the pistol being discharged accidentally. The automatic pistol is put to full-c.o.c.k automatically with violence, by the discharge. Therefore the trigger-pull has to be made much heavier than the trigger-pull of a single-shot pistol, where the shooter c.o.c.ks it gently with his own hand.

A typical example of how men, even after a lifetime of shooting, pay no attention to the weight of their trigger-pulls occurs to me.

An old gentleman, belonging to one of the learned professions, who had been an enthusiastic but very bad shot all his life, asked me to try his shotgun at some clay pigeons.

He was one of those men who always pride themselves on getting things cheaper than any one else.

He did not understand that a good gun is expensive; and that a second-hand gun by a first-cla.s.s maker is much better value (and safer to use) than a cheap new gun.

Acting on his usual principle, he had bought a gun very cheap, "a splendid bargain which I have used the last ten years. I am not as strong as I once was so I bought a featherweight one."

To buy a light, cheap gun is extremely dangerous. Only a very first-cla.s.s maker can reduce the weight of a gun to its limit without risk of a burst, and the materials must be flawless.

When I saw the gun I was sorry I had offered to shoot it. The barrels looked fearfully thin at the breech, of inferior metal, and rattled from bad fitting, when one succeeded in closing the gun.

The weakness of the gun, however, was made up by the strength of the cartridges, which were for pigeon shooting, and loaded with a full 1 ounces of shot and an enormous charge of nitro powder.

The gun had the proof mark for black powder only!

He was delighted with his cartridges and told me he had bought them at a great bargain from the executors of a celebrated pigeon shot recently deceased.

I ventured to suggest that it might be dangerous to shoot such a heavy charge of nitro powder out of a very light gun proofed only for black powder.

He said: "That's nothing, I am not as active as I was and I was told these cartridges would kill much farther than lighter loaded ones, and how cheap they are!"

I, with many misgivings, had a clay pigeon thrown, but the gun refused to go off.

I took out the cartridges and tested the trigger-pulls by feel.

They were like lifting a coal scuttle.

I said to him: "Do you know what your trigger-pull is?" He did not understand what I meant. I used a trigger-tester. They were well over nine pounds each. A shotgun generally has 2 for front trigger and 2 for back trigger.

I had another pigeon thrown.

I took a hard tug at the trigger and the gun went off with such a recoil that the stock nearly jumped off my shoulder. I do not know where the charge went; the pigeon was almost out of range before I could get the trigger to act. (I learned the cartridges had been stored near the kitchen fire!!!)

This was enough for me and fully explained why the old man, whilst shooting all his life, had never become expert.

First-cla.s.s gunmakers see to the trigger-pull so as to make a compromise between a nice, light trigger-pull and one safe to use.

Military rifles are made with a very heavy trigger-pull in order to make them safe to be handled by men who have rough, hard hands from manual labour.

This, in my opinion, is a mistake. A very heavy trigger-pull prevents accurate shooting, because the rifle is always going off later than you want it to and encourages hanging on to the trigger.

The man gets into the habit of pressing on the trigger when he is not shooting. He knows the rifle will not go off unless he gives a tug at the trigger.

With a light trigger, a man knows that he must keep his finger clear of it, or he will fire his rifle accidentally.

When learning the handling of the single-shot pistol (the automatic must not be touched till the learner is familiar with the single-shot), blank ammunition may be used.

The learner is very apt to discharge his pistol unintentionally, and the fright caused by firing a blank cartridge by accident will impress on him to be more careful in the future, before he had a loaded cartridge in the pistol, which might cause a fatal accident if discharged unintentionally.

As the automatic cannot be made with as light a trigger-pull as a single-shot pistol, it becomes a question as to how light the trigger-pull of your single-shot pistol should be.

If you want to make the best possible shooting with it and to make your lessons as pleasant and as easy as possible, have as light a trigger-pull as your gunmaker (not an ironmonger who sells firearms) recommends.

If, however, it is important that you should learn an automatic pistol well, and the single-shot pistol is only used for getting familiar with firearms, then have the trigger-pull adjusted to be as near as possible, not only of the strength, but of the character of the automatic pistol you intend to use later.

Two triggers of the same weight may vary greatly in the feel and sweetness of the pull.