Skelding took a snap-shot at it as it fell.
"If that cap is damaged," said Ives, smoothing his precious bang which the brisk breeze began to flirt about, "I'll make you fellows pay for it.

That's flat!" But Julian's alarm was premature.

Not a shot had touched it.
The members of the Chickering set continued the delightful sport of snatching hats and caps from each other's heads and shooting at them with Paulding's fine English gun; but the only damage done was by the falls the articles received, for not a shot touched any of them.
"Of course, fellahs, a moor cock doesn't fly that way," Willis drawlingly explained, in extenuation of the poor shooting.

"He doesn't go right up and down, you 'now.

He has wings, don't you 'now, and flies straight away, like a shot.