They made a prodigious racket, but failed somehow to fully express my feelings.

The little brass pistol in my bedroom suddenly occurred to me.

It had been loaded I don't know how many months, long before I left New Orleans, and now was the time, if ever, to fire it off.

Muskets, blunderbusses, and pistols were banging away lively all over town, and the smell of gunpowder, floating on the air, set me wild to add something respectable to the universal din.
When the pistol was produced, Jack Harris examined the rusty cap and prophesied that it would not explode.
"Never mind," said I, "let's try it." I had fired the pistol once, secretly, in New Orleans, and, remembering the noise it gave birth to on that occasion, I shut both eyes tight as I pulled the trigger.

The hammer clicked on the cap with a dull, dead sound.