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More "Ambuscade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through the lessons of a military drill; showing them how to fire and fall back, how to advance and retreat, how to form in line of march, how to pitch their tents for a night's encampment, how to lay an Indian ambuscade, how to scale a wall, how to storm a battery; and, in short, forty other evolutions not to be found in any work on military tactics ever written, and at which old Wooden Leg, had he been there, would have shaken his cocked hat with a dubious look. ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... attack them with three regiments of infantry, one of cavalry, and two nine-pounders. He thought he should surprise them, and contrived so that he should come upon them about daybreak. Sheo Ratan knew all his plans. He placed one hundred and fifty of his men in ambuscade at the entrance to the jungle, and kept the other hundred and fifty by him in the centre. When they had got well in, the party in ambush rushed upon the rear, while he attacked them in front. After a short resistance, Ghulam Husain's force took to flight, leaving five hundred ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... men out from behind the stockade, while the remainder were concealed in ambush near the spring with which the garrison was supplied with water. The most experienced of the defenders understood the tactics of their wily foes, and shrewdly guessed that an ambuscade had been prepared in order to cut off the garrison from access to the spring. The water in the station was already exhausted, and unless a fresh supply could be obtained the most dreadful sufferings were apprehended. It was thought probable that the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... smoking, looking sometimes on the solemn front of the old palatial mansion, and sometimes breathing a white film up to the stars, impatient, like the enamoured Aladdin, watching in ambuscade for the emergence of the Princess Badroulbadour. But honest Mark forgot that young ladies do not always come out quite alone, and jump unassisted into their vehicles. And in fact not only did Lord Chelford assist the fair lady, cloaked and hooded, into the carriage, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Twice she heft her ambuscade to go to bed, and twice Curiosity, or Something, drew her back. At last, having looked, peered, and peeped, till her feet were cold, and her face the reverse, she informed herself that the foolish ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and ran across some marsh land, he perceived a short distance from him a dark shadow, which his practised eye detected at once as a body of crouching men. Reining up his horse within a few yards of the ambuscade, he wrapped his cloak round his bridle-arm and summoned ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... equal discrimination. In the former case a spot is selected at the descent or ascent of a hill, so that the carriage of the victim cannot be going at a sufficient pace to defeat the marksman's aim, and a conveniently protected angle, with facilities for escape, is occupied by the ambuscade. In the latter, either a natural amphitheatre or a conspicuous hill is pitched upon for the gathering. To the picturesque Mayo mind a park meeting on a dead flat would be the most uninteresting affair possible unless vitality were infused into the ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... century, were able to hew these coffins (they are at least twelve feet long by ten feet high), and, having hewn them, to carry them underground (they weigh on an average between sixty and seventy tons), and finally to range them in rows here in these strange chambers, where they stand as if in ambuscade on either side of us as we pass? Each in its turn has contained quite comfortably the mummy of a bull Apis, armoured in plates of gold. But in spite of their weight, in spite of their solidity which effectively defies destruction, they have ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... Turk before him, he backed toward the shadowed recess, with the one idea of shielding Cara. But the darker spot was the door behind which Sayed Ayoub lay in ambuscade, and as Karyl reached it, it swung open, showing them against a background as bright as though they were painted on ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... 'The ambuscade shall be laid in the very same place where the infamous one concealed you in order to expose me to your gaze. At the approach of night I shall turn back one of the folding-doors upon you, undress myself, lie down, and when ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... farewells were smuggled through under an ambuscade of laughter, and the parting over ere I knew it was begun. The figures vanished, the steps died away along the silent city front; on board, the men had returned to their labours, the captain to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "The ambuscade was well-planned, and the Southlanders had enlisted the aid of the Painted Men, to their shame be it said. So our brethren found themselves hemmed in at every point. Yet they sold their lives at a good price, and they are mourning to-day in the Southland, even as we here. Not a Doomsman ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... ranging them comfortably around the many hay and straw stacks of the neighborhood. Inquiry revealed that a reconnoitring party, misled by the apparent quiet of the other side, had crossed, fallen into an ambuscade, and under the most galling of fires, artillery and musketry, kept up most unmercifully by the advancing rebels, who thus ungraciously repaid the courtesy shown them the day after Antietam—had been compelled to recross that most difficult ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... o'erwhelm'd th' unhappy town She feign'd nocturnal orgies; left my bed, And, mix'd with Trojan dames, the dances led Then, waving high her torch, the signal made, Which rous'd the Grecians from their ambuscade. With watching overworn, with cares oppress'd, Unhappy I had laid me down to rest, And heavy sleep my weary limbs possess'd. Meantime my worthy wife our arms mislaid, And from beneath my head my sword convey'd; ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... Crows put up a good fight, and managed to squirm away from the gagging boxing-gloves and let out a yelp; but the heavy door of the gymnasium kept the secret mum, and there was something so surprising about the ambuscade in the dark that the Dozen soon had the half-dozen securely gagged and fettered. Then they were toted like meal-bags up the stairs of the chapel, and on up and up into the loft, and into the bell-tower. There they were laid out on the floor, and their angry eyes discovered that they were ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... take for this?" answered the cautious soldier—"A man must know his guarantee, or he may fall into an ambuscade." ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... imaginative nor of a romantic turn of mind; but, the circumstances reviewed, it's nothing to his discredit that he entertained a passing suspicion of some curious conspiracy against the girl, thought of an ambuscade, and with quick eyes raked the surroundings for signs of a confederate ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... war chief, named tienne Annaotaha, whose life is described as a succession of conflicts and adventures, and who is said to have been always in luck, landed with a few companions, and fell into an ambuscade of the Iroquois. He prepared to defend himself, when they called out to him, that they came not as enemies, but as friends, and that they brought wampum-belts and presents to persuade the Hurons to forget the past, go back with them to ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Having formerly been at war with Cyrus, and afterwards reconciled to him, he now made a conspiracy to destroy him. he made a proposal to Cyrus: if Cyrus would furnish him with a thousand horsemen, he would deal with these troopers, who were burning down everything in front of them; he would lay an ambuscade and cut them down, or he would capture a host of them alive; in any case, he would put a stop to their aggressiveness and burnings; he would see to it that they did not ever get a chance of setting eyes on Cyrus's army and reporting ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... uncle, and Andrew was assisting to fill a spring-cart with pumpkins. This vehicle had arrived under guidance of a tall, fair young man with perfect teeth and a pleasant smile, which kept them well before the public, seeing they were not concealed by any hirsute ambuscade, regarding the adorning qualities of which Dawn and her grandmother were divided. The former came out to inform Andrew that the pony had to be harnessed, as Mrs Clay had promised Miss Flipp she could drive her uncle back to catch ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... due in part to the courage, skill, and superior numbers of the Navajos and in part to the character of the country, which is easily defended, as the routes of travel along the canyons present excellent opportunities for defense and ambuscade. But under the leadership and by the advice of Kit Carson these Indians were ultimately conquered. This wily but brave frontiersman recommended a new method of warfare, which was to destroy the herds and flocks of ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... late! A dark wave of men rushed from the ambuscade, surged up round the car, ... swept forward.... She had disappeared, and, as Philammon followed breathless, the horses galloped past him madly homeward with ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... followers, upon landing, sat down upon the beach for breakfast; but their repast was rudely disturbed by a shower of stones from an ambuscade of Typees in the edge of the wood. Stopping but a moment to finish their food, the jackies picked up their cutlasses and muskets, and started for the enemy. They were soon in the shady recesses of the tropical ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... intended to place his men in ambuscade at the ford, but, owing to various delays caused by the Indians, he was still a mile away from the ford when the British crossed. He was marching forward when he came suddenly upon the little party of guides ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... one or two guns had been let off, but happily they did no mischief. We had hailed them several times; but they not hearing, we received no answer, which was the cause of our firing. The boat was then sent on board of her, and she proved to be the Ambuscade man of war, to my no small disappointment. We returned to Portsmouth, without having been in any action, just at the trial of Admiral Byng (whom I saw several times during it): and my master having left the ship, and gone to London for ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... resolved and prepared.' He admitted the 'intent was particular against Sir Walter Ralegh and others.' He thought this a proof that 'it was no matter of treason against her Majesty, but rather a manifestation of the contrary.' Essex gave out that his rising was prompted by a discovery that there was an ambuscade of musketeers placed upon the water by the device of Lord Cobham and Ralegh, to murder him in the way as he passed. Blount, at his trial, confessed there was no foundation for the allegation. In reply to Cecil, who ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... the cathedral and placed himself in ambuscade at the corner of the Rue des Canettes; it was impossible that Bazin should go out of the cathedral without his ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... reach Kwisa without further molestation. However, in mounting a steep rise, after crossing a river, a heavy fire was suddenly opened on them; and they had their first experience of the nature of the ground chosen by the enemy for an ambuscade. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... untaken in their rear. The garrison of that fort had been reinforced by many cohorts of the regular army who had flocked thither at the general's signal, and with these Sabinianus prepared a formidable ambuscade. He sent a considerable number of infantry round by unfrequented paths over the mountains, and ordered them to take up a commanding but concealed position, and to rush forth from thence at a given signal. He himself started with his cavalry from Lychnidus at nightfall, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... Nombre de Dios. He was evidently a man of great presence of mind. He put spurs to his horse, and galloped off down the road, partly to escape the danger, but partly also to warn the treasure train, the bells of which were now clanging loudly at a little distance from the ambuscade. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... breaks a bottle over one of their heads; and a fight ensues, in which the bandits are worsted. The two Huguenots reach La Rochelle, which is soon afterwards besieged by the king's troops. In a sortie, Bernard forms an ambuscade, into which his brother unfortunately falls, and receives a mortal wound. Taken into La Rochelle, he is laid upon a bed to die; and, refusing the spiritual assistance of Catholic priest and Protestant minister, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... less than 250,000 persons, only about 100,000 crossed into Asia Minor. The fate of these was no better than that of those who had perished in Hungary and Bulgaria. After grievous suffering and loss they at last reached Nicaea. There they fell into an ambuscade; and out of the whole of the undisciplined masses who had followed Peter the Hermit, it is doubtful whether 10,000 ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances, as if to lead him further from his way. For Denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there was real danger ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... ambuscade That the twining vines had made, They found the grapes, in clusters, Drinking up the shine and shade— Plumpt like tiny skins of wine, With a vintage so divine That the tongue of fancy tingled With ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... herself but also—which had certainly not been in her mind before—to keep her husband away from herself. Something latent in the situation had surprised her with this effect. It had arisen out of the quarrel like a sharpshooter out of an ambuscade. Her right to go out alone had now only the value of a mere pretext for far more extensive independence. The ultimate extent of these independences, she still dared ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Baden-Powell, and if he had not been locked up in Mafeking all through those precious months at the beginning of the war, it is no idle guesswork to say that we should have lost fewer men and fewer guns by surprise and ambuscade. ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... and they to take the residue. But inasmuch as the convoy across the moors, under his command, would be strong, and strongly armed, the Doones must be sure to send not less than a score of men, if possible. He himself, at a place agreed upon, and fit for an ambuscade, would call a halt, and contrive in the darkness to pour a little water into the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... extreme heat of the sun by day, and the heavy dews at nightfall. As the sea-breeze and the flood-tide set in, the boats again started and proceeded up the river. It was ascertained the war-canoes were beyond where the Panda was first taken; for fear of an ambuscade great caution was observed in proceeding. "As we approached a point, a single native was observed standing near a hut erected near the river, who, as we approached, beckoned, and called for us to land. We endeavored to do so, but fortunately the water ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... dervishes of principle, who rushed on the bayonets in the name of manhood and truth and sincerity. Godwin when he came in his systematic treatise to describe how a free people would conduct a defensive war, declared that it would scorn to resort to a stratagem or an ambuscade. In the same spirit Holcroft hearing that a warrant was out against him for high treason, walked boldly into the Chief Justice's court, and announced that he came to be put upon his trial "that if I am a guilty man, the whole extent of my guilt may become ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... successfully "tackle" with his little detachment. The major rejoiced that the captain was sensible enough to discontinue the pursuit at the Niobrara crossing. Beyond that there were numerous ridges, winding ravines, even a shallow canyon or two,—the very places for ambuscade; and it would be an easy matter for a small party of the Sioux to drop back and give the pursuers a bloody welcome. No! Terry had done admirably so long as there was a chance of square fighting, and his subsequent moves, barring the one dash down-stream after ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... glimpses of the old trap of a feigned flight and ambuscade, into which they fell, and so again lose "possession of the place of death," the ultimate test of victory. "This year," says the Saxon Chronicle, "nine general battles were fought against the army in the kingdom south of the Thames; besides which Alfred, the king's brother, and single aldermen ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... Leaving the party in ambuscade below, I ascended the butte, to obtain a view of the surrounding country. The day had now fairly broken, and the sun was just rising over the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... glory in falling in an ambuscade. It is a death which always implies a little rashness or want of foresight. Often, indeed, he who falls in one meets with but little pity. Those who are not pitied, Raoul, have died to little purpose. Still further, the conqueror laughs, and ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Salernum, which are far superior to the empire of the East, are quite equal to the gay scarf which a municipal authority wears, and the uneasiness with which a Jacobin journalist returns to his home in the evening, fearing always lest he should fall into an ambuscade of the cut-throats of the general. For me it was not to establish two chambers that I first mounted the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... rally to the fragrant cedar's shade The settler's crafty foe, With toilsome march and midnight ambuscade To lay his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... Clennam was at the cottage, the Dowager Mrs Gowan drove up, in the Hampton Court equipage which pretended to be the exclusive equipage of so many individual proprietors. She descended, in her shady ambuscade of green fan, to favour Mr and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Breakfast over, the work of landing the troops was begun. The point chosen was a broad beach fringed with woods near the anchorage of the vessels. Before landing the troops, the ships threw a few shells into the woods, to make certain that they concealed no ambuscade, as in the disastrous affair at Matthias Point. After two dozen shells had burst, mowing down trees, and driving out frightened animals in plenty, but no sharp-shooters, the long-boats put off from the transports bearing the soldiers for the land attack. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... original intention, the result might have been more favorable to the French, for the former would then have been the attacking party and have borne the brunt of the battle. As it was, the French commander nearly succeeded in drawing the thousand men that Johnson had sent out to meet him into an ambuscade, and among the slain was brave Colonel Williams, commander of the Provincials in this engagement, and gallant Chief Hendrick, who had accompanied him ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... their ambuscade, they came to a mill on the skirt of the forest and saw the farm burning amid the starlight. Here, under some huge oaks, in front of a frozen pool, they ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... what Amaury the traitor wants; he goes to Charlot and proposes an ambuscade to lie in wait for the two boys and get rid of them; his real purpose being to get rid of the king's son as well as of ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... passed by, their famous captain at their head. One of them—an old friend—reined in long enough to tell me they were off to lie in wait for a small British patrol, which, a native had told them, daily passed a certain spot suitable for an ambuscade. ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... where the lumbermen were in camp, and made the same proposition, which they accepted, as they were new in the country and needed horses and mules. The lumbermen joined the Mexicans, and as they could easily discern the course of the Apaches by the clouds of dust, succeeded in forming an ambuscade and fired on the Apaches when they reached the river. The Apaches fled at the fire, ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... have cured the almost total blindness of Bertram, son of Hugo de Jubilet, after the disease had baffled the skill of the Saracen and Christian-Syrian physicians of his day. Now Littre avers that a certain Hugo de Jubilet was involved in an ambuscade in Syria in the year 1227, and that he had a son named Bertram. It is very natural, of course, to conclude that this Bertram was the patient recorded in the book of Gilbert. Kingsford says that Gilbert "met" Bertram in Syria, but the text of the Compendium ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... and of having things outside in the best posture possible, he eluded the guardships of the Athenians and sailed out. Remaining among the Chalcidians, he continued to carry on the war; in particular he laid an ambuscade near the city of the Sermylians, and cut off many of them; he also communicated with Peloponnese, and tried to contrive some method by which help might be brought. Meanwhile, after the completion of the investment of Potidaea, Phormio next employed his sixteen ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... days of travel we encountered herds of buffalo and mustangs or wild horses, and when our scouts reported numerous Indian signs, we advanced slowly and carefully, momentarily expecting an ambuscade and attack. Our column halted frequently while our horsemen explored suspicious-looking ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... and I stepped lightly, so as not to leave much mark, on some dried grass, and made off up the side of the draw, among the bushes. These grew as high as our shoulders, and formed a fine ambuscade. We climbed far enough so that we could see both sides of the draw and the trail in between; and by crawling we picked a good spot ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... The whole affair was a mistake on the part of the commander. His troops had been heedlessly pushed forward, and General Longstreet, commanding the opposing brigade, by carefully concealing his infantry, had drawn him into an ambuscade. The results of the action were not without importance. The Federals fell back with a loss of 83 officers and men, and the Confederates were much elated at their easy success. Among some of the Northerners, on the other ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... stride and bethought him of shelter. He travelled a road that faithfully followed the convolutions of the levee, running along its base, but whither he knew not. Bushes and rank grass crowded it to the wheel ruts, and out of this ambuscade the pests of the lowlands swarmed after him, humming a keen, vicious soprano. And as the night grew nearer, although colder, the whine of the mosquitoes became a greedy, petulant snarl that shut out all other sounds. To his right, against the heavens, he ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Bey, after his successes in Arabia, invaded Syria and wrested that province from the power of the sultan. The victorious soldier, however, now plotted against his master and took the lead in a military revolt. As a result of this, Ali Bey fell into an ambuscade set by his own rebellious subjects, and died from poisoning m 1786. Thus terminated the career of the famous Mamluk, a man whose energy, talents, and ambition bear a strong resemblance to those of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... then on the island. He withdrew to his fort at Frederica, and anxiously awaited reinforcements from Carolina. By turning to account the desertion of a French soldier he precipitated the attack of the Spaniards, and on their march to Frederica they fell into an ambuscade. Great slaughter ensued, and they retreated precipitately. The place of conflict is to this day known as "Bloody Marsh." The Spaniards retreated south along the coast in their vessels, and on their way attacked Fort ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... was soon checked; the cannon from the fortress forced them to retire as far off as the isle of Upe. In the mean time, seven poor fishermen, who had been out all night about their employment, and were now returning to the town, fell into an ambuscade of the Infidels, were taken, and brought before the general. After he had cut off their ears and noses, he sent them back with a letter, directed to Don Francisco de Melo, governor of Malacca, of which these ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... and made five hours only, because to-morrow there is no herbage until late in the evening. How tantalising to be obliged to advance thus by short stages towards an ambuscade! We take things pretty philosophically, however, and make geological observations. Overweg (who begins to show signs of weakness) is delighted that we have at length reached a region of granite. I think I must have passed a great number of rocks of the same kind between Ghadamez ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... the sudden torrents peculiar to that country, and which, winding among the trees and copse-wood, formed, as it were, a net of places of concealment, opening into each other, so that there was perhaps no place in the world so fit for the purpose of ambuscade. The spot where the borderer Turnbull had made his escape at the hunting match, was one specimen of this broken country, and perhaps connected itself with the various thickets and passes through which ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... and 9th Tennessee of my brigade—aggregating nearly six hundred men—and also the two pieces of artillery. These regiments were moved beyond Burkesville and placed in a position which served all the purposes of an ambuscade. When the enemy approached, one or two volleys caused his column to recoil in confusion. General Morgan instantly charged it with Quirk's scouts and some companies of the 9th Tennessee, and not only prevented it from rallying, but drove it all the way back to Marrowbone, entering the encampment ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... under Lieutenant-Colonel Frizell very cleverly succeeded in drawing into an ambuscade a body of Floyd's cavalry under Colonel A. G. Jenkins. The principal body of our men lined a defile near the Hawk's Nest, and the skirmishers, retreating before the enemy, led them into the trap. Our men began firing ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... son of Priam, whom he had captured in an ambuscade, that Troy could not be taken unless both Philoctetes and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, could be prevailed upon to join the besiegers. The former, having been stung in the foot by a serpent, and becoming insupportable to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... they dwelt on the Kabompo river, 200 m. to the N.E. of their present country, and here the descendants of a section of the tribe which did not migrate still remain, under the name Balokwakwa (men of the ambuscade), formerly known as Aalukolui. That the Barotse at a still more remote period emigrated from the far north-east is indicated by vague tradition as well as by a certain similarity in type and language to some tribes living in that direction, though the fact that natives from Mashonaland can ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... communicate with the support. As in enemy's country the roads are likely to be waylaid, patrols are sent out to investigate any flanking hill, or wood, or group of buildings, behind which a party could be hiding. You can imagine the grim interest in trying to walk into an ambuscade. I company's patrols having failed to locate the enemy in his last concealment, we were particularly anxious to make ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... the herdsmen departed, trotting rapidly off toward the village, but they stopped every here and there, at all the highest spots on the road, as though they were looking out for some hidden ambuscade, always keeping near enough to Orso and his sister to be able to come to their assistance if necessary. And old Polo ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... ambush was captured and killed. This so excited the Indians that they raised the war-whoop. Fifty English soldiers were sent from the fort to ascertain the occasion of the yelling, and were drawn into the ambuscade. A volley from the woods on either side swept them down, and before the remainder could recover from the panic into which they were thrown by the volley, they were assailed with swords, bayonets and tomahawks, and but four out of the party escaped ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... if the Nicaraguans meant to fight, they would place an ambush in the dense jungle along the river, and from this place of concealment harass the flotilla before it got within gunshot of the fort. This ambuscade could easily fall back upon the fort if directly attacked and defeated. This, the young man argued was what he himself would have done had he been in command of the Nicaraguan forces, so it naturally occurred to him to discover ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... adversary; and perceiving that he was reconnoitring him, he presented to him, from among the trees and behind curtains, false heads of columns. The time that Grant occupied in reconnoitring, and discovering an imaginary ambuscade, M. de Lafayette employed in regaining the foreground; at length he passed by Grant's column. He managed to impose likewise on Grey's column, which followed him; and when the third division, under Howe and Clinton, ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... that those who wanted my cape and blade would have to get them with some trouble. Then I quickened pace, while they still followed slowly at my heels; this augmented my fear, for I thought I might be falling into an ambuscade, which would have cut me off in front as well as rear. Accordingly, when I was at the distance of a hundred paces from my home, I ran with all my might, and shouted at the top of my voice: "To arms, to arms! out with you, out with you! I am being murdered." In a moment four of my young ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... thundering round the curve, there was a fierce splutter of pistol shots from amongst the bushes, and the grey sank down upon its knees with a sobbing moan, struck mortally in the head. Ezra sprang to his feet and rushed at the ambuscade, while the sergeant, who had been grazed on the cheek by the first volley, jumped from his horse and followed him. Burt and Farintosh met them foot to foot with all the Saxon gallantry which underlies the Saxon brutality. Burt stabbed at the sergeant and struck him through the muscle ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... comes on, you shall order fifteen or twenty men, under the command of your sergeant La Place, to be under arms, and to lay themselves flat on the ground, between this place and the head-quarters." "What the devil!" cried Matta, "an ambuscade? God forgive me, I believe you intend to rob the poor Savoyard. If that be your intention, I declare I will have nothing to say to it" "Poor devil!" said the Chevalier, "the matter is this; it is very likely that we shall win his money. The ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... would terrify, And cause them from their lairs to fly. And, sooth, the horrid noise the creature made Did strike the tenants of the wood with dread; And, as they headlong fled, All fell within the Lion's ambuscade. "Has not my service glorious Made both of us victorious?" Cried out the much-elated Ass. "Yes," said the Lion; "bravely bray'd! Had I not known yourself and race, I should have been myself afraid!" The Donkey, had he dared, With anger would ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... followers arrive, and Robin Hood offers the money to redeem Sir Richard's bond; but, upon a legal quibble, the Abbot declines to receive it—preferring to seize the forfeited land. Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham appear, and Robin and his Foresters form an ambuscade. Sir Richard Lea has been brought in, upon his litter, and Marian stays beside him. Prince John attempts to seize her, but this time he is frustrated by the sudden advent of King Richard—from whose presence he slinks away. The myrmidons ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... of their commanders, set in irresistibly against them, before taking refuge inside the walls of the city. An hour after parting from Mr. Chambers I am wheeling briskly down the same road on the eastern slope of the pass where Mukhtar Pasha's ill-fated column was drawn into the fatal ambuscade that suddenly turned the fortunes of the day against them. While rapidly gliding down the gentle gradient, I fancy I can see the Cossack regiments, advancing toward the Turkish position, the unwary and over-confident Osmanlis ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... every way a big man," said the Doctor. "On the whole, he's about our biggest man. An officer who came out of the ambuscade at Fort Duquesne with thirty living men out of three companies and four shot holes in his coat must have an engagement with Destiny. Evidently his work was not finished. You have traveled about some. What is the feeling ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... they had been in a manner expelled. The violence of Duke Charles, in the one country, was scarcely more to be feared than the cold and tyrannical policy of King Louis in the other. After deep thought, Durward could form no better or safer plan for their security, than that, evading the ambuscade, they should take the road to Liege by the left hand of the Maes, and throw themselves, as the ladies originally designed, upon the protection of the excellent Bishop. That Prelate's will to protect them could not be doubted, and, if reinforced by this Burgundian party of men at arms, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... He learnt likewise, that the royalists squadron had gone to the port of Santa, to which place he accordingly marched. Aldana got notice of his coming from some Spanish inhabitants of that place, and laid an ambuscade for him, consisting of an hundred and fifty musqueteers, in a place overgrown with tall reeds on the side of the road by which Acosta had to march in his way to Santa. Acosta had certainly fallen into the snare, if he had not fortunately made prisoners of some spies who had been sent ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... muttered. Still for some moments she continued to look about her in a dazed way; at length she recognised the old woman, and the cottage. Then she remembered, with a moan, what had happened—the ambuscade, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... Xenophon and the rear-guard, on hearing it, thought that some new enemies were assailing the front, for in the rear, too, the people from the country that they had burnt were following them, and the rear-guard, by placing an ambuscade, had killed some, and taken others prisoners, and had captured about twenty shields made of raw ox-hides with the hair on. 23. But as the noise still increased, and drew nearer, and as those who came up from time to time kept running at full speed to join those who were continually shouting, ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... Punic war. Hannibal and his forces pitched camp at Lake Trasimenus last night. They prepared an ambuscade for the Romans, and a battle took place at the fourth watch this morning. ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... to attend the forthcoming State Temperance Alliance which held its second annual meeting February 20, and to which a dozen of us went bearing credentials. It was evident from the first that trouble was brewing. The enemy had had a whole year to prepare an ambuscade of which our party had no suspicion. A Committee on Credentials was appointed with instructions to rule the woman suffrage delegation out of the Alliance as a "disturbing element." Hon J. Quinn Thornton was chairman of that committee. In his report he declared all delegations to be satisfactory ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... body of the regiment was marching leisurely along the road, when bang, debang, debang, bang, and a volley of buck and ball came hurling right through the two advance companies of the regiment—companies H and K. We had marched into a Yankee ambuscade. ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... named Andrew Grear, who lived at Watauga, had been at Echota. He had disposed of his wares, and was about to return with the furs he had taken in exchange, when he perceived signs of hostile feeling among some of the young warriors, and on his return, fearing an ambuscade on the great war-path, he left it before he reached the crossing at the French Broad, and went homeward by a less-frequented trail along the Nolachucky. Two other traders, named Boyd and Dagget, who left Echota on the following day, pursued the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... the table, and light scaled cuirass, which I will do on under my toga. I shall be there at the fourth hour precisely; but it were well that ye should be on your posts by the second hour or soon after. For it may be, he too will lay an ambuscade, and so ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... enemy then condensed his forces and crossed the bridge, and was encountered on the plains of Chippewa by Scott, with his brigade, when the action became severe and general. No ambuscade or masked batteries were held in reserve—the enemy was not a moment concealed from our view—no tangled thicket or umbrageous groves gave effect or facility to our rifles: the battle was fought on a plain—where man grappled man, force was opposed to ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... January 1567 Sampiero was slain in an ambuscade laid for him in the defile of Cauro, into which he had been led by forged letters brought him by the monk ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... say, to this stifling of all complaints and of all light, no man, no fact wears its true aspect or bears its true name. M. Bonaparte's crime is not a crime, it is called a necessity; M. Bonaparte's ambuscade is not an ambuscade, it is called a defence of public order; M. Bonaparte's robberies are not robberies, they are called measures of state; M. Bonaparte's murders are not murders, they are called public safety; ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... of whatever kind it may be, an individual suspected of any crime is arrested, the arrest is held secret. Four or five men are placed in ambuscade in the first room. The door is opened to all who knock. It is closed after them, and they are arrested; so that at the end of two or three days they have in their power almost all the HABITUES of the establishment. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the stranger, "it seems that I have gone astray; if the chateau is on the other side, where can I establish my ambuscade?" ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... Beaujeu, Captain, intrusted with the ambuscade at the battle of the Monongahela, i. 166; death of, in the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... parties under captain Mason and captain Ogal decoyed within the Indian lines and cut to pieces, Girty demands the surrender of Wheeling, Col. Zane's reply, Indians attacks the fort and retire, Arrival of col. Swearingen with a reinforcement, of captain Foreman, Ambuscade at Grave creek narrows, conspiracy of Tories discovered and defeated, Petro and White taken prisoners, Irruption into Tygarts Valley, Murder at ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... father captured James and held him in degrading captivity. He escaped, and was reconciled to his gaoler, who, in 1584, again conspired, and was executed, while the Ruthven lands were forfeited. By a new revolution (1585-1586) the Ruthvens were reinstated. In July 1593 Gowrie's mother, by an artful ambuscade, enabled the Earl of Bothwell again to kidnap the King. In 1594 our Gowrie, then a lad, joined Bothwell in open rebellion. He was pardoned, and in August 1594 went abroad, travelled as far as Rome, studied at Padua, and, summoned by the party ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... authority. The very night before the column reaches the borders of the reservation the leading chiefs come in camp to interview the officers, shake hands, beg tobacco, and try on their clothes, then go back to their braves and laugh as they tell there are only a handful, and plan the morrow's ambuscade and massacre. Vae victis! There are women and children among the garrisons along the Union Pacific whose hearts have little room for thoughts of germans in the horror of this morning's tidings. But Sibley is miles and miles away, and, as Mrs. Wheeler says, aren't ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... think long over the best way quickly to awaken the love of the page, and had soon discovered the natural ambuscade in the which the most wary are taken. This is how: at the warmest hour of the day the good man took his siesta after the Saracen fashion, a habit in which he had never failed, since his return from the Holy Land. During this time ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... combat, and presently seizes the opportunity afforded by a false alarm of impending attack to break up the council. The Latin mothers and maidens offer gifts and litanies to Pallas. Turnus arms for battle (337-576). Camilla and Messapus command the Latin horse; Turnus prepares an ambuscade (577-612). Diana tells the story of Camilla and charges Opis, one of her nymphs, to avenge her should she fall (613-684). Opis watches the battle before the city of Latinus (685-738). The deeds and death of Camilla ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... council of war, they rose up and marched towards Mansoul; but all in a manner invisible, save only Diabolus, who approached the town in the shape and body of a dragon. So they drew up and sat down before Eargate, and laid their ambuscade for Mr. Resistance within a bow shot of the town. Then Diabolus, being come to the gate, sounded his trumpet for audience, at which the chiefs of the town, such as my lord Innocent, my lord Will-be-will, Mr. Recorder, and Captain Resistance, came down to the wall to see who was there and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... 3rd, 1814. During these campaigns he was never wounded, although exposed to great danger. One morning, among others, his old servant had scarcely reached the skirts of a forest in which the enemy had an ambuscade than his master's horse was killed by a ball, and the rider overthrown. The servant thought it was all over with his master, but the sad thought had hardly entered his mind when Beckwith sprang up and cried out, "All right, John," and by a quick ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... "black" train. Two engines were attached to a troop-train, and Jewett seated himself on the pilot of the forward locomotive. The lights were all put out. They were to have no pilot engine, but were to slip past the ambuscade, if possible, and take chances on lifted rails and absent bridges. It was near the end of a dark, rainy night. The train was rolling along at a good freight clip, the engines working as full as might be without ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... in the city. When Dragut returned, the siege had gone on for a month, without result; a tremendous assault had been repulsed with heavy loss to the besiegers, who were growing disheartened. The Corsair assembled a body of Moors and Turks and attempted to relieve the fortress; but his ambuscade failed, His[a]r's simultaneous sally was driven back, and Dragut, seeing that he could do nothing, fled to Jerba. His retreat gave fresh energy to the siege, and a change of attack discovered the weak places of the defence. ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... ready to fall, not only upon their enemies, but also on their neighbours, in the hope either of robbing them when off their guard, or of obtaining a ransom for any unwary traveller who might fall into their hands. Everywhere society was in ambuscade, and waged civil war—individual against individual—without peace or mercy. Such was the reign of feudalism. It is unnecessary to point out how this system of perpetual petty warfare tended to reduce the power of centralisation, and how royalty itself was weakened towards ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... desperate than others, A pair of ragamuffin brothers In secret ambuscade join'd forces, To carry on unlawful courses. These Robbers' names, enough to shake us, Where, Strymon one, the other Cacus. And, more the neighbourhood to bother, A wicked dam they had for mother, Who knew their craft, but not forbid it, And whatsoe'er ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Ottawa from the Great Beyond shortly after Radisson returned from Onondaga. Six of these Algonquins had brought their furs to Three Rivers. Some emissaries had gone to Quebec to meet the governor; but the majority of the Indians remained at Montreal to avoid the ambuscade of the Mohawks on Lake St. Peter. Radisson and Groseillers were not the only Frenchmen conspiring to wrest fame and fortune from the Upper Country. When the Indians came back from Quebec, they were ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... further aggravated by the commission of actual hostilities within the territories of the United States. The ship Grange, a British vessel which had been cleared out from Philadelphia, was captured by the French frigate L'Ambuscade within the capes of the Delaware, while on her way to ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... and shut lips,—dumb prayers, wrung out of some depth within, such as Christian sent out of the slough, when he was like to die. But he did stop at the tavern, and there drank some brandy to steady his nerves; and he did not forget that there was an ambuscade of Rebels at Blue's Gap, and that he was to share in the attack on them at daylight: he spurred his horse, as he drew nearer Romney. Dode, being a woman, thinking love lost, sat by the fire, looking vacantly at nothing. Yet the loss was as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... happened to be squirrel-hunting, and he stepped into the road to get a good view of them. He was well grown for his age, and his single-barrelled shot-gun looked like a rifle. The revenue men halted at once. They suspected an ambuscade. Experience had taught them that the Moonshiners would fight when the necessity arose, and they held a council of war. The great gawky boy, with the curiosity of youth and ignorance combined, stood in ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... that a force of the enemy were in front, and that several men had been observed going into the woods on the right. A search was made of the bush, but as the shades of night had fallen fast it was impossible to grope through the woods, and fearing an ambuscade Col. Peacocke resolved to halt his column for the night. In the meantime he had sent two companies of the 16th Regiment to scour the woods, but owing to the darkness they were unable to do so. Having been told by some person that a bridge ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... arroyo which the waters of the rainy season had cut deep into the soft, powdery soil. Upon either bank grew cacti and mesquite, forming a sheltering screen behind which a regiment might have hidden. The place was ideal for an ambuscade. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... have been a warlike people, despite their own traditions. Sporadic forays, fostered by their ignorant dread of one another or stirred up by rival medicine-men, there may have been between different tribes—and there certainly were between the Indians and the Esquimaux—with ambuscade and slaughter of isolated hunting parties that ventured too far beyond the confines of their own territory; and one such affair would furnish tradition for generations to dilate upon. I have myself found all the men of Nulato gone scouting, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... could penetrate. The general width was about forty feet, and occasionally it diminished so as not to allow the passage of more than five or six persons abreast. In short, there could be no place in the world better adapted for the consummation of an ambuscade, and it was no more than natural that we should look carefully to our arms as we entered upon it. When I now think of our egregious folly, the chief subject of astonishment seems to be, that we should have ever ventured, under any circumstances, so ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of a dog, but the heart of a stag, never hast thou at any time dared in soul to arm thyself with the people for war, nor to go to ambuscade with the chiefs of the Greeks; for this always appears to thee to be death. Certainly it is much better through the wide army of the Achaeans, to take away the rewards of whoever may speak against thee. ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... into the confessional. What kind of a figure should I cut among the monks? And if I were to meet the abbot on the way, how could I help returning with him? If I had had a trusty friend I would have arranged an ambuscade and carried off my charmer. It would have been an easy task, as she had nobody to defend her. What if I were to pluck up my heart and beg them to let me sup in their company? I was afraid of the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... type is always hard to catch, and it's bad judgment to try to catch him until you have evidence enough to hang him. So, for the present, I'm certain that we'd better let the scoundrel go. But the flying of that kite means that there's danger of an ambuscade. This is the first time I've commanded in the field and I don't intend to be ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... Here once when Melanippe, daughter of Ares, had, gone forth, the hero Heracles caught her by ambuscade and Hippolyte gave him her glistening girdle as her sister's ransom, and he sent away his captive unharmed. In the bay of this headland, at the outfall of Thermodon, they ran ashore, for the sea was rough for their voyage. No river is like this, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... bushmen, whose advance had been, and still was, very slow and cautious, as if they dreaded an ambuscade, had approached to within seventy yards of the house. Thinking them yet too distant to make sure of them, we allowed them to come nearer. They did so; but they had now assumed a stealthy step, walking lightly, as if they feared that their footfalls ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... and him three parts asleep, having drunk hard. But it is ill to catch an Elliott. For a while, in the night and the black water that was deep as to his saddle-girths, he wrought with his staff like a smith at his stithy, and great was the sound of oaths and blows. With that the ambuscade was burst, and he rode for home with a pistol-ball in him, three knife wounds, the loss of his front teeth, a broken rib and bridle, and a dying horse. That was a race with death that the laird rode! In the mirk night, with his broken bridle and his ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... go that way; it is dangerous for you in the daytime"—it did lend itself to an ambuscade, and persons who knew Wilkes Booth assert having seen him prowling around—"it ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... places, they would not do so in places not to their advantage. Thus the path was cleared, upon this day, without encountering any enemy or sighting their fort. Again the men returned to the fleet for the night. On the third day, as the work of reconnoitering was proceeding, a large ambuscade of Indians attacked us in the open near a palm-grove. As was learned later, they numbered about two thousand. They attacked us with the greatest fury and determination, in small bodies of skilful troops. As the soldiers were ordered immediately ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... crew blazed up immediately. My shipmates were eager, too eager. As it turned out, their precipitancy was to cost them their chance of victory, for they began to riot while the three tradesmen were still handy to the roundhouse door, though, indeed, they had no knowledge, as had I, of the captain's ambuscade. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... quickly done. Scarce has the ambuscade been set, when the trampling of horses heard down the defile tells of a cavalcade coming up, and presently the foremost files appear rounding an angle of rock. Dim as is the light, the horseman leading can be told to be the young Tovas cacique, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... results. On the 18th of September, Colonel Sibley determined to move upon the enemy, and on that day camp was broken at the fort, a boat constructed, and a crossing of the Minnesota river effected near the fort, to prevent the possibility of an ambuscade. Colonel Sibley's force consisted of the Sixth Regiment under Colonel Crooks, about three hundred men of the Third under Major Welch, several companies of the Seventh under Col. William R. Marshall, a small number of mounted men under Colonel McPhail, and a ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... now looked through the hole to test the truth of the prognostication. The hour of five completed itself on their watches; the girl again came forward. And then the three in ambuscade could see her pull out her handkerchief and place it to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... era of agony that minute, in which, after avoiding the ambuscade that he felt sure awaited him at the door, he had nothing on earth he could do but wait and see what ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... significant look, made him return the poinard into his bosom, unseen by all except himself; for most of the party were disputing at a distant window, on the situation of a dell where they meant to form an ambuscade. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... called upon to face a foe that shuns general engagements, that can choose and does choose its own ground, that from the nature of the country is visible or invisible at pleasure, and that fights only from ambuscade and when all the advantages of position and numbers are on its side. In a country where all that is indispensable to life in the way of food, clothing, and shelter is so easily obtainable, especially by those born and bred on the soil, it is obvious that there ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... score of Theron's scouts passed by, their famous captain at their head. One of them—an old friend—reined in long enough to tell me they were off to lie in wait for a small British patrol, which, a native had told them, daily passed a certain spot suitable for an ambuscade. ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... me of the cause of their terror, which was that they recognized, by some peculiarity of their headgear, that these men belonged to the tribe of the Dilwas, the most ferocious and unscrupulous of the Bedouin, who had evidently laid an ambuscade for us at this point with the intention of seizing our caravan. When I thought of all my efforts in Abyssinia, of the length of my journey and of the dangers and fatigues which I had endured, I could not bear to think of this total disaster coming ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... still hovered around in such energetic and persevering hostility, that not a trapper could leave the camp without danger of falling into an ambuscade. The Indians avoided any decisive conflict, but their war-whoops and yells of defiance, like the howlings of wolves, could be heard, by day and by night, in the forests all around them. Unless the traps were carefully guarded, they were sure ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... farther we found a small Shed or Hutt, about which lay green shells of Cocoa Nutts. By this we were well assured that the inhabitants were not far off; nay, we thought we heard their Voices in the woods, which were so close and thick that we did not think it safe to venture in, for fear of an Ambuscade, as we had only a Boat's crew with us, a part of which were left to look after the boat, which lay about a 1/4 of a Mile from the Shore. We therefore took a walk upon the Sea beach, but had not gone above 200 Yards before we were attack'd by 3 or 4 Men, who came out of the woods a little ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... when the fatal horse, descending down, Pregnant with arms, o'erwhelm'd th' unhappy town She feign'd nocturnal orgies; left my bed, And, mix'd with Trojan dames, the dances led Then, waving high her torch, the signal made, Which rous'd the Grecians from their ambuscade. With watching overworn, with cares oppress'd, Unhappy I had laid me down to rest, And heavy sleep my weary limbs possess'd. Meantime my worthy wife our arms mislaid, And from beneath my head my sword convey'd; The door unlatch'd, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... his men in ambuscade at the ford, but, owing to various delays caused by the Indians, he was still a mile away from the ford when the British crossed. He was marching forward when he came suddenly upon the little party ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... Palmer, to whom every path and outlet in the wood appeared to be familiar, led the way through the most devious paths, and more than once excited anew the suspicion of the Israelite, that he intended to betray him into some ambuscade of his enemies. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... turned to retrace their steps, when suddenly, before Reynolds could reload his gun, or Burl disencumber himself of the buck, they found themselves completely surrounded by at least a dozen savages, who, hovering about the enemy's van, had spied the stragglers and laid in ambuscade to capture them, though all but within rifle-range of the American pickets. Taken by surprise, and outnumbered two to one, any attempt at resistance or escape would have been instant death. So they surrendered at once, and quietly suffered themselves to be stripped of their arms and accouterments, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... he finished examining his weapons when a cloud of dust slowly advancing in the distance told him that a party of considerable size was on its way towards the ambuscade. He anxiously awaited their approach, and soon recognised Roberval's Picard escort, and the fluttering skirts of the women. If the men in ambush were waiting for them they were doomed, unless he could warn them. To pass from his hiding meant almost instant death, ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... to go that way; it is dangerous for you in the daytime"—it did lend itself to an ambuscade, and persons who knew Wilkes Booth assert having seen him prowling around—"it is ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... all the vegetation ceased. Dwarf pines not big enough to be Christmas trees, grew thinly among loose stone and gravel scaurs. Here and there a big boulder sat quiescent on a knoll, having paused there till the next rain in his long slide down the mountain. There was here no ambuscade for the snakes, you could see clearly where you trod; and yet the higher I went, the more abject and appealing became Chuchu's terror. He was an excellent master of that composite language in which dogs communicate with men, and he would assure me, on his honour, that ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had time to return from the donjon, than D'Artagnan placed himself in ambuscade close to the Rue du Petit-Muse, so as to see every one who might leave the gates of the Bastille. After he had spent an hour on the look-out from the "Golden Portcullis," under the pent-house of which he could ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... have been grievously disappointed. Vague general phrases, founded on a priori reasoning rather than on observation, together with a few statistical tables—which the cautious investigator should avoid as he would an ambuscade—are too often all that is to be found. Through the thin veil of pseudo-erudition the real facts are clear enough. These philosophical legislators, who have spent their lives in the official atmosphere of St. Petersburg, know as much about Russia as the genuine ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... surprises. There were brooks to be forded. Sometimes large trees were mischievously felled across the trail. Grape-vines were tied across from tree to tree, to trip up the passers-by or to sweep off their caps. It was a great joke for half a dozen young men to play Indian. They would lie in ambuscade, and suddenly, as the procession was passing, would raise the war-whoop, discharge their guns, and raise shouts of laughter in view of the real ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... hedonism! Each struggles with teeth and claws for that which gives the largest promise of pleasure to body, mind, or soul, as the individual happens to incline. To Sybarites the race is too short to be fatiguing, and the goal is only an ambuscade for satiety and ennui; to ascetics, the race course stretches to the borders of futurity, but even for them one form of pleasure, spiritual pleasure, lights up eternity. The thing we want, we want; not because of its orthodoxy, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... enemy, but they were not both equally fortunate in the result. Horry may be allowed to tell his own story. "I was sent," he writes, "by Gen. Marion to reconnoitre Georgetown. I proceeded with a guide through the woods all night. At the dawn of day, I drew near the town. I laid an ambuscade, with thirty men and three officers, near the road. About sunrise a chair appeared with two ladies escorted by two British officers. I was ready in advance with an officer to cut them off, but reflecting that they might escape, and alarm the town, which would prevent ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... The minions, in their turn, sought revenge on Bussy by attacking him, on the following night, while he was returning from the Louvre to his lodgings. He eluded them, and the next morning he accused M. de Grammont of having led the ambuscade. De Quelus then proposed that all the King's gentlemen should meet all those of the Duke in a grand encounter to the death. The Duke's followers gladly accepted the challenge. Three hundred men on each side would have fought, had not the King resolutely forbidden the duel. De ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... their boats, which were at a landing two or three miles away, they were savagely attacked from both sides of the road. They were compelled to drop the corn and fight for their lives. Wherever there was opportunity for an ambuscade, arrows showered upon them from the woods. They kept up the running fight bravely, returning a steady fire, but probably made little impression on their hidden foes swarming under cover. By the time they reached the boats they had two men killed and twenty-two ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... on the Mississippi, numbering twenty-five thousand souls, of which he became mayor, chief justice, and general-in-chief; that he announced himself, in 1843, as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States; and that finally, being drawn into ambuscade at Carthage, he was thrown into prison, and assassinated by a band of men ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... dark wave of men rushed from the ambuscade, surged up round the car, ... swept forward.... She had disappeared, and, as Philammon followed breathless, the horses galloped past him madly homeward with the ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... Reinaldo, or Reinhold, marched forward, and took possession of the fortress of Exorogorgon. The Sultan Solimaun was on the alert, with a superior force. A party of Crusaders, which had been detached from the fort, and stationed at a little distance as an ambuscade, were surprised and cut to pieces, and Exorogorgon invested on all sides. The siege was protracted for eight days, during which the Christians suffered the most acute agony from the want of water. It is hard to say how long the hope of succour ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... from either side, as though they had been waiting purposely to ambuscade him, shot several animals, who charged him without ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... any wound. And ever in her mind she cast about For that unnoticed failing in herself, Which made him look so cloudy and so cold; Till the great plover's human whistle amazed Her heart, and glancing round the waste she feared In ever wavering brake an ambuscade. Then thought again, 'If there be such in me, I might amend it by the grace of Heaven, If he would only speak and tell ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... The General explained to us that these light-draft armed vessels—river-gropers, as he called them—were indefatigable at pushing up the numerous creeks, burning and devastating everything. He said that when he became acquainted with the habits of one of these "critturs," he arranged an ambuscade for her, and with the assistance of "his fancy Irishman" (Captain Mitchell), he captured her. This was the case with the steamer Stono, a short time since, which, having been caught in this manner by the army, was lost by the navy shortly afterwards ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... we had taken over the 6th Kentucky and 9th Tennessee of my brigade—aggregating nearly six hundred men—and also the two pieces of artillery. These regiments were moved beyond Burkesville and placed in a position which served all the purposes of an ambuscade. When the enemy approached, one or two volleys caused his column to recoil in confusion. General Morgan instantly charged it with Quirk's scouts and some companies of the 9th Tennessee, and not only prevented it from rallying, but ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... northern nations having risen in arms against Rome, the emperor marched to encounter them. He was, however, drawn into an ambuscade, and dreaded the loss of his whole army. Enveloped with mountains, surrounded by enemies, and perishing with thirst, the pagan deities were invoked in vain; when the men belonging to the militine, or thundering ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Bailie called to his son to retire, and the order was obeyed; but the two wounded youths and Bailie Ross's servant were taken prisoners, and carried up the hill, where they were quickly divested of clothes, arms, money, and papers. Easterfearn's son died next morning. The troops faced the ambuscade manfully and are said to have given their fire thrice, and to have beaten the Highlanders from the bushes near them; but, observing at this juncture several parties of the enemy on the neighbouring heights, and being informed of a party of sixty ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... retired into a sort of ambuscade—at least he mingled with a small clump of three Scotch firs, and stood amongst them so rectilinear he might have passed for the fourth stump. Walter awaited the arrival of the foe, but in a spirit which has seldom conducted ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... point; the wrong landing point was chosen for the main body; the men fell ill and mutinied; the Spaniards, who might have been surprised at first by a direct assault on St. Domingo, resisted bravely, and poured shot among the troops from ambuscade. Two attempts to get into St. Domingo were both foiled with heavy loss, including the death of Major-General Heane and others of the best officers. The mortality from climate and bad food being also great, the enterprise ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... taking refuge inside the walls of the city. An hour after parting from Mr. Chambers I am wheeling briskly down the same road on the eastern slope of the pass where Mukhtar Pasha's ill-fated column was drawn into the fatal ambuscade that suddenly turned the fortunes of the day against them. While rapidly gliding down the gentle gradient, I fancy I can see the Cossack regiments, advancing toward the Turkish position, the unwary and over-confident Osmanlis ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... having hewn them, to carry them underground (they weigh on an average between sixty and seventy tons), and finally to range them in rows here in these strange chambers, where they stand as if in ambuscade on either side of us as we pass? Each in its turn has contained quite comfortably the mummy of a bull Apis, armoured in plates of gold. But in spite of their weight, in spite of their solidity which effectively defies destruction, they have ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... not the worst. Should the institution ever acquire any influence, it will afford most pernicious facilities to every malignant coward who may desire to blast a reputation which he envies. It will furnish a secure ambuscade, behind which the Maroons of literature may take a certain and deadly aim. The editorial WE has often been fatal to rising genius; though all the world knows that it is only a form of speech, very often employed by a single needy blockhead. The academic ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his followers, upon landing, sat down upon the beach for breakfast; but their repast was rudely disturbed by a shower of stones from an ambuscade of Typees in the edge of the wood. Stopping but a moment to finish their food, the jackies picked up their cutlasses and muskets, and started for the enemy. They were soon in the shady recesses of the tropical forest, but not a Typee was to be seen. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... they had secured their ambuscade, each lying on the ground at full length, concealed by low, scrubby trees. By a slight turn of the head, each could command a view up the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... broad daylight, and, consequently, there was little cause of immediate alarm, the worthy publican carried on his shoulder a musket on full cock; and each moment he kept peeping about, as if not only every bush, but every blade of grass contained an ambuscade, ready to spring up the instant he was off his guard. By his side the redoubted Jacobina, who had transferred to her new master, the attachment she had originally possessed for the Corporal, trotted ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of soldiers venturing on down the valley instead of hurrying back, they had signalled all over the country calling in war-parties to their aid, and formulated their scheme to ambuscade and "corral" it at the narrows of the valley; but Ray's vigilance and plainscraft had defeated that scheme; though they had good chances yet, if they only knew where the regiment had gone. Late the previous evening it had disappeared behind a prominent ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... holy ones that you have escaped, sahib," Rujub said, as soon as he came within speaking distance of Bathurst. "I was in an agony last night. I was with you in thought, and saw the boats approaching the ambuscade. I saw you leap over and swim to shore. I saw you fall, and I cried out. For a moment I thought you were killed. Then I saw you go on and fall again, and saw your friends carry you in. I watched you recover and come on here, and then ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... event was the mysterious cutting down of the cedar tree, whose branches had been intertwined with others, and which had evidently been used as an ambuscade by the assassins who had lain in wait for ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... "but your force isn't strong enough to surround the enemy. You must advance in line. It's an ambuscade." ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... otherwise with Eben McClure. He was a fugitive from justice, and had been guilty of carrying off a large sum of money and various jewels, the property of His Royal Highness the Duke of Lyonesse. He was also suspected of having led the Prince and his party into an ambuscade, where the son of the King had been wounded to the effusion of blood and the danger ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... rebuild it; accordingly they themselves set fire to it, and totally destroyed it. The captain, having arrived at his destination at midnight, with all possible secrecy leaped ashore, and arranged his men and the Pintados [42] Indians whom he had with him in ambuscade near the villages, in order to make the attack upon them at daybreak. However, the natives of this island having been informed of the hostile incursion of the Spaniards, withdrew with their children and wives and all their belongings that they could take with them, to three forts ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... get glimpses of the old trap of a feigned flight and ambuscade, into which they fell, and so again lose "possession of the place of death," the ultimate test of victory. "This year," says the Saxon Chronicle, "nine general battles were fought against the army in the kingdom south of the Thames; besides which Alfred, the king's brother, and single ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... Thompson, who dared to attack a foraging party of four hundred British troops at McIntire's Branch, seven miles northwest of Charlotte, on the Beattie's Ford road, compelling them to retreat, with a considerable loss of men and a small amount of forage, fearing, as they said, an ambuscade was prepared ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... ill to catch an Elliott. For a while, in the night and the black water that was deep as to his saddle-girths, he wrought with his staff like a smith at his stithy, and great was the sound of oaths and blows. With that the ambuscade was burst, and he rode for home with a pistol-ball in him, three knife wounds, the loss of his front teeth, a broken rib and bridle, and a dying horse. That was a race with death that the laird rode! In the mirk night, with his broken bridle and his head swimming, he dug his spurs to the rowels ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... established a fortified camp, and, sallying thence, they laid waste the Veientine territory. For two years they sustained the whole weight of the Veientine war; and all the attempts of the Veientines to dislodge them proved in vain. But at length they were enticed into an ambuscade, and were all slain. The settlement was destroyed, and no one of the house survived except a boy who had been left behind at Rome, and who became the ancestor of the Fabii, afterward so celebrated in Roman history. The Fabii were sacrificed to the hatred of the Patricians; for the consul T. Menenius ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... Joy, "this may not be. If you had caught Master Spikeman, by your own cunning, it might have been different; but it was the white girl and I who devised the scheme, and I told you where to place the ambuscade, which has been successful. Were you to murder this man, the guilt would rest more on Prudence and me than on you, whose savage and un-Christian notions may partly excuse so ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... confusion hardly dared to glance at him; she wanted to amuse the gloomy Count, and to make him talk more freely, so as to get him into better humour; for the Count was strangely glum when he returned from his walk, or rather, as Thaddeus thought, from his ambuscade. While listening to Telimena he raised his brow haughtily, frowned, and looked at her almost with contempt; then he sat down as near Zosia as he could, filled her glass, and passed plates to her, saying a thousand polite things, and bowing and smiling; sometimes he rolled his eyes ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... his hand from the piece ... oh, heavens, his eye is wandering back to that critical pawn ... ah, light is dawning on him ... you see it illuminating his face as he bends over the board, you hear a murmur of revelation issuing from his lips ... he is drawing back from the precipice ... your ambuscade is in vain and now you must start plotting ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... return, for his presence with the forces was imperative and he grudged every hour of absence from his beloved, he set out alone in his boat. Before an hour had passed he was captured by a flotilla which had been lying in ambuscade behind the Grandes Rocques, and was a prisoner ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... charred trunks and portions of trunks of trees still reared themselves here and there; but the undergrowth had all been burned away down to the bare earth, and was now springing up again, fresh and green, in little irregular patches, all over the open area. The spot would serve admirably for an ambuscade, for while it was sufficiently open to permit of straight shooting, there was cover enough to conceal a hundred men, or more, at need. But what made the place especially suitable for our purpose was the fact that away over in one corner of the clearing there grew a thick, dense belt of ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... man of conduct, suffered his vanity to overcome him so far as to accept of the proposal, and the next morning with ten of his sailors, all dressed in their best clothes, went on shore to this collation. But before they had reached half way, they were set upon by a party of Indians who lay in ambuscade, and with one flight of their poisoned arrows laid them all upon the ground, except Kennedy and another, who escaped to the top of a mountain, from whence they leaped into the sea, and were with much difficulty ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Huron war chief, named tienne Annaotaha, whose life is described as a succession of conflicts and adventures, and who is said to have been always in luck, landed with a few companions, and fell into an ambuscade of the Iroquois. He prepared to defend himself, when they called out to him, that they came not as enemies, but as friends, and that they brought wampum-belts and presents to persuade the Hurons to forget the past, go back ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... is needed, I say for myself I highly approve of secret pickets and outposts, if only because in supplying a guard to protect your friends you are contriving an ambuscade to catch the enemy. Also the outposts will be less exposed to a secret attack, being themselves unseen, and yet a source of great alarm to the enemy; since the bare knowledge that there are outposts somewhere, though where precisely no man knows, will prevent the enemy from ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... happen in a better place," he said to a man who stood near him. "Leave me five men. Take the others and help Schneider. If you don't clean them out, retreat this way, and six rifles from this ambuscade will do ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... these, more desperate than others, A pair of ragamuffin brothers In secret ambuscade join'd forces, To carry on unlawful courses. These Robbers' names, enough to shake us, Where, Strymon one, the other Cacus. And, more the neighbourhood to bother, A wicked dam they had for mother, Who knew their craft, but not forbid it, And whatsoe'er they nymm'd, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... before he knew what he was doing, had obeyed. The surprise was complete and irremediable. Coming on the top crest of his murderous intentions, he had walked straight into an ambuscade, and now stood, with his hands impotently lifted, staring ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... structure, with its entrance surmounted by a gloomy, massive arch, upon which was reared a tower, a relic of the feudal system, which had braved the storms of centuries. Here, under this dark archway, Drouet and his companions had formed their ambuscade. The horses had hardly entered the gloomy pass, when they were stopped by a cart which had been overturned, and five or six armed men, seizing their heads, ordered the travelers to alight and exhibit their passports. ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... defeats at Le Mans and Savenay, Cottereau retired again to his old haunts in the wood of Misdon, and resumed his old course of guerrilla warfare. Misfortunes here increased upon him, until he fell into an ambuscade and was mortally wounded. He died among his followers in February 1794. Cottereau's brothers also perished in the war, with the exception of Rene, who lived until 1846. Royalist authors have made of Cottereau a hero and martyr, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... prepared.' He admitted the 'intent was particular against Sir Walter Ralegh and others.' He thought this a proof that 'it was no matter of treason against her Majesty, but rather a manifestation of the contrary.' Essex gave out that his rising was prompted by a discovery that there was an ambuscade of musketeers placed upon the water by the device of Lord Cobham and Ralegh, to murder him in the way as he passed. Blount, at his trial, confessed there was no foundation for the allegation. In reply to Cecil, who asked if he thought Cobham and Ralegh had ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... impressed upon the sand, as they were below high-water mark: We therefore concluded that the people were at no great distance, and, as a thick wood came down within a hundred yards of the water, we thought it necessary to proceed with caution, lest we should fall into an ambuscade, and our retreat to the boat be cut off. We walked along the skirts of the wood, and at the distance of about two hundred yards from the place where we landed, we came to a grove of cocoa-nut trees, which stood upon the banks of a little brook of brackish water. The trees were of a small ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... believing if the evidence were such as to commend itself at once to our understanding, is one which need only be stated to be set aside. It is blasphemy against the goodness of God to suppose that He has thus laid as it were an ambuscade for man, and will only let him escape on condition of his consenting to violate one of the very most precious of God's own gifts. There is an ingenious cruelty about such conduct which it is revolting even to imagine. Indeed, the whole theory reduces our Heavenly Father to a level of wisdom ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... it was on a forlorn hope, for which he volunteered, and in the course of which he is said to have walked straight into an almost obvious ambuscade of ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... partisan, had hastily left Ticonderoga with five hundred men, on hearing of the presence of this scouting party of provincials, and was now near at hand. The sound of the muskets gave him exact information as to the position of their camp. Hastening forward, he laid an ambuscade on the line of march of his foes, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... played his cannon on the barricade. That night a curious sound, that was neither chant nor war-cry, came from the thick woods. At daylight carrion crows were seen circling above the barricade. Three hundred Russians landed. Approaching cautiously for fear of ambuscade, they clambered over the {314} palisades and looked. The fort was deserted. Naught of the Sitkans remained but thirty dead warriors and all their children, murdered during the night to prevent their cries ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... a tottering step, a bloodless countenance, and a look of horror. Without a word, he pointed to the door; I followed the direction, and saw what might well justify his feelings. The troop of yeomanry had been attacked on their return from patrolling the country; an ambuscade had been laid for them by a large force of the insurgents, in one of the narrow roads which bordered the demesne, and where, from its vicinity, they had imagined themselves secure. As they moved down this defile with their noble commandant at their head, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... friends of our enemies: what else can we do but relieve him of his nag and of his clothes, and hang him on one of these oaks in scorn of the Orsini?" To which proposal all agreeing, they bade Pietro strip himself: but while, already divining his fate, he was so doing, an ambuscade of full five-and-twenty men at arms fell suddenly upon them, crying:—"Death, death!" Thus surprised, they let Pietro go, and stood on the defensive; but, seeing that the enemy greatly outnumbered them, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and two nine-pounders. He thought he should surprise them, and contrived so that he should come upon them about daybreak. Sheo Ratan knew all his plans. He placed one hundred and fifty of his men in ambuscade at the entrance to the jungle, and kept the other hundred and fifty by him in the centre. When they had got well in, the party in ambush rushed upon the rear, while he attacked them in front. After a short resistance, Ghulam Husain's force took to flight, leaving five hundred ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... garrison of the great fortress that Kuropatkin found himself in such a favourable position at the end of August. But unfortunately for the Russians, one of their generals, Orloff, who had thirteen battalions under his command, showed incompetence, and falling into an ambuscade in the course of the counter-flanking operation, suffered defeat with heavy losses. The Japanese took full advantage of this error, and Kuropatkin, with perhaps excessive caution, decided to abandon his counter-movement and withdraw from Liaoyang. He ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... most peaceful character. This Diana, ambushed in her tower, needs a prey worthy of her prowess. The big Grasshopper, with the powerful jaws; the irascible Wasp; the Bee, the Bumble-bee and other wearers of poisoned daggers must fall into the ambuscade from time to time. The duel is nearly equal in point of weapons. To the venomous fangs of the Lycosa the Wasp opposes her venomous stiletto. Which of the two bandits shall have the best of it? The struggle is a hand-to-hand one. The Tarantula has no secondary means of defence, no cord to bind ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... grew on its margin. On they bounded, further and further, and a few moments more found them in the dense wood, where not a sunbeam could reach the ground. But suddenly the leaves rustled behind them, and the twigs cracked, and there sprung, from an ambuscade in the thicket, the tall figure of an Indian, who laid a strong hand on the arm of each little girl, and, despite the cries, tears, and entreaties of the poor children, hurried them deeper into the forest, where they found a large body of these cruel savages, ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... AEneas in single combat, and presently seizes the opportunity afforded by a false alarm of impending attack to break up the council. The Latin mothers and maidens offer gifts and litanies to Pallas. Turnus arms for battle (337-576). Camilla and Messapus command the Latin horse; Turnus prepares an ambuscade (577-612). Diana tells the story of Camilla and charges Opis, one of her nymphs, to avenge her should she fall (613-684). Opis watches the battle before the city of Latinus (685-738). The deeds and death of Camilla ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... might have said was cut short by the furious outburst of firing from the guns, which dropped shell after shell into the projected ambuscade. ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... lead—starvation. They met but little or no opposition in their progress; but wherever they turned they found every fiber of meat, every grain of maize, every ounce of bread or meal, swept away or destroyed utterly before them. Even when the buccaneers had successfully overcome an ambuscade or an attack, and had sent the Spaniards flying, the fugitives took the time to strip their dead comrades of every grain of food in their leathern sacks, leaving nothing ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... forgotten Sergeant Velasquez, captain," said the latter. "He escaped the ambuscade in which you were taken prisoner. You see I've got the epaulet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... sympathy of colour, similia similibus gaudent, or from a sort of instinct that the European is better armed, or because he supposes the Arab will make a better repast? The other way of killing the lion is in ambuscade, of which there are two or three kinds. Sometimes the hunters dig a hole in the ground near the spot where the lion is in the habit of passing by night; over this hole they throw branches of trees, which they ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... I to take for this?" answered the cautious soldier—"A man must know his guarantee, or he may fall into an ambuscade." ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... it, for no man has a right to embrace temptation and damn himself by a life-long lie. You choose to make it a hard battle for me; you are neither an honest friend nor a generous foe. No matter, I have fallen into an ambuscade and must cut my way out as I can, and as I will, for there is enough of this Devil's work in the world without ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... gravely and imperiously, standing in front of Hardenberg, and looking him full in the face. "I am opposed to any sort of underhand games; when you are not strong enough to attack your enemy openly and honestly, you ought to be too proud to shoot at him from an ambuscade, like a coward and bandit. The bullet may miss him, and he who fired it dies as a traitor, overwhelmed with disgrace. I have concluded this alliance with France; I am now her ally, and thereby compelled to furnish her an auxiliary ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... vigilant to be taken at unawares, and perhaps long since apprised of the coming of the band, the Indians had resumed their hiding-places in the grass and among the bushes, preparing for the new-comers an ambuscade similar to that they had so successfully practised against Roland's unfortunate party. "Let them hide as they will, detestable miscreants," he uttered to himself with feelings of vindictive triumph; "they will not, this time, have frightened women and a ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... right in," gasped Kosmaroff. "The arms are gone. The place is full of men. There is a sotnia drawn up in the yard itself. It is an ambuscade. We have failed—failed—this time!" ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... gold medal and the rank of major, March 3rd, 1814. During these campaigns he was never wounded, although exposed to great danger. One morning, among others, his old servant had scarcely reached the skirts of a forest in which the enemy had an ambuscade than his master's horse was killed by a ball, and the rider overthrown. The servant thought it was all over with his master, but the sad thought had hardly entered his mind when Beckwith sprang up and cried out, "All ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... of his officers and unfolded to them a desperate plan he had conceived. This was no less than to lay an ambuscade for the Inca and seize him in the face of his army, holding him as a hostage for the safety of the Christians. Nothing less decisive than this would avail them, he said. It was too late to retreat. At the first sign of such a movement the army of the Inca would be upon them, and ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... troops about 11.00 A.M., and passing from one column to another, incautiously rode upon an ambuscade without apprehension, at some distance ahead of his staff and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... given up, kept constantly telling M. de Remusat, "You are going against your interest—I must say that I do not comprehend you!" And yet Savary, himself minister of the police, executor of most important services, head manager of the murder of the Duc d'Enghien and of the ambuscade at Bayonne, counterfeiter of Austrian bank-notes for the campaign of 1809 and of Russian banknotes for that of 1812,[1268] Savary ends in getting weary; he is charged with too many dirty jobs; however hardened his conscience ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... convenient place. This they did, but not without suffering much loss; for the man fought for his life and defended himself, slaying many of his enemies. Then they that escaped ran into the camp, saying that Sicinius had fallen into an ambuscade, and had died along with certain others of the soldiers. At the first, indeed, this story was believed; but afterwards, when, by permission of the Ten, there went some to bury the dead, they found that none of the dead bodies had been spoiled, and that ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... quarter part, and they to take the residue. But inasmuch as the convoy across the moors, under his command, would be strong, and strongly armed, the Doones must be sure to send not less than a score of men, if possible. He himself, at a place agreed upon, and fit for an ambuscade, would call a halt, and contrive in the darkness to pour a little water into the priming ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... that these shots were the first fired in anger for a hundred and fifty years. He heard bullets whacking over his head, felt a splash of molten metal sting his ear, and perceived without looking that the whole opposite facade, an unmasked ambuscade of red police, was crowded and bawling and firing ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... there was a fierce splutter of pistol shots from amongst the bushes, and the grey sank down upon its knees with a sobbing moan, struck mortally in the head. Ezra sprang to his feet and rushed at the ambuscade, while the sergeant, who had been grazed on the cheek by the first volley, jumped from his horse and followed him. Burt and Farintosh met them foot to foot with all the Saxon gallantry which underlies the Saxon brutality. Burt stabbed at the sergeant and struck him through the muscle of the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not wish to lengthen the session of the next Congress, and probably they particularly wish it should not meet till Genet is gone. At this meeting I received a letter from Mr. Remsen at New York, informing me of the event of the combat between the Ambuscade and the Boston. Knox broke out into the most unqualified abuse of Captain Courtnay. Hamilton, with less fury, but with the deepest vexation, loaded him with censures. Both showed the most ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... then, sahib, that the trap is open and the bird flown! Know you how fast news travels? Faster than the guns, Sahib! There will be an ambuscade, from which neither man, nor gun, nor horse, nor memsahib ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... times. No former Ard-Righ had a severer struggle with the insubordinate elements which beset him from first to last. His end was sudden, but not inglorious. In returning from the chariot-races at the Curragh of Kildare, he was surprised and slain in an ambuscade laid for him by Godfrid at a place on the banks of the Liffey called Tyraris or Teeraris house. By his side, fighting bravely, fell the lords of Teffia and Ferrard, two of his nephews, and others of his personal attendants and companions. The Dublin Danes had in their turn ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... walls, fires were bursting out in twenty places. It was not long before the knights rode out, with a hundred and fifty men-at-arms, but the Welsh were already gone. It seems that they had laid an ambuscade round every village and, on the signal being given, fell at once upon the sleeping inhabitants, put all to the sword, fired the houses; and in ten minutes from the first alarm made off, driving horses, cattle, ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... destroyed their country? or which betrayed the cavalry, [Footnote: After Olynthus was besieged by Philip, various sallies were made from the city, some of which were successful. But the treachery of Lasthenes and his accomplices ruined all. A body of five hundred horse were led by him into an ambuscade, and captured by the besiegers. See Appendix I.] by whose betrayal Olynthus fell? The creatures of Philip; they that, while the city stood, slandered and calumniated the honest counselors so effectually, that the Olynthian people were induced ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... forty feet, and occasionally it diminished so as not to allow the passage of more than five or six persons abreast. In short, there could be no place in the world better adapted for the consummation of an ambuscade, and it was no more than natural that we should look carefully to our arms as we entered upon it. When I now think of our egregious folly, the chief subject of astonishment seems to be, that we should have ever ventured, under any circumstances, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... set With glittering mosque and minaret, Is Cairo, in whose gay bazaars The dreaming traveller first inhales The perfume of Arabian gales, And sees the fabulous earthen jars, Huge as were those wherein the maid Morgiana found the Forty Thieves Concealed in midnight ambuscade; And seeing, more than half believes The fascinating tales that run Through all the Thousand Nights and One, Told by the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... plans had miscarried, but his energetic and hardy temperament would not permit him to turn back without a blow being struck. However one may commend his energy, one cannot but stand aghast at his dispositions. The country was wild and rocky, the very places for those tactics of the surprise and the ambuscade in which the Boers excelled. And yet the column still plodded aimlessly on in its dense formation, and if there were any attempt at scouting ahead and on the flanks the result showed how ineffectively it was carried out. It was at a quarter past four ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the neighbourhood in ambush. . .I would also lie in ambush. This system of ambuscade employed so generally by the Baris had created a wholesome alarm among the troops, which tended to obedience. They now began to appreciate the orders that no one should stray alone from the camp, and that the watering party should consist of a powerful guard. At the same time, the surprises that ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and several voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French officer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat and reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and that there was probably an ambuscade there. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... knowledge of the mountains, the raiders had hurriedly driven the cattle into the forest, where they would be out of sight and so could not give warning of the whereabouts of the thieves, and had then hidden themselves behind some rocks along the trail. From their ambuscade they would be able to shoot down their pursuers or capture them as they ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... order, in the early gray of the morning, the two men directly in his rear, forgetting their orders, suddenly called out, 'Colonel, the British!' faced about, and putting spurs to their horses, were soon out of sight. The colonel, looking around, discovered that he was in the centre of a powerful ambuscade, into which the enemy had silently allowed him to pass, without his observing them. They lined both sides of the road, and had been stationed there to pick up any straggling party of the Americans that might chance to pass. Immediately on ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... the Lake of Maracaibo, landed their forces, and proceeded at once to attack the castle that guarded the entrance to the harbor. The governor had made judicious dispositions for its defence, having formed an ambuscade for the purpose of bringing the pirates between two fires. His design, however, in this respect, was frustrated, for those forming the ambuscade, being discovered and routed, fled to the town, the inhabitants of which, remembering the former visitation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Daniel came, he resumed his seat by the stove, and remained silent for a while. Then, without the slightest warning or apparent motivation, he began to discuss religion. And how? With the old spirit of defiance, as if from an ambuscade from which he could send out his poisoned arrows, with calculating maliciousness and cold rebellion, with the air of a man who has been defeated, who is now being pursued, and who is willing to concede more to the earthly order of things ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... in this case learned of Herkimer's advance and sent the savages under his command to intercept and ambuscade him. A terrible hand-to-hand combat ensued in which a hundred and sixty of the colonists were killed and the loss to the Indians was as great. General Herkimer's horse was shot under him and he himself wounded severely in the leg. ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... the men out from behind the stockade, while the remainder were concealed in ambush near the spring with which the garrison was supplied with water. The most experienced of the defenders understood the tactics of their wily foes, and shrewdly guessed that an ambuscade had been prepared in order to cut off the garrison from access to the spring. The water in the station was already exhausted, and unless a fresh supply could be obtained the most dreadful sufferings were apprehended. It was thought probable that the Indians ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... him by gobbling like a turkey; that he must meet me at Sand Point at three o'clock sharp, and if he was not there at that time I would know that something was wrong. I also told him to be careful and not run into an ambuscade, but above all not to be taken prisoner. Then I asked him if he could bark like a cayote. His answer was: "Sure, Captain, it's mesilf that can make a bloody cayote ashamed of himself bairking, and I belave ye's is afraid for me, but ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... Lord King, lest never a boat come back from that errand. With their narrow flat-bottomed punts, cut out of a single log, and their leaping-poles, wherewith they fly over dikes of thirty feet in width,—they can ambuscade in those reed-beds and alder-beds, kill whom they will, and then flee away through the marsh like so many horse-flies. And if not, one trick have they left, which they never try save when driven into a corner; but from that, may all ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... gave very strict orders, under great penalties, that no man, upon any pretext whatsoever, should dare to leave the boats and go ashore. This he did, fearing lest they should be surprised and cut off by an ambuscade of Spaniards, that might chance to lie thereabouts in the neighbouring woods, which appeared so thick as to seem almost impenetrable. Having this morning begun their march, they found the ways so dirty and irksome, that Captain Morgan thought it more ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... war. Hannibal and his forces pitched camp at Lake Trasimenus last night. They prepared an ambuscade for the Romans, and a battle took place at the fourth watch this ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... and Love, together mated, Watch and wait in ambuscade; At early morn, or else belated, They meet and mark the man ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and take them through the lessons of a military drill; showing them how to fire and fall back, how to advance and retreat, how to form in line of march, how to pitch their tents for a night's encampment, how to lay an Indian ambuscade, how to scale a wall, how to storm a battery; and, in short, forty other evolutions not to be found in any work on military tactics ever written, and at which old Wooden Leg, had he been there, would have shaken ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... mile of the way we came that did not hold a hundred hiding-places fit for ambuscade, but our party was too numerous and well-armed to need worry on that account. Monty and Kagig drew ahead, quite a little way behind the gipsies still, but far in front of us, who had to keep Fred upright on ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... their insolence was soon checked; the cannon from the fortress forced them to retire as far off as the isle of Upe. In the mean time, seven poor fishermen, who had been out all night about their employment, and were now returning to the town, fell into an ambuscade of the Infidels, were taken, and brought before the general. After he had cut off their ears and noses, he sent them back with a letter, directed to Don Francisco de Melo, governor of Malacca, of which these ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... Ambush [Means of concealment]. — N. camouflage; mimicry; hiding place; secret place, secret drawer; recess, hold, holes and corners; closet, crypt, adytum[obs3], abditory[obs3], oubliette. ambush, ambuscade; stalking horse; lurking hole, lurking place; secret path, back stairs; retreat &c. (refuge) 666. screen, cover, shade, blinker; veil, curtain, blind, cloak, cloud. mask, visor, vizor[obs3], disguise, masquerade dress, domino. pitfall &c. (source ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... protracted: up to midday the Germans stood like walls; but the unwonted heat of the Provengal sun relaxed their energies, and a false alarm in their rear, where a band of Roman camp-boys ran forth from a wooded ambuscade with loud shouts, utterly decided the breaking up of the wavering ranks. The whole horde was scattered, and, as was to be expected in a foreign land, either put to death or taken prisoners. Among the captives was king Teutobod; among the killed a multitude of women, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... followed her, and stealthily creeping along, we gained a small rise of ground which commanded a more extended view than most places in the Black Forest, and, but for the thickness of the trees, we could have seen our own camping-place and the part where the ambuscade had been laid. From sounds of the voices, we could tell that the ruffians were leading their prisoners to the spot where we had passed the night, and the most fearful oaths and imprecations could ever and anon be ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... the darksome glade, And roves o'er the mountains all? It crouches in nightly ambuscade; The hurrah breaks round the foe dismayed, And the Frankish sergeants fall. Should you of the rangers black demand— That is Luetzow's wild ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... finger on his six-shooter the while; every sailor grasped his cutlass and kept his revolver ready for action. "I don't half like the look of it," the captain observed, partly to himself. "They seem to be leading us into an ambuscade or something. Keep a sharp lookout against surprise from the jungle, boys; and if any native shows fight shoot ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... a significant look, made him return the poinard into his bosom, unseen by all except himself; for most of the party were disputing at a distant window, on the situation of a dell where they meant to form an ambuscade. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... McFarland was so worthless that his wife refused to live with him, and, sadly enough, fell in love with still another man. The worthless husband, discovering that Richardson was coming into property which had not always been his own, resorted to an ambuscade, and killed Richardson. To the dullest comprehension this act revealed a deep jealousy. Jealousy is founded on a solid fear of losing something. In this unhappy family, where the man believed he had nothing to care for, he suddenly awoke to find he had thrown ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... advance civilization; on the other, just as grim a determination to resist it. The savage, employing the same arts in his wars with the white man as he did in his wars with his fellow savage, used stealth and cunning, the ambuscade, the scalping knife, and the tomahawk, and tortured his victims at the stake. A terrible hatred was engendered, that meant death and extermination. In the sanguinary struggles that followed, many outrages were no doubt perpetrated by lawless white men upon the ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... you shall order fifteen or twenty men, under the command of your sergeant La Place, to be under arms, and to lay themselves flat on the ground, between this place and the head-quarters." "What the devil!" cried Matta, "an ambuscade? God forgive me, I believe you intend to rob the poor Savoyard. If that be your intention, I declare I will have nothing to say to it" "Poor devil!" said the Chevalier, "the matter is this; it is very likely that we shall ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... especially cobras and coralillos, which last by preference inhabit trees, still abound in the forests of Mataran as in days of old, and wage a regular guerilla warfare against the invaders. Woe betide the belated pedestrian, or even horseman, if he happens to pass under a tree which forms the ambuscade of a coralillo snake! Cobras and other reptiles seldom attack men, and will generally try to avoid them, unless accidentally trodden upon, but these guerilleros of the forest, the tree serpents, lie in wait for their victims. As soon as the head of a man comes under the branch which shelters ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... through trees: "You mind the fight in the haunted house? That's it; we clenched them in the room— An ambuscade of ghosts, we thought, But proved sly rebels on a house! Luke lies in the yard." The chimneys loom: Some muse on Mosby—some ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... fighting power was made of sterner stuff. The fact is, perhaps, never more happily exemplified than in this very story of the dying Braddock himself. As he was carried away, bleeding, to his death, from that fatal ambuscade, something of the hero animated and exalted {287} the spirit of that drink-hardy and foolhardy soldier. "I must do better another time," he is reported to have said; and it would not be easy to say with what gallanter words a stout soldier could ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... observed carrying wounded men and ranging them comfortably around the many hay and straw stacks of the neighborhood. Inquiry revealed that a reconnoitring party, misled by the apparent quiet of the other side, had crossed, fallen into an ambuscade, and under the most galling of fires, artillery and musketry, kept up most unmercifully by the advancing rebels, who thus ungraciously repaid the courtesy shown them the day after Antietam—had been compelled to recross ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... sofa.] No, I will. Here it is—"Battle with Ladrones. The 91st Regiment of New York, which went out under Captain H.S. Miller to subdue the bandits in the Island of Orla, met an ambuscade of the Ladrones and were annihilated almost to a man." [She looks up dazed, not able at once to realize what it means. Rereads, skipping some lines.] "Captain H.S. Miller who went out under—to subdue the bandits in the—met an ambuscade of the Ladrones and was ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... extraction of a carious molendinar, which it was the very end of their formation to achieve, and sent me home minus a guinea.—But hand me that great-coat, Captain, and we will place the instruments in ambuscade, until they are called into action in due time. I should think something will happen—Sir Bingo is a ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... before the Matabili in the clump, surprised at not seeing the awnings of the waggons, and suspecting that they had been deceived, came out from their ambuscade; first crawling on all-fours, and as they arrived at the camp, and found only fires burning, rising up one after another. After remaining about a minute in consultation, two of the party were sent back to the river to communicate this intelligence to the main body, while the others searched ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dead middle of the street I pulled my horse up, just to study the full quietness of the hour. Leaning over, I put a hand on his nostrils and whispered in his ear for a silence, as we do abroad in ambuscade. Town Innera-ora slept sound, sure enough! All to hear was the spilling of the river at the cascade under the bridge and the plopping of the waves against the wall we call the ramparts, that keeps the sea from thrashing on the Tolbooth. And then over all I could hear ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French officer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat and reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and that there was probably an ambuscade there. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Sir Walter Ralegh and others.' He thought this a proof that 'it was no matter of treason against her Majesty, but rather a manifestation of the contrary.' Essex gave out that his rising was prompted by a discovery that there was an ambuscade of musketeers placed upon the water by the device of Lord Cobham and Ralegh, to murder him in the way as he passed. Blount, at his trial, confessed there was no foundation for the allegation. In reply to ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... some common sense into her head, but her hair wuz bound up that tight with curl papers that nothin' could git past that ambuscade, so it would seem, but jest the image and the idee of ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... them all. This fancy pleased my thoughts for some weeks, and I was so full of it that I often dreamed of it, and, sometimes, that I was just going to let fly at them in my sleep. I went so far with it in my imagination that I employed myself several days to find out proper places to put myself in ambuscade, as I said, to watch for them, and I went frequently to the place itself, which was now grown more familiar to me; but while my mind was thus filled with thoughts of revenge and a bloody putting twenty or thirty of them to the sword, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... there is no difference; it was the chance of the sea, and the ill reward of a humane action—a melancholy end for such a man—like the end of a warrior, not dying Epaminondas-like on the field of victory, but cut off in some poor brawl or ambuscade. But so it was with all these men. They were cut off in the flower of their days, and few of them laid their bones in the sepulchres of their fathers. They knew the service which they had chosen, and they ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... evidently a man of great presence of mind. He put spurs to his horse, and galloped off down the road, partly to escape the danger, but partly also to warn the treasure train, the bells of which were now clanging loudly at a little distance from the ambuscade. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... the traitor wants; he goes to Charlot and proposes an ambuscade to lie in wait for the two boys and get rid of them; his real purpose being to get rid of the king's son as well as of Huon ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... extract a considerable amount of amusement out of this unexpected happening. He evidently considered that he had been in for more or less luck simply because he happened to be in Fred's company when the other ran into the ambuscade. Colon was not averse to an occasional measure of excitement, and although not all considered a pugnacious fellow, he could at the same time hold ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... himself in the fort with about two hundred and fifty men. He shortly afterwards sallied out to attack the intrenchments of the Indians, but Pontiac having received intelligence of his intention, laid an ambuscade for him, beat back the troops with great loss, and poor Dalyell fell in the combat that took place near a bridge which still goes by the name of Bloody Bridge. Pontiac cut off the head of Captain Dalyell, and set it upon ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... I think one or two guns had been let off, but happily they did no mischief. We had hailed them several times; but they not hearing, we received no answer, which was the cause of our firing. The boat was then sent on board of her, and she proved to be the Ambuscade man of war, to my no small disappointment. We returned to Portsmouth, without having been in any action, just at the trial of Admiral Byng (whom I saw several times during it): and my master having left the ship, and gone to London for promotion, Dick and I were ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... azaleas and almost all the vegetation ceased. Dwarf pines, not big enough to be Christmas trees, grew thinly among loose stones and gravel scaurs. Here and there a big boulder sat quiescent on a knoll, having paused there till the next rain in his long slide down the mountain. There was here no ambuscade for the snakes, you could see clearly where you trod; and yet the higher I went, the more abject and appealing became Chuchu's terror. He was an excellent master of that composite language in which dogs communicate with men, and he would assure me, on his honour, that there was some peril on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his Pockets were searched, and the Letter was known by the Direction to be one of those which they were order'd to intercept. One of them immediately set out to carry it to him who had appointed the Ambuscade, and he flew to deliver it to Zeokinizul. As the young Bassa appeared to know who was his Rival, suitable Measures were to be taken, and such an Answer sent to him as might throw him into Despair, and make him abandon ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... crew; In vain their stubborn ardour he would tame, The hand that kindles cannot quench the flame; The wary foe alone hath turned their mood, And shown their rashness to that erring brood: 940 The feigned retreat, the nightly ambuscade, The daily harass, and the fight delayed, The long privation of the hoped supply, The tentless rest beneath the humid sky, The stubborn wall that mocks the leaguer's art, And palls the patience of his baffled art, Of these they had not ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... an admirable spot for an ambuscade. Sanderson saw that there were few places in which his men could conceal themselves, for the hostile force occupied both sides of the defile. Their rifles were still popping, and Sanderson saw two of the Double A force go down before they could ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... success of which would unquestionably have ensured the destruction of the Prussian army, counter-orders were issued by the Prince of Eckmuhl, from what motives I know not. General Excelmans alone maintained the battle. He attacked the enemy in advance of Versailles, drove them into an ambuscade, cut them to pieces, and took from them their arms, baggage, and horses. Generals Strulz, Pire, Barthe, and Vincent, colonels Briqueville, Faudoas, St. Amand, Chaillou, Simonnet, Schmid, Paolini, and their brave ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... fascinated, that he had neither eyes nor speech for any one else, though there were dozens of charming girls present. But, I say, Hester! Saw you ever a more frightful place than this, or a more deadly situation for an ambuscade?" ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... longest spell at the crank, of course. He went at his work with a rigid courage. His red-hot anger had cooled down into a shape that was like a bar of forged steel. He meant to make that light revolve if it killed him to do it. He was the captain of a company that had run into an ambuscade. He was going to fight his way through if ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... captors, and the deathlike silence that surrounded him. Too vigilant to be taken at unawares, and perhaps long since apprised of the coming of the band, the Indians had resumed their hiding-places in the grass and among the bushes, preparing for the new-comers an ambuscade similar to that they had so successfully practised against Roland's unfortunate party. "Let them hide as they will, detestable miscreants," he uttered to himself with feelings of vindictive triumph; "they will not, this time, have frightened women and a handful of dispirited fugitives ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... his silent reply, for, quick as lightning, he had realised that in another few moments they would be forced to fight in defence, and that it was far better to take the initiative and make the enemy believe that they had fallen into an ambuscade. He gave a short nod, raised his own revolver, glanced at Gedge to see that he was ready, and then roared at the top of ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... into an ambuscade, and some of the native artillerymen proving traitors, it was compelled to retire with a very heavy loss of officers and men, and three ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... would, in some measure, conciliate their favour, and soften their resentment. 21. At first the pride of Bocchus struggled against such a proposal; but a few interviews with Sylla reconciled him to this treacherous measure, and Jugur'tha was given up, being drawn into an ambuscade by the specious pretences of his ally, who deluded him by desiring a conference; and being made a prisoner, he was loaded with chains, and carried by Ma'rius to Rome, a deplorable instance of blighted ambition. 22. He did not long survive his overthrow, being condemned by the senate ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... that, in all its parts; old treaty of Breslau, to be guaranteed, to be actually kept. To me Silesia sure;—from you, Polish Majesty, one million crowns as damages for the trouble and cost this Triple Ambuscade of yours has given me; one million crowns, 150,000 pounds we will say; and all other requisitions to cease on the day of signature. These are my terms: accept these; then wholly, As you were, Empress-Queen and you, and all surviving ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... he could have done; for, despite the discouraging tone of his voice, it seemed joyful to those crouching in concealment; and, yielding to an instinct that they were now saved by the presence of a stanch protector, they rushed from their ambuscade, and in so doing discovered themselves ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... learnt likewise, that the royalists squadron had gone to the port of Santa, to which place he accordingly marched. Aldana got notice of his coming from some Spanish inhabitants of that place, and laid an ambuscade for him, consisting of an hundred and fifty musqueteers, in a place overgrown with tall reeds on the side of the road by which Acosta had to march in his way to Santa. Acosta had certainly fallen into the snare, if he had not fortunately made prisoners of some spies who had been sent ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... effort; and the sound of the hoof may be heard; whereas in nine cases out of ten, a man on foot—that is, such a man as either Rube Rawlings or Bill Garey—will discover the enemy before he is himself seen, or any ambuscade can be attempted. Of course the scout should never advance beyond the possibility of retreating upon ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... certainly insecure with such a fort as Lychnidus untaken in their rear. The garrison of that fort had been reinforced by many cohorts of the regular army who had flocked thither at the general's signal, and with these Sabinianus prepared a formidable ambuscade. He sent a considerable number of infantry round by unfrequented paths over the mountains, and ordered them to take up a commanding but concealed position, and to rush forth from thence at a given signal. He himself started ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... was a chant, a saga, a recitation of the glories of his ancestors. The Malhominis had been a proud race,—now they were dwindled to this village of eighty braves. He crooned long tales of famine, of tribal bickerings, of ambuscade and defeat; his voice rustled monotonously ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... them just skinned, for she meant playing a trick upon her father. Then she dug four pits for us to lie in, and sat down to wait till we should come up. When we were close to her, she made us lie down in the pits one after the other, and threw a seal skin over each of us. Our ambuscade would have been intolerable, for the stench of the fishy seals was most distressing {45}—who would go to bed with a sea monster if he could help it?—but here, too, the goddess helped us, and thought of something that gave us great relief, for she put some ambrosia under each man's nostrils, ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... sent for in haste from Paisley. He was in the saddle and away before the bridal party could recover from their first shock of surprise. But even Claverhouse was foiled. His lieutenant, however, had better luck. Colonel Buchan, as he was returning to Paisley by way of Lismahago, came upon an ambuscade of two hundred Covenanters, whose advanced post fired on and wounded one of the soldiers.[46] "They followed the rogues," wrote Claverhouse to Queensberry, "and advertised Colonel Buchan; but before he could come up, our party had ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... which has most attractions for Baden-Powell, and if he had not been locked up in Mafeking all through those precious months at the beginning of the war, it is no idle guesswork to say that we should have lost fewer men and fewer guns by surprise and ambuscade. ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... ago. There was an upward incline, but it was quite easy for the horses. The pass gradually narrowed as they went, and the mountain-sides grew more precipitous, shutting them in like great walls on either side. Little foothold was there for a lurking enemy, and there were no deep gorges where an ambuscade might hide. To defend this part of the pass in the old days must have meant a hand-to-hand struggle in the narrow way. Ellerey noted this as he went. His life in Sturatzberg had made ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... Hoangho. His light cavalry raided past the Chinese capital into the province of Szchuen, and returned laden with the spoil of countless cities. These successes were crowned by a signal victory over the emperor in person. Kaotsou was drawn into an ambuscade in which his troops had no chance with their more active adversaries, and, to save himself from capture, Kaotsou had no alternative but to take refuge in the town of Pingching, where he was closely beleaguered. It was impossible to defend the town for any length of time, and the capture of ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... her veil fall, as if by chance, and I had time to look again upon her face, which was even more beautiful than I had imagined. Her eyes were large and peculiarly black, and fringed by long lashes, which, aided by the collyrium with which they were tinged, formed a sort of ambuscade, from which she levelled her shafts. Her eyebrows were finely arched, and nature had brought them together just over her nose, in so strong a line, that there was no need of art to join them together. Her nose was aquiline, her mouth small, and full of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Abbot and his followers arrive, and Robin Hood offers the money to redeem Sir Richard's bond; but, upon a legal quibble, the Abbot declines to receive it—preferring to seize the forfeited land. Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham appear, and Robin and his Foresters form an ambuscade. Sir Richard Lea has been brought in, upon his litter, and Marian stays beside him. Prince John attempts to seize her, but this time he is frustrated by the sudden advent of King Richard—from whose presence he slinks away. The myrmidons of John, however, attack the King, who would oppose ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... experience for the scouts to find the quarry gone when they reached the place where they expected to find him. Pilar's own scouts had found that the ambuscade was destined to fail of its purpose, and the wily leader drew back into the more accessible country. The scouting party did not come in sight of the little brown soldiers. The occasional crack of a Mauser broke the silence of the advance, keeping the Americans in active touch ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... was the battle of Beder. The history of the battle is thus given by Abulfeda: "The apostle, hearing that a caravan of the Meccans was coming home from Syria, escorted by Abu Sofian at the head of thirty men, placed a number of soldiers in ambuscade to intercept it. Abu Sofian, being informed thereof by his spies, sent word immediately to Mecca, whereupon all the principal men except Abu Laheb—who, however, sent Al Asum son of Hesham in his stead—marched out to his assistance, making in all nine hundred ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... you? As soon as night comes on, you shall order fifteen or twenty men, under the command of your sergeant La Place, to be under arms, and to lay themselves flat on the ground, between this place and the head-quarters." "What the devil!" cried Matta, "an ambuscade? God forgive me, I believe you intend to rob the poor Savoyard. If that be your intention, I declare I will have nothing to say to it" "Poor devil!" said the Chevalier, "the matter is this; it is very likely that we shall win his money. The Piedmontese, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... the ground was very dry, a cloud of dust had instantly enveloped them, by which means, fortunately, every one of them had escaped unharmed, although on their way they had drawn the fire of more than three hundred Indian rifles, successively discharged at them while passing the lines of the ambuscade. Not thus easily, however, ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... blindness of Bertram, son of Hugo de Jubilet, after the disease had baffled the skill of the Saracen and Christian-Syrian physicians of his day. Now Littre avers that a certain Hugo de Jubilet was involved in an ambuscade in Syria in the year 1227, and that he had a son named Bertram. It is very natural, of course, to conclude that this Bertram was the patient recorded in the book of Gilbert. Kingsford says that Gilbert "met" Bertram in Syria, but ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... cautiously approached Kief, he left his army in a secluded encampment, and with a few chosen troops floated down the stream in barges, disguised as merchant boats. Landing in the night beneath the high and precipitous banks near the town, he placed a number of his soldiers in ambuscade, and then calling upon the princes of Kief, informed them that he had been sent by the king of Novgorod, with a commercial adventure down the Dnieper, and invited them to ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... light of day could penetrate. The general width was about forty feet, and occasionally it diminished so as not to allow the passage of more than five or six persons abreast. In short, there could be no place in the world better adapted for the consummation of an ambuscade, and it was no more than natural that we should look carefully to our arms as we entered upon it. When I now think of our egregious folly, the chief subject of astonishment seems to be, that we should have ever ventured, under any circumstances, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... From his ambuscade he looked out upon the approaching canoe. He was puzzled by the slowness of its progress. At times it seemed to stand still, and he could distinguish no movement at all among its occupants. At first he thought they were undecided as to which ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... is dull! Your horse thinks so, too. He gently tries the reins, and, finding that you offer no resistance, he decides to take a little exercise, and starts off at a canter, keeping away from the wall most piously, avoiding the corners as if some Hector might be in ambuscade there to catch and tame him, and rushing on faster and faster, as you do nothing in particular ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... was held to consider in what manner they should approach the sad and solitary bird, which, unconscious that itself was the object of a formidable ambuscade, stood motionless on a stone, by the brink of the lake, watching for such small fish or water-reptiles as might chance to pass by its lonely station. A brief debate took place betwixt Raoul and the hawk-merchant on the best mode of starting the quarry, so as to allow Lady ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... were no enemy within striking reach, well, then this were a pleasant march from Neville to Binch, for that is where I'm told we are going. But, faith, I don't like the sight of this country in which we are being entangled. If Conde has any head, and he is not a fool, he could arrange a fine ambuscade, and catch those mighty and vain-glorious Imperialists and that fool Souches like rats in a trap. Or he might make a sudden attack on the flank and cut our army into two, as you divide a caterpillar ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... fighting among themselves, and man, in his turn, pursuing all kinds of game. He identified nature with woman, both possessing in his eyes an equally deceiving appearance, the same beguiling beauty, and the same spirit of ambuscade and perfidy. The people around him inspired him only with mistrust and suspicion. In every peasant he met he recognized an enemy, prepared to cheat him with wheedling words and hypocritical lamentations. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... were lying along the lower levels. Sounds, mingled and far ahead, told of the presence of a marching host, and Sergius led his troop on a more oblique course to gain the flank of the foe and lessen the chances of detection and ambuscade. ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... cavalry—if such it could be called. Men accustomed from infancy to the saddle and the rifle had seized whatever weapon they were possessed of; and more at home on horseback than on foot, they were, no doubt, ugly enemies in a bush fight, or an ambuscade. Many whole companies had no sabers but those their officers carried, and the very individuality and self-reliance of the men acted as an invincible opponent to drill and discipline. Mounted on horses of all sizes and colors; equipped with all ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... a big man," said the Doctor. "On the whole, he's about our biggest man. An officer who came out of the ambuscade at Fort Duquesne with thirty living men out of three companies and four shot holes in his coat must have an engagement with Destiny. Evidently his work was not finished. You have traveled about some. What is the feeling ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... finished examining his weapons when a cloud of dust slowly advancing in the distance told him that a party of considerable size was on its way towards the ambuscade. He anxiously awaited their approach, and soon recognised Roberval's Picard escort, and the fluttering skirts of the women. If the men in ambush were waiting for them they were doomed, unless he could warn them. To pass from his hiding meant almost instant ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... perilous situation of Captain Mason became known at the fort, Captain Ogle was sent out with twelve men, to cover his retreat. This party fell into an ambuscade and two-thirds of the number were slain upon the spot. Captain Ogle found a place of concealment, where he was obliged to remain until the end of the siege. Sergeant Jacob Ogle, though mortally wounded, managed to escape, with two ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... but that is not a matter of much consequence the government can stand it. She is bent on capturing me, that is plain; but she will find by and by that what she took for a sleeping garrison was an ambuscade." ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... weeks, travel through Edinburgh up to London. But these reports were vague and contradictory; and the very worst of them was far from coming up to the horrible truth. The Whig version of the story was that the old robber Mac Ian had laid an ambuscade for the soldiers, that he had been caught in his own snare, and that he and some of his clan had fallen sword in hand. The Jacobite version, written at Edinburgh on the twenty-third of March, appeared in the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all sides of us we see public and private society broken up, as it were by an earthquake: the noblest and the meanest passions of the human bosom at contention, and the latter often so disguised, that the vile ambuscade is not even suspected till found within the heart of the fortress itself. We have, however, one veritable touchstone, that of the truest observation, "ye shall know a tree by its fruits." Let us look round, then, for those which ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... time the Indians had made themselves thus "completely frightful", it was nearly one in the morning. Then, finding all the Eskimo quiet in their tents, they rushed forth from their ambuscade, and fell on the poor, unsuspecting creatures, unperceived till they were close to the very eaves of the tents. A horrible massacre forthwith took place, while Hearne stood neutral in ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... the Moorish cavalry announced that Jugurtha was encamped about two miles in advance. At this report, great dismay fell upon our men; for they believed themselves betrayed by Volux, and led into an ambuscade. Some exclaimed that they ought to take vengeance on him at once, and not suffer such ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... cohorts to forage. It having been falsely reported to them that these were ensnared, whilst they march in great haste, in order to support them, without even retaining the author [of the report] who had deceived them, he being a Latin enemy instead of a Roman soldier, they themselves fell into an ambuscade. There, whilst they suffer and commit great havoc, making resistance on disadvantageous ground solely by the valour of the soldiers, the enemy in the mean time in another quarter attacked the Roman camp which was situate on a plain. By their temerity and want of skill, matters were ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... success having passed the Boristhenes, encountered a party of 10,000 Muscovites and 6000 Calmuck Tartars; but they gave way on the first onset and fled into a wood, where the king, following the dictates of his great courage more than prudence, pursuing them, fell into an ambuscade, which, throwing themselves between him and three regiments of horse that were with him, hem'd him in, and now began a very unequal fight.—Many of the gallant Swedes were cut to pieces, and the Muscovites made quite up to his majesty:—two aid-de-camps were killed ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... band which came from the Rue Saint Denis had halted there and had waited. These men were astonished at not being pursued. Had the soldiers feared to follow them into the little narrow streets, where each corner of the houses might conceal an ambuscade? Had a counter order been given? They hazarded various conjectures. Moreover they heard close by, evidently on the boulevard, a terrific noise of musketry, and a cannonade which resembled continuous ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... they wrapt in so much shade, That they may more successful rise, Starting from such soft ambuscade, To catch and kill ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... returned home late from the supper-room, and he was sorrowfully walking along the streets of Sion, accompanied by a few disciples and women, when all on a sudden a band of armed men, who were lying in ambuscade in the neighbourhood of Caiphas's tribunal, fell upon them, and laid hands upon Joseph, whereupon his companions fled, uttering loud cries of terror. He was confined in a tower contiguous to the city ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... I hear the far warble of blown bugles. Again I see the tall, blue smoke of camp-fires ascending from the dim valleys of Wonderland. There steals upon my sense the ghost of an odor from pines that canopy the ambuscade. I feel upon my cheek the morning mist that shrouds the hostile camp unaware of its doom, and my blood stirs at the ringing rifle-shot of the solitary sentinel. Unfamiliar landscapes, glittering with sunshine or sullen with rain, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... select and disciplined body of his Illyrian troops, proposing to follow them in person, with the remainder of his forces. But the conduct of his lieutenants soon terminated the unnatural contest. By the artful appearances of flight, Constantine was betrayed into an ambuscade, which had been concealed in a wood, where the rash youth, with a few attendants, was surprised, surrounded, and slain. His body, after it had been found in the obscure stream of the Alsa, obtained the honors of an Imperial sepulchre; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... from any wound. And ever in her mind she cast about For that unnoticed failing in herself, Which made him look so cloudy and so cold; Till the great plover's human whistle amazed Her heart, and glancing round the waste she feared In ever wavering brake an ambuscade. Then thought again, 'If there be such in me, I might amend it by the grace of Heaven, If he would only speak and tell ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... friend Dromas, with their contingent, being at the lower end of the flat and far out of bow-shot, were not thus tempted to disobey orders. The ambuscade on the other side of the Swamp had been put under the command of Captain Arkal, with Maikar for his lieutenant. Being entirely ignorant of what was going on, the men of this contingent lay close, ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... catch an Elliott. For a while, in the night and the black water that was deep as to his saddle-girths, he wrought with his staff like a smith at his stithy, and great was the sound of oaths and blows. With that the ambuscade was burst, and he rode for home with a pistol-ball in him, three knife wounds, the loss of his front teeth, a broken rib and bridle, and a dying horse. That was a race with death that the laird rode! In the mirk night, with his broken bridle and his head swimming, he dug his ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inferior in number to their opponents, and it was beginning to go hard with them, when the remainder of the guerillas, now armed and mounted, came up to their assistance. On perceiving this accession to their adversaries' force, the French thought they had been led into an ambuscade, and retreating in tolerable order to the edge of the wood, at last fairly turned tail and ran for it, leaving several killed and wounded on the ground, and were pursued for some distance by the guerillas, who, however, only succeeded in making one prisoner. This ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... directly in his rear, forgetting their orders, suddenly called out, 'Colonel, the British!' faced about, and putting spurs to their horses, were soon out of sight. The colonel, looking around, discovered that he was in the centre of a powerful ambuscade, into which the enemy had silently allowed him to pass, without his observing them. They lined both sides of the road, and had been stationed there to pick up any straggling party of the Americans that might chance to pass. Immediately on finding they were discovered, ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... in the purple was the Prince Imperial, whose fate beggars tragedy; who went to gather laurels on an African desert and fell a victim to a savage ambuscade—his beautiful body stuck almost as full of cruel darts as that of the ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... for Sardinia, which they saw on the 23d in the evening, when his lordship sent the Juno with orders for the transports to join him. At sunset, on the 26th, the fleet anchored in the Gulph of Palma; where Lord Nelson found his old friend, Admiral Louis, in the Ambuscade, who had sailed from England the 16th of February. The whole of this night, and the three following days, were employed in clearing transports. On the 29th, the Seahorse brought intelligence that the French fleet were safe in port on Sunday the 24th. The day following, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... castle, knight, and bishop of the opposite army: also, he exhorted the king to make a feint, as if about to march onwards. Sir Launcelot, on perceiving the movement of the monarch, sprang forward to make him a prisoner; but he was surprised by an elephant in ambuscade, from whose castle-bearing back a well-shot arrow pierced his corslet, and inflicted a mortal wound. He fell; but, in falling, he seemed to smile even sweetly, as he thought upon the noble speech of Sir Bohort[224] over the dead body of his illustrious ancestor, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... was meditated upon our party. The road, as we advanced, seemed to afford every facility for such an unpleasant interruption. At first it winded apart from the lake through marshy meadow ground, overgrown with copsewood, now traversing dark and close thickets which would have admitted an ambuscade to be sheltered within a few yards of our line of march, and frequently crossing rough mountain torrents, some of which took the soldiers up to the knees, and ran with such violence, that their force could only be stemmed by the strength of two or three men holding fast by each ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... set fire to it, and totally destroyed it. The captain, having arrived at his destination at midnight, with all possible secrecy leaped ashore, and arranged his men and the Pintados [42] Indians whom he had with him in ambuscade near the villages, in order to make the attack upon them at daybreak. However, the natives of this island having been informed of the hostile incursion of the Spaniards, withdrew with their children and wives and all their belongings that they could take with them, to three ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... a spot well calculated by nature to form, as it has done, an important rendezvous and ambuscade for the prowling savages of the prairies, and often afforded them, especially the once powerful and murderous Pawnees whose name it perpetuates, a pleasant little retreat or eyrie from which to watch the passing Santa Fe traders, and dash down upon them like ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... victorious. A deep melancholy—ever broken by startled movements, by sudden alarms, by disturbed rest, by stifled sighs—reigns throughout. We are surrounded by such scenes and feelings as might arise among those who had been surprised and encompassed on all sides by an ambuscade, the vast sweep of whose horizon reveals not a single ground for hope, and whose despair had giddied the brain, like a draught of that wine of Cyprus which gives a more instinctive rapidity to all our gestures, a keener point to all our words, a more subtle ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... descriptions. She demanded an account of Billy's furniture, Billy's clothes, Billy's form of exercise. It dawned upon Benham that for some inexplicable reason she was hostile to Billy. It was like the unmasking of an ambuscade. He had talked a lot about Prothero's ideas and the discussions of social reform and social service that went on in his rooms, for Billy read at unknown times, and was open at all hours to any argumentative caller. To Lady Marayne all ideas were obnoxious, a form of fogging; all ideas, she held, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... the troops was begun. The point chosen was a broad beach fringed with woods near the anchorage of the vessels. Before landing the troops, the ships threw a few shells into the woods, to make certain that they concealed no ambuscade, as in the disastrous affair at Matthias Point. After two dozen shells had burst, mowing down trees, and driving out frightened animals in plenty, but no sharp-shooters, the long-boats put off from the transports bearing the soldiers for the land attack. As soon as six or seven hundred ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... avenged upon the Jesuits. This was the case with a band of Guapalaches, who, coming on Father Espinosa in a wood, attacked and massacred him and all his Indians, and, having cut his body into pieces, left it for the wild beasts to eat. Upon another occasion Father Mendoza fell into an ambuscade, from which he might have escaped had not his horse sunk in a miry stream. Long he defended himself with an Indian shield, but at length was stretched upon the ground and left for dead. During the night he ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... of them came out of the wood, with a bow and arrows in his hand, and made signs for the boat to come to the place where he stood. This the officer very prudently declined, as he would then have been within bow-shot of an ambuscade, and after waiting some time, and finding that a conference could be procured upon no other terms, he returned back to the ship. It was certainly in my power to have destroyed many of these unfriendly people, by firing my great guns into the wood, but it would have answered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... the south, to indicate the strip of woods that he desired to cross. The plan seemed feasible enough. The town, although seemingly near, was over five miles distant. The road by which the guerrilleros had to reach it was much farther. Could Rolfe and his party meet them on this road, by an ambuscade, they would gain an easy victory, although with inferior numbers, and Rolfe wished to carry back to camp a Mexican prisoner. This was the object of the scout, to gain information of the force supposed to be in the rear of our lines. The men, too, were eager for the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... would answer him by gobbling like a turkey; that he must meet me at Sand Point at three o'clock sharp, and if he was not there at that time I would know that something was wrong. I also told him to be careful and not run into an ambuscade, but above all not to be taken prisoner. Then I asked him if he could bark like a cayote. His answer was: "Sure, Captain, it's mesilf that can make a bloody cayote ashamed of himself bairking, and I belave ye's is afraid for me, but O'ill tell ye now ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... not simply to establish certain liberties for herself but also—which had certainly not been in her mind before—to keep her husband away from herself. Something latent in the situation had surprised her with this effect. It had arisen out of the quarrel like a sharpshooter out of an ambuscade. Her right to go out alone had now only the value of a mere pretext for far more extensive independence. The ultimate extent of these independences, she still ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... night they ford The hostile stream. The endless earth below, The boundless sky above, they know no day Of their return. Their breasts are ever bared To the pitiless steel and all the wounds of war Unspeakable. Methinks I see them now, Dust-mantled in the bitter wind, a host Of Tartar warriors in ambuscade. Our leader scorns the foe. He would give battle Upon the threshold of the camp. The stream Besets a grim array where order reigns, Though many hearts may beat, where discipline Is all, and life of no account. The spear Now works its iron will, the startled ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... incident in the period was the invasion of Phlius by Iphicrates. He laid an ambuscade, and with a small body of troops adopting a system of guerilla war, took occasion of an unguarded sally of the citizens of Phlius to inflict such losses on them, that though they had never previously received the Lacedaemonians within their walls, they ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... behind the stockade, while the remainder were concealed in ambush near the spring with which the garrison was supplied with water. The most experienced of the defenders understood the tactics of their wily foes, and shrewdly guessed that an ambuscade had been prepared in order to cut off the garrison from access to the spring. The water in the station was already exhausted, and unless a fresh supply could be obtained the most dreadful sufferings were apprehended. It was thought probable that the Indians in ambush would not unmask ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... his way forward in the shelter of a large patch of shadow cast by the orange-trees, dragging himself along, almost, like a thief afraid of an ambuscade. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the English on James' Island. One of these expeditions, when Kosciuszko and his companion attacked a party of English woodcutters, has the distinction of being the last occasion on which blood was shed in the American War. They were surprised by an ambuscade, and Wilmot was killed. At length Charleston fell. On December 14, 1782, the American army entered the town in a triumphal procession, in which Kosciuszko rode with his fellow-officers, greeted by the populace with flowers and fluttering kerchiefs and cries of "Welcome!" and "God bless ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... place. This they did, but not without suffering much loss; for the man fought for his life and defended himself, slaying many of his enemies. Then they that escaped ran into the camp, saying that Sicinius had fallen into an ambuscade, and had died along with certain others of the soldiers. At the first, indeed, this story was believed; but afterward, when, by permission of the Ten, there went some to bury the dead, they found that none of the dead ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... secure the weakened city. He schemed all this with the aid of a Guelph that dwelt in Arezzo as a red-hot Ghibelline. Now, it would have been simple enough for him after this to send the little handful of Florentines against a warned Arezzo and have them cut to pieces by an Aretine ambuscade. But his purpose went further than merely demolishing a number of his enemies. He wanted to win Arezzo, if he could, as well. So, by his machinations, he arranged that the forces of Arezzo should be out to meet and overthrow the adventurous Florentines, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... his ambuscade with discretion. With a closed carriage and a band of chosen ruffians he had left the palace a good half-hour before the king's messengers, and by the aid of his sister's gold he had managed that their journey should not be a very rapid ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Thay-en-dan-e- gea or Brant, who went with a company of Tories, led by Col. Butler, to intercept General Herkimer, who was reported as coming to the relief of the garrison. At a certain point on the way, where they expected the general would pass, they formed an ambuscade, and though they selected their ground with wisdom, and acquitted themselves with great bravery, they were unable to stand before the invincible courage of the ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... house, of whatever kind it may be, an individual suspected of any crime is arrested, the arrest is held secret. Four or five men are placed in ambuscade in the first room. The door is opened to all who knock. It is closed after them, and they are arrested; so that at the end of two or three days they have in their power almost all the HABITUES of the establishment. And that is ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... must not pass unnoticed, which is, that in America, the major part of which is still an uncleared country, the system of warfare naturally partakes much of the Indian practices of surprise and ambuscade; and the invaders will always have to labour under the great disadvantage of the Americans having that perfect knowledge of the country which ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... disaster; once in Britain, when his fleet was nearly wrecked in a storm; in Gaul, at Gergovia, where one of his legions was put to the rout; and in the territory of the Germans, his lieutenants Titurius and Aurunculeius were cut off by an ambuscade. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the French, for the former would then have been the attacking party and have borne the brunt of the battle. As it was, the French commander nearly succeeded in drawing the thousand men that Johnson had sent out to meet him into an ambuscade, and among the slain was brave Colonel Williams, commander of the Provincials in this engagement, and gallant Chief Hendrick, who had accompanied him ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... arrayed against him. One morning, therefore, the party was divided, and half of them sent back to an ambush in the scrub. The natives were allowed to pass on in close pursuit of the advance party. The native dogs, however, scented this ambuscade, and, after their fashion, warned the blacks of the presence of the hidden whites. As they halted, and began handling and poising their spears, one of the ambushed men fired without orders, and the others followed his example. The natives faltered, and those ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... wife, with a view to establishing a strong claim for subsequent reward, bribed Antoine Macquart to lead the Republicans left in Plassans to an attack on the town hall. To meet this he prepared a strong ambuscade, and the Republicans were repulsed with considerable loss. As a result of this treachery, Pierre was regarded by his fellow-citizens as the saviour of the town, and the Government subsequently appointed him Receiver of Taxes, decorating ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... and story have found many incidents for treatment in this locality. Not far from the farm where Fuller's daily work was done, the tragedy of Bloody Brook was enacted; the fields which he tilled have their legend of Indian ambuscade and massacre; the soil is sown, as with dragon's teeth, with the arrow-heads and battle-axes of many bitter conflicts; even to the ancient house where, in recent years, the painter's summer easel was set up, a former owner was ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... were able to hew these coffins (they are at least twelve feet long by ten feet high), and, having hewn them, to carry them underground (they weigh on an average between sixty and seventy tons), and finally to range them in rows here in these strange chambers, where they stand as if in ambuscade on either side of us as we pass? Each in its turn has contained quite comfortably the mummy of a bull Apis, armoured in plates of gold. But in spite of their weight, in spite of their solidity which effectively ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... were in camp, and made the same proposition, which they accepted, as they were new in the country and needed horses and mules. The lumbermen joined the Mexicans, and as they could easily discern the course of the Apaches by the clouds of dust, succeeded in forming an ambuscade and fired on the Apaches when they reached the river. The Apaches fled at the fire, leaving the stolen ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... day after the battle Brennus appeared, leading his army to attack the city. At first, seeing the gates open and no guards on the walls, he feared some ambuscade, as he could not believe that the Romans had so utterly despaired of themselves. When he discovered the truth, he marched through the Colline Gate, and captured Rome, a little more than three hundred and sixty years after its foundation, if we can believe that any accurate record has been kept of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... the Archbishop's not hopping off just as the pinch was about to fall on him, and this seemed so unfair that his blood boiled at the thought of it. If this was to be so, he must try if he could not fix him by the judicious use of bird-lime or a snare, or throw the salt on his tail from an ambuscade. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... us. The chief of the escort came running to me, and informed me of the cause of their terror, which was that they recognized, by some peculiarity of their headgear, that these men belonged to the tribe of the Dilwas, the most ferocious and unscrupulous of the Bedouin, who had evidently laid an ambuscade for us at this point with the intention of seizing our caravan. When I thought of all my efforts in Abyssinia, of the length of my journey and of the dangers and fatigues which I had endured, I could not bear to think ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... possible ambuscade deterred the listener less than the thought of leaving Nan, from whom he was unwilling to separate himself for a moment. Likewise, the possibility of an attempt to kidnap her in his absence was not overlooked. On the other hand, if the message came from Duke and bore some ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Heaven, answer the spyglasses, it is a Montgolfier, a Balloon, and they are making signals! Austrian cannon-battery barks at this Montgolfier; harmless as dog at the Moon: the Montgolfier makes its signals; detects what Austrian ambuscade there may be, and descends at its ease. (26th June, 1794, see Rapport de Guyton-Morveau sur les aerostats, in Moniteur du 6 Vendemiaire, An 2.) What will not ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the valour of the troops: let them only join unanimously in a vigorous attack against a foe, already vanquished in the field, beaten out of their camps, and stripped of their towns, and now trying their last hope by the contrivance of an ambuscade, placing their reliance on the ground they occupied, not on their arms. But what ground was now unsurmountable to Roman valour?" The citadel of Fregellae, and that of Sora, were called to their remembrance, with many other places ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... General George Crook, who is looked upon by the old-timers as perhaps the greatest of our Indian-fighters, led the cavalry against the Apaches. Crook's understanding of the Indian was perfect; and not only was he able to beat the natives at their own game of ambuscade but he thoroughly sympathized with their cause. He knew how Washington and incompetent officers had blundered ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... boys in the vicinity possibly they would take alarm, and hurrying to their concealed biplane make for the far North with all haste; and in this way, if no one knew of their departure the intended ambuscade that night in the vicinity of the railroad pay-car would be ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... his six-shooter the while; every sailor grasped his cutlass and kept his revolver ready for action. "I don't half like the look of it," the captain observed, partly to himself. "They seem to be leading us into an ambuscade or something. Keep a sharp lookout against surprise from the jungle, boys; and if any native shows fight shoot ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... passes swift through the darksome glade, And roves o'er the mountains all? It crouches in nightly ambuscade; The hurrah breaks round the foe dismayed, And the Frankish sergeants fall. Should you of the rangers black demand— That is Luetzow's wild ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... of thanks and confidence was passed in full lodge, and so for the time the matter ended. When a few weeks later it was reported in the papers that Wilcox had been shot at from an ambuscade, it was an open secret that McMurdo was still at work upon ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... either side, as though they had been waiting purposely to ambuscade him, shot several animals, who charged him without as much ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... before taking refuge inside the walls of the city. An hour after parting from Mr. Chambers I am wheeling briskly down the same road on the eastern slope of the pass where Mukhtar Pasha's ill-fated column was drawn into the fatal ambuscade that suddenly turned the fortunes of the day against them. While rapidly gliding down the gentle gradient, I fancy I can see the Cossack regiments, advancing toward the Turkish position, the unwary and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... [says Liszt] predominates, intersected by wild movements, melancholy smiles, unexpected starts, and intervals of rest full of dread such as those experience who have been surprised by an ambuscade, who are surrounded on all sides, for whom there dawns no hope upon the vast horizon, and to whose brain despair has gone like a deep draught of Cyprian wine, which gives a more instinctive rapidity to every gesture, a sharper point ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... to be patriots, he was led to turn aside from the road upon which he marched out into a somewhat narrow clearing in the forest near a small work called Fort Keyser, and was killed nearly two miles from Fort Paris, being attacked on every side in what amounted to an ambuscade. ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe
... the leadership of a brave and skillful chief named Osceola they resisted the troops sent to coerce them into obedience. The most memorable event of the war was the massacre of Major Dade and about one hundred soldiers in an ambuscade, December 28, 1835. On the same day Osceola with a small party of followers killed and scalped General Wiley Thomson, of the United States army and five of Thomson's friends. Before the opening of hostilities Thomson ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... grip of Ulrich's beard, as he was leaning close to the side of the coach to watch his proceedings. Not a stir did the brave old knight make, but sat as still as marble, and even held his breath, lest the ghost might feel it warm upon his hand, and so discover their ambuscade. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... traditions. Sporadic forays, fostered by their ignorant dread of one another or stirred up by rival medicine-men, there may have been between different tribes—and there certainly were between the Indians and the Esquimaux—with ambuscade and slaughter of isolated hunting parties that ventured too far beyond the confines of their own territory; and one such affair would furnish tradition for generations to dilate upon. I have myself found all the men of Nulato ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... back. Montoni arrested his half-extended arm, and, with a significant look, made him return the poinard into his bosom, unseen by all except himself; for most of the party were disputing at a distant window, on the situation of a dell where they meant to form an ambuscade. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... shots fired. The men in ambuscade tried to escape to the fastnesses of the hills. Some of them stood ground and fought, only to be mown down by the enemy; others were surrounded and made captive; but few actually succeeded in evading the troopers. All were ready to sue for mercy and to ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... tottering step, a bloodless countenance, and a look of horror. Without a word, he pointed to the door; I followed the direction, and saw what might well justify his feelings. The troop of yeomanry had been attacked on their return from patrolling the country; an ambuscade had been laid for them by a large force of the insurgents, in one of the narrow roads which bordered the demesne, and where, from its vicinity, they had imagined themselves secure. As they moved down this defile with their noble commandant at their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... other portions of the wide field over which the war was raging, Rome had obtained additional successes. Ardaburius, who probably still commanded in Mesopotamia, had drawn the Persian force opposed to him into an ambuscade, and had destroyed it, together with its seven generals. Vitianus, an officer of whom nothing more is known, had exterminated the remnant of the Arabs not drowned in the Euphrates. The war had gone everywhere against the Persians; and it is not improbable that Varahran, before the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... and Belleville next Saturday, carrying fifty thousand francs of government money to the monks of Saint-Bernard; to which I may add that there is between those two places a spot called the Maison-Blanche, which seems to me admirably adapted for an ambuscade." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... defeated with considerable loss. These are all the details of this action we have been able to find. Colonel Floyd collected twenty-five men to pursue the Indians, but in spite of all his caution, fell into an ambuscade, which was estimated to consist of two hundred warriors. Half of Colonel Floyd's men were killed, and the survivors supposed that they had slain nine or ten of the Indians. This, however, is not probable; either the number of the Indians engaged, or their loss, is much exaggerated. ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... century. Previously, for an indefinite period, they dwelt on the Kabompo river, 200 m. to the N.E. of their present country, and here the descendants of a section of the tribe which did not migrate still remain, under the name Balokwakwa (men of the ambuscade), formerly known as Aalukolui. That the Barotse at a still more remote period emigrated from the far north-east is indicated by vague tradition as well as by a certain similarity in type and language to some tribes living in that direction, though the fact that natives from Mashonaland ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... had delivered the order, "Forward!" and we were down upon them with a rush. They stood no chance; they turned tail and scattered, we plowing through them as if they had been men of straw. That was our last ambuscade, and it was probably laid for us by that treacherous rascal, the King's own minister and favorite, De ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... Signet of signets from which it was taken. Truly the holy Tanofir, or his Cup, Karema, or his messengers, or the spirits with whom he dwelt, I know not which, had a general's eye and knew how to plan an ambuscade. ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... who wanted my cape and blade would have to get them with some trouble. Then I quickened pace, while they still followed slowly at my heels; this augmented my fear, for I thought I might be falling into an ambuscade, which would have cut me off in front as well as rear. Accordingly, when I was at the distance of a hundred paces from my home, I ran with all my might, and shouted at the top of my voice: "To arms, to arms! out with you, out with you! I am being murdered." In a moment four of my young ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... of vengeance, or the ambition of striking a glorious coup by my capture—have continued the pursuit? If so we might expect to encounter them on their return; or, if first perceived, we might fall into an ambuscade. In either case should they chance to outnumber us—to any great extent—a collision would ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... no surprise, No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes From brake or lurking dell or deep defile; No humors, frolic forms — this mile, that mile; No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes Beyond the bend of roads, the distant slopes. Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame: ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the mountains, the raiders had hurriedly driven the cattle into the forest, where they would be out of sight and so could not give warning of the whereabouts of the thieves, and had then hidden themselves behind some rocks along the trail. From their ambuscade they would be able to shoot down their pursuers or capture them ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... suddenly seized with as strong a desire for active life, as he formerly possessed for easy rest, and he felt himself in no safety except when at a distance from the mansion, for he knew that Ragnar possessed too much honor to entrap him in an ambuscade. ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... 17th January 1567 Sampiero was slain in an ambuscade laid for him in the defile of Cauro, into which he had been led by forged letters brought him by the monk Ambrosius ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... secretly stole over to a point of ambuscade from which he could see the shimmery flash of her dress as she moved about the porch, cavaliered by the odious Jimmy and his fellows. On these nocturnal vigils he heard the note of her heedless laughter while he crouched ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... complained of his sending back his daughter: that he hates him out of fear that he should take possession of the crown of his Shamkhalat: that he implored the Colonel to allow him to kill him in an ambuscade, or to poison him in his food; but that the other consented only to send him to Siberia, beyond the end of the world. In one word, invent and describe every thing cleverly. You were formerly famous for your tales. Do not eat dirt now. And, above all, insist ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... few of them as I could; and especially I was unwilling to hazard the killing of any of our men, knowing the others were very well armed. I resolved to wait, to see if they did not separate; and therefore, to make sure of them, I drew my ambuscade nearer, and ordered Friday and the captain to creep upon their hands and feet, as close to the ground as they could, that they might not be discovered, and get as near them as they could possibly ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... new and terrible danger daunted every heart. Resolved to cut off all communication between Damietta and the camp of the Crusaders, the sultan ordered a number of galleys to be transported overland, to form an ambuscade; and many French vessels were intercepted. For a time, Louis could not comprehend how no arrivals took place, and felt the gravest alarm. Ere long, however, one vessel, belonging to the Count of Flanders, escaped the vigilance ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... unknown town. The silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances, as if to lead him further from his way. For Denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... overtook them, he was red and breathless, but Fran's beribboned hat was clutched triumphantly in his hand. It was he who first discovered the ambuscade. He suddenly remembered, looked across the street, then fell, desperately wounded. The shots would have passed unheeded over Abbott's head, had not Fran called his ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... had secured their ambuscade, each lying on the ground at full length, concealed by low, scrubby trees. By a slight turn of the head, each could command a view up the gorge ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... little beyond the range of his gun. Whilst in a state of doubt and anxiety as to whether they would approach near enough to be shot, he suddenly observed them raise their heads and swim towards the shore apart from his ambuscade; and, whilst wondering at the cause of so strange a proceeding, his attention was directed to a fox which was skipping about on the shore, and evidently enticing the ducks to approach. This accidental discovery of so weak a point in the nature of the feathered tribe led the sportsman ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... secret code in war. Stray Indians put themselves in touch again with the band by turkey calls in the daytime and by owl or wolf notes at night. The frontiersmen used the same means to trick the Indian band into betraying the place of its ambuscade, or to lure the strays, unwitting, within reach of ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... full view of the men who lay in ambush. Jugurtha proceeded to the same spot amidst a large retinue of his friends; it had been agreed that all the partners to the conference should come unarmed.[1190] A sign was given, and the men of the ambuscade had sprung from every side upon the mound. Jugurtha's retinue was cut down to a man; the king himself was seized, bound and handed over to Sulla. In a short while he ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... And kindly stoppld the unfinish'd charm But though not changed to owl or bat, Or something more indelicate; Yet, as your tongue has run too fast, Your boasted beauty must not last, No more shall frolic Cupid lie In ambuscade in either eye, >From thence to aim his keenest dart To captivate each youthful heart: No more shall envious misses pine At charms now flown, that once were thine: No more, since you so ill behave, Shall injured Oberon be ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... King, lest never a boat come back from that errand. With their narrow flat-bottomed punts, cut out of a single log, and their leaping-poles, wherewith they fly over dikes of thirty feet in width,—they can ambuscade in those reed-beds and alder-beds, kill whom they will, and then flee away through the marsh like so many horse-flies. And if not, one trick have they left, which they never try save when driven into a corner; but from that, may all ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... once with valor true The attack from an ambuscade, In moral strife, or bloody war, Hath ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... in India the natives had been won by the diplomatic French, but their aid proved of no avail. The British Parliament sent over General Braddock in 1757, and he perished with a large portion of his army in the celebrated ambuscade from which Washington escaped.[17] For a time French energy made the war seem not unequal; but the number of French in America was small; the home Government of Louis XV seemed wholly lost in sloth and indifferent to the result. The English ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... concealed themselves, before the Matabili in the clump, surprised at not seeing the awnings of the waggons, and suspecting that they had been deceived, came out from their ambuscade; first crawling on all-fours, and as they arrived at the camp, and found only fires burning, rising up one after another. After remaining about a minute in consultation, two of the party were sent back to the river ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... lured into an ambuscade by the Indians, and most of them were killed. Reenforcements were sent to Sudbury. The Indians were driven off; and the next day David Comee was found lying in the water of the river meadow, scalped, and stripped of his armour ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... comrades, they had, under their officers, Lieutenants Sutherland and MacKay, made a skilful detour in the woods to the rear of the enemy, reaching a point where the road passed from the forest to the open marsh across a small semicircular cove. Here they formed an ambuscade in a thick grove of palmettos which nearly ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... preaching to the desart. The baronet, being a well-bred man, carried his civilities as far as she could in conscience expect, and, if evil tongues are to be believed, some degrees farther; but he was too much a veteran in gallantry, as well as in war, to fall into any ambuscade that she could lay for his affection — While we were absent in the Highlands, she practised also upon the laird of Ladrishmore, and even gave him the rendezvous in the wood of Drumscailloch; but the laird had such a reverend care of his own reputation, that he came attended with the parson ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... I?" she muttered. Still for some moments she continued to look about her in a dazed way; at length she recognised the old woman, and the cottage. Then she remembered, with a moan, what had happened—the ambuscade, the flight, the knife. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... irresistibly against them, before taking refuge inside the walls of the city. An hour after parting from Mr. Chambers I am wheeling briskly down the same road on the eastern slope of the pass where Mukhtar Pasha's ill-fated column was drawn into the fatal ambuscade that suddenly turned the fortunes of the day against them. While rapidly gliding down the gentle gradient, I fancy I can see the Cossack regiments, advancing toward the Turkish position, the unwary and over-confident Osmanlis ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... much the better; we can easily get it left open, and the thief won't suspect an ambuscade. He must be found out, for the sake of all the boys who are innocent and to wipe out the blot ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... ensured the destruction of the Prussian army, counter-orders were issued by the Prince of Eckmuhl, from what motives I know not. General Excelmans alone maintained the battle. He attacked the enemy in advance of Versailles, drove them into an ambuscade, cut them to pieces, and took from them their arms, baggage, and horses. Generals Strulz, Pire, Barthe, and Vincent, colonels Briqueville, Faudoas, St. Amand, Chaillou, Simonnet, Schmid, Paolini, and their brave regiments, performed prodigies of valour, and were intrepidly seconded by the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... advance-guard under Lieutenant-Colonel Frizell very cleverly succeeded in drawing into an ambuscade a body of Floyd's cavalry under Colonel A. G. Jenkins. The principal body of our men lined a defile near the Hawk's Nest, and the skirmishers, retreating before the enemy, led them into the trap. Our men began firing before the enemy was quite ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... and property unprepared, because sham fights are thought to be ridiculous? Will not the legislator require that his citizens shall practise war daily, performing lesser exercises without arms, while the combatants on a greater scale will carry arms, and take up positions, and lie in ambuscade? And let their combats be not without danger, that opportunity may be given for distinction, and the brave man and the coward may receive their meed of honour or disgrace. If occasionally a man is killed, there is ...
— Laws • Plato
... discouraging tone of his voice, it seemed joyful to those crouching in concealment; and, yielding to an instinct that they were now saved by the presence of a stanch protector, they rushed from their ambuscade, and in so doing ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... Russian army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and several voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French officer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat and reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and that there was probably an ambuscade there. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... fancy pleased my thoughts for some weeks, and I was so full of it that I often dreamed of it, and, sometimes, that I was just going to let fly at them in my sleep. I went so far with it in my imagination that I employed myself several days to find out proper places to put myself in ambuscade, as I said, to watch for them, and I went frequently to the place itself, which was now grown more familiar to me; but while my mind was thus filled with thoughts of revenge and a bloody putting twenty or thirty of them to the sword, as I may call it, the ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances, as if to lead him further from his way. For Denis, who had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there was real ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... that way; it is dangerous for you in the daytime"—it did lend itself to an ambuscade, and persons who knew Wilkes Booth assert having seen him prowling around—"it ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... borders of the reservation the leading chiefs come in camp to interview the officers, shake hands, beg tobacco, and try on their clothes, then go back to their braves and laugh as they tell there are only a handful, and plan the morrow's ambuscade and massacre. Vae victis! There are women and children among the garrisons along the Union Pacific whose hearts have little room for thoughts of germans in the horror of this morning's tidings. But Sibley is miles and miles away, and, as ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... mind she cast about For that unnoticed failing in herself, Which made him look so cloudy and so cold; Till the great plover's human whistle amazed Her heart, and glancing round the waste she feared In ever wavering brake an ambuscade. Then thought again, 'If there be such in me, I might amend it by the grace of Heaven, If he would only speak ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... disappearance of his captors, and the deathlike silence that surrounded him. Too vigilant to be taken at unawares, and perhaps long since apprised of the coming of the band, the Indians had resumed their hiding-places in the grass and among the bushes, preparing for the new-comers an ambuscade similar to that they had so successfully practised against Roland's unfortunate party. "Let them hide as they will, detestable miscreants," he uttered to himself with feelings of vindictive triumph; "they will not, this time, have frightened women and a handful of dispirited ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Liberators marched twelve miles in a northwesterly direction to Coro. They arrived an hour before dawn, and found the town silent and deserted. Dividing themselves into two parties, they entered cautiously on opposite sides, for fear of an ambuscade,—but, unfortunately, when the detachments met in the Grand Plaza, they mistook each other, in the dusk of the morning, for the enemy, and fired. Miranda's most efficient officer fell, shot through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... magic spell—those years of youth when I was soldiering! Again I hear the far warble of blown bugles. Again I see the tall, blue smoke of camp-fires ascending from the dim valleys of Wonderland. There steals upon my sense the ghost of an odor from pines that canopy the ambuscade. I feel upon my cheek the morning mist that shrouds the hostile camp unaware of its doom, and my blood stirs at the ringing rifle-shot of the solitary sentinel. Unfamiliar landscapes, glittering ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... accepted, as they were new in the country and needed horses and mules. The lumbermen joined the Mexicans, and as they could easily discern the course of the Apaches by the clouds of dust, succeeded in forming an ambuscade and fired on the Apaches when they reached the river. The Apaches fled at the fire, leaving the stolen ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... business on hand, besides having the first lieutenant in the following boat, so I contented myself with looking straight ahead as far as I could for the maze-like wanderings of the creek, and I was just thinking how easily we could run into an ambuscade, and be shot at from the dense shrubby growth on the bank, when Mr Reardon called to ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... the Indians to do the work. Then come reports of a massacre in some town on the frontier, and with it is coupled a whisper of "Castine!" a fort has been surprised, he is there! Some of Church's men have fallen in an ambuscade; the baron has planned it, and furnished the arms and ammunition by which the deed was consummated! Superstition invests him with imaginary powers; fanaticism exclaims, 'tis he who had taught the savages to believe that we are the ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... has struck a rib and followed it around and out." It was one of the hundreds of remarkable freaks performed by those ugly minie-balls during the war. Why that brigade should have been allowed to march into that ambuscade, from which we had so narrowly escaped, I could not understand. It was one of the early faux pas of that unfortunate comedy, rather ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... really only reached the stage of the miraculous after they had gone and had no further part in it. So far as Gordon's military skill and prevision could arrange for their safety, he did so, and with success. When the warships had to return he gave them the best advice against treachery or ambuscade:—"Do not anchor near the bank, do not collect wood at isolated spots, trust nobody." What more could Gordon say? If they had paid strict heed to his advice, there would have been no catastrophe at Dar Djumna. These reflections invest ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... their progress; but wherever they turned they found every fiber of meat, every grain of maize, every ounce of bread or meal, swept away or destroyed utterly before them. Even when the buccaneers had successfully overcome an ambuscade or an attack, and had sent the Spaniards flying, the fugitives took the time to strip their dead comrades of every grain of food in their leathern sacks, leaving nothing but ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... have come to some convenient place. This they did, but not without suffering much loss; for the man fought for his life and defended himself, slaying many of his enemies. Then they that escaped ran into the camp, saying that Sicinius had fallen into an ambuscade, and had died along with certain others of the soldiers. At the first, indeed, this story was believed; but afterward, when, by permission of the Ten, there went some to bury the dead, they found that none of ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... the 17th century. Previously, for an indefinite period, they dwelt on the Kabompo river, 200 m. to the N.E. of their present country, and here the descendants of a section of the tribe which did not migrate still remain, under the name Balokwakwa (men of the ambuscade), formerly known as Aalukolui. That the Barotse at a still more remote period emigrated from the far north-east is indicated by vague tradition as well as by a certain similarity in type and language to some tribes living in that direction, though the fact that natives ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... done wrong, Raimbaut?" She came to him with fluttering hands. "Why, but look you, the man had laid an ambuscade in the marsh and he meant to kill you there to-night as you rode for Vaquieras. He told me of it, told me how it was for that end alone he lured you into Venaissin——" Again she brushed the hair back from her forehead. "Raimbaut, I spoke of God and knightly honor, and the man laughed. No, I think ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Ghulam Husain marched to attack them with three regiments of infantry, one of cavalry, and two nine-pounders. He thought he should surprise them, and contrived so that he should come upon them about daybreak. Sheo Ratan knew all his plans. He placed one hundred and fifty of his men in ambuscade at the entrance to the jungle, and kept the other hundred and fifty by him in the centre. When they had got well in, the party in ambush rushed upon the rear, while he attacked them in front. After a short ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... drowned in a long, rippling roar of musketry from each side of the khor. The bastion-like cliff was fringed with gun-barrels, with red tarbooshes drooping over the triggers. From the other lip also came the long spurts of flame and the angry clatter of the rifles. The raiders were caught in an ambuscade. The Emir fell, but was up again and waving. There was a splotch of blood upon his long white beard. He kept pointing and gesticulating, but his scattered followers could not understand what he wanted. Some of them came tearing ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... form and hue; some springing perpendicularly up like the spire of a church, others running along in broken ridges, or presenting the appearance of high embattled walls; here riven into deep gullies, there opening into wild savage glens, fit spots for robber ambuscade; now presenting a fair smooth surface, now jagged, shattered, shelving, roughened with brushwood; sometimes bleached and hoary, as in the case of the pinnacled crag called the White Kirk; sometimes green with moss ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Luckily for Mar, the whole of his knights and men-at-arms were far away, uselessly watching the bridge, over which they had expected the disinherited to force a passage. Thus saved from the night ambuscade, the kernel of the Scottish army prepared next morning, August 12, to attack the disinherited. Puffed up by the memory of Bannockburn and the consciousness of superior numbers, they marched to battle as if certain ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... trotting rapidly off toward the village, but they stopped every here and there, at all the highest spots on the road, as though they were looking out for some hidden ambuscade, always keeping near enough to Orso and his sister to be able to come to their assistance if necessary. And old Polo ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... and procured my supper for a quarter ... fried potatoes and a cold slab of steak ... and a big Westerner who wore a sombrero and had a stupid, kindly, boyish face, showed me to a bed ... which also cost but a quarter for the night ... with a scattered ambuscade of bedbugs thrown ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... this preposterous apparition, as if to shield her. He was neither overly imaginative nor of a romantic turn of mind; but, the circumstances reviewed, it's nothing to his discredit that he entertained a passing suspicion of some curious conspiracy against the girl, thought of an ambuscade, and with quick eyes raked the surroundings for signs of a confederate of ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... arms, the instant the warder's horn was sounded; but when I reached the top of the walls, fires were bursting out in twenty places. It was not long before the knights rode out, with a hundred and fifty men-at-arms, but the Welsh were already gone. It seems that they had laid an ambuscade round every village and, on the signal being given, fell at once upon the sleeping inhabitants, put all to the sword, fired the houses; and in ten minutes from the first alarm made off, driving horses, cattle, and sheep ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... combat lay By the tomb's self; how he sprang from ambuscade- Captured Death, caught him in ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... proper landing point; the wrong landing point was chosen for the main body; the men fell ill and mutinied; the Spaniards, who might have been surprised at first by a direct assault on St. Domingo, resisted bravely, and poured shot among the troops from ambuscade. Two attempts to get into St. Domingo were both foiled with heavy loss, including the death of Major-General Heane and others of the best officers. The mortality from climate and bad food being also great, the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... to entice the men out from behind the stockade, while the remainder were concealed in ambush near the spring with which the garrison was supplied with water. The most experienced of the defenders understood the tactics of their wily foes, and shrewdly guessed that an ambuscade had been prepared in order to cut off the garrison from access to the spring. The water in the station was already exhausted, and unless a fresh supply could be obtained the most dreadful sufferings were apprehended. It was thought probable that the Indians in ambush would not unmask ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... did he seem to have a glimpse of the reality, when he drew two rings from his finger, placed there by a loving mother and sister, handed them to an attendant, saying: 'Carry them home,' and then he was amid battle scenes, calling out, 'Deploy to the left;' 'Keep out of that ambuscade;' 'Now go, my braves, double quick, and strike for your flag! On, on,' and he threw up his arms as if cheering them, 'you'll win the day;' and so he continued to talk, whilst death was doing its terrible work. As we looked ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... night, and Sylla was preparing, at sunrise, to pitch his camp, the Moorish cavalry announced that Jugurtha was encamped about two miles in advance. At this report, great dismay fell upon our men; for they believed themselves betrayed by Volux, and led into an ambuscade. Some exclaimed that they ought to take vengeance on him at once, and not suffer ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... chance, and I had time to look again upon her face, which was even more beautiful than I had imagined. Her eyes were large and peculiarly black, and fringed by long lashes, which, aided by the collyrium with which they were tinged, formed a sort of ambuscade, from which she levelled her shafts. Her eyebrows were finely arched, and nature had brought them together just over her nose, in so strong a line, that there was no need of art to join them together. Her nose was aquiline, her mouth small, and full of sweet ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... me to detail this midnight ramble; but it gave Garfield the exact position of the enemy. They had made a stand, and laid an ambuscade for him. Strongly posted on a semicircular hill, at the forks of Middle Creek, on both sides of the road, with cannon commanding its whole length, and hidden by the trees, they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... vegetation ceased. Dwarf pines, not big enough to be Christmas trees, grew thinly among loose stones and gravel scaurs. Here and there a big boulder sat quiescent on a knoll, having paused there till the next rain in his long slide down the mountain. There was here no ambuscade for the snakes, you could see clearly where you trod; and yet the higher I went, the more abject and appealing became Chuchu's terror. He was an excellent master of that composite language in which dogs communicate with men, and he would assure me, on his honour, that there was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with pitchforks and spades, while the women remained outside the church with the cure, they sought a suitable ambuscade. Approaching a mill on a rising ground adjacent to the verge of the forest, they saw the light of the burning farm flaming against the stars. There they waited under enormous oaks, before a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... consuming the plant; the bird mangling the insect, the deer fighting among themselves, and man, in his turn, pursuing all kinds of game. He identified nature with woman, both possessing in his eyes an equally deceiving appearance, the same beguiling beauty, and the same spirit of ambuscade and perfidy. The people around him inspired him only with mistrust and suspicion. In every peasant he met he recognized an enemy, prepared to cheat him with wheedling words and hypocritical lamentations. Although during the few months he had experienced the delightful influence ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... natives had been won by the diplomatic French, but their aid proved of no avail. The British Parliament sent over General Braddock in 1757, and he perished with a large portion of his army in the celebrated ambuscade from which Washington escaped.[17] For a time French energy made the war seem not unequal; but the number of French in America was small; the home Government of Louis XV seemed wholly lost in sloth and indifferent to the result. The English Government was doggedly resolute. Its unwilling ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... an incidental part in the tribal war that had raged up and down Yellow Banks Creek and its principal tributary, the Pigeon Roost, since long before the Big War. He was getting out timber to be floated down the river on the spring rise when word came to him of an ambuscade that made him the head of his immediate clan and the upholder of his ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... and can he follow a clean scent?" exclaimed the marine; "do you think, Signor Pilota, that a general ever puts his forces in an ambuscade where he can't find them himself? 'Fore God! I knew well enough where the rascals lay snoring on their knapsacks, some half an hour ago, and I would have given the oldest majority in Washington's army to have had them where a small intimation from myself ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... One massive dome or archway, a hundred feet in diameter, rises to the surface. Its front is carved in elaborate tracery and crusted with serpulae, looking like the fret-and flower-work that covers Saracenic architecture. Looking through this into the violet ambuscade, the eye falls upon colonnades, light slender shafts a foot in diameter, that seem to support the paly-golden, lustrous roof. It is curiously like a vast temple, spreading every way in vault and colonnade, on which religious enthusiasm or barbaric royalty has worked with a reckless ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... I thanked him, as in duty bound; and then he informed me that the ambuscade had been completely successful, the entire cauffle having been captured with the exchange of less than a score of shots; and that although three of the slave-traders had been killed and five wounded, not one of our own men had been ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the third day after the battle Brennus appeared, leading his army to attack the city. At first, seeing the gates open and no guards on the walls, he feared some ambuscade, as he could not believe that the Romans had so utterly despaired of themselves. When he discovered the truth, he marched through the Colline Gate, and captured Rome, a little more than three hundred and sixty years after its foundation, if we can believe that any accurate record ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... passed round the village; through it I would not go for fear of an ambuscade. It was quite a big place, enclosed with a strong fence, but hidden from the sea by a rise in the intervening land. In the centre was a large eastern-looking house, where doubtless Hassan dwelt with his harem. After we had ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... betaken themselves, they could spread destruction through the ranks of their advancing enemies in comparative security. The Christians were likewise aware that the Moors, although defeated, were not subdued; and they had more to fear from their treacherous ambuscade, than from their ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... purifications enjoined by the soothsayers, he took the field with his colleague, and harassed Hannibal much in the country between the towns of Bantia and Venusia. Hannibal declined battle, but, learning that a force was detached from the Roman army to attack the Epizephyrian Lokrians, he laid an ambuscade on the mountain near Petelia, and defeated them with a loss of two thousand five hundred men. This excited Marcellus, and he led his forces nearer to those of Hannibal. There was between the two camps ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... supplicatio, and was a sign that the general was likely to be honoured with a triumph. [309] Necubi for ne alicubi, 'in order that not somewhere.' See Zumpt, S 136. [310] Post insidias Jugurthae, 'after he had once experienced attacks made from an ambuscade.' ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... big man," said the Doctor. "On the whole, he's about our biggest man. An officer who came out of the ambuscade at Fort Duquesne with thirty living men out of three companies and four shot holes in his coat must have an engagement with Destiny. Evidently his work was not finished. You have traveled about some. What is the ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... the Greeks, issuing forth from an ambuscade, threw themselves on his rearguard, which they cut to pieces. It was in this miserable state that the Gauls gained the camp of Heraclea. They remained there for a few days before setting out on their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... Present at a Hanging A Cold Greeting A Wireless Message An Arrest Soldier-Folk A Man with Two Lives Three and One are One A Baffled Ambuscade Two Military Executions Some Haunted Houses The Isle of Pines A Fruitless Assignment A Vine on a House At Old Man Eckert's The Spook House The Other Lodgers The Thing at Nolan The Difficulty of Crossing a Field An Unfinished Race Charles ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... his unpromising materials. Covelong fell. Clive learned that a strong detachment was marching to relieve it from Chingleput. He took measures to prevent the enemy from learning that they were too late, laid an ambuscade for them on the road, killed a hundred of them with one fire, took three hundred prisoners, pursued the fugitives to the gates of Chingleput, laid siege instantly to that fastness, reputed one of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the "point" is always the post of greatest danger with a marching command. This point is small in numbers, and moves well in advance. If the enemy has posted an ambuscade on the line of march it is the point that ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place to-day, it is vain to seek it there to-morrow. You cannot lay a trap for it. It will fall into no ambuscade, concert it ever so cunningly. Pleasure has no logic; it never treads in its own footsteps. Into our commonplace existence it comes with a surprise, like a pure white swan from the airy void into the ordinary ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... preference. Is it from sympathy of colour, similia similibus gaudent, or from a sort of instinct that the European is better armed, or because he supposes the Arab will make a better repast? The other way of killing the lion is in ambuscade, of which there are two or three kinds. Sometimes the hunters dig a hole in the ground near the spot where the lion is in the habit of passing by night; over this hole they throw branches of trees, which they cover with stones and mortar; they then place some bait ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... Unto these Captain Morgan gave very strict orders, under great penalties, that no man, upon any pretext whatsoever, should dare to leave the boats and go ashore. This he did, fearing lest they should be surprised and cut off by an ambuscade of Spaniards, that might chance to lie thereabouts in the neighbouring woods, which appeared so thick as to seem almost impenetrable. Having this morning begun their march, they found the ways so dirty and irksome, that Captain Morgan thought it more convenient ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... some partic'lars, but in some they ain't, Dan'l; f'r instance, they don't caw like a crow, and don't try to ambuscade folks, and they give you warning afore they strike, which is more ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... were led into an ambuscade, and having shot away all their ammunition in a panic, were surrounded and massacred before two o'clock in the afternoon. Sixteen Indians were killed, and chief Spider among them. The bodies of the soldiers were horribly mutilated and scalped. Why reinforcements ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... attend and favour the virtuous; and the latter in like manner accompany and have power over the vicious. Several warriors have told me," he says, "that their Nana Ishtohoollo, 'concomitant Holy Spirits,' or angels, have forewarned them, as by intuition, of a dangerous ambuscade, which must have been attended with certain death, when they were alone and seemingly out of danger; and, by virtue of the impulse, they immediately darted off, and with extreme difficulty ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the saddle, feeling pretty good about the world. In no time at all, if his one-man ambuscade came off, he would be on his way back to the Yore, and thence to the twenty-second century and a haircut. Selling the Sangraal without the aid of a professional time-fence like Perfidion would be difficult, of course, but it could be done, ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... Jonquiere. He had written to my son demanding enormous pensions and rewards; but meeting with a refusal, he went into Spain, where he promised Alberoni to carry off my son, and deliver him into his hands, dead or alive. He brought one hundred men with him, whom he put in ambuscade near Paris. He missed my son only by a quarter of an hour in the Bois de Boulogne, which the latter had passed through in his way to La Muette, where he went to dine with his daughter. La Jonquiere having thus failed, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... rebels who directed his rebellion personally against Gallienus was Aureolus. Passing the Rhaetian Alps, this leader sought out and defied the emperor. He was defeated, and retreated upon Milan; but Gallienus, in pursuing him, was lured into an ambuscade, and perished from the wound inflicted by an archer. With his dying breath he is said to have recommended Claudius to the favor of the senate; and at all events Claudius it was who succeeded. Scarcely was the new emperor installed, before he was summoned to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... first was a chant, a saga, a recitation of the glories of his ancestors. The Malhominis had been a proud race,—now they were dwindled to this village of eighty braves. He crooned long tales of famine, of tribal bickerings, of ambuscade and defeat; his voice rustled monotonously ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... liberties for herself but also—which had certainly not been in her mind before—to keep her husband away from herself. Something latent in the situation had surprised her with this effect. It had arisen out of the quarrel like a sharpshooter out of an ambuscade. Her right to go out alone had now only the value of a mere pretext for far more extensive independence. The ultimate extent of these independences, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... as perhaps the greatest of our Indian-fighters, led the cavalry against the Apaches. Crook's understanding of the Indian was perfect; and not only was he able to beat the natives at their own game of ambuscade but he thoroughly sympathized with their cause. He knew how Washington and incompetent officers had ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... fall, not only upon their enemies, but also on their neighbours, in the hope either of robbing them when off their guard, or of obtaining a ransom for any unwary traveller who might fall into their hands. Everywhere society was in ambuscade, and waged civil war—individual against individual—without peace or mercy. Such was the reign of feudalism. It is unnecessary to point out how this system of perpetual petty warfare tended to reduce the power of centralisation, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... fighting was in an ambuscade. That was something peculiar to the Indians. The English had never heard of that way of fighting before they came to America. The Indians would lie down flat on the ground or stand behind trees or in a bush or thicket. When the enemy came along with no suspicion that any one was near, the ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... his exemplary conduct, 85; visits Cherbourg, ib.; presented to Louis XVI. 86; returns to Guernsey, ib.; visited by Prince William Henry, (afterwards William IV. King of England,) 87; elegant person and manners of, ib.; appointed to command the Ambuscade frigate, 88; pays her off, and returns to Guernsey, ib.; letter of, upon his marriage, ib.; removes to Exeter, 89; commissions and pays off the Raisonable, ib.; appointed to command the Crescent in the war of ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... proceeded direct for the place along the sea-coast, and came to where two roads led up the mountain to the town. One of the roads was open and inviting; the branches of the trees being lopped, and all the underwood cleared away. Here the Indians had stationed an ambuscade to take the Spaniards in the rear. The other road was almost closed up by trees and bushes cut down and thrown across each other. Esquibel was wary and distrustful; he suspected the stratagem, and chose the encumbered road. The town was about ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... over one of their heads; and a fight ensues, in which the bandits are worsted. The two Huguenots reach La Rochelle, which is soon afterwards besieged by the king's troops. In a sortie, Bernard forms an ambuscade, into which his brother unfortunately falls, and receives a mortal wound. Taken into La Rochelle, he is laid upon a bed to die; and, refusing the spiritual assistance of Catholic priest and Protestant minister, he accelerates his death by a draught from Hornstein's wine flask, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... great presence of mind. He put spurs to his horse, and galloped off down the road, partly to escape the danger, but partly also to warn the treasure train, the bells of which were now clanging loudly at a little distance from the ambuscade. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... seemed so unfair that his blood boiled at the thought of it. If this was to be so, he must try if he could not fix him by the judicious use of bird-lime or a snare, or throw the salt on his tail from an ambuscade. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... Ezra and the sergeant, the grey horse and the bay, came thundering round the curve, there was a fierce splutter of pistol shots from amongst the bushes, and the grey sank down upon its knees with a sobbing moan, struck mortally in the head. Ezra sprang to his feet and rushed at the ambuscade, while the sergeant, who had been grazed on the cheek by the first volley, jumped from his horse and followed him. Burt and Farintosh met them foot to foot with all the Saxon gallantry which underlies the Saxon brutality. Burt stabbed at the sergeant and struck ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wrung out of some depth within, such as Christian sent out of the slough, when he was like to die. But he did stop at the tavern, and there drank some brandy to steady his nerves; and he did not forget that there was an ambuscade of Rebels at Blue's Gap, and that he was to share in the attack on them at daylight: he spurred his horse, as he drew nearer Romney. Dode, being a woman, thinking love lost, sat by the fire, looking vacantly at nothing. Yet the loss was as costly to him as to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... arrive, and Robin Hood offers the money to redeem Sir Richard's bond; but, upon a legal quibble, the Abbot declines to receive it—preferring to seize the forfeited land. Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham appear, and Robin and his Foresters form an ambuscade. Sir Richard Lea has been brought in, upon his litter, and Marian stays beside him. Prince John attempts to seize her, but this time he is frustrated by the sudden advent of King Richard—from whose presence he slinks away. The myrmidons ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... suspicious air, Joyce," observed the captain, after musing a little; "to me it seems like an attempt to induce us to follow, and to draw us into an ambuscade." ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the war, Philopoemen was led into an artfully arranged ambuscade, and was taken in chains to Messenia, where, notwithstanding his gray hair, he was exposed to the jeers ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... of the sea, all of them just skinned, for she meant playing a trick upon her father. Then she dug four pits for us to lie in, and sat down to wait till we should come up. When we were close to her, she made us lie down in the pits one after the other, and threw a seal skin over each of us. Our ambuscade would have been intolerable, for the stench of the fishy seals was most distressing {45}—who would go to bed with a sea monster if he could help it?—but here, too, the goddess helped us, and thought of something that gave us great relief, for she put some ambrosia under each ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... Sedgwick tapped him, and his familiarity with every inch of the ground enabled him to magnify his own forces, and make every man tell; while Sedgwick was groping his way through the darkness, knowing his enemy's ability to lure him into an ambuscade, and taking his ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... him, he backed toward the shadowed recess, with the one idea of shielding Cara. But the darker spot was the door behind which Sayed Ayoub lay in ambuscade, and as Karyl reached it, it swung open, showing them against a background as bright as though they ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... appearances of flight, Constantine was betrayed into an ambuscade, which had been concealed in a wood, where the rash youth, with a few attendants, was surprised, surrounded, and slain. His body, after it had been found in the obscure stream of the Alsa, obtained the honors of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and quiver which his fathers made; The gun, that filled the warrior's deadliest vow; The mace, the spear, the axe, the ambuscade— ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... the squadron despatched by the governor of Brazil, Gomez Freyre, could arrive to protect it. That squadron consisted of the Lord Clive, of 64 guns, an English ship commanded by Capt. Macnamara; the Ambuscade, of 40 guns, in which Penrose, the poet, served as lieutenant; and the Gloria, of 38 guns. The Spanish ships retired before Macnamara, and he ran under the guns of the forts of Colonia, in order to retake the place. He had nearly succeeded in silencing ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... cavern at all in it, and that is what makes me suspect the scoundrel's motives. He can have hundreds of outlaws secretly armed, who would never suffer you to escape with your life. The thing is an ambuscade; take my word for it, it is nothing less. Of course you can go, yourself and your party, if you wish. You will prevent me from running a great risk; but I am only anxious for ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the Greater Love—men call it this; No light-o'-love sets here an ambuscade; No tender torture of the secret kiss Makes sick the spirit and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... course, and that is more, I fear, than the First Lord of the Admiralty did. For the Ruler of the King's Navy made a bee-line for the Lieutenant-Commander's own private dug-out the moment he came aboard at Calais, and he remained in ambuscade ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... save on days of festivity, when the achievements of former times were commemorated in a kind of mimic warfare, in which the chiefs and warriors displayed their prowess, and illustrated their former adroitness, by laying the ambuscade, surprizing their enemies, and performing many accurate manoeuvres with the tomahawk and scalping knife; thereby preserving and handing to their children, the theory of Indian warfare. During that period ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... all her royal beauty should pass behind a pall, that all her glory should be demeaned by pitiless eclipse, and her dome of delight become the valley of humiliation! Is there no help? I said. Can no hand lead her gently another way? Can no voice warn her of the black shadow that lies in ambuscade? None. Just as the young girl leaves her tender home, and goes fearless to her future,—to the future which brings sadness for her smiling, and patience for her hope, and pain for her bloom, and the cold ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... his adversary in the back. Montoni arrested his half-extended arm, and, with a significant look, made him return the poinard into his bosom, unseen by all except himself; for most of the party were disputing at a distant window, on the situation of a dell where they meant to form an ambuscade. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... hurriedly driven the cattle into the forest, where they would be out of sight and so could not give warning of the whereabouts of the thieves, and had then hidden themselves behind some rocks along the trail. From their ambuscade they would be able to shoot down their pursuers or capture them as ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... however having immediately discovered our ambuscade by the howling of one of their dogs, halted and poised their spears; but a man of our party (King) inconsiderately discharging his carabine, they fled as usual to their citadel, the river, pursued and fired ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... through narrow winding streets, and there was great need of care to avoid an ambuscade. Slipping from door to door, from one point of vantage to the next, the boys made the whole distance of the enemy's land without sight of an enemy. They came to the further boundary and raised a cheer ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... is sometimes said that Braddock fell into an ambuscade. This is a mistake. He was surprised because he did not send scouts ahead of his army; but the Indians were not in ambush. Braddock would not permit the troops to fight in Indian fashion from behind trees and bushes, but forced his men to form in platoons. A part ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... hunters. Fighting a delaying action with a few men while the bulk of his force fell back on an old roadblock of felled trees dating from the second Manassas campaign, he held off the enemy until he was sure his ambuscade was set, then, by feigning headlong flight, led them into a trap and chased the survivors for five or six miles. Wyndham and Stoughton had found Mosby an annoying nuisance; their successors were ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... large trees were mischievously felled across the trail. Grape-vines were tied across from tree to tree, to trip up the passers-by or to sweep off their caps. It was a great joke for half a dozen young men to play Indian. They would lie in ambuscade, and suddenly, as the procession was passing, would raise the war-whoop, discharge their guns, and raise shouts of laughter in view of the real or ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... against this rebellious pacha, who sat upon the parapets of his stronghold, paying down thirty sequins for the head of every janissary brought to him by his own troops, and I am afraid a great deal of money was spent in that way. We fell into an ambuscade, and one half of the corps to which my father belonged were cut to pieces, before we could receive any assistance. At last the enemy retired. I looked for my father, and found him expiring; as before, he had received a wound ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... concealment]. — N. camouflage; mimicry; hiding place; secret place, secret drawer; recess, hold, holes and corners; closet, crypt, adytum[obs3], abditory[obs3], oubliette. ambush, ambuscade; stalking horse; lurking hole, lurking place; secret path, back stairs; retreat &c. (refuge) 666. screen, cover, shade, blinker; veil, curtain, blind, cloak, cloud. mask, visor, vizor[obs3], disguise, masquerade dress, domino. pitfall &c. (source of danger) 667; trap &c. (snare) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... cobras and coralillos, which last by preference inhabit trees, still abound in the forests of Mataran as in days of old, and wage a regular guerilla warfare against the invaders. Woe betide the belated pedestrian, or even horseman, if he happens to pass under a tree which forms the ambuscade of a coralillo snake! Cobras and other reptiles seldom attack men, and will generally try to avoid them, unless accidentally trodden upon, but these guerilleros of the forest, the tree serpents, lie in wait for their victims. As soon as the head of a man comes under the branch ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... road, as we advanced, seemed to afford every facility for such an unpleasant interruption. At first it winded apart from the lake through marshy meadow ground, overgrown with copsewood, now traversing dark and close thickets which would have admitted an ambuscade to be sheltered within a few yards of our line of march, and frequently crossing rough mountain torrents, some of which took the soldiers up to the knees, and ran with such violence, that their force could only be stemmed by the strength of two or three ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... considered, and, according to the just conclusion, be obeyed. On all sides of us we see public and private society broken up, as it were by an earthquake: the noblest and the meanest passions of the human bosom at contention, and the latter often so disguised, that the vile ambuscade is not even suspected till found within the heart of the fortress itself. We have, however, one veritable touchstone, that of the truest observation, "ye shall know a tree by its fruits." Let us look round, then, for those which bear "good fruits," wholesome to the taste as well as pleasant ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... hundred and fifty men, put to the sword. The pirates next sailed into the Lake of Maracaibo, landed their forces, and proceeded at once to attack the castle that guarded the entrance to the harbor. The governor had made judicious dispositions for its defence, having formed an ambuscade for the purpose of bringing the pirates between two fires. His design, however, in this respect, was frustrated, for those forming the ambuscade, being discovered and routed, fled to the town, the inhabitants of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 247, Greeley 95, Woodford 36. For the moment Greeley's friends seemed stunned. It was worse than a defeat—it was utter rout and confusion. He had been led into an ambuscade and slaughtered. The Tribune, in explaining the affair, said "it was evident in the morning that Griswold would get the nomination. His friends had been working so long and there were so many outstanding pledges." Besides, it continued, "when the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... intention, the result might have been more favorable to the French, for the former would then have been the attacking party and have borne the brunt of the battle. As it was, the French commander nearly succeeded in drawing the thousand men that Johnson had sent out to meet him into an ambuscade, and among the slain was brave Colonel Williams, commander of the Provincials in this engagement, and gallant Chief Hendrick, who had accompanied him with two ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... valour in the endeavour to capture the ferocious beast, without getting in his way or coming nearer to him than a hundred yards. All was in vain. The bear vanished in the forest like a flying shadow; and, presuming from his known ferocity and vindictiveness that he had prepared an ambuscade for us in the woods, we deemed it the better part of valour to abandon the pursuit. Upon comparing notes, we found that we had all been similarly impressed with his enormous size, his shagginess, and his generally savage appearance, and had all been inspired at the same ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... time we had taken over the 6th Kentucky and 9th Tennessee of my brigade—aggregating nearly six hundred men—and also the two pieces of artillery. These regiments were moved beyond Burkesville and placed in a position which served all the purposes of an ambuscade. When the enemy approached, one or two volleys caused his column to recoil in confusion. General Morgan instantly charged it with Quirk's scouts and some companies of the 9th Tennessee, and not only prevented it from rallying, but drove it ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... dangerous places, they would not do so in places not to their advantage. Thus the path was cleared, upon this day, without encountering any enemy or sighting their fort. Again the men returned to the fleet for the night. On the third day, as the work of reconnoitering was proceeding, a large ambuscade of Indians attacked us in the open near a palm-grove. As was learned later, they numbered about two thousand. They attacked us with the greatest fury and determination, in small bodies of skilful troops. As the soldiers were ordered immediately to form their square, when ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... situation of Captain Mason became known at the fort, Captain Ogle was sent out with twelve men, to cover his retreat. This party fell into an ambuscade and two-thirds of the number were slain upon the spot. Captain Ogle found a place of concealment, where he was obliged to remain until the end of the siege. Sergeant Jacob Ogle, though mortally wounded, managed to escape, with ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... only four men could pass abreast. He made such haste that he marched four leagues in two hours, and at daybreak found himself at the entrance of the pass, which, however, seemed so peculiarly well adapted for an ambuscade, that he halted his battalion, and sent on twenty men to reconnoitre. In a quarter of an hour the twenty men returned. They had not met a single living thing. The colonel hesitated no longer, and entered the defile; but, on reaching a spot about halfway through it, where the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... drew near Segovia, we found yet another ambuscade, which we forced to retire, and passed into the town, ready to fight our best—for we thought that here the Spaniards might make a great effort to expel us. But they only discharged their muskets at us now and then from the shelter of the pine-wood above the town, into which ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... trouble sleeps; I hear no sound of aught that weeps; I will not look into thy deeps— I am afraid, I am afraid!" "Afraid!" she saith; "and yet 'tis true That what man dreads he still should view— Should do the thing he fears to do, And storm the ghosts in ambuscade." ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... character of the devil. As the devil, therefore, had arrived in their country, it became an act of the most imperious duty to force him to abandon it, by any means which could suggest themselves, and no one certainly could be more effectual than to put themselves in ambuscade, and take the first opportunity of killing him at once. It must also be taken into consideration, that the report of the destruction of the town and the murder of some of the natives by the crew of the Alburkha, had spread itself all along the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... dews at nightfall. As the sea-breeze and the flood-tide set in, the boats again started and proceeded up the river. It was ascertained the war-canoes were beyond where the Panda was first taken; for fear of an ambuscade great caution was observed in proceeding. "As we approached a point, a single native was observed standing near a hut erected near the river, who, as we approached, beckoned, and called for us to land. We endeavored ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... it again bride in hand, he must fight his way inch by inch, and step by step. She is slighted and he is stung to the quick. She is ridiculed and he is mortified to death. He is able to meet open resistance, but he is for ever in dread of an ambuscade. He sees a sneer in every smile, he fears an insult in every whisper. The unmeaning jest must have a hidden point for him. Politeness seems cold, even good-nature looks like the insolence of condescension. If his wife ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... yet the car Whereon he sat came still unshattered home, What gaps were in his harness time had made. Then with couched lance to reach the foe, his targe Covering his rear, and bide the biting sword; Or, on the warpath, place his ambuscade, Marshal his lines and rally his cavaliers; This knightly Castor learned him, erst exiled From Argos, when her realms with all their wealth Of vineyards fell to Tydeus, who received Her and her chariots at Adrastus' hand. Amongst ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... boat came to the beach, and observed that nobody landed, one of them came out of the wood, with a bow and arrows in his hand, and made signs for the boat to come to the place where he stood. This the officer very prudently declined, as he would then have been within bow-shot of an ambuscade, and after waiting some time, and finding that a conference could be procured upon no other terms, he returned back to the ship. It was certainly in my power to have destroyed many of these unfriendly people, by firing my great guns into the wood, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... like a turkey; that he must meet me at Sand Point at three o'clock sharp, and if he was not there at that time I would know that something was wrong. I also told him to be careful and not run into an ambuscade, but above all not to be taken prisoner. Then I asked him if he could bark like a cayote. His answer was: "Sure, Captain, it's mesilf that can make a bloody cayote ashamed of himself bairking, and I belave ye's is afraid for me, but O'ill ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... examination of the map, and a study of the country to the eastward, showed that a flank movement in that direction would be compelled to follow a circuitous route, and to traverse broken ground, covered with bush and exceedingly favourable to ambuscade and to surprise attacks. Sir Redvers judged that to commit troops, untrained to manoeuvre over terrain of this description and hampered by many ox-wagons, to a rather long flank march in presence of a mobile ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... when we formed our little ambuscade. Hopkins was for leaving the door of the hut open, but Holmes was of the opinion that this would rouse the suspicions of the stranger. The lock was a perfectly simple one, and only a strong blade was needed to push it back. Holmes also suggested that we should wait, not inside the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Fitzpatrick and I stepped lightly, so as not to leave much mark, on some dried grass, and made off up the side of the draw, among the bushes. These grew as high as our shoulders, and formed a fine ambuscade. We climbed far enough so that we could see both sides of the draw and the trail in between; and by crawling we picked a good ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... 20th of December,—thanks, we say, to this stifling of all complaints and of all light, no man, no fact wears its true aspect or bears its true name. M. Bonaparte's crime is not a crime, it is called a necessity; M. Bonaparte's ambuscade is not an ambuscade, it is called a defence of public order; M. Bonaparte's robberies are not robberies, they are called measures of state; M. Bonaparte's murders are not murders, they are called public safety; ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... Cossack drew near enough to perceive an apparently dead man sitting up in his grave, he gave vent to a hideous roar of horror, turned off at a tangent, and shot away into the bushes. Those in rear, supposing that he had come on an ambuscade, followed his example, and, in another moment, Ali Bobo was left alone to his ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... Chalgrove, when again comes sound of battle, and he in his turn is for a moment held at bay by Roundheads' "insolence". No matter which way we turn our eyes, each bit of rising ground, each bridge across a stream gives birth to some imagining of skirmish or of ambuscade in that long civil war that ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... window, and with it took a grip of Ulrich's beard, as he was leaning close to the side of the coach to watch his proceedings. Not a stir did the brave old knight make, but sat as still as marble, and even held his breath, lest the ghost might feel it warm upon his hand, and so discover their ambuscade. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... verdure proffering ambuscade, the air hung tense along the border. Traders had sent in word that Shawanoes, Delawares, Mingos, Wyandots, and Cherokees were refusing all other exchange than rifles, ammunition, knives, and hatchets. White men were shot down in their fields from ambush. Dead Indians ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... gully for their ambuscade, but they had made the mistake of leaving their horses too far away from their place of concealment. And when they rushed across the stretch of level that extended from the gully to the draw, half a dozen of them dropped before they had traveled ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... one a score of heads with painted faces floated silently out of the spewing rock-mouth. One by one the glistening, bronze-red bodies appertaining thereto emerged from the water, each to take its place in an ambuscade enclosing the stream-crossing of the Indian path in a pocket-like line of crouching figures, with the mouth of the pocket open toward ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... faith, and that there would be no merit in believing if the evidence were such as to commend itself at once to our understanding, is one which need only be stated to be set aside. It is blasphemy against the goodness of God to suppose that He has thus laid as it were an ambuscade for man, and will only let him escape on condition of his consenting to violate one of the very most precious of God's own gifts. There is an ingenious cruelty about such conduct which it is revolting even to imagine. Indeed, the whole theory reduces our Heavenly Father to a level of wisdom and goodness ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... Hessians mistaking this for the advanced party, supposed the enterprize disconcerted, which at that time was not begun, and under this idea returned to their quarters; so that, what might have raised an alarm, and brought the Americans into an ambuscade, served to take off the force of an information, and promote the success of the enterprise. Soon after day-light General Washington entered the town, and after a little opposition made himself master of it, with upwards of ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... they are silent at first, hardly raising their heads to look through the window-panes at the passing girls. Two are very young, almost children like Ramuntcho: Arrochkoa and Florentino. The others have, like Itchoua, hardened faces, eyes in ambuscade under the frontal arcade, expressing no certain age; their aspect reveals a past of fatigues, in the unreasonable obstinacy to pursue this trade of smuggling, which hardly gives bread to the ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... this with the aid of a Guelph that dwelt in Arezzo as a red-hot Ghibelline. Now, it would have been simple enough for him after this to send the little handful of Florentines against a warned Arezzo and have them cut to pieces by an Aretine ambuscade. But his purpose went further than merely demolishing a number of his enemies. He wanted to win Arezzo, if he could, as well. So, by his machinations, he arranged that the forces of Arezzo should be out to meet and overthrow the adventurous Florentines, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... more eager spirit of vengeance, or the ambition of striking a glorious coup by my capture—have continued the pursuit? If so we might expect to encounter them on their return; or, if first perceived, we might fall into an ambuscade. In either case should they chance to outnumber us—to any great extent—a collision would be inevitable ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the scrub became quite scanty in a wide belt that terminated in a low range of hills. The slopes of the rising ground were fairly steep except at a gap in the centre, where a deep ravine had been utilized by the makers of the road. It was an ideal spot for an ambuscade. Sheltering behind the cacti that abundantly covered the hill the Haussas could extend on a fairly broad front, and concentrate a heavy fire upon any enemy retiring along the path. The maxim on ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... suddenly, before Reynolds could reload his gun, or Burl disencumber himself of the buck, they found themselves completely surrounded by at least a dozen savages, who, hovering about the enemy's van, had spied the stragglers and laid in ambuscade to capture them, though all but within rifle-range of the American pickets. Taken by surprise, and outnumbered two to one, any attempt at resistance or escape would have been instant death. So they surrendered at once, and quietly suffered themselves to be stripped of their arms and accouterments, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... the young acolyte disappeared down the alley of fig trees, not without a furtive look at the patches of chickweed around their roots, the possible ambuscade of creeping or saltant vermin. The good priest heaved a sigh and glanced round the darkening prospect. The sun had already disappeared over the mountain wall that lay between him and the sea, rimmed with a faint white line of outlying fog. A cool zephyr fanned his cheek; it was ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... that but little of the light of day could penetrate. The general width was about forty feet, and occasionally it diminished so as not to allow the passage of more than five or six persons abreast. In short, there could be no place in the world better adapted for the consummation of an ambuscade, and it was no more than natural that we should look carefully to our arms as we entered upon it. When I now think of our egregious folly, the chief subject of astonishment seems to be, that we should have ever ventured, under any circumstances, so completely into the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... short distance further details were observed carrying wounded men and ranging them comfortably around the many hay and straw stacks of the neighborhood. Inquiry revealed that a reconnoitring party, misled by the apparent quiet of the other side, had crossed, fallen into an ambuscade, and under the most galling of fires, artillery and musketry, kept up most unmercifully by the advancing rebels, who thus ungraciously repaid the courtesy shown them the day after Antietam—had been compelled to recross that most difficult ford. Our loss was frightful—one new ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... of the morning a lone horseman was seen approaching over the hills, and the restless sheepmen, eager for any sport, spread out into a veritable ambuscade, taking position behind rocks and in depressions along ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... tendency. This is not imaginary. It is a formidable reality. If consolidation proves to be as mischievous to this country as it has been to other countries, what will the poor inhabitants of this country do? This government will operate like an ambuscade. It will destroy the state governments, and swallow the liberties of the people, without giving previous notice. If gentlemen are willing to run the hazard, let them run it; but I shall exculpate myself by my opposition and monitory warnings within ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... delirious with excitement, crazed with fear, trembling as though he had a congestive chill—who, in fact, had come back faster than he had gone to the front, and in his excited condition had told the story of an ambuscade; that Wheeler, Wood, and Roosevelt were all dead; that the enemy was as thick as the barbs on the Spanish bayonet; and that he, only he, had escaped to tell the tale. This was the account of the battle that got back to the newspapers in the form of a "scoop," ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... uneasy at the prolonged absence of his agents—a circumstance that he could only account for upon the absurd hypothesis that those stupid brutes had suffered themselves to be overtaken by sleep in their ambuscade. ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... reconnaissance near Lucknow, which I had undertaken with my regimental staff and a small escort, my own carelessness led us into an ambuscade set by the English, which cost most of my companions their lives. At the beginning of the encounter a shot in the back had unhorsed me. I was taken for dead, and those few of my companions who were able to save themselves by flight had no time to take the fallen with them. After lying ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... Second Punic war. Hannibal and his forces pitched camp at Lake Trasimenus last night. They prepared an ambuscade for the Romans, and a battle took place at the fourth watch ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... detachment of marines and seamen was, after dark, pushed through a heavy surf, and landed, in the hope of taking them by surprise. But the enemy was on the alert, and on the following morning our little party fell into an ambuscade, which would have proved serious, had not Major Miller, who commanded the marines, promptly formed his men, who, attacking in turn, soon put the enemy to flight at the point of the bayonet, capturing their colours, and the greater portion of their arms. On the 13th, a detachment of ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... were in fact dervishes of principle, who rushed on the bayonets in the name of manhood and truth and sincerity. Godwin when he came in his systematic treatise to describe how a free people would conduct a defensive war, declared that it would scorn to resort to a stratagem or an ambuscade. In the same spirit Holcroft hearing that a warrant was out against him for high treason, walked boldly into the Chief Justice's court, and announced that he came to be put upon his trial "that if I am a guilty man, the whole extent of my guilt may become notorious, and if innocent that the rectitude ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... Ladies of Croye, a youth whose horoscope so far corresponded with mine that he hath saved me from danger, even by the disobedience of my own commands, and taking the route which avoided De la Marck's ambuscade." ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... I would prefer a fair fight under the open heavens, vessel to vessel, soldier to soldier, sword to sword. Ah, Meroe, for us, Gauls, who despise ambuscade or cowardice, and hang brass bells on the iron of our lances to warn the enemy of our approach, to ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... soldier in one of the South Carolina regiments. These stood to their ranks, so well, and appeared to be so resolute, that Gen. Marion did not wish to expose his men, by an attack on equal terms; he therefore feigned a retreat, and led them into an ambuscade, near the Blue Savannah, where they were defeated. This was the first manoeuvre of the kind, for which he afterwards ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... there rose a blue thread of it far up on the thinly forested crest of San Jacinto where the buck, bedded in the low brush between the bosses of the hills, kept a look out across the gullies from which Greenhow attempted to ambuscade him. Day by day the man would vary the method of approach until almost within rifle range, and then the wind would change or there would be the click of gravel underfoot, or the scrape of a twig on stiff overalls, and suddenly the long oval ears would slope forward, the angular lines flow ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... white man and an Indian) by two, behind trees, "that none might pass undiscovered." When the enemy should be started in flight, then all the attacking party were to make a great noise. Every figure moving without noise was to be fired upon by the ambuscade. ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... absence her courage gained strength. If it could only be prolonged until Ahmed reached her. That the Sheik would come she knew, her faith in him was unbounded. If he only came in time! Hours had passed since the ambuscade had surprised them. It had been early afternoon then. Now the lighted lamp told her it was night. How late she did not know. Her watch had been broken some months before, and she had no means of even guessing the hour, but it must be well ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... that they may {249} burn the easier, and one of them mounting upon a tree adjoining to that in which the bear is, sets fire to the reeds, and darts them one after another into the breach; the other hunters having planted themselves in ambuscade upon other trees. The bear is quickly burned out of his habitation, and he no sooner appears on the outside, than they let fly their arrows at him, and often kill him before he gets to the bottom ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... quiver which his fathers made; The gun, that filled the warrior's deadliest vow; The mace, the spear, the axe, the ambuscade— Where are ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... sterner business on hand, besides having the first lieutenant in the following boat, so I contented myself with looking straight ahead as far as I could for the maze-like wanderings of the creek, and I was just thinking how easily we could run into an ambuscade, and be shot at from the dense shrubby growth on the bank, when Mr Reardon called to us ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... of the New Cabinet, with Chateauneuf at its head, as a veritable declaration of war, Conde went to Chantilly, and, it is said, had a very narrow escape from falling into an ambuscade which the Court had ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... school of Buckingham and Rochester. He could devote to the capture of a woman all the tireless energy, the strategic skill, the will, the patience, the daring, of a great general. He could mine and countermine, could plan an ambuscade here, and lead a forlorn hope there, could take one intrenchment by storm, and another by treachery. And victory seldom forsook her ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... information or even suspicion that Girty's warriors, concealed behind the trunks of the great trees, were awaiting their coming. Steadily advancing, the horsemen soon were drawing near the place where the ambuscade had ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... confidence in them, to the extent even of letting them carry his carbine. He and his men had slept in the village one night, and on the following day some of the tribe joined the party as guides, but led them into the ambuscade, where the gallant WITTI and many of his men were killed by sumpitans.[28] So far as we have been able to ascertain the sole reason for the attack was the fact that WITTI had come to the district from a tribe with whom ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... to spread trouble among the assailants, by beginning with blowing out Ki-Tsang's brains, if Ki-Tsang is the author of this ambuscade? That would bring matters to ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... and what contempt had we conceived for them! We had one desire, and one only—to measure ourselves with them. And every time we had seen their squadrons the result had been either that they had turned and retired in good order behind their lines of infantry, or they had drawn us into some ambuscade under the pitiless fire of ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... batteries on both sides were in the hands of the enemy, but they were quickly regained by bayonet charges; and on the north bank Colonel Dudley, after spiking the captured guns, having marched with 400 men to attack the British camp, was drawn into an ambuscade by the Indians, and himself and about half his men were slain. Of the Americans, about 550 men were made prisoners, and their killed and wounded were estimated at nearly as many more. The far-famed Tecumseh buried his tomahawk in the head of a Chippewa chief, whom he found ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... at Frederica, and anxiously awaited reinforcements from Carolina. By turning to account the desertion of a French soldier he precipitated the attack of the Spaniards, and on their march to Frederica they fell into an ambuscade. Great slaughter ensued, and they retreated precipitately. The place of conflict is to this day known as "Bloody Marsh." The Spaniards retreated south along the coast in their vessels, and on their way attacked Fort William, at the southern extremity of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... up, else your feet will stray Towards that dim ambuscade, Where spider-like they catch their prey In ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... indefinite period, they dwelt on the Kabompo river, 200 m. to the N.E. of their present country, and here the descendants of a section of the tribe which did not migrate still remain, under the name Balokwakwa (men of the ambuscade), formerly known as Aalukolui. That the Barotse at a still more remote period emigrated from the far north-east is indicated by vague tradition as well as by a certain similarity in type and language to some tribes living in that direction, though the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... during the night, and Sylla was preparing, at sunrise, to pitch his camp, the Moorish cavalry announced that Jugurtha was encamped about two miles in advance. At this report, great dismay fell upon our men; for they believed themselves betrayed by Volux, and led into an ambuscade. Some exclaimed that they ought to take vengeance on him at once, and not suffer such perfidy to ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... men, and have to fight his way back, with the whole country roused. Half the party were then sent back, under the overseer, to conceal themselves in the scrub and allow the natives to pass on in pursuit of the tracks; this ambuscade, however, was scented out by the dogs accompanying the blacks, and the natives halted, poising their spears. One of the men hastily fired, and a retreat was made for the bank of the river by the blacks. The scrub party followed them up firing, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... shrinking, Drive what may through darksome smother; Saturate, but never sinking, Fatal only to the other! Deadlier than the sunken reef Since still the snare it shifteth, Torpid in dumb ambuscade Waylayingly it drifteth. ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... discipline, and equipment could hardly fail to tell greatly to their advantage. But they are called upon to face a foe that shuns general engagements, that can choose and does choose its own ground, that from the nature of the country is visible or invisible at pleasure, and that fights only from ambuscade and when all the advantages of position and numbers are on its side. In a country where all that is indispensable to life in the way of food, clothing, and shelter is so easily obtainable, especially by ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... intrusted with the ambuscade at the battle of the Monongahela, i. 166; death of, in the battle, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... 'escalade'; 'granada' (Hacket) 'grenade'; 'parada' (J. Taylor) 'parade'; 'emboscado' (Holland) 'stoccado', 'barricado', 'renegado', 'hurricano' (all in Shakespeare), 'brocado' (Hackluyt), 'palissado' (Howell), drop their foreign terminations, and severally become 'ambuscade', 'stockade', 'barricade', 'renegade', 'hurricane', 'brocade', 'palisade'; 'croisado' in like manner (Bacon) becomes first 'croisade' (Jortin), and then 'crusade'; 'quinaquina' or 'quinquina', 'quinine'. Other slight modifications of spelling, not in the termination, but ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Washington, aide-de-camp of General Lee, was killed, while making a reconnaissance, by a party in ambuscade. The loss of this valuable and accomplished officer was much regretted by his general and ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... expelled. The violence of Duke Charles, in the one country, was scarcely more to be feared than the cold and tyrannical policy of King Louis in the other. After deep thought, Durward could form no better or safer plan for their security, than that, evading the ambuscade, they should take the road to Liege by the left hand of the Maes, and throw themselves, as the ladies originally designed, upon the protection of the excellent Bishop. That Prelate's will to protect them could not be doubted, and, if reinforced ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... wounded youths and Bailie Ross's servant were taken prisoners, and carried up the hill, where they were quickly divested of clothes, arms, money, and papers. Easterfearn's son died next morning. The troops faced the ambuscade manfully and are said to have given their fire thrice, and to have beaten the Highlanders from the bushes near them; but, observing at this juncture several parties of the enemy on the neighbouring heights, and being informed of a party of sixty in their rear, Easterfearn deemed ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... with what a magic spell—those years of youth when I was soldiering! Again I hear the far warble of blown bugles. Again I see the tall, blue smoke of camp-fires ascending from the dim valleys of Wonderland. There steals upon my sense the ghost of an odor from pines that canopy the ambuscade. I feel upon my cheek the morning mist that shrouds the hostile camp unaware of its doom, and my blood stirs at the ringing rifle-shot of the solitary sentinel. Unfamiliar landscapes, glittering with sunshine or sullen ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... three divisions on the causeways, while at the same moment troops from the neighboring towns attacked their camps in the rear. He did not content himself with open attacks, but resorted to stratagem. On one occasion he had a large number of canoes in ambuscade, among some tall reeds bordering the lake. Several large boats then rowed near the Spanish vessels. Believing that they were filled with provisions intended for the city, two of the smaller vessels pursued them. The Aztec boats made for the reeds, the Spaniards followed, ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... Friedrich's offers are precisely what they were, what they have always been: "Convention of Hanover; that, in all its parts; old treaty of Breslau, to be guaranteed, to be actually kept. To me Silesia sure;—from you, Polish Majesty, one million crowns as damages for the trouble and cost this Triple Ambuscade of yours has given me; one million crowns, 150,000 pounds we will say; and all other requisitions to cease on the day of signature. These are my terms: accept these; then wholly, As you were, Empress-Queen and you, and all surviving creatures: and I march home ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... contributed. In any case, security was certainly insecure with such a fort as Lychnidus untaken in their rear. The garrison of that fort had been reinforced by many cohorts of the regular army who had flocked thither at the general's signal, and with these Sabinianus prepared a formidable ambuscade. He sent a considerable number of infantry round by unfrequented paths over the mountains, and ordered them to take up a commanding but concealed position, and to rush forth from thence at a given signal. He himself started with ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... employ him as a tool, just as Cortes had done with Montezuma. He therefore took advantage of the honesty and simplicity of Atahualpa, who placed entire confidence in Pizarro's protestations of friendship and so was thrown off his guard, to arrange an ambuscade into which Atahualpa was certain to fall. There was not a scruple in the disloyal soul of the conqueror; he was as cool as though he were about to offer battle to enemies who had been forewarned of his approach; ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... presently seizes the opportunity afforded by a false alarm of impending attack to break up the council. The Latin mothers and maidens offer gifts and litanies to Pallas. Turnus arms for battle (337-576). Camilla and Messapus command the Latin horse; Turnus prepares an ambuscade (577-612). Diana tells the story of Camilla and charges Opis, one of her nymphs, to avenge her should she fall (613-684). Opis watches the battle before the city of Latinus (685-738). The deeds and death of Camilla are recounted: ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... accomplishes this by means of a pitfall, covered with branches and palm-leaves; at other times, he places himself in ambuscade, either before twilight or in the early morning, and shoots the unsuspecting animal as it approaches on ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... they would reach Kwisa without further molestation. However, in mounting a steep rise, after crossing a river, a heavy fire was suddenly opened on them; and they had their first experience of the nature of the ground chosen by the enemy for an ambuscade. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... in so much shade, That they may more successful rise, Starting from such soft ambuscade, To catch and ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... of combat lay By the tomb's self; how he sprang from ambuscade- Captured Death, caught him in that pair of ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... great quantity of parakeets, monkeys, and little dogs." His courtiers and favorites naturally followed his example, and shared the popular disfavor; in 1576, the Parisians began to designate them as mignons du roi. Their worthy master, whenever it arrived to one of them to be killed in duel or ambuscade, contented himself with giving him a fine tomb and a marble statue in the church of Saint-Paul, hence called "the seraglio of the mignons," so that, says De Thou, "the usual threat against one of these favorites was: 'I will have him carved ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... Dwarf pines, not big enough to be Christmas trees, grew thinly among loose stones and gravel scaurs. Here and there a big boulder sat quiescent on a knoll, having paused there till the next rain in his long slide down the mountain. There was here no ambuscade for the snakes, you could see clearly where you trod; and yet the higher I went, the more abject and appealing became Chuchu's terror. He was an excellent master of that composite language in which dogs communicate with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... past eleven o'clock when we formed our little ambuscade. Hopkins was for leaving the door of the hut open, but Holmes was of the opinion that this would rouse the suspicions of the stranger. The lock was a perfectly simple one, and only a strong blade was needed to push it back. Holmes also ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Amaury the traitor wants; he goes to Charlot and proposes an ambuscade to lie in wait for the two boys and get rid of them; his real purpose being to get rid of the king's son as well as ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... fifty warriors, and the same number of women, and dogs, and servants, and Deirdre went with them. And for a long time they wandered about Ireland, in homage to this man or that; and often Conor sought to slay them, either by ambuscade or by treachery; from round about Assaroe, near to Ballyshannon in the west, they journeyed, and they turned them back to Benn Etar, in the north-east, which men to-day call the Mountain of Howth. Nevertheless the men of Ulster drave them from the land, and they came to the land of Alba, and in its ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... spreading false intelligence in newspapers; by sending pretended spies and deserters to give him untrue reports of the numbers or movements of the troops; by employing false signals to lure him into an ambuscade. On the use of the flag and uniform of an enemy for purposes of deception there has been some controversy, but it is supported by high military authority.[29] The use of spies is fully authorised, but the spy, if discovered, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... the field with his colleague, and harassed Hannibal much in the country between the towns of Bantia and Venusia. Hannibal declined battle, but, learning that a force was detached from the Roman army to attack the Epizephyrian Lokrians, he laid an ambuscade on the mountain near Petelia, and defeated them with a loss of two thousand five hundred men. This excited Marcellus, and he led his forces nearer to those of Hannibal. There was between the two camps ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... arranging his troops about 11.00 A.M., and passing from one column to another, incautiously rode upon an ambuscade without apprehension, at some distance ahead of his staff and orderlies, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... undergrowth had all been burned away down to the bare earth, and was now springing up again, fresh and green, in little irregular patches, all over the open area. The spot would serve admirably for an ambuscade, for while it was sufficiently open to permit of straight shooting, there was cover enough to conceal a hundred men, or more, at need. But what made the place especially suitable for our purpose was the fact that away over in one corner of the clearing ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... you are telling me, boy," remarked the captain. "How is it you know there is an ambuscade ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... difference; it was the chance of the sea, and the ill reward of a humane action—a melancholy end for such a man—like the end of a warrior, not dying Epaminondas-like on the field of victory, but cut off in some poor brawl or ambuscade. But so it was with all these men. They were cut off in the flower of their days, and few of them laid their bones in the sepulchres of their fathers. They knew the service which they had chosen, and they did not ask the wages for which they had not laboured. Life with them was ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... bad comrades," said the other amicably. "In '53, when I was with Lopez in Cuba, I had a little black mare that was just as well worth dying for as a woman or a man or most causes, but, damn me! she died for me—carried me past a murderous ambuscade, got a bullet for her pains, and never dropped until she reached our camp!" He coughed. "What pleasant weather! Was it difficult ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... before I die; for it is the young warrior, whom, years ago, I saw shielded from our bullets by the hand of the Great Spirit. Let the pale-faces hear my words. Fifteen summers ago, when the woods and thickets were dense and green, the French and Indians went out to lay in ambuscade for the big English general, among the Monongahela hills. I took my warriors, and went along, and we lay in wait together. The English were many and strong; we were few and weak: thus we had no thought of victory in our minds, but only to give our enemies a little trouble, and keep ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... case learned of Herkimer's advance and sent the savages under his command to intercept and ambuscade him. A terrible hand-to-hand combat ensued in which a hundred and sixty of the colonists were killed and the loss to the Indians was as great. General Herkimer's horse was shot under him and he himself wounded ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... courtyard smoking, looking sometimes on the solemn front of the old palatial mansion, and sometimes breathing a white film up to the stars, impatient, like the enamoured Aladdin, watching in ambuscade for the emergence of the Princess Badroulbadour. But honest Mark forgot that young ladies do not always come out quite alone, and jump unassisted into their vehicles. And in fact not only did Lord Chelford ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to the proper landing point; the wrong landing point was chosen for the main body; the men fell ill and mutinied; the Spaniards, who might have been surprised at first by a direct assault on St. Domingo, resisted bravely, and poured shot among the troops from ambuscade. Two attempts to get into St. Domingo were both foiled with heavy loss, including the death of Major-General Heane and others of the best officers. The mortality from climate and bad food being also great, the enterprise on Hispaniola was then abandoned; but, dreading ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... was that our farewells were smuggled through under an ambuscade of laughter, and the parting over ere I knew it was begun. The figures vanished, the steps died away along the silent city front; on board, the men had returned to their labours, the captain to his solitary ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... team into a run, and they had just begun to hope the ambuscade had been passed, when three more Boers sprang out of the willows nearly opposite them ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... Toulouse. For his services at the last place he received a gold medal and the rank of major, March 3rd, 1814. During these campaigns he was never wounded, although exposed to great danger. One morning, among others, his old servant had scarcely reached the skirts of a forest in which the enemy had an ambuscade than his master's horse was killed by a ball, and the rider overthrown. The servant thought it was all over with his master, but the sad thought had hardly entered his mind when Beckwith sprang up and cried out, "All right, John," and by a quick movement escaped ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... and his followers, upon landing, sat down upon the beach for breakfast; but their repast was rudely disturbed by a shower of stones from an ambuscade of Typees in the edge of the wood. Stopping but a moment to finish their food, the jackies picked up their cutlasses and muskets, and started for the enemy. They were soon in the shady recesses of the tropical forest, but not a Typee was to be seen. That the enemy was there, however, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Creek. While on their way thither, they were attacked by a body of Indians, and defeated with considerable loss. These are all the details of this action we have been able to find. Colonel Floyd collected twenty-five men to pursue the Indians, but in spite of all his caution, fell into an ambuscade, which was estimated to consist of two hundred warriors. Half of Colonel Floyd's men were killed, and the survivors supposed that they had slain nine or ten of the Indians. This, however, is not probable; either the number ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... the back. Montoni arrested his half-extended arm, and, with a significant look, made him return the poinard into his bosom, unseen by all except himself; for most of the party were disputing at a distant window, on the situation of a dell where they meant to form an ambuscade. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... their head. One of them—an old friend—reined in long enough to tell me they were off to lie in wait for a small British patrol, which, a native had told them, daily passed a certain spot suitable for an ambuscade. ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... continued always calling out, but not too loudly, that those who wanted my cape and blade would have to get them with some trouble. Then I quickened pace, while they still followed slowly at my heels; this augmented my fear, for I thought I might be falling into an ambuscade, which would have cut me off in front as well as rear. Accordingly, when I was at the distance of a hundred paces from my home, I ran with all my might, and shouted at the top of my voice: "To arms, to arms! out with you, out with you! I am being murdered." In a moment four of my ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Franklin's and Washington's sage hints touching savage modes of warfare. The consequence was this brave Briton's defeat and death. As he drew near to Fort Du Quesne, he fell into a carefully prepared ambuscade. Four horses were shot under him. Mounting a fifth he spurred to the front to inspire his men, forbidding them seek the slightest cover, as Washington urged and as the provincials successfully did. The regulars, obeying, were half of them killed in their tracks, the remainder retreating, ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... were the utterings of the cooing dove, Who did approve In myrtle ambuscade this tender lore; The constant plashing of the fountain spray Melted in easy numbers, dying away A quiet cadence, while for evermore Faded the eve in richest livery wove Of Tyrian dyes and amber woof t'allure The soft salaam ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... others—stimulated by a more eager spirit of vengeance, or the ambition of striking a glorious coup by my capture—have continued the pursuit? If so we might expect to encounter them on their return; or, if first perceived, we might fall into an ambuscade. In either case should they chance to outnumber us—to any great extent—a collision ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... of an ambuscade?" exclaimed Fred, who began to entertain an opinion that the lieutenant was not well posted on ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... from her as improbable. She did not credit him with so much acumen. And from his absence her courage gained strength. If it could only be prolonged until Ahmed reached her. That the Sheik would come she knew, her faith in him was unbounded. If he only came in time! Hours had passed since the ambuscade had surprised them. It had been early afternoon then. Now the lighted lamp told her it was night. How late she did not know. Her watch had been broken some months before, and she had no means of even guessing the hour, but it must be well on ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... coffins (they are at least twelve feet long by ten feet high), and, having hewn them, to carry them underground (they weigh on an average between sixty and seventy tons), and finally to range them in rows here in these strange chambers, where they stand as if in ambuscade on either side of us as we pass? Each in its turn has contained quite comfortably the mummy of a bull Apis, armoured in plates of gold. But in spite of their weight, in spite of their solidity which effectively defies destruction, they have been despoiled[*]—when ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... his energetic and hardy temperament would not permit him to turn back without a blow being struck. However one may commend his energy, one cannot but stand aghast at his dispositions. The country was wild and rocky, the very places for those tactics of the surprise and the ambuscade in which the Boers excelled. And yet the column still plodded aimlessly on in its dense formation, and if there were any attempt at scouting ahead and on the flanks the result showed how ineffectively it was carried out. It was ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in rear. The whole affair was a mistake on the part of the commander. His troops had been heedlessly pushed forward, and General Longstreet, commanding the opposing brigade, by carefully concealing his infantry, had drawn him into an ambuscade. The results of the action were not without importance. The Federals fell back with a loss of 83 officers and men, and the Confederates were much elated at their easy success. Among some of the Northerners, on the other hand, the sudden check ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... disguise accused his own self; he further promised, if the centurion would accompany him, to deliver the robber to him. So, pretending that he was leading him to Felix (this was another name of the chief), he brought him to a hill-encompassed spot, suitable for ambuscade, and easily seized him. Later he assumed the garb of a magistrate, ascended the tribunal, and having called the centurion caused his head to be shaved, and said: "Take this message to your masters: 'Feed your slaves, if you want to make an end of ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... by Heav'n decreed our last: For, when the fatal horse, descending down, Pregnant with arms, o'erwhelm'd th' unhappy town She feign'd nocturnal orgies; left my bed, And, mix'd with Trojan dames, the dances led Then, waving high her torch, the signal made, Which rous'd the Grecians from their ambuscade. With watching overworn, with cares oppress'd, Unhappy I had laid me down to rest, And heavy sleep my weary limbs possess'd. Meantime my worthy wife our arms mislaid, And from beneath my head my sword convey'd; The door ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... new experience for the scouts to find the quarry gone when they reached the place where they expected to find him. Pilar's own scouts had found that the ambuscade was destined to fail of its purpose, and the wily leader drew back into the more accessible country. The scouting party did not come in sight of the little brown soldiers. The occasional crack of a Mauser broke the silence ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... deadly and ubiquitous—the terror of the colonies. It was he who had stirred up the Indians to do the work. Then come reports of a massacre in some town on the frontier, and with it is coupled a whisper of "Castine!" a fort has been surprised, he is there! Some of Church's men have fallen in an ambuscade; the baron has planned it, and furnished the arms and ammunition by which the deed was consummated! Superstition invests him with imaginary powers; fanaticism exclaims, 'tis he who had taught the savages to believe that we are the ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... having immediately discovered our ambuscade by the howling of one of their dogs, halted and poised their spears; but a man of our party (King) inconsiderately discharging his carabine, they fled as usual to their citadel, the river, pursued and fired upon by the party from the scrub. The firing had no sooner ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... part, once cured an inveterate toothache of three days' duration, prevented the extraction of a carious molendinar, which it was the very end of their formation to achieve, and sent me home minus a guinea.—But hand me that great-coat, Captain, and we will place the instruments in ambuscade, until they are called into action in due time. I should think something will happen—Sir Bingo is a sure ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... charge will produce momentous changes, not only in the future of war, but also in that of international relations. Anything which tends to discount the value of personal bravery and to elevate the tactics of the ambuscade and the sharp-shooting expedition gives, pro tanto, an advantage to the meaner-spirited races of mankind, and places them more or less in a position of mastery over those who hold higher racial traditions. The man who will face ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... war had been confined chiefly to the valley of the Connecticut. But from that moment Philip was like a hungry tiger goaded in confinement, suddenly let loose upon his prey. The destruction of villages and the deadly ambuscade of bodies of men followed each other in quick succession. In the space of sixty days his forces attacked Lancaster, Medfield, Weymouth, Groton, Warwick, Marlboro', Rehoboth, Providence, Chelmsford, Andover and Sudbury. At least one half of the death and desolation of this ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... by one a score of heads with painted faces floated silently out of the spewing rock-mouth. One by one the glistening, bronze-red bodies appertaining thereto emerged from the water, each to take its place in an ambuscade enclosing the stream-crossing of the Indian path in a pocket-like line of crouching figures, with the mouth of the pocket open ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... struggles with teeth and claws for that which gives the largest promise of pleasure to body, mind, or soul, as the individual happens to incline. To Sybarites the race is too short to be fatiguing, and the goal is only an ambuscade for satiety and ennui; to ascetics, the race course stretches to the borders of futurity, but even for them one form of pleasure, spiritual pleasure, lights up eternity. The thing we want, we want; not because of its orthodoxy, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of concealment]. — N. camouflage; mimicry; hiding place; secret place, secret drawer; recess, hold, holes and corners; closet, crypt, adytum[obs3], abditory[obs3], oubliette. ambush, ambuscade; stalking horse; lurking hole, lurking place; secret path, back stairs; retreat &c. (refuge) 666. screen, cover, shade, blinker; veil, curtain, blind, cloak, cloud. mask, visor, vizor[obs3], disguise, masquerade dress, domino. pitfall &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and, according to the just conclusion, be obeyed. On all sides of us we see public and private society broken up, as it were by an earthquake: the noblest and the meanest passions of the human bosom at contention, and the latter often so disguised, that the vile ambuscade is not even suspected till found within the heart of the fortress itself. We have, however, one veritable touchstone, that of the truest observation, "ye shall know a tree by its fruits." Let us look round, then, for those which ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... to consider in what manner they should approach the sad and solitary bird, which, unconscious that itself was the object of a formidable ambuscade, stood motionless on a stone, by the brink of the lake, watching for such small fish or water-reptiles as might chance to pass by its lonely station. A brief debate took place betwixt Raoul and the hawk-merchant on the best mode of starting the quarry, so as to allow Lady Eveline and ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... could not have been more frequently made a matter of reproach to him;—a sign surely of the penury of subjects for satire in his life and character, since an accident, which might have happened to the greatest hero who ever lived, was resorted to as an imputation on his honour. The Rose-alley ambuscade became almost proverbial;[22] and even Mulgrave, the real author of the satire, and upon whose shoulders the blows ought in justice to have descended, mentions the circumstance in his "Art of Poetry;" with a cold and ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... drew near enough to perceive an apparently dead man sitting up in his grave, he gave vent to a hideous roar of horror, turned off at a tangent, and shot away into the bushes. Those in rear, supposing that he had come on an ambuscade, followed his example, and, in another moment, Ali Bobo was left alone to his ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... self-interested advice, were only too well justified. At a spot where the road was particularly rough, and ran across some marsh land, he perceived a short distance from him a dark shadow, which his practised eye detected at once as a body of crouching men. Reining up his horse within a few yards of the ambuscade, he wrapped his cloak round his bridle-arm and summoned ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... place his men in ambuscade at the ford, but, owing to various delays caused by the Indians, he was still a mile away from the ford when the British crossed. He was marching forward when he came suddenly upon the little party of guides and Virginian light horsemen. ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... themselves set fire to it, and totally destroyed it. The captain, having arrived at his destination at midnight, with all possible secrecy leaped ashore, and arranged his men and the Pintados [42] Indians whom he had with him in ambuscade near the villages, in order to make the attack upon them at daybreak. However, the natives of this island having been informed of the hostile incursion of the Spaniards, withdrew with their children and wives and all their belongings that they could take with them, to three forts which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... must know that his comrades of the garrison of Sainte Menehould had not forgotten their ambuscade, and ever since midnight had been collected near the gibbet, to save their friend, although he was not overwise, and also to capture prisoners and whatever else they could. When they arrived they took up their position, and put a sentinel in a tree to watch when the Troyes folk should be ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... Indians still hovered around in such energetic and persevering hostility, that not a trapper could leave the camp without danger of falling into an ambuscade. The Indians avoided any decisive conflict, but their war-whoops and yells of defiance, like the howlings of wolves, could be heard, by day and by night, in the forests all around them. Unless the traps were carefully guarded, they ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... preface can atone For crimes which guilty Bayes has singly done— Bayes, whose Rose Alley ambuscade enjoin'd To be to vices, which he ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... little detachment of soldiers venturing on down the valley instead of hurrying back, they had signalled all over the country calling in war-parties to their aid, and formulated their scheme to ambuscade and "corral" it at the narrows of the valley; but Ray's vigilance and plainscraft had defeated that scheme; though they had good chances yet, if they only knew where the regiment had gone. Late the previous evening it had disappeared behind a prominent headland far up a valley farther ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Reinhold, marched forward, and took possession of the fortress of Exorogorgon. The Sultan Solimaun was on the alert, with a superior force. A party of Crusaders, which had been detached from the fort, and stationed at a little distance as an ambuscade, were surprised and cut to pieces, and Exorogorgon invested on all sides. The siege was protracted for eight days, during which the Christians suffered the most acute agony from the want of water. It is hard to say how long ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... you how you will probably find it, fellows," said Ted. "The Indians ride in different directions. Whenever you hit a trail follow it, but go slow and keep your eyes peeled for an ambuscade. You will find that eventually all the trails will lead to the same place. If we are in luck, we will find them before they go on into the mountains, and we may have a skirmish. I hope, however, that we will be able to settle the matter without resorting to any shooting. Uncle Sam ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... the shield, is a picture of spies at a distance, an ambuscade, and a battle; the scene then changes to ploughing and sowing, and the incidents connected with the gathering of a bountiful harvest; then are introduced a vineyard, the gathering of the grapes, and a merrymaking by the youths ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... mentions, for I know the ravine well, but I never knew nor do I believe that there is a cavern at all in it, and that is what makes me suspect the scoundrel's motives. He can have hundreds of outlaws secretly armed, who would never suffer you to escape with your life. The thing is an ambuscade; take my word for it, it is nothing less. Of course you can go, yourself and your party, if you wish. You will prevent me from running a great risk; but I am only anxious for ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... bottle over one of their heads; and a fight ensues, in which the bandits are worsted. The two Huguenots reach La Rochelle, which is soon afterwards besieged by the king's troops. In a sortie, Bernard forms an ambuscade, into which his brother unfortunately falls, and receives a mortal wound. Taken into La Rochelle, he is laid upon a bed to die; and, refusing the spiritual assistance of Catholic priest and Protestant minister, he accelerates his death by a draught from Hornstein's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... up, kept constantly telling M. de Remusat, "You are going against your interest—I must say that I do not comprehend you!" And yet Savary, himself minister of the police, executor of most important services, head manager of the murder of the Duc d'Enghien and of the ambuscade at Bayonne, counterfeiter of Austrian bank-notes for the campaign of 1809 and of Russian banknotes for that of 1812,[1268] Savary ends in getting weary; he is charged with too many dirty jobs; however hardened his conscience it has a tender spot; he discovers at last that he has scruples. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... having drunk hard. But it is ill to catch an Elliott. For a while, in the night and the black water that was deep as to his saddle-girths, he wrought with his staff like a smith at his stithy, and great was the sound of oaths and blows. With that the ambuscade was burst, and he rode for home with a pistol-ball in him, three knife wounds, the loss of his front teeth, a broken rib and bridle, and a dying horse. That was a race with death that the laird rode! ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which is the fault some people find with the laws of Lycurgus, allowing them well enough calculated to produce valour, but not to promote justice. Perhaps it was the Cryptia, as they called it, or ambuscade, if that was really one of this lawgiver's institutions, as Aristotle says it was, which gave Plato so bad an impression both of Lycurgus and his laws. The governors of the youth ordered the shrewdest of them from time to time to disperse themselves in the country, provided ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... immediately beneath them. His apparent composure deceived his adversary; and perceiving that he was reconnoitring him, he presented to him, from among the trees and behind curtains, false heads of columns. The time that Grant occupied in reconnoitring, and discovering an imaginary ambuscade, M. de Lafayette employed in regaining the foreground; at length he passed by Grant's column. He managed to impose likewise on Grey's column, which followed him; and when the third division, under ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... somewhat minimized by the townspeople, Pierre and his wife, with a view to establishing a strong claim for subsequent reward, bribed Antoine Macquart to lead the Republicans left in Plassans to an attack on the town hall. To meet this he prepared a strong ambuscade, and the Republicans were repulsed with considerable loss. As a result of this treachery, Pierre was regarded by his fellow-citizens as the saviour of the town, and the Government subsequently appointed ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... of the line, followed at some distance by the 6th Regiment, which had marched by the Rue de Bourgogne, emerged from the Rue de l'Universite. "The regiment," says an eye-witness, "marched as one steps in a sickroom." It arrived with a stealthy step before the Presidency door. This ambuscade ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... largest settlements on the island, and where the king of the island resides. On the twenty-fifth he went ashore, leaving the master-of-camp aboard the vessels with a guard for the security of the fleet. Marching in the direction of one of the enemy's forts, they came upon an ambuscade in their path. Coming to a hand-to-hand conflict, Captain Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa was wounded in the head by a knife-thrust, and died in two days without regaining consciousness. At this turn ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... not to go that way; it is dangerous for you in the daytime"—it did lend itself to an ambuscade, and persons who knew Wilkes Booth assert having seen him prowling around—"it is ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... would have hesitated about following the Mexicans into the forest, but all of the Texans were expert in woodcraft, and thought they could keep out of an ambuscade as well in the woods as ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... however, was premature, and proved entirely unsuccessful, for the crabs backed and sidled into their burrows with such expedition, that the last of them disappeared before their assailant could get within reach. Leaving Johnny to renew his ambuscade, if so disposed, I proceeded along the reef, and found Max and Browne bathing for the second time that day. They had discovered a charming place for the purpose, where a kind of oval basin was formed ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... with his war-club, made him forget all else, and spring to her rescue. The trapper, who was not hurt, made a blow at his assailant, but he evaded it and tied into the forest where Howe thought it not prudent to follow, as he imagined a whole ambuscade of Indians might be in waiting to seize upon him. Hastening to the assistance of Whirlwind, he saw him closed hand to hand with the savage, their hunting-knives being their only weapons, both having dropped their tomahawks. Howe saw they were equally matched, and fearing the chief would get ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and several voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French officer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat and reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and that there was probably an ambuscade there. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... examining his weapons when a cloud of dust slowly advancing in the distance told him that a party of considerable size was on its way towards the ambuscade. He anxiously awaited their approach, and soon recognised Roberval's Picard escort, and the fluttering skirts of the women. If the men in ambush were waiting for them they were doomed, unless he could warn them. To pass from his hiding meant almost instant death, but it must ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... The pass gradually narrowed as they went, and the mountain-sides grew more precipitous, shutting them in like great walls on either side. Little foothold was there for a lurking enemy, and there were no deep gorges where an ambuscade might hide. To defend this part of the pass in the old days must have meant a hand-to-hand struggle in the narrow way. Ellerey noted this as he went. His life in Sturatzberg had ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... recal the parting Glances of her Beholders. You see my Complaint, and hope you will take these mischievous People, the Peepers, into your Consideration: I doubt not but you will think a Peeper as much more pernicious than a Starer, as an Ambuscade is more to be feared than an ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... about For that unnoticed failing in herself, Which made him look so cloudy and so cold; Till the great plover's human whistle amazed Her heart, and glancing round the waste she feared In ever wavering brake an ambuscade. Then thought again, 'If there be such in me, I might amend it by the grace of Heaven, If he would only speak and tell ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... tell his own story. "I was sent," he writes, "by Gen. Marion to reconnoitre Georgetown. I proceeded with a guide through the woods all night. At the dawn of day, I drew near the town. I laid an ambuscade, with thirty men and three officers, near the road. About sunrise a chair appeared with two ladies escorted by two British officers. I was ready in advance with an officer to cut them off, but reflecting that they might escape, and alarm the town, which would ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... lumbermen were in camp, and made the same proposition, which they accepted, as they were new in the country and needed horses and mules. The lumbermen joined the Mexicans, and as they could easily discern the course of the Apaches by the clouds of dust, succeeded in forming an ambuscade and fired on the Apaches when they reached the river. The Apaches fled at the fire, leaving ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... Flavours? What unnatural Motions and Counterferments must such a Medley of Intemperance produce in the Body? For my Part, when I behold a fashionable Table set out in all its Magnificence, I fancy that I see Gouts and Dropsies, Feavers and Lethargies, with other innumerable Distempers lying in Ambuscade among the Dishes. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... places where it ran over broad levels of grass where he presented a good target to men who might be eager to send a shot at him. There were other spots where the trail led into timber clumps and through tangles of brush where an ambuscade might be planned in perfect safety by an enemy; and there were the bastioned cliffs that towered above the trail at intervals, offering admirable hinding-places for ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... for idle talk. A hundred men immediately mounted and rode up the ravine. On reaching the ground occupied by the picket, they led their horses behind the rocks, and formed an ambuscade. The order was, that all the Indians must be ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... seized with as strong a desire for active life, as he formerly possessed for easy rest, and he felt himself in no safety except when at a distance from the mansion, for he knew that Ragnar possessed too much honor to entrap him in an ambuscade. ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... disappointment at Nombre de Dios. He was evidently a man of great presence of mind. He put spurs to his horse, and galloped off down the road, partly to escape the danger, but partly also to warn the treasure train, the bells of which were now clanging loudly at a little distance from the ambuscade. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... and I was so full of it that I often dreamed of it, and, sometimes, that I was just going to let fly at them in my sleep. I went so far with it in my imagination that I employed myself several days to find out proper places to put myself in ambuscade, as I said, to watch for them, and I went frequently to the place itself, which was now grown more familiar to me; but while my mind was thus filled with thoughts of revenge and a bloody putting twenty or thirty of them to the sword, as I may ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... running to me, and informed me of the cause of their terror, which was that they recognized, by some peculiarity of their headgear, that these men belonged to the tribe of the Dilwas, the most ferocious and unscrupulous of the Bedouin, who had evidently laid an ambuscade for us at this point with the intention of seizing our caravan. When I thought of all my efforts in Abyssinia, of the length of my journey and of the dangers and fatigues which I had endured, I could not bear to think of this total disaster coming ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... along the lower levels. Sounds, mingled and far ahead, told of the presence of a marching host, and Sergius led his troop on a more oblique course to gain the flank of the foe and lessen the chances of detection and ambuscade. ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... of the implements of war was not known, nor the war-whoop heard, save on days of festivity, when the achievements of former times were commemorated in a kind of mimic warfare, in which the chiefs and warriors displayed their prowess, and illustrated their former adroitness, by laying the ambuscade, surprizing their enemies, and performing many accurate manoeuvres with the tomahawk and scalping knife; thereby preserving and handing to their children, the theory of Indian warfare. During that period they also pertinaciously observed the religious rites of their progenitors, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... away from their "forms," to speak in the hunter's phrase, and sought to rejoin each other. But in these attempts they were liable to surprises from the enemy; papa and mamma were both on the alert, and often intercepted the young deserter by a cross march or an ambuscade; in which cases each had a separate policy for enforcing obedience. The father, upon his general system of "perseverance," compelled the fugitive back to his quarters, and, in effect, exhorted him to persist in being frightened out of his wits. To his wife's gentle ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Right and left everybody's servants were on the gallop for news. The country taverns were thronged with horsemen, who drank and cursed and brawled at the bars, each bringing his gloomy story. The army had been surprised. The troops had fallen into an ambuscade, and had been cut up almost to a man. All the officers were taken down by the French marksmen and the savages. The General had been wounded, and carried off the field in his sash. Four days afterwards the report was that the General was dead, and ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... my part," says an elegant writer, "when I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy I see gouts, and dropsies, fevers, and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers, lying in ambuscade among ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... and were finally relieved by a force from the railway. All the operations were not, however, as successful as these three defences. On October 24th a party of cavalry details belonging to many regiments were snapped up in an ambuscade. On the next day Jacobsdal was attacked, with considerable loss to the British. The place was entered in the night, and the enemy occupied the houses which surrounded the square. The garrison, consisting of about sixty men of the Capetown Highlanders, had encamped in the square, and were ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was begun. The point chosen was a broad beach fringed with woods near the anchorage of the vessels. Before landing the troops, the ships threw a few shells into the woods, to make certain that they concealed no ambuscade, as in the disastrous affair at Matthias Point. After two dozen shells had burst, mowing down trees, and driving out frightened animals in plenty, but no sharp-shooters, the long-boats put off from ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... YOU?' She repressed a little shudder, and clasped his hand more closely. 'Don't let us say anything more about it, she implored him; 'we are just together again, you and I; that is all that matters.' But her words were like brave soldiers who have fought their way through an ambuscade but have left all confidence ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... of Nicaragua. Here he burnt and pillaged ruthlessly, committing the most revolting cruelties on the Spanish inhabitants. One example of this monster's inhuman deeds will more than suffice to tell of. It happened that during an attack on the town of San Pedros the buccaneers had been caught in an ambuscade and many of them killed, although the Spaniards had at last turned and fled. The pirates killed most of their prisoners, but kept a few to be questioned by L'Ollonais so as to find some other way to the town. As he could get no information out of these men, the Frenchman ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... time Daniel came, he resumed his seat by the stove, and remained silent for a while. Then, without the slightest warning or apparent motivation, he began to discuss religion. And how? With the old spirit of defiance, as if from an ambuscade from which he could send out his poisoned arrows, with calculating maliciousness and cold rebellion, with the air of a man who has been defeated, who is now being pursued, and who is willing to concede more to the earthly order of things than to the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... hundred yards wide at its greatest width, and perhaps half a mile long, and then runs up and across the face of a third cliff which drops sheer down into the river. This cliff forms the end of the trap. It would be hard to find a better place for an ambuscade. ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... Caxamarca. He learnt likewise, that the royalists squadron had gone to the port of Santa, to which place he accordingly marched. Aldana got notice of his coming from some Spanish inhabitants of that place, and laid an ambuscade for him, consisting of an hundred and fifty musqueteers, in a place overgrown with tall reeds on the side of the road by which Acosta had to march in his way to Santa. Acosta had certainly fallen into the snare, if he had not fortunately ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... declivities. Bouquet resorted to a ruse which was signally successful. He formed his men in a wide semicircle, and from the centre advanced a company toward the enemy; the advancing company then made a feint of retreat, the deceived Indians followed close after and fell into the ambuscade. The outwitted savages were completely routed and fled in hopeless confusion. Bouquet had won one of the greatest victories in Western Indian warfare. His loss was about one hundred fifty men, nearly a third of his army. The loss of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... that the fight—if fight there were—would be made. Should the Indians take the palisade, there would yet be the houses of the town, and, last of all, the fort in which to make a stand. I believed not that they would take it, for Indian warfare ran more to ambuscade and surprise than to assault in the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... by chance, and I had time to look again upon her face, which was even more beautiful than I had imagined. Her eyes were large and peculiarly black, and fringed by long lashes, which, aided by the collyrium with which they were tinged, formed a sort of ambuscade, from which she levelled her shafts. Her eyebrows were finely arched, and nature had brought them together just over her nose, in so strong a line, that there was no need of art to join them together. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... This is the life which has most attractions for Baden-Powell, and if he had not been locked up in Mafeking all through those precious months at the beginning of the war, it is no idle guesswork to say that we should have lost fewer men and fewer guns by surprise and ambuscade. ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... mangling the insect, the deer fighting among themselves, and man, in his turn, pursuing all kinds of game. He identified nature with woman, both possessing in his eyes an equally deceiving appearance, the same beguiling beauty, and the same spirit of ambuscade and perfidy. The people around him inspired him only with mistrust and suspicion. In every peasant he met he recognized an enemy, prepared to cheat him with wheedling words and hypocritical lamentations. Although during the few months he ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... moment two incidents occurred to still further increase the curiosity of which she was the object. Quite close to Chinon some vagabonds, it is said, had prepared an ambuscade for the purpose of despoiling her, her and her train. She passed close by them without the least obstacle. The rumor went that at her approach they were struck motionless, and had been unable to attempt their wicked purpose. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... with a high hand; and no wonder, for the possession of gunpowder gives them almost absolute power. The mode by which tribes armed with bows and arrows carry on warfare, or defend themselves, is by ambuscade. They never come out in open fight, but wait for the enemy ensconced behind trees, or in the long grass of the country, and shoot at him unawares. Consequently, if men come against them with firearms, when, as is usually the case, the long grass is all burned off, the tribe attacked are as ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... they ford The hostile stream. The endless earth below, The boundless sky above, they know no day Of their return. Their breasts are ever bared To the pitiless steel and all the wounds of war Unspeakable. Methinks I see them now, Dust-mantled in the bitter wind, a host Of Tartar warriors in ambuscade. Our leader scorns the foe. He would give battle Upon the threshold of the camp. The stream Besets a grim array where order reigns, Though many hearts may beat, where discipline Is all, and life of no account. The spear Now works ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... stealthily creeping along, we gained a small rise of ground which commanded a more extended view than most places in the Black Forest, and, but for the thickness of the trees, we could have seen our own camping-place and the part where the ambuscade had been laid. From sounds of the voices, we could tell that the ruffians were leading their prisoners to the spot where we had passed the night, and the most fearful oaths and imprecations could ever and anon ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
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