"Ambuscade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Flower of the North • 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 ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... 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
... 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 cockney knows ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... 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
... 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 Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... 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
... 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. A people-devouring king ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... 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
... 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 keep ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... 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
... 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 ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... 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 |
