"Freebooter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... second year of Baldwin, king of Jerusalem, Joppa was besieged by the Turks of Cairo; and Baldwin embarked from the town of Assur, in a vessel called a buss, commanded by one Goderic an English freebooter, intending to proceed to the relief of the besieged. Fixing the royal banner aloft on a spear, that it might be seen of the Christians, they sailed boldly towards Joppa, with but a small company of armed men. The king knew that the Christians ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... banks of the Loire, devastated the country as high as Tourraine, shared the women and girls among his crews, and even carried off the male children, to be brought up in his own profession. Charles the Bald, not having the power to expel him, engaged the freebooter, for 500 pounds of silver, to dislodge his countrymen, who were harassing the vicinity of Paris. In consequence of this subsidy, Wailand, with a fleet of 260 sail, went up the Seine, and attacked the Normans in the isle of Oiselle: after a long and obstinate resistance, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... of his enterprises and the intensity of his hatred of the Spaniards. When still a young man, in 1567-'68, he was captain of a small ship, the Judith, one of a fleet of slavers running between the coast of Africa and the West Indies, under the command of John Hawkyns, another famous freebooter. In the harbor of San Juan de Ulua the Spaniards took the fleet by stratagem; the Judith and the Minion, with Hawkyns on board, being the only vessels that escaped. Young Drake's experiences on that occasion fixed the character of his relations ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... extinct in the West so far as government was concerned. Valentinian's miserable widow, daughter of the eastern, wife of the western, emperor, during a short two months the prey of her husband's murderer, became with her daughters the captive of the Vandal freebooter, and saw the elder compelled to marry his son Hunnerich, the future persecutor of the Church. Twenty years succeed in which emperors are enthroned and pass like shadows, until the Herule general Odoacer, commanding for the time the Teuton mercenaries, deposes the last imperial ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... certificate of his entire innocence of the murder of La Salle, which the priest did not hesitate to do. For the rest, Hiens treated his departing fellow-travellers with the generosity of a successful freebooter; for he gave them a good share of the plunder which he had won by his late crime, supplying them with hatchets, knives, heads, and other articles of trade, besides several horses. Meanwhile, adds Joutel, "we had the mortification and chagrin of seeing this scoundrel ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... the fight, notwithstanding the martial character of Quentin Durward, was indifferent to him, in comparison with the fate of Isabelle of Croye, which, he had reason to fear, would be a dreadful one, unless rescued from the power of the dissolute and cruel freebooter who was now, as it seemed, bursting the gates of the castle. He reconciled himself to the aid of the Bohemian, as men in a desperate illness refuse not the remedy prescribed by quacks and mountebanks, and followed across ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... That freebooter of civilization, the man who lives by his wits, is subject to strange fluctuations from prosperity to adversity. He is the miner or gold-digger of civilized life; and as there are times when his pickaxe strikes suddenly on a rich lode, so there are dreary intervals in which his spade turns ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... reign of Henry VI., Malkin Tower became a robber's stronghold, and gave protection to a freebooter named Blackburn, who, with a band of daring and desperate marauders, took advantage of the troubled state of the country, ravaged it far and wide, and committed unheard of atrocities, even levying contributions ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... when I was a freebooter," he said to himself, "only admitted on sufferance, and liable to have the door shut in my face any morning. But I am trusted now, and I must prove myself worthy of my future mother-in-law's confidence. Once ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Gilnockie Tower, in a situation which in point of natural beauty is scarcely equalled even in Scotland. It was the stronghold of a chief popularly known in his day as Johnnie Armstrong.*[1] He was a mighty freebooter in the time of James V., and the terror of his name is said to have extended as far as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, between which town and his castle on the Esk he was accustomed to levy black-mail, or "protection and forbearance ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... prisoner to escape. They had, indeed, little to learn from him, even had he been disposed to give intelligence, or capable of communicating it. All were well assured that their lady had fallen into an ambuscade, formed by Dawfyd the one-eyed, a redoubted freebooter of the period, who had ventured upon this hardy enterprise in the hope of obtaining a large ransom for the captive Eveline, and all, incensed at his extreme insolence and audacity, devoted his head and limbs to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... The peasant and mechanic were astonished that wages were not doubled, that bread was not to be had for asking, that the disparities of life remained the same,—the rich still rich, the poor still poor. In the first days of the revolution, Sir Geoffrey Gates, the freebooter, little comprehending the earl's merciful policy, and anxious naturally to turn a victory into its accustomed fruit of rapine and pillage, placed himself at the head of an armed mob, marched from Kent to the suburbs of London, and, joined by ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... known to infest the place, but, in general, there is too little to be gained for the risk. Your rich traveller is not an every-day sight among our rocks; and you well know Signore, that there may be too few, as well as too many, on a path, for your freebooter." ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... singular, it was bewildering, this change in her estimate of Marshall Haney. The deeper he sank in reminiscent meditation the farther he withdrew from the bold and splendid freebooter he had once seemed to her. She was now unjust to him for he was still capable of what his kind call "standing pat." The rough-and-ready borderman was still housed under the same thatch of hair with the sentimental old Irishman, ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the thirteenth century there lived at a castle in the heart of these mountains a nobleman called Wolfram Herzog von Bergendorf; and being no freebooter like most of the other German barons of the time, but a man of very pious disposition, he was moved during the prime of his life to forsake his home and join a body of crusaders. Reaching Palestine after a protracted journey, these ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... on trembling, while Carl became nervous again, then gaily defiant, then nervous again, till the alternation of gloom and bravado disgusted him and made Ruth wonder whether he was an office-slave or a freebooter. As he happened to be both at the time, it was hard for him to be either convincingly. She accused him of vacillating; he retorted; the suspense kept ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... buried under that tree," I said to Frank, suppressing my excitement so far as I could. "More than likely it was placed there by some freebooter a long time ago, and these people were awaiting a chance ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... But the face of the woman advancing towards him suggested that she was not particular about the identity of the form emerging from the mists of time to rescue her from virginity. She looked as if she would have gladly surrendered that jewel to any freebooter in return for a passage in the ship of matrimony, and gone off flying the proud signal, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... condition of the poor free laborer, by competition with the labor of the slave. The property in horses was the gift of God to man, at the creation of the world; the property in slaves is property acquired and held by crimes, differing in no moral aspect from the pillage of a freebooter, and to which no lapse of time can give a prescriptive right. You are told that this is no concern of yours, and that the question of freedom and slavery is exclusively reserved to the consideration of the separate States. But if it be so, as to the mere question of right ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... received the keys, accepted the sword of the captain commissioned by Charles with royal courtesy, gave his hand to be kissed by the mayor; and then, with grave inexorable air, like a statue of steel, watched as the freebooter Vaurus and his two chief companions were led down with their hands tied, halters round their necks, and priests at their sides, preparing them to be hung on that very tree. They were proud hard men, and uttered no entreaty for grace. They had hung too many travellers upon ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recently been buried. Near here also was Caerlanrig, where the murder of Johnnie Armstrong of Gilnockie, a very powerful chief who levied blackmail along the Border from Esk to Tyne, or practically the whole length of Hadrian's Wall, took place in 1530. Johnnie was a notorious freebooter and Border raider, no one daring to go his way for fear of Johnnie or his followers. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies. The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the infringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... a moment to the career of another great fortune-builder, the man who was, perhaps, the greatest freebooter the American financial world ever saw, who made his money by destroying rather than building up, and whose wealth finally killed him—Jay Gould. Let us see if we can get some sort of idea of the personality of ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... name of one of the boldest warriors, and of the most accomplished freebooter of his time—even Martino's cheek grew pale, and his followers uttered ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the cave's mouth, was not buried in Saul's great back, but only hacked off the end of his robe spread out behind him! No personal animosity was in David. However he had been driven to consort with outlaws, and to live a kind of freebooter's life, his natural sweetness was unspoiled, and was reinforced by solemn veneration for the sanctity of the Lord's anointing, which he reverenced all the more because himself had received it. He ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of an island upon which he stood, was at that time—September, 1814—the stronghold of Jean Lafitte, the famous freebooter, or, as he chose rather to call himself, privateer, and his band of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... chose to call himself, Robert Campbell. He was born in 1671 and died in 1734, and was a son of Donald MacGregor, a lieutenant in the army of James II, from whom after the accession of William of Orange, Robert obtained a commission. Afterward he became a freebooter. He was included in the Act of Attainder, but continued to levy blackmail on the gentry of Scotland while in the enjoyment of the protection of the Duke ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... and John surrender it to be held as a temporal fief of the papacy; or when, in the reign of Henry III, a papal legate, Gualo, administered England as a province of the Papal States; when a foreign freebooter was sheriff of six English shires; and when aliens held in their hands the castles and keys of the kingdom. It was a dark hour which preceded the dawn of English nationality, and so far there was no sign of English indignation ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... thoughts about the true nature of life. They refer, originally, to the strange vicissitudes and extremes of fortune and condition which characterised, so dramatically and remarkably, the life of King David. Shepherd-boy, soldier, court favourite, outlaw, freebooter and all but brigand; rebel, king, fugitive, saint, sinner, psalmist, penitent—he lived a life full of strongly marked alternations, and 'the times that went over him' were singularly separate and different ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... window Phyllis saw them ride away, and persuaded herself that she was glad. Vengeance was about to fall upon this insolent freebooter who had not even manhood enough to appreciate a kindness. But as the hours passed she was beset by a consuming anxiety. What more likely than that he would resist! If so, there could be only one end. She could not keep her thoughts from ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... religious aims they ignored ineradicable elements in human nature. They attempted the impossible. How then have their deeds become the source of song and story? Why all the honor that we pay them? It is not because in danger, in sacrifice, and in failure, they were stout-hearted. Many a freebooter or soldier of fortune has been that. It is, as one said whose name I bear, "because they were stout-hearted for an ideal—their ideal, not ours, of civil and religious liberty. Wherever and whenever resolute men and women devote themselves, not to material, but to spiritual ends, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... thus thrown away contained six books, relating to the period above mentioned, which were never afterwards recovered. The soldier brought the remainder to their author, who bought them at the price of a vacant benefice, which he persuaded the pope to confer on the freebooter, in his native land of Cordova. It is not often that simony has found so good an apology. The deficiency, although never repaired by Giovio, was in some degree supplied by his biographies of eminent men, and, among others, by that of Gonsalvo de ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... to one—four men with law on their side, to one wounded freebooter, half-starved, exhausted by days and nights of pursuit, worn down with loss of sleep, thirst, privation, and the grinding, nerve-racking consciousness of an ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... freebooter, "but time vill make dat all squaar. Smugglers bring guns to we, an' pooder. Ver' soon be ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... unwisely brought down a pistol for him from London; and Teddy thereupon having his imagination excited by what he had read of pirates and highwaymen in the works of romance which he devoured whenever he could get hold of them, went about fancying himself a bold buccaneer and freebooter, firing at everything moving within as well as out of range, along the solitary country lanes and hedgerows— thereby frightening passers-by frequently with untimely shots close to their ears, and making them believe their last hour ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... was born at Locksley, in Notts., in the reign of Henry II. (1160). His real name was Fitzooth, and it is commonly said that he was the earl of Huntingdon. Having outrun his fortune, and being outlawed, he lived as a freebooter in Barnsdale (Yorkshire), Sherwood (Notts.), and Plompton Park (Cumberland). His chief companions were Little John (whose name was Nailor), William Scadlock (or Scarlet), George Green, the pinder (or pound-keeper) of Wakefield, Much, a miller's son, and Tuck, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Surat were imprisoned, and not released till they had paid full compensation. Some small satisfaction was experienced when it became known that John Proud, master of the Swan, one of the Company's ships, had encountered the Roebuck in the Comoro Islands, and had attacked the freebooter. He was unable to capture it, but succeeded in procuring restitution of the captured goods; the treasure, however, was carried off to London, where it must have seemed as if the days of Drake ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... presence; and one, in a headlong pursuit, broke through the glass of a greenhouse, then dashed through another glass partition, and was only brought up by a third. Pigeons are also quite in its line. Indeed, it is a bold red-taloned freebooter, and only condescends to insects and the smaller reptiles when there are no little birds at hand. During the spring migration this hawk is ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... too, had felt the world's injustice, but instead of bearing it patiently, he had struck back, and struck hard. He was striking all the time—there was war between him and society. He was a genial freebooter, living off the enemy, without fear or shame. He was not always victorious, but then defeat did not mean annihilation, and need not break ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... much richer, for there were so many the fewer pockets to fill. But even yet there were too many to share the booty, in Blackbeard's opinion, and so he marooned a parcel more of them—some eighteen or twenty—upon a naked sand bank, from which they were afterward mercifully rescued by another freebooter who chanced that way—a certain Major Stede Bonnet, of whom more will presently be said. About that time a royal proclamation had been issued offering pardon to all pirates in arms who would surrender ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... trade with China, but their advances being rejected, doubtless through secret opposition from the Portuguese, they seized the Pescadores, and later established themselves on Formosa, whence they were eventually expelled by Koxinga, a Chinese freebooter. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... described by his countrymen as a gentleman who would be rich if justice were done, as a gentleman who had a fine estate if he could only get it. [153] He seldom betook himself to any peaceful calling. Trade, indeed, he thought a far more disgraceful resource than marauding. Sometimes he turned freebooter. Sometimes he contrived, in defiance of the law, to live by coshering, that is to say, by quartering himself on the old tenants of his family, who, wretched as was their own condition, could not refuse a portion of their pittance to one whom they ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was the island selected for his residence by Blackbeard, the famous pirate; the citadel that stands on the hill above the town of Nassau, is built on the site of the fortress which contained the treasure of that famous freebooter. A curious circumstance occurred during my stay on this island, and which, beyond all doubt, was connected with the adventures of those extraordinary people, known by the appellation of Buccaneers. Some workmen were digging near the foot of the hill under ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... his black friend had just hewn down, and which was ready for burning. "Let the freebooter roast," said Tom, "who cares!" He now felt convinced that all he had heard and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... no sign of the wonder that had shot into his mind at the name of Cathbarr, except that his blue eyes seemed changed suddenly to cold ice. The Dark Master saw the change, and his smile withered. Brian, watching him, reflected that this malformed freebooter could be venomous-looking ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... The freebooter of the green-pea trade touched his wet forelock respectfully. "My name is Gibney, sir, an' I hold an unlimited license as first mate of sail or steam. I was passin' up the coast on a good-for-nothin' little bumboat, an' seen you in distress, so me an' a friend swum over ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... faith in that homely adage that there are more ways of killing a cat than by choking him with butter which moved Bob McGraw to cudgel his nimble brain until he had discovered exactly how it would be possible for him to accomplish legally what every freebooter with an appraising eye on the public domain is troubled to accomplish illegally. The sole difference between Bob's projected course and that of his competitors' would be a slightly lessened profit; but after ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... a late Latin word which passed into Greece and then entered Central Europe via the Balkans. It comes into 16th-century German from Hungar. huszar, freebooter. This is from a Serbian word which means also pirate. It represents medieval Gk. {koursarios}, a transliteration of Vulgar Lat. cursarius, from currere, to run, which occurs also with the sense of pirate in medieval Latin. Hussar is thus a doublet of corsair. The ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... thief, robber, homo triumliterarum [Lat.], pilferer, rifler, filcher^, plagiarist. spoiler, depredator, pillager, marauder; harpy, shark [Slang], land shark, falcon, mosstrooper^, bushranger^, Bedouin^, brigand, freebooter, bandit, thug, dacoit^; pirate, corsair, viking, Paul Jones^, buccaneer, buccanier^; piqueerer^, pickeerer^; rover, ranger, privateer, filibuster; rapparee^, wrecker, picaroon^; smuggler, poacher; abductor, badger [Slang], bunko ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... but little breeze, and consequently the Sabine could not have run into neutral waters even if second mate Jack Gray, who had charge of the deck, had known that the steamer that was bearing down upon her was the freebooter, Sumter. ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... the houses of the town clung to the hillside, creeping up close to the castle wall and clustering in its shadow as if to claim protection. In truth, for many a day it had been their warden against freebooter and foreign foe, gathering the habitations of the humble as a hen gathers her chickens beneath her wings to defend them ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... Dagh mountains, among the barren, variegated hills that skirt the Angora plateau. We had already passed through Ismid, the ancient Nicomedia and capital of Diocletian; and had left behind us the heavily timbered valley of the Sakaria, upon whose banks the "Freebooter of the Bithynian hills" settled with his four hundred tents and laid the foundation of the Ottoman empire. Since leaving Geiveh we had been attended by a mounted guard, or zaptieh, who was sometimes forced upon us by the authorities ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... seventy thousand (70,000) rupees to the treasury; that his family had held many villages in hereditary right for many generations, within the purgunnah, but that all had, been or were being seized by this lawless freebooter ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... and noble effort, a part of the poetry of life. It is so already to many of us, and has been so to the noblest Englishmen since we have had a literature. If Henry V's speech at Agincourt is the splendid gasconade of a royal freebooter, there is no false ring in the scene where John of Gaunt takes leave of his banished son; nor in Sir Walter Scott's 'Breathes there a man with soul so dead,' etc. 'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.' We cannot quite manage to substitute London for Zion in singing ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... country had gained him fame in the Revolutionary days, placed himself at the head of a volunteer company which called itself the "Wabash regiment," and had been recruited in Kentucky for an expedition against the Shawnee Indians. Clark had degenerated through intemperance into a kind of border freebooter. Turning his troops from the original purpose, he seized the goods of the Spanish traders at Post Vincennes as a retaliation upon the Spanish, and prepared to descend upon New Orleans. Congress was compelled to take strong measures for disbanding ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... shades of character, from the religious enthusiast, seeking in unknown regions, invested with strange charms by a heated imagination, the kingdom of saints upon earth, which he had vainly hoped to erect in the old world, down to the reckless freebooter, whose life had been passed in wild indulgence, unrestrained by law, human or divine, whom chance or design had thrown upon their coast, it is obvious that a vigilant eye and strong hand were necessary to note and repress every incipient ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... and to destroy the tyranny. This man now assumed the reins of office, and had no sooner done so than he showed himself a harsh prince to the Thessalians: harsh too and hostile to the Thebans and Athenians, (31) and an unprincipled freebooter everywhere by land and by sea. But if that was his character, he too was doomed to perish shortly. The perpetrators of the deed were his wife's brothers. (32) The counsellor of it and the inspiring soul was the wife ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... foreign lands. In part they went as traders and exchanged the furs, wool, and fish of Scandinavia for the clothing, ornaments, and other articles of luxury found in neighboring countries. But it was no far cry from merchant to freebooter, and, in fact, expeditions for the sake of plunder seem to have been even more popular with the Northmen ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... tributary waters, are the wealthiest marts, the most splendid capitals, and the most sacred shrines of India. The tyranny of man had for ages struggled in vain against the overflowing bounty of nature. In spite of the Mussulman despot and of the Mahratta freebooter, Bengal was known through the East as the garden of Eden, as the rich kingdom. Its population multiplied exceedingly. Distant provinces were nourished from the overflowing of its granaries - and the noble ladies of London and Paris were clothed in the delicate produce of its ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... European order, nor could any European power send assistance to a monarch who had refused to listen even to the remonstrances of Austria against his cruelties. The stanchest of English conservatives, while they said they must regard Garibaldi as a freebooter, did not hesitate to express the warmest wishes for the freebooter's success. When the Sardinians marched to Garibaldi's aid, they did so in the interest of order, which has been promptly restored to Southern ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... accomplish the portended crime of dealing death to his father? I was torn by distracted arguments; at one moment I believed firmly as ever in the stars, at the next my trust was in the lance of the burly freebooter I had brought down with me ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... alone when he travels. The old villain then catches what he can. Myself, I hardly believe he continues his brigandage. He appears wholly worn out. I gave his little son 20 paras to buy camel's flesh. The old freebooter grinned a ghastly smile. Walking in Ben Weleed quarters, I heard a great to-do, and went to see what it was, when I saw the old chief, Haj Ben Mousa Ettanee, standing over his young truant son, whilst with a thick stick the servant of the schoolmaster was belabouring ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... head crested a figure of extraordinary power. Gray as a mediaeval castle, age had not yet touched his gnarled strength. The keen steady eyes, the close straight lips, the shaggy eyebrows heavy and overhanging, gave accent to the rugged force of this grim freebooter who had reversed the law of nature which decrees that railroads shall follow civilization. Scorning the established rule of progress, he had spiked his rails through untrodden forests and unexplored canons to watch the pioneer come after by the road ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... assail her while his strong arm was there to ward it off. She felt very much as Mary Stuart may have done about Bothwell; when, moved to scornful aversion by the silken boy-profligate Darnley, her heart acknowledged its master in the dark freebooter who had slain him. There had been no Darnley in Pamela Tempest's life; but this resolute, clear-brained soldier was her Bothwell. She had the Mary Stuart temperament, the love of compliments and fine dresses, dainty needlework and luxurious living, without the Stuart ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... to be robbed or murdered, or to fight with desperation to avert robbery and murder, was then only a commonplace of the sea. Men from the safety of the adjoining shore only looked on in calm curiosity, as nowadays men look on indifferently to see the powerful freebooter of the not less troubled business sea rob, impoverish, and perhaps drive down to untimely death others who only ask to be permitted to make their ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... author's only long poem not dramatic in form. This uneven and in passages extraordinarily beautiful work is a sort of epic in fifteen songs, difficult to read, yet simple enough in general outline. Arnljot Gelline was a sort of freebooter of the eleventh century, whose fierce deeds were preserved in popular tradition. The 'Heimskringla' tells us how, grown weary of his lawless life, he joined himself to Olaf the Holy, accepted baptism, and fell at Stiklestad righting for Christianity and the King. From this suggestion, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... brother instead, who, it was soon evident, could render them no assistance. The travellers were soon surrounded by the inhabitants, to whom a number of small presents were given. These men were very inferior in appearance even to the common Taki freebooter, and extremely degraded in ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... he was settled in his castle, the freebooter devoted all his energies to rendering it still more impregnable by strengthening the walls and breaking the cliffs into more horrid precipices. In this work he was assisted by his numerous friends and followers; for Musso rapidly became, like ancient Rome, an ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... founder of the line, as a soldier of fortune in the Seljukian service; and, in spite of the civilizing influences of the country, the people, and the religion, to which he had attached himself, he had not as yet laid aside the habits of his ancestors, but was half shepherd, half freebooter. Nor is it likely that any of his countrymen would be anything else, as long as they were still in war and in subordinate posts. Peace must precede the enjoyment, and power the arts of government; and the very readiness with ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... as there were Gaelic marauders, they had been regarded by the Saxon population as hateful vermin who ought to be exterminated without mercy. As soon as the extermination had been accomplished, as soon as cattle were as safe in the Perthshire passes as in Smithfield market, the freebooter was exalted into a hero of romance. As long as the Gaelic dress was worn, the Saxons had pronounced it hideous, ridiculous, nay, grossly indecent. Soon after it had been prohibited, they discovered that it was the most graceful drapery in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... An eager freebooter, ready for any task, the Ant is the first to come hastening and begin, particle by particle, to dissect the corpse. Soon the odour of the corpse attracts the Fly, the genitrix of the odious maggot. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Sable Island reefs by false lights. It is unsafe to accept as facts the charges and countercharges made by these two enemies; but from independent sources it seems fairly certain that Charnisay, unknown to Cardinal Richelieu, was a bit of a freebooter and wrecker; for his men made a regular business of waylaying English ships from Boston, Dutch ships from New York, as they passed Sable Island; and Charnisay's name became cordially hated by the Protestant colonies of New England. La Tour, being Huguenot, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... objection that I never trusted them in any hands but my own. We went on talking for a little while, when he called for betel and pan. This meant that I might go. I helped myself, took leave and recrossed the drawbridge. It was a notorious freebooter, a Hindoo Robin Hood, that I had dropped upon. But why did he not tumble me into his ditch and enrich his armory with my rifle and pistols? It may be that prudence operated, in his letting me go free, as a check on his lust for a very small gain. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Messer Benincasa da Laterina, a learned judge, who had condemned to death for their crimes two relatives of Ghin di Tacco, the most famous freebooter of the day, whose headquarters were between Siena and Rome. Some time after, Messer Benincasa sitting as judge in Rome, Ghino entered the city with a band of his followers, made his way to the tribunal, slew Benincasa, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... a freebooter. She draws no nice distinctions between a mouse in the wainscot, and a canary swinging in its gilded cage. Her traducers, indeed, have been wont to intimate that her preference is for the forbidden quarry; but this is one ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... should say that as a result of such an association Gilles's mysticism began to soar. Henceforth we have to deal with a man who is half-freebooter, half-monk. Moreover—" ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... the freebooter who had burnt it down; one Philip Heredith, a descendant of Philip Here-Deith, whose name is inscribed in the Domesday Book as one of the knights of the army of Duke William which had assembled at Dives for the conquest of England. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... night was at hand, they tacked out to sea, laying their account to make an attempt upon our ships in Plymouth next morning. In the mean time, while thus deceived in the land, they were discovered by captain Fleming, a pirate or freebooter who had been roving at sea, and who knowing them to be the Spanish fleet, repaired in all haste to Plymouth, and gave notice to our fleet then, riding at anchor, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... to Pittsburg. He was endowed with gigantic strength, courage, and presence of mind—his rifle was unerring, and his conscience never troubled his repose. Every one was afraid of him; every one was anxious to be on good terms with him, for he was a regular freebooter; and although he spared his friends, he gave no quarter to the lives or properties of others. Mike Fink was not originally a boatmen: at an early age he had enlisted in the company of scouts, another variety of employment produced by circumstances—a species of solitary ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... plovers are as noisy in the park as they are in an eastern pasture-field, and almost as plentiful. In the evening near the village a pair of western robins and a thieving magpie had a hard tussle along the fence of the road. The freebooter was carrying something in his beak which looked sadly like a callow nestling. He tried to hide in the fence-corners, to give himself a chance to eat his morsel, but they were hot on his trail, and at length he flew off ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... Asinai; and the authority which he had wielded passed into the hands of Anilai, without (so far as we hear) any fresh appointment from the Parthian monarch. Anilai had, it appears, no instincts but those of a freebooter, and he was no sooner settled in the government than he proceeded to indulge them by attacking the territory of a neighboring satrap, Mithridates, who was not only a Parthian of high rank, but had married one of the daughters of Artabanus. Mithridates flew to ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... for change and variety seemed likely to be fully satisfied. The ship was taken by English pirates, and as she was English and looked as if she would make a good freebooter, they compelled her to join them, and thus it was that she got her first idea of a pirate's life. When this company disbanded, she went to New Providence and enlisted on a privateer, but, as was very common on such vessels commissioned to perform acts of legal ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... events, have taken to the road through some supposed wrong—personal or political. Freebooting is less a crime, or at all events, more easy of extenuation in a country whose chief magistrate himself is a freebooter; and such, at this moment, neither more nor less, was the chief magistrate of Mexico, Don Antonio ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... got the estate from the king," says M. Picot, with a curious look from Hortense to me; and he told me of Blood, the freebooter, who stole the king's crown but won royal favour by his bravado and entered court service for the doing of deeds that bore ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Shakespeare if you don't know prudence. However, we're plotters now, and you must take on your wisest humor. You must not breathe a word to Rosa. Love is a freebooter in confidences. It has no conscience, as it has no law. It is an immense friction on the sober relations of life. It is cousin to the god of lies—Mercury. So be warned that while your heart is Rosa's your reason's your country's, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... with alligator, alpaca, bigot, cannibal, cargo, filibuster, freebooter, guano, hurricane, mosquito, negro, stampede, ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... as soon as there was enough bare ground to step upon. He seemed for a time to cast aside all restraint with his shoes and stockings, and when not in school lived a freebooter's life in the forest. ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... awe for having heard the hum of men, and his minstrel dreams had derived fresh vigour from contact with the active world. But, as usual, he was his brother's chief stay in the vexations of a reformer. The serfs had much rather their lord had turned out a freebooter than an improver. Why should they sow new seeds, when the old had sufficed their fathers? Work, beyond the regulated days when they scratched up the soil of his old enclosure, was abhorrent to them. As to his offered coin, they needed nothing it would buy, and had rather bask in the sun ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recompense," said Gaston, "I should be by a long score the debtor if we came to that. If it had not been for Sir Reginald, I should be by this time a reckless freebooter, without a hope in this world or the next; if it had not been for you, these bones of mine would long since have been picked by my cousins, the Spanish wolves. But let the gold tarry in your keeping: it were better King Edward's good crowns ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the previous evening because we were within an hour of the well of Tajetterat, which had become famous in our caravan as the place where we were to be attacked and despoiled by the freebooter Sidi Jafel Waled Sakertaf. This morning we pursued our way, cautiously sending scouts before. But as the wady opened, the place proved to be desolate, and we advanced joyously, with the confidence that this time at least we had been disturbed by a false alarm. Still, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... It was no disparagement to his manhood. Even Master Raymond's face grew very serious—for did even he know that this Captain Tolley might not be the renowned freebooter, of whose many acts of daring and violence the wide ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... been dissipated by observing that, the ship, in navigating into the harbor, was drawing too near the land; a sunken reef making out off her bow. This seemed to prove her a stranger, indeed, not only to the sealer, but the island; consequently, she could be no wonted freebooter on that ocean. With no small interest, Captain Delano continued to watch her—a proceeding not much facilitated by the vapors partly mantling the hull, through which the far matin light from her cabin streamed ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... at Panama for a considerable period, until, indeed, his men began to murmur at their protracted inactivity. The cause of this inaction will hardly be divined from the character thus far developed of this stupendous freebooter; but it was the tender passion! He had among his prisoners a beautiful Spanish lady, who attracted his particular attention. She was a native of Spain, and the wife of an opulent merchant, whose business had some time before called him to Peru. According to the historians of that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in a corner, while Chook did the buying. He walked along the stalls, eyeing the sellers and their goods with the air of a freebooter, for, as he always had more impudence than cash, he was a redoubtable customer. There was always a touch of comedy in Chook's buying, and the Chinamen knew and dreaded him, instantly on the defensive, guarding their precious cabbages against his predatory fingers, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... hog, and assuming either form as suited the occasion. He was said to be the nephew of Olopana, a king of Oahu, whose kindness in acting as his foster father he repaid by the robbery of his henroosts and other unfilial conduct. He lived the lawless life of a marauder and freebooter, not confining his operations to one island, but swimming from one to another as the fit took him. On one occasion, when, the farmers of Waipi'o, whom he had robbed, assembled with arms to bar his retreat and to deal vengeance upon him, he charged upon the multitude, overthrew ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... to swift vagaries of thought and conflicting emotions. She was riding away with a freebooter, a road-agent, to be held for ransom. The fact was scarcely credible. She could not shake the dread of nameless peril. She tried not to recall Roberts's words, yet they haunted her. If she had not been so handsome, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... trade in flesh and hides with that of piracy, the name gradually lost its original significance and acquired, in the English language at least, its modern and better-known meaning of corsair or freebooter. The French adventurers, however, seem always to have restricted the word "boucanier" to its proper signification, that of a hunter and curer of meat; and when they developed into corsairs, by a curious contrast they adopted an English name and called ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... finally broken and subdued. The small remains of them either dispersed themselves among their countrymen in Northumberland and East Anglia [z], or had recourse again to the sea, where they exercised piracy, under the command of Sigefert, a Northumbrian. This freebooter, well acquainted with Alfred's naval preparations, had framed vessels of a new construction, higher, and longer, and swifter than those of the English; but the king soon discovered his superior skill, by building vessels still higher, and longer, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... from the Dutch Vlieboot, fly-boat, swift boat, a kind of small craft whose sailing qualities were superior to those of the other vessels then in vogue. It is possible that the English made freebooter[9] out of the French adaptation. The fly-boat was originally only a long, light pinnace[10] or cutter with oars, fitted also to carry sail; we often find the word used by the French writers to designate vessels which brought important intelligence. They were favorite craft ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... wave of bitterest disappointment passed over Wilbur as he saw his $30,000 dwindling to nothing. Then the instincts of habit reasserted themselves. The taxpayer in him was stronger than the freebooter, after all. He felt that it was his duty to see to it that the girl had her rights. Kitchell must be made aware of the situation—must be told that Moran, the daughter, the Captain's heir, was on board the schooner; that the "kid" found in the ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... of, perhaps, sixty feet, and steering by instinct across seas as chartless as the forests where French coureurs ran, struck out from Asia for America with wilder {81} dreams of plunder than ever Spanish galleon or English freebooter hoped coasting ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... undisguised favor, and met a request from Philip II. for Drake's surrender by knighting the freebooter and wearing in her crown the jewel he offered her as a present. When the Spanish ambassador threatened that matters should come to the cannon, she replied "quietly, in her most natural voice," writes Mendoza, ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... rock above the fall yawns a hole, hardly a cavern, where once lurked a famous freebooter of Wales, Twm Sion Catti: the entrance to this cave is through a narrow aperture, formed of two immense slate rocks, which face each other, and the space between them is narrower at the bottom than the top, so {456} that the passage ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... you,' said Mr. Adister warming, to advise him, and checking the trot of his horse. 'Try South America.' The lordly gentleman plotted out a scheme of colonisation and conquest in that region with the coolness of a practised freebooter. 'No young man is worth a job,' he said, 'who does not mean to be a leader, and as leader to have dominion. Here we are fettered by ancestry and antecedents. Had I to recommence without those encumbrances, I would try my fortune yonder. I stood condemned to waste my youth in idle ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... points, the Hebrews, in the early age at which we are now considering them, appear to have entertained sentiments not very different from those of the Arabs, from whose sandy plains they had just emerged. The life of a migratory shepherd, too, has a very close alliance with the habits of a freebooter; and the attentive reader of the ancient history of the Israelites will recollect many instances wherein the descendants of Isaac gave ample proof of their relationship to the posterity of Ishmael. The character of Abimelech, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... necessary, however, for the development of our story, that we here make further mention of her husband and her sons. The elder Moor had been a daring freebooter in his youth; and often in the morning, and even at dead of night, the "fray of support," the cry for help, and the sudden summons for neighbours and kinsmen to rise and ride, were raised wheresoever he trode; and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... apple-hoards. There was a delightful proprietary sense in the idea of owning one. It stimulated some latent propensity to secretiveness, as also the inclination to play the freebooter in a small way. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... made a fresh effort to throw succor into the place. Two thousand men, with seven field-pieces, and many wagon-loads of munitions, were sent forward under Batenburg. This officer had replaced De la Marck, whom the Prince had at last deprived of his commission. The reckless and unprincipled freebooter was no longer to serve a cause which was more sullied by his barbarity than it could be advanced by his desperate valor. Batenburg's expedition was, however, not more successful than the one made by his predecessor. The troops, after reaching the vicinity of the city, lost their way in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... serve, and pitied by men whom I hate. This pirate career suits me. What is society to me, whom it has ostracised? I was a gentleman once—quick at books, pleasing in company, shrewd in business. They say that I have power still, but lack integrity. Be it so! Better a freebooter at sea than upon the land. I have half made up my mind to evil. Hugenot, listen to me! I believe that were I to do one bad, dark deed, it would restore ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... formidable by their numbers, they had, with some exertion of forethought and contrivance, constantly evaded, either by a little detour, or by a temporary halt in some place of strength. But now it was universally known that they were probably waylaid by a desperate and remorseless freebooter, who, as he put his own trust exclusively in the sword, allowed nobody to hope for any other shape ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... asking for his bill. Both reckonings having been paid, I was on the point of leaving the room when the stranger, whose name I afterwards learned was Drake—a quite appropriate name, I thought, for such a freebooter-looking character—put out a great, hairy paw as though to prevent me, and remarked, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... never was a lustier freebooter of the high seas than Capt. Thomas Randall, known familiarly as "Cap'n Tom," commander of the privateering ship Fox, and numerous other vessels. This boat, a brigantine, was well named, for she was quick and sly and yet could fight on occasion. ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... sheer political ruffianism, for the frank audacity of the freebooter, unshadowed by the darker vices of his better-born associates, may be awarded to Rigby. Not that Rigby redeemed by many private virtues the unblushing effrontery of his public career. It was given to few men to be as bad as Dashwood, and Rigby was not one of the few. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... standards of a ball may be almost as valuable to those without as to those within, the residents are constantly concerned for those many young people in the neighborhood who are too hedonistic to submit to the discipline of a dancing class or even to the claim of a pleasure club, but who go about in freebooter fashion to find pleasure wherever it may ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams |
