"Straggler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the top of the cliff. We will carry only rifles and some special instruments of attack which I have stored in canvas sacks below. Two men must remain on board. Head in close to those rocks before us. They are out of sight of the shack and there is ice stranded there—a straggler will scarcely tell our craft from it. I have no doubt there are a number of them and that they are hardy ruffians. We must ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... stamping with his foot, then recalled by his own vehemence, he cast a jealous and hurried glance round him, though at that moment his step was on the very height of the mountains, where not even the solitary shepherd, save in search of some more daring straggler of the flock, ever brushed the dew from the cragged, yet fragrant soil. "Yet," he said, in a lower voice, and again sinking into the sombre depths of his reverie, "it is a tempting, a wondrously tempting thought. And it struck athwart me, like a flash of lightning when this ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were the first who appeared upon the scene of action; and the Prussians were, consequently, in entire ignorance of the vicinity of any armed body of the enemy and, at worst, apprehended a stray shot from a straggler from one of the French armies, ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools so called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond readin', writin', and cipherin' to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... poor quilts, and struggled bravely on into a white, stinging fog of snow. Each morning there were more and more of them to bury. And even the burial was a mockery, for wolves were digging at the graves almost before the last debilitated straggler had left the camping-place. The heavy snows continued, but movement was necessary. Into the white jaws of the beautiful, merciless ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... perhaps several hours of marching yet ahead of them, they carried their heavy guns as though those guns were toys. Their fair sunburned faces were lined with sweat marks and masked under dust, and doubtless some were desperately weary; but I did not see a straggler. To date I presume I have seen upward of a million of these German soldiers on the march, and I have ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... suffered severely. The savage ferocity with which, in spite of repeated proclamations and orders, the invading army treated the people, had exasperated the peasantry almost to madness, and taking up arms, they cut down every straggler, annihilated small parties, attacked baggage trains, and repeated in Russia the terrible retaliation dealt by the Spanish ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There were some schools so-called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond 'readin', writin', and cipherin' to the Rule of Three.' If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education." But in the case of this ungainly boy there was no necessity of any external incentive. A thirst ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... when the last straggler had arrived, formed his men, without losing a minute, and emerging from ambush, fired a badly-aimed volley at the astonished Brock and his eight gunners, and with a wild shout ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... straggler, as he leant his back against the barn, and his two companions sat down on the ground in the shelter, "I have heard a lot about the Cause, but all I know is that my Lord of Essex sent to call out five-and-twenty men from our parish, and the squire, ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to sit watching the strange faces of the accountants and others, making so free with the great mysteries, the Books; or now and then to go on tiptoe into Mr Dombey's empty room, and stir the fire; or to take an airing at the door, and have a little more doleful chat with any straggler whom he knew; or to propitiate, with various small attentions, the head accountant: from whom Mr Perch had expectations of a messengership in a Fire Office, when the affairs of the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... — N. traveler, wayfarer, voyager, itinerant, passenger, commuter. tourist, excursionist, explorer, adventurer, mountaineer, hiker, backpacker, Alpine Club; peregrinator[obs3], wanderer, rover, straggler, rambler; bird of passage; gadabout, gadling[obs3]; vagrant, scatterling[obs3], landloper[obs3], waifs and estrays[obs3], wastrel, foundling; loafer; tramp, tramper; vagabond, nomad, Bohemian, gypsy, Arab[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... command of a very small boy or girl perched on one of their broad backs. He flourishes a little stick, and issues his commands like a general. It is one of the quaintest imaginable sights to see this little fellow get off his steed, run after a straggler, and beat him with his stick. The buffalo eyes his master, whom he could abolish with one shake of his head, submissively, and takes the beating, which he probably feels about as much as if a straw fell on ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... meals, I have fasted from the Sunday's dinner to the Tuesday's dinner, without any inconvenience[900]. I believe it is best to eat just as one is hungry: but a man who is in business, or a man who has a family, must have stated meals. I am a straggler. I may leave this town and go to Grand Cairo, without being missed here or observed there.' EDWARDS. 'Don't you eat supper, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir.' EDWARDS. 'For my part, now, I consider supper as a turnpike through which one must pass, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... black, with figures which at the distance blended into one mass, but on the flanks hung stragglers, lawless old bulls or weaklings, and outside there was a fringe of hungry wolves, snapping and snarling, and waiting a chance to drag down some failing straggler. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... I pray, that could thy blessed favors slight! Back to the ranks the straggler bring beneath thy ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... could take no part in the engagement. This was enough—we instantly radiated in all possible directions, so that by the time he had descended through the intricacies of the glen to the field of battle, neither victor nor vanquished was visible, except, perhaps, a straggler or two as they topped the brow of the declivity, looking back over their shoulders, to put themselves out of doubt as to their visibility by the master. They seldom looked in vain, however, for there he usually stood, shaking at us his rod, silently prophetic of its application on the following ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... save for an occasional straggler making his weary way home after a day spent in ministering to the wants and the pleasures of the strangers who ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... own national ruin. Sometimes a fleet of galleons, when under strong convoy, succeeded in the return voyage; but a single ship, of whatever strength or force, seldom escaped the vigilance of the pirates. They followed such fleets as they judged it unsafe to attack, and a slow sailer or a straggler was inevitably captured. So daring were these robbers, that even before they were enabled to obtain a smaller craft, a crew of fifty-five of them in one of the large canoes sailed into the Southern Ocean, and proceeded along the coast of the continent as far north as California. On their ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Noster Row and the Old Corner Book Store—nearly all of them trying to make the wrong connections with the right things or the right connections with things they have no connection with, and only now and then a straggler lagging behind perhaps, at some left-over bookstall, who truly knows how to read, or some beautiful, over-grown child let loose in a library—making connections for himself, who knows the uttermost joy ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... and as the troops got to the ridge they encountered precipitous heights. They were led most gallantly, as American regular officers always lead their men; and the men followed their leaders with the splendid courage always shown by the American regular soldier. There was not a single straggler among them, and in not one instance was an attempt made by any trooper to fall out in order to assist the wounded or carry back the dead, while so cool were they and so perfect their fire discipline, that in the entire engagement the expenditure of ammunition ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... best. I would make any sacrifice to obey you, but I cannot give up my freedom to love the woman that attracts me as I have never been attracted before. I would sooner live a poor and unsuccessful straggler in the art I have chosen, with her to help me live, than be the mightiest man in England without her—even with Julia, whom I admire as much, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... but my faith in the owl, Robert, is beginning to shake too. It may be an Indian belonging to the band that the scout told about, but I still don't think we're in any danger of attack. We're in too small force to try it down here, but they might cut off a straggler." ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... follow, I carried them out to the letter. I stayed away from the guns and I permitted myself to be killed several times in order to make sure it would take. After that I became a sort of composite camp follower, deserter and straggler. ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... straggler for social honors—they have been mine without the struggling. I was born to a position. It is mine by right of inheritance. There is no strong odor of lately acquired greenbacks about our old and very respectable establishment. We live on a quiet, unfashionable street; we are somewhat ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... said he, "is there any man bold enough to venture the Trojans, and cut off some straggler, or us news of what the enemy mean to do whether they will stay here by the ships away from the city, or whether, now that they have worsted the Achaeans, they will retire within their walls. If he could learn all this and come back safely ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... sigh as a bridge loomed ahead, the car slackened and stopped. Carl slowly lighted a cigarette. At the end of the bridge a straggler struck a match and flung it lightly in the river, the disc of his cigar a fire-point in ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... leaned against the tree; one moment more, and Dolph might have had his passion for adventure cured by a bullet. He hallooed loudly, with the Indian salutation of friendship: the whole party sprang upon their feet; the salutation was returned, and the straggler was invited to join ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... finally swept up through the little village that lay at the foot of the hill to the castellated fortress which covered the summit, edging its mighty walls to the brink of the steep cliffs. Soon the last straggler would be lost to view, the heavy portcullis fall, and the massive iron gate swing to, and the first step would be taken towards the tragedy, which lay right before Herod's path. One sometimes wonders whether the whole of these circumstances had not been planned by the cunning ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... rapidly running and coffee-colored stream, which three of them had to cross by means of a very shaky plank. Lord Beauregard, Major Stuart, and Macleod remained on this side, keeping a lookout for a straggler, but chiefly concerned with the gradually opening and brightening sky. Then far away they heard a slight tapping on the trees; and almost at the same moment another sound caused the hearts of the two novices to jump. It was a quick ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... level at which bee-blossoms altogether cease to grow. Now, the butterfly differs greatly from the bee in his mode of honey-hunting: he does not bustle about in a business-like manner from one buttercup or dead-nettle to its nearest fellow; but he flits joyously, like a sauntering straggler that he is, from a great patch of color here to another great patch at a distance, whose gleam happens to strike his roving eye by its size and brilliancy. Hence, as that indefatigable observer, Dr. Hermann Mueller, has noticed, all ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Smallbones and the comfort of a keel-hauling. The long conference on the forecastle had not been unperceived by the hawk's eye of the lieutenant, and as they descended he walked forward to ascertain if he could not pick up some straggler who, unsupported by his comrades, might be induced by fear to acquaint him with the subject of the discussion. Now, just as Mr Vanslyperken came forward, Corporal Van Spitter had removed the canvas from his body, and was about to rise from his bed, when he perceived somebody ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... curiously misled as to the nature of the demonstration. This was the fault of the reporter on the staff of the Worfield Intelligencer and Farmers' Guide, who saw in the thing a legitimate "march-out," and, questioning a straggler as to the reason for the expedition and gathering foggily that the restoration to health of the Eminent Person was at the bottom of it, said so in his paper. And two days later, at about the time when Retribution had got seriously to work, the Daily Mail reprinted the ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... away and the singers drop off into a deep sleep. The town becomes as silent as the graveyards which have been filled with its victims. Not a sound is heard save the crackling of the flames and the challenges of the sentries to some belated newspaper man or straggler. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... his place, he would have followed the fleet across the Indian Ocean, and have picked up a straggler or two, but the sight of the Sceptre and a Dutch man-of-war had been enough for Kidd, and he left the pilgrim fleet alone. Without molesting them further, he made his way eastward, and, on the 29th August, off Sanjan, ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... be formed thereon, both in war and peace, are by no means proper to be discussed in this place; but they will easily offer themselves to the skilful in maritime affairs. However, as the Manilla ships are the only ones which have ever traversed this vast ocean, except a French straggler or two, which have been afterwards seized on the coast of Mexico; and as, during near two ages, in which this trade has been carried on, the Spaniards have secreted with the utmost care all accounts of their voyages from the rest of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... of Monday sweeping on in terrible impetuosity, knowing that every tongue of light which leaped on high carried with it the competence they had sinned to acquire. And behind all, plunderer, incendiary, and straggler, came the one vague, overlapping, dreadful fear of—the enemy. Would they finish what friends had commenced,—the sack, the desolation, the slaughter of the place? Richmond had cost them half a million of lives, a mountain of blood and wealth, four years ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... effectively concealed my movements from any prying eyes ashore. Everyone aboard would be clustered forward, curiously watchful of that line of soldiers filing across the gangplank and seeking quarters upon deck. The only danger of observation lay in some straggler along the near-by bank. I lowered myself the full length of my arms, dangling there an instant by clinging to the framework; then loosened my grip and dropped silently into the ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... a voyage to India was a perilous and lengthy undertaking. A whole fleet was collected, containing merchant, convict, and transport vessels, all under the convoy of the ships of war belonging to the Company; and, as no straggler might be left behind, the progress of the whole was dependent on the rate of sailing of the slowest, and all were impeded by the disaster of one. The Union, in which a passage was given to the chaplain, contained, besides the crew, passengers, the 59th Regiment, some ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... cruel: He is strong and Lord. 'Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs That march now from the mountain to the sea; 'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so. 'Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off; 'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, And two worms he whose nippers end in red; As it likes me each time, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... description; the air is sultry and stifling; an intolerable thirst is provoked, for which no running stream offers its kind relief. In a few hours, under an equatorial sun, reduced by these causes to entire exhaustion, woe betide the straggler at the Enchanted Isles! Their extent is such-as to forbid an adequate search, unless weeks are devoted to it. The impatient ship waits a day or two; when, the missing man remaining undiscovered, up goes a ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... the Indians. These enemies soon became a cause of great trouble to the colonists, and it was dangerous to pass beyond the palisades, as the Indians would hide for days, waiting to assail any unfortunate straggler. Although Maisonneuve was brave as man could be, he knew that his company was no match for the wily enemy, owing to their ignorance of the mode of Indian warfare; therefore he kept his men as near the fort as possible. They, however, failed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... above another en amphitheatre, excite the traveller's wonder. Close in its vicinity lay the city of Manresa, the focus of the Catalonian insurrection. The German troops advanced in close column, although surrounded by infuriated multitudes, by whom every straggler was mercilessly butchered. The two regiments, nevertheless, succeeded in making themselves masters of Manresa, where they were instantly shut in, furiously assailed, and threatened with momentary destruction. The Anhalt troops and a French corps, despatched by Augereau to their ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... Then, the Dipper took a lantern which stood on the binnacle, lighted it, and showed it, for half a minute, above the taffrail. His signal must have been instantly answered, for he soon extinguished the light, and moved about the deck, in attentive watchfulness to seize any straggler, who might happen to come on deck. Little fear of that, however, weariness chaining the men to their berths as closely as if they had been bolted down with iron. I now expected to see the fellows fill the yawl with effects, and run away with them, for, as yet, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the window and drew the curtains. There was nothing to see. He ordered Morris, who stood behind his chair, to have the ground searched and to bring in any straggler. Already both the officers were on their way to the door, and at this point it opened and let in a soldier. He said that as he and his comrade were returning from their duty with Radisson they saw a man lurking in the grounds and seized him. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... spirits, Mr Buchan himself having recovered his strength in a much greater degree than could have been expected. It was now near eight o'clock in the evening, but still good day-light, and they set forward for the nearest valley, Mr Banks himself undertaking to bring up the rear, and see that no straggler was left behind: This may perhaps be thought a superfluous caution, but it will soon appear to be otherwise. Dr Solander, who had more than once crossed the mountains which divide Sweden from Norway, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... unless it pleases him first, he has a way of getting in on his own account. Upon one of the shed doors is an old-fashioned latch, which by jumping he can reach and lift with his paw. Having opened the door, he pushed his poor yellow straggler in and followed himself. She laid down at once on the floor, and Plato began washing her with his rough tongue, while the lookers-on assisted his hospitality by bringing a saucer of milk. While she ate Plato rested, looking as pleased as if he were her ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Mexico. It wasn't much regular up and down fighting we had, though we had some toughish battles too, but it were skirmishing here, skirmishing there, keeping one eye always open, for man, woman, and child hated us like pison, and it was little mercy that a straggler might expect if he got caught away from his friends. Their partisans chiefs, half-soldier, half-robber, did us more harm than the regulars, and mercy was never given or asked between them and us. Me and Rube ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... feel here, to be sure! In spite of the huge numbers, which at first sight look a little equivocal, nothing in the least degree reprehensible can happen among these granites; which are, moreover, in a single piece, without the least crack or hole into which the straggler could contrive to crawl. No. The figures and the crosses denote simple blocks of stones, covered with hieroglyphics, and correspond to a chaste catalogue where each Pharaonic inscription may be found translated in the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... quarrel flies the bow, she flew. A moment was a league in that wild flight From vast to vast of ocean and the night. And now the moon her lanthorn had withdrawn: And now the pale weak heralds of the dawn Lifted the lids of their blear eyes afar: The last belated straggler of a star Went home; and in her season due the morn Brake on a cold and silent sea forlorn— A strange mute sea, where never wave hath stirred, Nor sound of any wandering wind is heard, Nor voice of sailors sailing merrily: A sea untraversed, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... this fight, I would discover where their Daughters are, To shew the error they are shrouded in: But Time hath run a desperate course with mee And desperate let them runne to misery. Here comes a Straggler of ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... be, and the horseman rode with an address and daring which were delightful to look at. He waved an urgent hand from three or four hundred yards away towards Polson, who responded by a gesture indicating the route he meant to take. The last straggler having been thus rounded up, the officer turned and reined in his charger for a final look at the retreating forces of the enemy; and somewhere from the black middle mass of them down in the shadow ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... another hour to avoid the chance of their being surprised by any straggler. Then, proceeding to the shore, they launched a small boat. Hawtry stepped the mast and hoisted the sail, and they were soon making their way off the land. The wind was light, and their progress slow. For a time they kept straight out ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... pass within reach, the puma will not hesitate in pouncing upon the unfortunate creature; but if a herd of animals, or party of men, should be travelling together, the caution of the brute asserts itself, and he will often dog their footsteps for a great distance, in hopes of securing a straggler. Birds are struck down by a single blow of the puma's ready paw, and so quick are his movements that even though a bird has risen on the wing, he can often make one of his wonderful bounds, and with a light, quick stroke, arrest the winged prey before it has time to soar beyond reach. ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... trained soldiers. Four hundred thousand men lay in hostile camps within sight of each other. From the national Capitol at Washington the stars and bars of the Confederate flag could be seen floating over the camp at Arlington. Occasionally the quiet would be broken by the crack of a rifle, as some straggler, on one side or the other, took a casual shot at the sentry pacing on the other side of the broad stream. Sometimes a battery would come driving down to the shore, select an advantageous spot, and begin an afternoon's target practice at the hostile ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... called out another. "There is both truth and reason in what he says. But there must be no firing, it might attract the notice of any straggler from the camps of those dogs of Kaffirs, and bring their infernal Dragoons down upon us. No! cut the throats of the men, and as there are but twenty of us, and only five of these women, tell off one of them to each four of us, and let us begone, for we must put the broad plain, at ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... eager blast, and angled in between the herd and a straggler on the edge of it, a yearling elk, a spike bull, his first antler growth consisting of two pointed spikes eighteen inches long. He was not alarmed,—but it was a new kind of coyote that faced him now, one that had learned pack hunting ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... there may be a straggler or two to come in later. Does the Shining One no longer know where his own thunderbolts have struck, that he sends his hired servants to gather up the gossip ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... brain, and it was many weeks before his memory ceased to dwell on the horrid event. The Cowboys rode steadily on their route, as if nothing had occurred; and the body was left swinging in the wind, until chance directed the wandering footsteps of some lonely straggler to the place. ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... as my reverie softened down to a sadder and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail, the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the distance and left ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher, beyond reading, writing, and ciphering to the rule of three. If a straggler, supposed to understand Latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher, to the rule of three; but ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... form without the spirit of the past. The glens lie veiled in cloud, but the peaks bask in sunshine. Waterfalls dash through thickets of crimson foxglove, and daturas swing their fragrant bells over the dancing water. A little goatherd, leading his bleating flock, plays on a reed flute to summon a straggler from a distant crag. The brown figure, in linen waistcloth and yellow turban, suggests that Indian personality which has survived ages of exile on these lonely heights. The route to Ngandwona discloses the Tengger in a different aspect; the volcanos ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... case, was fulfilled—"Train up a child in the way he should go, and he will not depart from it when he is old;" and though no mother's voice of warning was heard in that wild region of the earth, and no guardian's hand was there to beckon back the straggler from the paths of rectitude, yet he was not "let alone;" the arm of the Lord was around him, and His voice whispered, in tones that could not be misunderstood, "Remember the Sabbath-day, to ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... straggler of the party had disappeared from Lydia, who had watched their retreat from the door of the Warren Lodge. When she turned to go in she saw Cashel cautiously entering from the room in which he had lain concealed. His excitement had passed off; he looked cold and anxious, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... by the two squadrons engaged in an incessant advance for one hour and fifteen minutes averaged less than ten rounds per man. The fine quality of these troops is also shown by the fact that there was not a single straggler, and in not one instance was an attempt made by any soldier to fall out in the advance to assist the wounded or carry back the dead. The fighting on the left flank was equally creditable and was remarkable, and I believe unprecedented, in volunter troops ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... responsibility and worry, and that heavy weight on the truck back there, quite gone out of the world. She was in it, and himself—the world was full. The girl seemed to be as oblivious of outside facts, as he, for it was quite two minutes, and the last straggler from the boat had disappeared into the street before she broke into one of ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... traveler, wayfarer, voyager, itinerant, passenger, commuter. tourist, excursionist, explorer, adventurer, mountaineer, hiker, backpacker, Alpine Club; peregrinator^, wanderer, rover, straggler, rambler; bird of passage; gadabout, gadling^; vagrant, scatterling^, landloper^, waifs and estrays^, wastrel, foundling; loafer; tramp, tramper; vagabond, nomad, Bohemian, gypsy, Arab^, Wandering Jew, Hadji, pilgrim, palmer; peripatetic; somnambulist, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... unassaulted by death and sorrow—where were they? Alas! all the bewitching charms of her former being had gone down into the grave of her mother and sister; and she, their support and idol, seemed no more now than she really was—a wayworn, solitary, and isolated straggler ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... remits the punishment, but dismissal shall afford example to the rest as to the wisdom of showing energy." Thus he cast forth without pity an ageing officer whose only offense was an experience which sought the mission of the night straggler, and allowed the harmless to go free. Ryu[u]suke went forth from the office of the bugyo[u] stripped of the means of living and of reputation, and assured of the unforgiving character of his lord. That night he cut belly, recommending ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... peculiarity that I can perceive. They keep each to their own territory, except on the occasion of a grand "corroborie," when the whole assemble. They are at present on terms of peace nominally. Should a safe opportunity of cutting off a straggler offer, I have no doubt it would be taken advantage of. They are cowardly and treacherous in the extreme. The "Gudang" tribe, claiming the land from Cape York to Fly Point, at the entrance of Albany ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... you order a horse to be brought round at once for the surgeon, then hurry to the barracks. Order the colonel to turn out a troop of horse instantly, and let him scour the country between the north gate and the camp, and arrest every straggler he comes across." ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... years, after the style of the Gaucho warfare in the River Plate which was common twenty years ago, or that in Venezuela which obtains to-day. Alternately each party carried off the other's horses, drove each other's cattle, or, if they caught a straggler, tied his hands and cut his throat or lanced him, the party who had lost the man protesting he was 'massacred' — a term in use even to-day when the party to which one's self belongs sustains reverse. For the first two years — for wars in South America ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... swift flight through the water and the swiftness of the blow they strike with their long, spear-like bills that they are able to capture the fishes on which they feed. I ran down the meadow with the gun, got into my boat, and pursued that poor winter-bound straggler. Of course he dived again and again, but had to come up to breathe, and I at length got a quick shot at his head and slightly wounded or stunned him, caught him, and ran proudly back to the house with my prize. I carried him in my arms; he didn't struggle to get away or offer to strike ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... myself as to the several modes in which the four others attained felicity, I next set my mind at work to discover what enjoyments were peculiar to the old "straggler," as the people of the country would have termed the wandering mendicant and prophet. As he pretended to familiarity with the devil, so I fancied that he was fitted to pursue and take delight in his way of life by possessing some of the mental and moral characteristics—the lighter ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... between two other corrals. The darkness favored them, and the rustlers swept by. Arizona only waited long enough for them to get well clear, then his gun rang out again, and Tresler's too. But the game was played out. A straggler sighted them and gave the alarm, and instantly the ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... face, pale with fright, to the imperturbable Deyoe, and, striking him on the shoulder, said with as much composure as he could muster, "Captain, we have had hard times of it out there, but don't be afraid, don't be afraid." Deyoe, turning his face toward that of the straggler with a look of unruffled coolness and unmitigated contempt, replied, "Well, who the d—is afraid? Oh, yes, I see, you are. Well, you had better ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... unsightly shanty had been removed from a place where it disfigured the landscape. No one appeared to be sorry; but every one wondered how the fire had caught. Various conjectures were suggested; but, after all, no one knew anything about it. Some thought a straggler had used it as a lodging, and set it on fire in lighting his pipe. Others thought some bad boys had set ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... into the lagoon, to go different ways, in prosecution of the search. Not long after, Captain Clerke's party returned with their lost companion; and my boats having now no object left, I called them back by signal. This poor fellow must have suffered far greater distress than the other straggler, not only as having been lost a longer time, but as we found that he was too squeamish to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... the last straggler had marched through to the front and Johnston's junction with Magruder was accomplished. The rosy clouds faded into gray again; and, though the fluttering pulse of Richmond beat a little more steadily, it was not entirely normal. Rumors came from Yorktown of suffering and ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the exertion had brought on the pain in his knee, and he had to sit down a long time by the road-side to rest. He reached Ayrton at ten o'clock, but even then he could not summon up courage to pass through the town where he was so well known, lest any straggler should recognise him,—and he took a detour in order to get to Fairholm. He did not arrive there till eleven o'clock; and then he could not venture into the grounds, for he saw through the trees of the shrubbery that there was no light in any of the windows, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... raiders, cut off by the sea from their supports, ill-equipped as they will certainly be, and against odds, are so badly advised as to try terror-striking reprisals on the Belgian pattern, we irregulars will, of course, massacre every German straggler we can put a gun to. Naturally. Such a procedure may be sanguinary, but it is just the common sense of the situation. We shall hang the officers and shoot the men. A German raid to England will in fact not be fought—it will be lynched. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... unspeakable pap, "sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, or Cytherea's breath." How the brother and sister would croon over him "with murmurs made to bless," calling him their "tender novice" "in the first bloom of his nigritude," their belated straggler from the "rear of darkness thin," their little night-shade, not deadly, their infantile Will-o'-the-wisp caught before his sins, their "poor Blot," "their innocent Blackness," ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... himself by reading. Outside, the "Great Day for Indian Spring" was slowly evaporating in pale mists from the river, and the celebration itself spasmodically taking flight here and there in Roman candles and rockets. An occasional outbreak from revellers in the bar-room below, a stumbling straggler along the planked sidewalk before the hotel, only seemed to intensify the rustic stillness. For the future of Indian Spring was still so remote that Nature insensibly re-invested its boundaries on the ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... which case the runner is invariably fired at The supply of ammunition is in the centre, carried generally by about fifteen natives, and strongly escorted by guards. The rear of the party is closed by another flag behind which no straggler is permitted. The rear flag is also guarded by six or eight men, with a box of spare ammunition. With these arrangements the party is always ready to support ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... fond of young mocking-birds. These parents are wiser than the crow blackbirds, for not a sound betrays the accident in the family, unless, indeed, the little one is disturbed, when they make noise enough. They keep out of sight, no doubt closely watching the straggler until he gets away from people, for although he has proved that he cannot fly, the young mocker is by no means discouraged; he trusts to his legs, and usually at once starts off on a run "anywhere, anywhere, out (in) the world." When far enough away for them to feel ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... knew his character," said Mr. Preston; "but are there not good boys enough in the neighborhood for you to associate with—boys that have always lived here and are well known—without your cultivating the acquaintance of every straggler and vagabond that comes along? I wish you would not make yourself so intimate with Tom, Dick, and Harry, before you know anything about them. I 've cautioned you against this a good many times, and now I hope that you 'll see there is some cause for it. If this intimacy had gone on a few weeks ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... assistance. For nearly two days Yamba and I followed the tracks, which went in curious circles always trending to the left. At length we began to come upon various articles that had apparently been thrown away by the straggler. First of all, we found part of a letter that was addressed to some one (I think) in Adelaide; but of this I would not be absolutely certain. What I do remember was that the envelope bore the postmark ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... pattue" or "Buse pattue."—Though its visits seem not so absolutely confined to the autumn as the Common Buzzard, the Rough-legged Buzzard is a much more uncommon visitant to the Channel Islands, and can only be looked upon as a rare occasional straggler. Mr. MacCulloch informs me that one was killed near L'Hyvreuse, which is perhaps now more commonly known as the New Ground, in Guernsey, about Christmas, 1870, and I found one at the bird-stuffer and carpenter's ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... accidental straggler in Greenland. It is very similar to our Blue Heron and is the one which was formerly used to furnish sport for the royalty when ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... White-winged Dove on April 23 "at the mouth of Boquillas Canyon at about 4900 feet" and remarked that this bird might either be a straggler or a representative of a normal breeding population (Z. a. asiatica). On January 29 and 30, Sutton and Burleigh (1939a:29) saw White-winged Doves several times in southern Coahuila along the highway from Saltillo to ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... his feathers on a high log, had escaped the eye of the squirrel, whose strange, perverted thirst for birdling blood was roused at what seemed so fair a chance. With murderous intent to cut off the hindmost straggler, he made a dash. Brownie could not have seen him until too late, but Redruff did. He flew for that red-haired cutthroat; his weapons were his fists, that is, the knob-joints of the wings, and what a blow he could strike! At the first onset he struck the squirrel square on the end of the nose, his ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... for the motley train of Hard-Heart to disappear. When his scout reported that the last straggler of the Indians, who had joined their chief so soon as he was at such a distance from the encampment as to excite no jealousy by their numbers, had gone behind the most distant swell of the prairie, he gave forth the order to strike his tents. The cattle were ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... them pass, the war-cry of the men that fight the flames. Charioteers behind blood-horses bathed in foam; heads helmeted in flashing splendour; eyes all intent upon the track ahead, keen to anticipate the risks of headlong speed and warn the dilatory straggler from its path. Nearer and nearer—in a moment it will pass and take some road unknown to us, to say to fires that even now are climbing up through roof and floor, clasping each timber in a sly embrace fatal as the caress of Death itself:—"Thus far shalt ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... we resumed our journey, the men screaming chorus to scare our unwelcome visitors, whom I several times fancied I heard rustling among the brushwood on the road side, as though they were moving on our flanks in order to cut off any straggler who might drop astern. I never saw bearers go more expeditiously, or in more compact order, every man fearing to be the last in the cavalcade.[1] A sheet would have covered the whole party! The tigers, if they had calculated upon one of our number for their evening meal, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... could hear the Kurds shouting now and then, and once, when I climbed a high rock, I caught sight of the glow of their bivouac fires. Imagination conjured up the shrieks of tortured victims, for we had all seen enough of late to know what would happen to any luckless straggler they might have caught and brought to make sport by the fires. But there was no imagination about the calls of Kagig's men, posted above us on invisible dark crags and ledges to guard against surprise. We slept in comfortable consciousness that a sleepless watch was being kept—until fleas came ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... leave the north of the Fort wholly unguarded. Any rock, any black ravine, any clump of trees or bushes, might well be the lurking-place of hostiles, who would only too gladly wreak their vengeance upon any hapless straggler falling into their hands. I was unarmed, save for the long hunting-knife I carried in the bosom of my shirt; but my thought was not of fighting,—it was to ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... The straggler suddenly began kicking feebly at the prop of the cross with his foot, and then dragged himself off after the column. The cross fell forward with a dull splintering splash into ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... without punishment, some defenceless women. During the march, the Surenas, [49a] or Persian general, and Malek Rodosaces, the renowned emir of the tribe of Gassan, [50] incessantly hovered round the army; every straggler was intercepted; every detachment was attacked; and the valiant Hormisdas escaped with some difficulty from their hands. But the Barbarians were finally repulsed; the country became every day less favorable to the operations ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... eggs still, and squab young. The last swift I observed was about the 21st August; it was a straggler. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... stopped. Instantaneous change! The whole swarm fainted! their forms collapsed, their speed deserted them; they sought to fly, but in the act of falling died and melted into air. No fresh supply succeeded them. One straggler leaped down pretty briskly from the surface of the Great Bell, and alighted on his feet, but he was dead and gone before he could turn round. Some few of the late company who had gambolled in the tower, remained there, spinning over and over a little longer; but these became ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... the man with questions. He told them that he had killed it the day before, really. It had been prowling for the last week or more about Kernore's bush; probably it was a straggler from ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... progress had been made in the suppression of the rebellion. Few lives indeed had been lost, but the most bloody war could hardly have produced worse results. The country was filled with combatants. Every straggler was cut off. Violence and rapine were the law. Trade and agriculture languished. A rich province was fast relapsing into a wilderness; and all its people were beginning to suffer alike for shelter and sustenance. As our hero was about to set sail, the Rajah opened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... powers which will enable them to render the Moon forces fruitful for further development. And this will occur at a time when, side by side with the high development of a certain number of human souls, another development, that of those who have chosen the path of evil, will parallel it. These straggler-souls will have accumulated in their Karma so much sin, ugliness and evil, that at first they will form a separate community, a perverse and erring section of humanity, keenly opposing what we understand as "good." The "good" humanity will acquire little by little ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... pretend about them, and decide what they'll be like. When I see a man that takes my fancy, I add him to the list. Mostly they're clean-shaved, but I saw one the other day with a beard—" She lifted a warning finger to stay Bridgie's cry of protest. "Not a straggler, but a naval one, short and trim; and you wouldn't believe how becoming it was! I decided then to have one with a beard. And they are mostly tall and handsome, and rolling in riches, so that I can buy anything I like, nose included. But ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... abrasions; halts upon the march were made at frequent intervals, and the men soon held that to fall out on the march was a disgrace. Before a month "had passed," he says, "the brigade had learned how to march, and in the Valley with Jackson covered long distances without leaving a straggler behind."* (* ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Chimes ceased—there came that instantaneous transformation! "The whole swarm fainted; their forms collapsed, their speed deserted them; they sought to fly, but in the act of falling died and melted into air. One straggler," says the book, "leaped down pretty briskly from the surface of the Great Bell, and alighted on his feet, but he was dead and gone before he could turn round." After it has been added that some thus gambolling in the tower "remained there, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... of war as Johnson gored, His kindred cannibals desert their lord; They scour the waste for undistinguish'd prey, Howl thro the night the horrors of the day, Scalp every straggler from all parties stray'd, Each wounded wanderer thro the moonlight glade; And while the absent armies give them place, Each camp they ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... light into the flood, and emerging instantly afterwards with their finny prey. The opposite bank of the river displayed a sandy country covered with dark scrub; and beyond this was the sea, with a view of Rottnest and the Straggler rocks. A few white cottages relieved the sombre and death-like appearance of that opposite shore. Unpromising as was the aspect of the country, it yet afforded sufficient verdure to support in good condition a large herd of ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... was a score of pots and pans, tied together, and topped by a sack of buffalo-chips that, at each slow step, rolled first to one hand and then to the other. Yet with all the difficulty of balancing the fuel-sack and preventing its falling to the ground, the straggler did not fail to keep in place ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... Honduras to take him home. His real idea was that he might hit off the passage to the north of which Frobisher and Davis thought they had found the eastern entrance. He stood on towards California, picking up an occasional straggler in the China trade, with silk, porcelain, gold, and emeralds. Fresh water was a necessity. He put in at Guatulco for it, and his proceedings were humorously prompt. The alcaldes at Guatulco were in session ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... eggs still, and squab-young. The last swift I observed was about the twenty-first of August; it was a straggler. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... empty, with the exception of a black collie lying asleep in the middle of the road, and a patient donkey belonging to a travelling tinker. The clean, sleek country sparrows were enjoying a dust bath, and a long-legged chicken—evidently a straggler from the brood—was pecking fitfully at a cabbage stalk, unmindful of the alarmed clucking of ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... declared their saying each to the other, and to them knightly Nestor of Gerenia began discourse: "O friends, is there then no man that would trust to his own daring spirit, to go among the great-hearted Trojans, if perchance he might take some straggler of the enemy, yea, or hear perchance some rumour among the Trojans, and what things they devise among themselves, whether they are fain to abide there by the ships, away from the city, or will retreat again to the city, now that they have ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... perhaps she went out, possibly to market, earlier than he came, or later, after he had left the office. In this belief he arrived one morning after an early walk in a smart spring shower, the lingering straggler of the winter rains. There were few people astir, yet he had been preceded for two or three blocks by a tall woman whose umbrella partly concealed her head and shoulders from view. He had noticed, however, even in his abstraction, that she walked well, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... give reality to the picture. George Marshall, a mulatto, was taken up with others as a straggler, and ordered to receive fifty lashes. With each lash the unfortunate man gritted his teeth and turned his head, whether from pain or anger is uncertain. The provost-marshal construed this into a threatening look, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... know was what troops these were and to learn that he had to capture a "tongue"—that is, a man from the enemy column. That morning's attack on the wagons had been made so hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all been killed; only a little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he was a straggler he could tell them nothing definite about ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... peculiar coincidence of name, Oona's Handkerchief, in consequence of an old legend connected with it, might be seen moving a number of straggling figures, sometimes in groups of fours and fives; sometimes in twos or threes as the case might be, and not unfrequently did a single straggler advance, and, after a few private words, either join the others or proceed alone to a house situated in the angular corner of the field to which we allude. As the district was a remote one, and the night rather ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... could not without violence be thought of as indicative of a general constitution of things, either in the country or the government; but that it was a kind of lusus naturae, in the moral world—a solitary straggler out of the circumference of Nature's law—a monster which could not propagate, and had no birth-right in futurity. Accordingly, the first expectation was that the government would deem itself under the necessity of disanulling ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... or burn it. What the hell do I care what you do with it?" growled the sheriff. "He's dead, that's all I got to think about." He ran his shrewd eyes over the posse, saw that not one straggler remained to do further mischief, and drove them before him, willy-nilly. In five minutes the trampled yard was clear, and the sound of the horses' hoofs was already dying in the distance. In the sky all other stars had paled to make ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... excepting those whose course was toward some place of worship. The shops were all shut, and the voices of business and amusement were hushed. The market place, which yesterday was full of swarming life, and sent forth a confused uproar, was deserted and dumb—not a straggler was to be ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the threshold; dust on her snow-white gown—if the writers are to be believed in regard to its hue!—when she sat down in the only chair, and dust in her eyes when she flirted her fan. Fortunate was it for Straws that the Muse is a wayward, freakish gipsy; a straggler in attics; a vagrant of the streets; fortunately for him she is not at all the fine lady she has been depicted! Doubtless she has her own reasons for her vagaries; perhaps because it is so easy to soar from the hovel to fairy-land, but to soar from a palace—that is obviously ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... not!" exclaimed Mrs Keswick. "She can't be expected to see what a wretched plight she has got herself into by marrying this straggler from nobody ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... time the birds leave us in the fall: they do not go suddenly; their departure is like that of an army of occupation in no hurry to be off; they keep going and going, and we hardly know when the last straggler is gone. Not so their return in the spring: then it is like an army of invasion, and we know the very day when the first scouts appear. It is a memorable event. Indeed, it is always a surprise to me, and one of the compensations of our abrupt and changeable climate, this ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... had volunteered the information that he was going to fish downstream, but he was a long time in tying his leader and fussing with his reel. His preparations were finished just when the last straggler of the group was out of sight. Then he laid down his rod, went over to Evadna, took her by the arm, and drew her back to the farther shelter ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... pursued Indians, fortunately, had turned southward and gone jogging leisurely away towards their reservations, until warned of the pursuit by ambitious young braves still hovering about the troops in hope of slicing off the scalp of some straggler. Then, every man for himself, they had apparently scattered over the face of the country, laughing gleefully to think what fun the white chief would have in deciding which trail to follow. The situation on the third day out had been summarized by Crounse, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... a straggler here, but was not able to get him into our lines by myself, on account of his lying down and refusing to come; so I broke his musket, but not feeling inclined even then to leave him, I knelt down to protect ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... different Sentiments, and could not fansy my self out of Danger till I had reach'd our Camp. A wise Man should not frame an Accusation on Conjectures; but, on Inquiry, I was soon made sensible, that such barbarous Usage is too common among those People; especially if they meet with a Straggler, of what ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe |
