"Freebooter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 toward the distant ridge. Where did the robins build ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... Campeador). He was a vigorous, unscrupulous fighter, now on one side, now on the other. He was at one time entrusted with high embassies of state, at others, a rebel. His true place in history seems to be that of a great freebooter and guerrilla. His contemporary fame was ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... extreme end of a precipitous hill jutting out from the main range of mountains at the junction of the Bamee[a]n and Ir[a]k rivers, are the remains of an old castle called Zohawk, after a noted freebooter, who, secure in the strength of his fortress, was the terror of the surrounding villages, and lived by rapine, pillage, and plunder of every kind. To a careless observer the diminutive tower, which alone remains standing, ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... thorns—the laurel-tree, with large white flowers; The range afar—the richness and barrenness—the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss, The piney odour and the gloom—the awful natural stillness, Here in these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has his concealed hut; O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impassable swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... 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 attracts the Fly, the genitrix of the odious maggot. At the same time, the flattened Silpha,[1] the glistening, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... three feet long. The bars played freely like keys on a ring, and splayed out in their flight, and did the most dreadful execution. Intended originally, I believe, for use only against hostile spars and rigging, this rascally freebooter put them to any and every service, and with his powerful armament and merciless ferocity they went far towards ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... on the lowest step to the throne, is the guerilla leader in the wilderness of Judah who finally is compelled by Saul's persecutions to pass over to Philistine territory, there under the protection of the enemies of his nation, carrying on his freebooter life. After the battle of Gilboa he avails himself of the dissolution of the kingdom to set up a separate principality in the south as a vassal of the Philistines; he is not chosen, but comes with a following six hundred strong, and offers himself ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... your 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, your ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... drinks deep, plays deep, swears deep, and I suspect can lie and cheat a little into the bargain; useful qualities, Craigie, if kept in their proper sphere, but which have a little too much of the freebooter to make a figure in ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... on the scaffold of Old Palace Yard in Westminster. General Gordon said that England is what her adventurers have made her, and there is not in all English history a more shining and violent specimen of the adventurous type than Raleigh. I am desired to deliver a brief panegyric on this celebrated freebooter, and I go behind the modern definition of the word "panegyric" (as a pompous and ornamented piece of rhetoric) to its original significance, which was, as I take it, the reminder, to a great assembly of persons, of the reason why they have been brought ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... 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 ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... App. 165. The queen herself advanced to the borders, to remedy this evil, and to hold courts at Jedburgh. Bothwell was already in Liddesdale, where he had been severely wounded, in an attempt to seize John Elliot, of the Parke, a desperate freebooter; and happy had it been for Mary, had the dagger of the moss-trooper struck more home. Bothwell being transported to his castle of Hermitage, the queen, upon hearing the tidings, hastened thither, A dangerous morass, still called the Queen's Mire[22], is pointed out by ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... 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
... difficulties of the subject. Ralegh's multifarious activity, with the width of the area in which it operated, is itself a disturbing element. It is confusing for a biographer to be required to keep at once independent and in unison the poet, statesman, courtier, schemer, patriot, soldier, sailor, freebooter, discoverer, colonist, castle-builder, historian, philosopher, chemist, prisoner, and visionary. The variety of Ralegh's powers and tendencies, and of their exercise, is the distinctive note of him, and of the epoch which needed, fashioned, and used him. A whole band of faculties ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... version of the Ode printed on p. 203 of Wild Wales. Yet another version, differing from both, is printed in Alf the Freebooter and Other ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... or house-steward of European countries, with dress and duties differing as well. No black coat, or white cravat, wears he of Spanish America, no spotless stockings, or soft slipper shoes. Instead, a costume more resembling that of a Cavalier, or Freebooter; while the services he is called upon to perform require him to be not only a first-class horseman, but able to throw the lazo, catch a wild cow or colt, and tame the latter—in short, take a hand at anything. And at almost anything Gaspar ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... 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 from ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... weal. The truce, that on such occasions extended from the day of the meeting to the next day at sunset, was this time violated by a party of English soldiers, who seized upon William Armstrong of Kinmonth, a notorious freebooter, as he, attended by but three or four men, was returning from the conference; and lodged him in Carlisle Castle. The Laird of Buccleuch, after treating in vain for his release, raised two hundred horse, surprised the castle and carried ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... — N. 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 man, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... an hereditary source?) and stories of Rob Roy Macgregor, and Sergeant Alan Mhor Cameron, have served to paint them in still more sable colours to his imagination. [Of Rob Roy we have had more than enough. Alan Cameron, commonly called Sergeant Mhor, a freebooter of the same period, was equally remarkable ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... add to a presumption that your Honor already finds too bold, if one may judge by a displeased eye, by asking if report speaks to the face and other particulars of the person of this—free trader, one must call him, though freebooter should be ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... costume, he had put on an old blue-and-red foreign uniform, in which he made so strange a figure that, though it was donned in his honour, his visitor had hard work to keep from laughing. Nor was the freebooter's conversation more in accord with his surroundings. He talked much of Edward's family and connections, and especially of his uncle's Jacobite politics—on which last account, he seemed inclined to welcome the young man with more cordiality ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... 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
... brothers, sons of the wife, combined against Veli, the son of the slave, and drove him out of the house. The latter, forced to leave home, bore his fate like a brave man, and determined to levy exactions on others to compensate him for the losses incurred through his brothers. He became a freebooter, patrolling highroads and lanes, with his gun on his shoulder and his yataghan in his belt, attacking, holding for ransom, or plundering ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was one whose character is forever blackened on the pages of history by the relentless pen of Cicero, Caius Licinius Verres, who, if we may believe the only records we have regarding him, was the most phenomenal freebooter of all time. The story of his career is a vivid demonstration of the manner in which the people of the Roman provinces were outraged by the officers sent to rule over them, and we shall anticipate our story a little in tracing it. The provincial ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... preparations for defence were made; a certain Renzo da Ceri armed such men as he could enlist with such weapons as he could find, and sent out a little force of grooms and artificers to face the Constable's ruthless Spaniards and the fierce Germans of his companion freebooter, George of Fransperg, or Franzberg, who carried about a silken cord by which he swore to strangle the Pope with his own hands. The enemy reached the walls of Rome on the night of the fifth of May; devastation and famine lay behind them in their track, the plunder of the Church was behind ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... and conquest, began to make long voyages to 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 ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the Grocers, we must mention Sir John Philpot, Mayor, 1378, who fitted out a fleet that captured John Mercer, a Scotch freebooter, and took fifteen Spanish ships. He afterwards transported an English army to Brittany in his own ships, and released more than 1,000 of our victualling vessels. John Churchman, sheriff in 1385, was the founder of the Custom House. Sir Thomas Knolles, mayor in 1399 and 1410, rebuilt St. Antholin's, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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, ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... stillness with the greater 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 ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... companion for treason and anarchy, for which the lowest seats of hell should be reserved. The outlaw, like the commercial freebooter, is often a deformity on the face of nature that darkens the light of ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... the 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
... not that, Elshie," answered the freebooter; "When I ride, my foes may moan. They have had mair light than comfort at the Heugh-foot this morning; there's a toom byre and a wide, and a wail and a ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 and Hawkins ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... 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 Europe. The Gaelic monuments, the Gaelic ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... 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 ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... noting: that the buccaneer by sea, the privateersman, through long practice in endurance, is able to live at the expense of far superior powers. Yes, and the life of the freebooter is no less natural and appropriate to landsmen—I do not say, to those who can till and gather in the fruit of their fields, but to those who find themselves deprived of sustenance; since there is no alternative—either men must till their fields or live on the tillage of others, ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... ROB ROY, a Highland freebooter, second son of Macgregor of Glengyle; assumed the name of Campbell on account of the outlawry of the Macgregor clan; traded in cattle, took part in the rebellion of 1715, had his estates confiscated, and indemnified himself by ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... pleased, perhaps, with the spirit of deference to his regal authority on the part of his brother, implied in the referring of the case of the accused to him for trial, sent Remus back again to Numitor, saying that Numitor might punish the freebooter himself in any way that he thought best. Remus was accordingly brought again to Numitor's house. In the mean time, the fact of his being thus made a prisoner, and charged with crime, and the proceedings in relation to him, in sending him back and forth between Amulius and Numitor, ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... 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 ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 |
