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Rifled   /rˈaɪfəld/   Listen
Rifled

adjective
1.
Of a firearm; having rifling or internal spiral grooves inside the barrel.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Rifled" Quotes from Famous Books



... major was amazed to hear one of them mentioned by his companion as Totterly. He glanced at the fellow and saw that he was tall, with a marked stoop to his left shoulder, and that his nose did not point straight ahead. The description fitted perfectly to that given of the guerilla who had rifled the safe at Riverlawn and made off with five hundred dollars, some jewellery, and the paper intrusted to Noah Lyon, which was not to be opened until five years after Duncan Lyon's death. This man's name had been Totterly, and Deck ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic

... The lone robber rifled the sacks, turned the pockets of the travelers inside out, and bade them drive on without imitating Lot's wife; he ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... which they constantly act, you destroy the nation. The nation, in a state of anarchy and dissolution, then becomes a people; and after experiencing all the consequent misery, like a company of bees spoiled of their queen and rifled of their hive, they set to again and establish themselves into ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... mortally wounded, and died a few days later at City Point. The regiment was on a sandy ridge in front of woods, facing the rebel works, at a point nearly where the Norfolk Railroad passed through their lines. Behind them, in such a position as to fire almost over them, was a battery of rifled guns, which kept up a fire of shells upon the rebel works at intervals day and night. The rebel batteries responded at intervals of but a few minutes. This position was also under a continual fire from rebel ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... continuation of Tsountas's exploration of the buildings and lesser graves at Mycenae, a large treasure, independent of Schliemann's princely gift, has been gathered into the National Museum at Athens. In that year were excavated dome-tombs, most already rifled but retaining some of their furniture, at Arkina and Eleusis in Attica, at Dimini near Volo in Thessaly, at Kampos on the west of Mount Taygetus, and at Maskarata in Cephalonia. The richest grave of all was explored at Vaphio in Laconia ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... little housemaid replied, with an indignant flush, that she was the person. Mrs. Chump acknowledged to being awake when the shutters were opened, and agreed that it was not possible her pockets could have been rifled then. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... robbed of L1,400 (1827). The thieves entered at night, while the sentinel was on guard, and the rifled chest was found hidden under a tomb in the adjacent burial ground. Three persons, and the sentinel, were tried for the offence; but on the second day, the crown prosecutor was not in his place. This truant lawyer was enjoying a breakfast, while the court and prisoners were watching ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... her sister ships (except the St. Paul), had not yet received an armament suitable to her size or duties, lay for three-quarters of an hour under the fire of the enemy, at a distance of little over a mile. Fortunately a six-inch rifled gun on the Socapa battery, which was then being mounted, was not ready until the following day; and the St. Louis held her ground without injury until a piece had been cut out of the cable. In this work she was assisted by the tug Wompatuck, Lieutenant-Commander ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... enjoyment in life. Joy and sorrow, death and marriage, the comic circumstance and the tragic, what befalls him, what he observes, what he is brought into contact with, do not affect him as they affect other men; they are secrets to be rifled, stones to be built with, clays to be moulded into artistic shape. In giving emotional material artistic form, there is indisputably a certain noble pleasure; but it is of a solitary and severe complexion, and takes a man out of the circle and sympathies of ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... "must I be rifled; must I be imprisoned in a chest, and at last impaled, and all for not putting pepper in a cream-tart? Are these the actions of Moosulmauns, of persons who make a profession of probity, justice, and good works?" With these words he shed tears, and then renewing his complaint; "No," continued he, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... I get one more locker open,' he thought; and then set at work again with his pick-locks and skeleton keys. This compartment was the easiest of all rifled; the box of coin was secured and put into his sack. He then carefully closed and relocked the doors, hoisted his bag, now extremely heavy, upon his back, ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... the fire, they examined the cart to see if it contained any thing that would be useful to the unfortunate woman in her present hour of grief. There were a few culinary utensils, besides a thin mattress and blankets—all thrown in promiscuously, as though the load had been ransacked and rifled of every thing that was valuable, and the remainder not considered ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... deck was bad, it was worse below. The cabin doors on either side were either open or off their hinges, bunk bedding, mattresses, an open and rifled valise, some women's clothes, an empty cigar-box and a cage with a dead canary in ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... short range. Our men fought like heroes without wincing under the galling fire belching forth from behind trees and rocks, and much of the time from a concealed foe. At one time we were reinforced by three rifled pieces from a German battery, which fired four rounds, and then was compelled to withdraw from the field, being flanked by a ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge

... into my breast, and then let him go whither he pleases, or to the dogs, I could wish also that I might change my countenance, or that I had on the square cap and the cassock, for fear some or other should impeach me of theft as if I had privily rifled our masters' desks in that I have got so much divinity. But it ought not to seem so strange if after so long and intimate an acquaintance and converse with them I have picked up somewhat; when as that fig-tree-god ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... case" was the great sensation of the town, and Wood was one of the main witnesses, for he had been taking the place of the absent cashier when the safe was broken open and rifled to the widespread distress of depositors and stockholders, and the ruin of Hon. Edward Clark, the president. Wood had locked the safe on the afternoon before the eventful night, and had carried home the key with him, and he was to testify to the contents of the safe ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin

... trains were thronged with eager pilgrims, hastening out of the city, to behold once more the ancient marvel of the spring; and, on Sunday evenings, the railway termini were aflower with banners of blossom from rifled woodland and orchard carried in the hands of the returning pilgrims, whose eyes still shone with the spring magic, in whose ears still ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... these he either enlisted into his armies, or slaughtered on the spot. The second class consisted of the rich, the women, and the artizans;—these he divided amongst his followers. The remainder, the old, infirm, and poor, he suffered to return to their rifled city. Such was his ordinary course; but when anything occurred to provoke him, the most savage excesses followed. The slightest offence, or appearance of offence, on the part of an individual, sufficed for ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... proceedings he watched, acted at one time as carriers of pellets, and at another as miners, and all shortly afterwards assumed the office of conveyers of the spoil. In about two hours, all the nests of the formicae were rifled. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... the number of these. The one before us could sweep across the field with majestic slowness, or dart with lightning swiftness and a swallow's grace. It could gyrate in a spiral, or spin on its axis in a rectilinear path like a rifled bullet. It could dart up or down, and begin, arrest, or change its motion with a grace and power which at once astonish and entrance. Fixing on one of these monads then, we followed it doggedly by a never-ceasing movement of a "mechanical stage," never for an instant losing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... except that of Hymettus. The bees are of a special kind, which work hard, and go out in wind and slight rain; but the excellence of the honey was probably due to the rosemary blossoms, on which they feed by preference, only visiting other flowers when these have been completely rifled. Of late years the inhabitants have cleared a great part of the land in order to cultivate vines or chrysanthemum, so the yield of honey is much reduced. Remains of mosaic pavements found here and there show ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... anybody. What would have happened next? You would have driven straight to the house in Soho and secured the document which Miss Finn would probably have entrusted to her cousin's keeping. Or, if he conducted the search, he would have pretended to find the hiding-place already rifled. He would have had a dozen ways of dealing with the situation, but the result would have been the same. And I rather fancy some accident would have happened to both of you. You see, you know rather an inconvenient amount. That's a rough outline. I admit I was caught napping; ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... the discussion which took place at the meeting of the British Association at Cambridge in 1862, upon the material proper to be used as projectiles. The discussion arose after a paper had been read by me in the Mechanical Section upon 'Rifled guns and projectiles adapted for attacking armour plates.' The paper was, I think, printed by the Association in their Report for 1862. You spoke, I believe, at some length on the occasion; and I recollect that you surprised ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... shapeless blocks of creeper-clad masonry, which attract the eye on all sides amidst the vineyards and orange groves, where the peasants delving in the rich soil frequently alight upon treasures of the antique world. What a delight it is to wander through the Street of Tombs—alas, long rifled of their contents!—where the gay valerian and the pink silene sprout from every fissure of the soft tufa rock, and lizards of unusual size and brilliancy play games of hide-and-seek in the warm sunshine. We moderns are afraid of graveyards and ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... of exhibiting Lord Sidmouth in the unsuspected character of a poet. As several millions of verses were poured out as the offerings of the Muse on the joyful occasion, as Parnassus was rifled by the Universities, and as every village school in the kingdom hung a pen-and-ink garland on the altar of AEsculapius or Hygeia; it was felt to be the bounden duty of every candidate for cabinet honours, to put his desk "in order," and rhyme, to the best of his power. Addington, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... well it was that he found such agreeable companions, for time flowed on, and no summons arrived to call him to his grandfather's presence, and no herald to announce his grandfather's advent. The ladies and Coningsby had exhausted badinage; they had examined and criticised all the furniture, had rifled the vases of their prettiest flowers; and Clotilde, who had already sung several times, was proposing a duet to Ermengarde, when a servant entered, and told the ladies that a carriage was in attendance to give them an airing, and after that Lord Monmouth hoped they would return and dine with him; ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... to lose," said Shaw, pointing to another band of bulls on the left. We lashed our horses and galloped upon them. Shaw killed one with each barrel of his gun. I separated another from the herd and shot him. The small bullet of the rifled pistol, striking too far back, did not immediately take effect, and the bull ran on with unabated speed. Again and again I snapped the remaining pistol at him. I primed it afresh three or four times, and each time it missed fire, for the touch-hole ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... the wolves stopped, and rifled the sledge-pack —a brief pause filled with horrid snarls and yelps. Then, the steady, resonant baying again, louder and more triumphant, seemingly at the very heels of the fugitives. A hundred yards away the woods stood, impersonal witnesses of ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... from the Capes upon the 23th Day of Aprill A pink[2] of about 100 tons bound from Barbadoes to virginia, no great guns, and between 50 or 60 men, most french and Dutch and some Irish men[3] lately taken by Pyrates, Seized his ship, rifled her, and barberously used him and a Merchant belonging to him, by whom they had accot. that the Cheif Pirate[4] was about 24 Guns and about 140 Tons, and another about the same burthen but what force he could not learn, and a Sloope ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... the box in the folds of his sash and continued the search of the captive. The Character Marking Spectacles were next abstracted, but the Turk, seeing in them nothing but spectacles, scornfully thrust them back into Rob's pocket, while his comrades laughed at him. The boy was now rifled of seventeen cents in pennies, a broken pocket knife and a lead-pencil, the last article seeming to ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum

... the garden and fields, and advertising a reward, in case of its having been thrown away when rifled, or found to ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... maddened with fright, struggled against his assailants furiously, but he was overmatched, a violent blow with the butt end of a pistol stunned him completely, and all resistance was over. Undaunted by their want of success the coach was then rifled, the mails ruthlessly thrown out into ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various

... abuse. He gives it to the world at large by pulpit and press; he even inflicts it upon leading statesmen by private letters. But these weapons did not succeed. They were like Chinese gongs and dragon lanterns against rifled cannon. Buckland, Pye Smith, Lyell, Silliman, Hitchcock, Murchison, Agassiz, Dana, and a host of of noble champions besides, pressed on the battle for truth was won. And was it won merely for men of science? ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... did we suffer grievous material loss at the hands of the raiding parties which malignant Sir John Johnson piloted into the Valley of his birth. In one of these the Cairncross mansion was rifled and burned, and the tenants despoiled and driven into the woods. This meant a considerable monetary damage to us; yet our memories of the place were all so sad that its demolition seemed almost a relief, particularly ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... especial interest in American literature. He wrote to congratulate Trumbull upon his excellent poem, and took the opportunity to lay down "the conditions prescribed for burlesque poetry." "These, Sir, you have happily seized and perfectly complied with.... I believe that you have rifled every flower which that kind of poetry could offer.... Nor do I hesitate to assure you that I prefer it to every work of the kind,—even to Hudibras." Notwithstanding the opinion of the pompous Marquis, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... sitting gloomily before the rifled mantel, with the empty tumbler and teaspoon in his hand, "it's sad business to have a Doctor Franklin lodging in the next room. I wonder if he sees to all the boarders this way. How the O-t-a-r-d merchants ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... careful, loving hand, Transplanted her into your own fair garden, Where the sun always shines: there long she flourish'd; Grew sweet to sense, and lovely to the eye; Till at the last a cruel spoiler came, Cropp'd this fair rose, and rifled all its sweetness, Then cast it like ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway

... of the besiegers had marked Benedetto's fall, and the disappearance of the body into the earth. A pool of blood revealed the entrance to the passage. Ere sunrise Mantua was full of Frederick's soldiers, full also of burning houses, rifled sanctuaries, violated damsels, children playing with their dead mothers' breasts, especially full of citizens protesting that they had ever longed for the restoration of the Emperor, and that this was the happiest day of their lives. Frederick waited till everybody was killed, then entered the city ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... field guns, ran the batteries at Vicksburg and caused much alarm on the river below. The tow-boat Webb, before mentioned, had powerful machinery and was very fast, and I determined to use her as a ram and attempt the destruction of the Queen. A thirty-two-pounder, rifled and banded, was mounted forward, some cotton bales stuffed around her boilers, and a volunteer crew organized. Pending these preparations I took steamer at Alexandria and went down to Fort De Russy, and thence to Butte a la Rose, which ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... angel to avoid going into a wood with her lover, or into any dark or retired place where she might not be able to make people hear her if she cried out. Alas! for her if she pay no attention to the warning! She shall be rifled of the precious flower of chastity, and shall never again have right to wear the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... begin with, this projectile had to travel point foremost; therefore it had to be made to spin—and it certainly was spinning when it entered the body, as the clothing and the wound showed us. Now, to make it spin, it had to be fired from a rifled barrel; but as the hilt would not engage in the rifling, it had to be fitted with something that would. That something was evidently a soft metal washer, which fitted on to this hexagon, and which would ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... first Leo, when from his rifled palace on one of the devastated hills of Rome he looked out upon the Christian world, pillaged, sacked, overrun with barbarians, full of untold calamities,—order and law crushed; literature and art prostrate; justice a byword; murders and assassinations unavenged; central ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... of fallen coal had inflicted the terrible blow. No doctor was available, and for many days he hovered between life and death, unable to speak. It was only after the steamer arrived at Somerset that medical assistance was obtained, and that Captain MacAlister opened the safe, and found it rifled of all the cash it had contained—the bundle of unsigned notes Adlam had given to the bank manager within an hour after the steamer's arrival at Cooktown. Poor Adlam, still unconscious, was sent to Brisbane. The disappearance of ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke

... fell, and crying out "Down, dog." The Spaniards, overwhelmed with surprise, began to cross and bless themselves. One sprang overboard and swam ashore; the rest were bound and stowed away under the hatches while the ship was rifled. The beginning was not a bad one. Wedges of gold were found weighing four hundred pounds, besides miscellaneous plunder. The settlement, which was visited next, was less productive, for the inhabitants had fled, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... of manufacture has human ingenuity been taxed more vigorously, for the attainment of the highest possible point of perfection, than in that of rifled guns for the use of the troops, on whose capacity for the destruction of their opponents the throne of the tyrant or the liberty of the people may be dependent. Nations, companies, and individuals have expended years of time and millions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... to have turned a stranger dog to the door. The next day the poor old creature was found dead in his hut—his brains beaten out with an old iron implement which he used, and his little furniture rifled and in confusion. The wretch had murdered him for the supposed hoard of a few shillings. The snow, from which he afforded his murderer shelter, had drifted in at the door, which the miscreant, when he fled, had left open, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... losses. Not merely the plate in common use was gone, but the costly services and ornaments that had been the glory of old Mr. Fulmort's heart; and the locks had not been broken but opened with a key; the drawing-rooms had been rifled of their expensive bijouterie, and the foray would have been completely successful had it included the jewels. There were no marks of a violent entrance; windows and doors were all fastened as usual, with the single exception ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hails his coming as the harbinger of freedom.' Not one, but many, of our generals have proclaimed that the negro has gained by the bayonet the ballot. Admiral Du Pont made mention of the negro pilot Small, who brought out the steamer Planter, mounting a rifled and siege gun, from Charleston, as a prize to us, under the very guns of the enemy. He brought us the first trophy from Fort Sumter, and information more ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... pale brassy dome of the sky cloudless over all, the sun a glaring white disc with its edges almost melting into the sky. Job held his gun carelessly ready (it was a double-barrelled muzzle-loader, one barrel choke-bore for shot, and the other rifled), and he kept an eye out for dingoes. He was saving his horse for a long ride, jogging along in the careless Bush fashion, hitched a little to one side—and I'm not sure that he didn't have a leg thrown up and across in front of ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... preservation and special favour), only with much difficulty saved. In which shipwreck, not only the said ship was broken, but also the whole mass and body of the goods laden in her was, by the rude and ravenous people of the country thereunto adjoining, rifled, spoiled, and carried away, to the manifest loss and utter destruction of all the lading of the said ship, and together with the ship, apparel, ordnance, and furniture, belonging to the company, in value of 1,000 pounds of all, which was not restored ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt

... came upon the House of one Adams at Wells, and captived the Man and his Wife, and assassinated the children.... The woman had Lain in about Eight Days. They drag'd her out, and tied her to a Post, until the House was rifled. They then loosed her, and bid her walk. She could not stir. By the help of a Stick she got half a step forward. She look'd up to God. On the sudden a new strength entered into her. She was up to the Neck in Water five times that very Day in passing ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... nearly to the margin of a burning question, I hope that I may be allowed to take one step more in the same direction, and to assure you that no one regretted more sincerely than I did the destruction of that collection of summer-houses and kiosks, already, and previously to any act of mine, rifled of their contents, which was dignified by the title of Summer Palace of the Chinese Emperor. But when I had satisfied myself that in no other way, except, indeed, by inflicting on this country and on China the calamity of another year of war, could I mark the sense which I entertained, which ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... nervously about the hotel,—upstairs and down. The jewels were locked in his pack upstairs. He went up to his room half a dozen times and almost instantly walked down again, after satisfying himself that the pack had not been rifled. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... ship built for war, a very respectable little steam-corvette, the only one of her class—if such a bull as a class of one may be excused. She carried one ten-inch gun and four 32-pounders, all smooth-bores. There was, besides, one small nondescript rifled piece, upon which we looked with more curiosity than confidence. Indeed, unless memory deceive, the projectiles from it were quite as apt to go end over end as true. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... of Whitworth and Armstrong resulted in the production of rifled guns, based on a principle that had already been tried with success in small-arms. The rifling enabled long conical shot to be fired with far greater accuracy than the old round-shot, and as these conical shot were ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... delicious coffee and thick slices of French bread, for the very reasonable sum of twopence. They were always friendly and hospitable, and the men, in turn, treated them with courteous and kindly respect. Tommy was a great favorite with the French children. They climbed on his lap and rifled his pockets; and they delighted him by talking in his own vernacular, for they were quick to pick up English words and phrases. They sang "Tipperary" and "Rule Britannia," and "God Save the King," so quaintly and prettily that the men kept them at it for hours ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall

... of five divisions, under Generals Hunter, Pope, Sigel, McKinstry, and Asboth, and numbers about thirty thousand men, including over five thousand cavalry and eighty-six pieces of artillery, a large proportion of which are rifled. The infantry is generally well, though not uniformly armed. But the cavalry is very badly armed. Colonel Carr's regiment has no sabres, except for the commissioned and non-commissioned officers. The men carry Hall's carbines and revolvers. Major Waring's fine corps, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... pounds sterling a day, when gold and silver were worth four times as much as at the present day. Rome was made up of these citizen kings and their dependants, for most of the senators had been, at some time, governors of provinces, which they rifled and robbed. In Rome were accumulated the choicest treasures of the world. Her hills were covered with the palaces of the proudest nobles that ever walked the earth, Rome was the centre, and the glory, and the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... The town was now in a miserable condition: the soldiers searched and rifled the houses of the inhabitants for victuals; they had lived on horseflesh several weeks, and most of that also was as lean as carrion, which not being well salted bred wens; and this want of diet made the soldiers sickly, and many died of fluxes, yet ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe

... Richmond and Vincennes grounded on the bar. The fire-rafts drifted harmlessly on to the western bank of the river, and then burned out. When day broke, the enemy's fleet, finding the head of the passes abandoned, followed down the river, and with rifled guns kept up a steady but not very accurate long-range fire upon the stranded ships, not venturing within reach of the Richmond's heavy broadside. About 10 A.M., apparently satisfied with the day's work, they returned up river, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... of departure was arrived, and have seldom found a visit to appear so very short. The carriage being laden with the sweet-scented spoils,—or, rather let me say, gifts of our kind hostess, for nothing could exceed the free hand with which every shrub was rifled for us,—we made our adieus, and set forth to return to the city by a different road, paying a call at another cottage ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... winds, and was driven to the west of the island of Celebes, and so passed round it through the straits of Desalon, and back to the Moluccas. The Chinese complain much against the Hollanders for robbing and pilfering their junks, of which they are said to have taken and rifled seven. The emperor of Japan has taken some displeasure against the Hollanders, having refused a present they lately sent him, and would not even speak to those who brought it. He did the same in regard to a present sent by the Portuguese, which came in a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... inn, spending three pistols on liquid refreshment. He so took the fancy of the publican by his open-handed ways that he was invited to call again. This Evans and his companions did, in the middle of the same night, and rifled the house and took away all they could carry aboard ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... had been removed in lorries at the time of the German capture of Merville, and the long galleries and rooms thereafter became filled with troops. The ample bath-house, laundry, and kitchen of the Asylum, though ravaged by shelling and rifled by the mysterious depredations of looters, more than provided for the Battalion's wants. I have to record a very regrettable incident in connection with St. Venant Asylum. On the morning of May 21, during some shelling, when most ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... the absence of the faithful black Tom, who for years had served them by day and guarded them by night. They lived in constant fear of burglars, which grew into a veritable terror when some one broke into the pantry and rifled the shelves. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... During the years 1538 and 1539 the monasteries fell one by one, while during the same period war was carried on against shrines and pilgrimages. The images of Our Lady of Ipswich and of Our Lady of Walsingham were destroyed; the tomb of St. Thomas Becket was rifled of its precious treasures, and the bones and relics of the saint were treated with the greatest dishonour. Everywhere throughout the country preachers inspired by Cromwell and Cranmer, the latter of whom aimed at nothing less than ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... to warn him, he felt himself suddenly seized round the neck from behind. He had just time to notice that the arm round his neck was naked and of a tawny-brown colour, before his eyes were bandaged, his mouth was gagged, and he was thrown helpless on the floor by (as he judged) two men. A third rifled his pockets, and—if, as a lady, I may venture to use such an expression—searched him, without ceremony, through and through ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... been a dream, but so impressed was I by the old lady's story that all the rest of the week I searched for further light upon it. Into old carven chests I dived, opening package after package of mouldy papers. In the attic trunks and boxes were rifled, until at last, about to give up in despair, I found in an old desk a letter. It was in French with the Benneville crest and seal, brown with age, and by no means easy to decipher. The place of writing, and the date, quite beyond human ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... animation to the terrified soldiers, and my orders were obeyed. But I must add, they were soon disappointed, for in less than half an hour the detachment returned in despair, showing me his majesty's coat, which they had found in the fosse. I suppose the ruffians tore it off when they rifled him. It was rent in several places, and so wet with blood that the officer who presented it to me concluded they had murdered the king there, and drawn away his body, for by the light of the torches the soldiers could trace drops of ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... pressed forward to assure themselves. He put the paper into their hands and, stepping to the rifled valise, bent over it, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... victim, and the figure of Kazmah, as well as every paper or other possible clue, they carried up to the Cubanis office, and from thence across the roof to Sir Lucien's study. Next, while Mareno went for the car, Mrs. Sin rifled the safe, bureaus and desks in Sir Lucien's flat, so that we had the devil's own work, as you know, to find out even the more simple facts ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... with him we learned that Robert R. did not land at Liverpool, but when suffering from depression threw himself overboard three days after leaving America, and was drowned. We further elicited that upon his death the sailors rifled his clothes and boxes, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... out their launch and came and took it on board the schooner, viz: ten boxes containing twenty thousand dollars; then returned to the brig again, drove all the crew into the forecastle, ransacked the cabin, overhauling all the chests, trunks, &c. and rifled my pockets, taking my watch, and three doubloons which I had previously put there for safety; robbed the mate of his watch and two hundred dollars in specie, still insisting that there was more money in the hold. Being answered in ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... the barrel. Silver and gold ornament was inlaid over most of the surface, but the locks were taken from English muskets. The Gusti assured me, however, that the Rajah had a man who made locks and also rifled barrels. The workshop where these guns are made and the tools used were next shown us, and were very remarkable. An open shed with a couple of small mud forges were the chief objects visible. The bellows ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... remote date been carefully preserved. Taking the Western Powers as a model, the Japanese have not failed to emulate them in nearly all the prominent features of civilization, promptly furnishing themselves with rifled cannon and torpedo boats, with newspapers and a national debt. As we have remarked, the army and civil officers have long since adopted the American costume. The railroad and the telegraph, too much of an innovation for the more pretentious Chinese, are ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... might make things harder for him. She ordered all the dishes she knew he liked for tea, and spent a couple of hours in the hot kitchen that scorching morning preparing a cake that he always praised. With eager haste she took from its glass-doored cabinet the rare old Mason china, and rifled the garden of roses to fill the quaint century old punch-bowl for the center of the table. All things possible should be done to make Jim feel himself, that night, the honored guest, the person of most importance in their world. It was an heirloom—the Mason china—quaint and curious, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... examined the island, as thoroughly as their position would allow, from the different loops, and found that its conquerors were preparing for a feast, having seized upon the provisions of the English and rifled the huts. Most of the stores were in the blockhouse; but enough were found outside to reward the Indians for an attack that had been attended by so little risk. A party had already removed the dead ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... efficiently carried out. Observe the completeness of the thing, and the way in which all the necessities of the case are foreseen and met. This projectile was discharged from a powerful air-gun—the walking-stick form—provided with a force-pump and key. The barrel of that gun was rifled." ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... to mind; Her life from Ocean's waves, her honour too, To him she owed; what could he have in view? A something, which already has been shown, Was saved through Hispal's nervous arm alone: Said he, far better bless a real friend, Than have each treasure rifled in the end, By some successful ruffian; think it o'er; You little dream for whom you guard ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... man's gaze. It was open. Papers lay scattered everywhere and its contents had been rifled and flung on the floor. Some one, in a desperate hurry, ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... their religion they would not. They set about going. They bribed ship captains, feed the sailors, paid unreasonable rates for passage, and then, deserted by these same captains and sailors, tried it again with others, were betrayed into the hands of officers who rifled them of what money they had left and turned them over to prison. Hard luck! Set free from prison, they bargained with a Dutchman to take them in his ship to Holland, but as they were going aboard a company ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... possession of an important sum. They placed upon his track three bold fellows, who, after many fruitless endeavors, encountered him one evening accompanied only by a single lackey. Seizing fast hold of himself and attendant, they rifled him in a twinkling; and as he had accidentally left his purse at home, they took his rich cloak of Spanish cloth and silk, which was quite new, and of great value. Polidamor, who at first resisted, found himself compelled to yield to force, but asked as a favor to be allowed to redeem his ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... taken up into the hills by a squad of men. There wasn't a man among us that didn't know that we were to be killed as soon as the ship had gone. With our own eyes, we saw the mail bags rifled, and nearly all of the mail destroyed. The pouches from the chateau were burned. Rasula politely informed us that the plague had broken out among the chateau servants and that no mail could be sent out from that place. He said he intended to warn the ship's officer of the ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... to atoms—the chairs were overturned—china-plates and cut-glasses lay scattered about in fragments amid clothing, and books, and boxes; the cabin lamp and a cabin compass, and stores of every sort, of which the lockers had been rifled—chests and trunks lay open, despoiled of their contents, but no human form, either alive or ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... Stephen gravely. "You have a right to the life that you have saved. Will you come with me now? But perhaps you cannot leave together? Will the house be rifled when ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... interested in her welfare—up to the point of sacrificing social interests in the eyes of the Sykeses. Friendship gardens were rich with Autumn, cosmos and salvia and opulent asters, and on the morning of the two parties this store of sweetness was rifled for the debutante. By noon Mrs. Ricker and Kitton was saying in awe, "Nobody in Friendship ever had this many flowers, dead, or alive, or rich." And although some of us grieved that Mis' Postmaster Sykes had shown what she named her good-will by ordering from the town a pillow ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... honor, he asshoored me that, after battles, he rifled the corpses uv both armies, impartially. "Cood any boddy be more nootraller than that?" he asked. "My sons," sed he, "wuz in the confedrit army. This fact wood hev turned the affections uv a week-minded ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... berth. There was no time to wait. He glided out of the room, and reentered his own stateroom. Immediately after his departure Mr. Waterbury, who had awakened in time to catch sight of his receding figure, rose in his berth, and drew toward him the garment which Graham had rifled. He felt in the pocket, and discovered that ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger

... chastisement. The outward aspect is calm and peaceful. The gates are thrown open, and the merchants and traders are returning to the pursuits of traffic; the gentry and nobles are engaged in refitting and re-embellishing their rifled palaces; and the common people have returned in quiet to the several ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... not above nine households, presently fled away and abandoned the town. Our General manned his boat and the Spanish ship's boat, and went to the town; and, being come to it, we rifled it, and came to a small chapel, which we entered, and found therein a silver chalice, two cruets, and one altar-cloth, the spoil whereof our General gave to Master Fletcher, his minister. We found also in this town a warehouse stored with wine of Chili and many boards of ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty

... 'Yes, truly,' answers the other: 'if we got ourselves japanned, coated with resinous varnish (INDUITS DE POIX RESINEUX); who knows!' Not a sublime owlery can you drop, but it is manipulated, ground down, put in rifled cannon, comes back on you as tempests of burning dust." Enough to send Maupertuis pirouetting through the world, with red ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... right and left, evident snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, truculent, ragged, wearing evil-looking knives by their sides. During their transit the village had shut itself up, as Coventry did for Godiva's ride. When we all ventured forth again the talk was of missing poultry and rifled fruit trees. The geese had luckily started for their day on the high pastures before the bad folk came; for in a German village there is always a gooseherd. Sometimes it is a little boy or girl, sometimes an old woman, and early in the morning ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... of old, from the limb! The catbird croons in the lilac bush! 25 Through the dim arbor, himself more dim, Silently hops the hermit-thrush, The withered leaves keep dumb for him; The irreverent buccaneering bee Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery 30 Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor With haste-dropt gold from shrine to door; There, as of yore, The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup Its tiny polished urn holds up, 35 Filled with ripe summer to the edge, The sun in his ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... afternoon, General Henningsen arrived, bringing a fine brass howitzer, and a small reinforcement of infantry—as those armed with rifled muskets and bayonets were called—and artillerymen; and, after some hours' rest, he ordered a fresh attempt with the howitzer, supported by somewhere near two hundred men. This party was received with so fierce a fire at the barricade that they shrank back, leaving the howitzer behind in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... Gordon rifled the hood's pockets, and located a roll of bills stuffed in. He dragged them out, before snapping cuffs on the man. Then he pulled ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... once more rifled the jewel case. There were some things still left—two or three rings and a diamond cross. She had never wanted to part with that cross. She had pictured over and over how it would shine on Nora's white neck; how lovely Nora would look when dressed for her first ball, having that white ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... from this that those who had rifled his belongings could not have left the scene ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster

... improved guns, and very few are so located as to give full effect to the greater range of such guns as we are now making for coast-defense uses. This general subject has had consideration in Congress for some years, and the appropriation for the construction of large rifled guns made one year ago was, I am sure, the expression of a purpose to provide suitable works in which these guns might be mounted. An appropriation now made for that purpose would not advance the completion of the works ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... stunned. It was seething with disgust and fury. How dared he? Her own, her exclusive property, inherited and separate....She felt at this moment exactly as she would have felt if her jewel coffer instead of the dispatch box had been rifled; it was the instinct of possession that had been outraged. What was hers was hers as much as the hair on her head or the thoughts in her mind...an instinct that harked back to the oldest of the buried civilizations...she wondered if any socialist really had cultivated the power ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... This, as he afterwards learned, proceeded from Gilfillan's party, who had now assembled, the stragglers in front and rear having joined the others. At their approach the Highlanders drew off, but not before they had rifled Gilfillan and two of his people, who remained on the spot grievously wounded. A few shots were exchanged betwixt them and the Westlanders; but the latter, now without a commander, and apprehensive of a second ambush, did not make any serious ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... other interests he interested himself in this ancient place, passing from neglect into oblivion, as his own life was doing. There were Etruscan sepulchres and Pelasgic caves which had been centuries earlier rifled of their objects of value, but still otherwise remained untouched under the acacia woods by the river. There were columns and terraces and foundations of marble which had been there when the Latin city of Ruscinonis had flourished, from the time of Augustus until its destruction by Theodoric. And ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... Indiana: Start your four regiments to St. Louis at the earliest moment possible. Get such harness as may be necessary for your rifled gums. Do not delay a single regiment, but hasten everything forward as soon as any one regiment is ready. Have your three additional regiments organized at once. We shall endeavor to send you the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... our poor old father with great indignity also; dragged him down the steps of the veranda, took his watch, rifled his pockets, plundered the house, then set it on fire and burned ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... until the next morning, when, upon rising, she found the jewel-box, in which she kept the jewelry which she commonly wore (her diamonds and more valuable gems being locked in a trunk, fortunately) together with all that Violet had possessed, was rifled of its contents and her husband gone, together with his traveling-bag and a ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... while her husband was taking down the bed, larger perhaps, than the room itself in which they would in vain try to set it up, or cruelly forcing a lid, which, having a spring lock, had closed again after the carved chest had been already rifled by the commissioner or his men. The kitchen was full of squabbling women, and the whole place in the agonies of dissolution. But there was a small group of persons, fortuitously met, but linked ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... into the tent again; and nerved himself to await the inevitable scene. Meanwhile he could see Rina alight at the door, search the cabin hastily, and dart about outside, like a distracted ant returning to find her dwelling rifled. She followed the tracks down to the water's edge, dragging the horse after her. Seeking over the water, she soon discovered the dugout lying at Garth's camp; whereupon she clambered on the horse again. Presently she came crashing through ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... bore the marks of siege and fracture repair. The walls were new-built, of age-old stone. The last expedition out of India had leveled every bit of those defenses flat with the valley, but Khinjan's devils had reerected them, as ants rebuild a rifled nest. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... his engagements, as well to mother as to son. He has his own pistols—not made for this purpose—but a substantial pair of traveller's babes—big of mouth, long of throat, thick of jaw, keen of sight, quick of speech, strong of wind, and weighty of argument. They are rifled bores also, and, in the hands of the owner, have done clever things at bottle and sapling. Stevens would prefer to have the legitimate things, but these babes are trustworthy; and he has no reason to suppose that the young rustic whom he goes to meet can ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... decreed—namely, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust. The poorest slave, buried in a hole within the ground, is safer from man's greed and violence than the mightiest conqueror; for the massive porphyry sarcophagus of Alexander was rifled by Caligula, and after that by others, in Egypt. And the same fate has befallen the tombs of Cyrus and Darius in Persia, for the sake of the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... fell; Jerusalem itself was taken by storm; the sepulchre of Christ, the churches of Constantine and of Helena were given to the flames; the Savior's cross was sent as a trophy to Persia; the churches were rifled of their riches; the sacred relics, collected by superstition, were dispersed. Egypt was invaded, conquered, and annexed to the Persian Empire; the Patriarch of Alexandria escaped by flight to Cyprus; ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... pallet of filthy straw. The place I was in was in utter darkness. I listened for any sound which might explain my situation. The vile odours of a ship's hold, the sound of water, and a slight sense of motion convinced me I was on shipboard! I felt in my pockets, but they had been rifled! ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... mainland, but this theory was disproved by the fact that the skulls were never carried away. As we know of no Borneo tribe which is in the habit of breaking open graves, the only conclusion that can be come to is that the graves were rifled under the supposition that the Europeans buried treasure with their dead, though it is strange that their experiences of failure never seemed to teach them that such ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... rifle their saddle-bags for the little packages of gold that it was their mission to guard with their lives. Life at all times is dearer than gold, and the men realised that they were in a trap from which there was only one way of escape. They submitted meekly to their fate, saw the saddle-bags rifled without a word of protest, and, deceived by the shadows, watched what they took to be half a dozen men at least loading up with the gold. It speaks well for the dominant personality of Mr. Bradby that no one seemed to have suspected that only two men were concerned in the hold-up, despite ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... won it by matching coins. We divided the blankets in the same way, and all the spare underwear. Brown and Coutlass had to be satisfied with cotton blankets from a bale of trade goods; but when they had rifled enough to build up good thick mattresses as well as coverings, there were still two apiece for our ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... daughter of Belial, as she is styled, sung and danced in the church, to ridicule the hymns and processions of the Orientals. Nor were the repositories of the royal dead secure from violation: in the church of the Apostles, the tombs of the emperors were rifled; and it is said, that after six centuries the corpse of Justinian was found without any signs of decay or putrefaction. In the streets, the French and Flemings clothed themselves and their horses ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... accomplishments, her diversions, her talents,—a harp beside an open harpsichord, a guitar on a chair, an embroidering frame with a square of satin stretched on it, a half-finished miniature on a table among papers and books, a bookcase in dire disorder as if rifled by the hand of a fair reader as eager to know as ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... a kind-hearted person; and, being really grieved over the detention of an innocent man, wrote several exculpating letters to the papers, enclosing rifled express envelopes to prove his peripatetic identity. These letters were signed "Jim Cummings," a nom de guerre borrowed from an older and an abler offender ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas

... the restitution of the tyrants' effects, which the senate had formerly voted, came again under consideration. The fathers, fired with indignation, expressly forbad them either to be restored or confiscated. They were given to be rifled by the people, that after being made participators in the royal plunder, they might lose for ever all hopes of a reconciliation with the Tarquins. A field belonging to them, which lay between the city and the Tiber, having been consecrated to Mars, has been called ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius



Words linked to "Rifled" :   unrifled



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